Considering that SpaceX has started printing *entire* rocket motors - not primary launch motors, to be sure, but rocket motors for production spacecraft nonetheless - I don't think ULA playing "me too" with building a few parts this way is going to make them as cool as SpaceX!

Yep. Some parts of the Merlin 1D are built additively, I think, but the *entire* SuperDraco thruster (which uses Hydrazine rather than cryogenic fuels like RP1/LOX) is printed. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/S...

It's really cool to see this technique taking off (pun not initially intended, but let's go with it). People think of 3D printing as making rough plastic parts, but it can be used to create extremely precise parts out of various metals, too.

Eat my shorts.

http://code.metager.de/source/... /*-
  * Copyright (c) 1995 Terrence R. Lambert
  * All rights reserved.
  *
  * Copyright (c) 1982, 1986, 1989, 1991, 1992, 1993
  * The Regents of the University of California. All rights reserved.
  * (c) UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
  * All or some portions of this file are derived from material licensed
  * to the University of California by American Telephone and Telegraph
  * Co. or Unix System Laboratories, Inc. and are reproduced herein with
  * the permission of UNIX System Laboratories, Inc.
  *

If they're renting (as most low-income people do), they won't be (directly) paying property tax.

I suspect Lucas doesn't actually expect to turn a profit on doing this, possibly not by a long shot. 200M isn't exactly pocket change, but he can easily afford to write off the whole thing if needed.

It's pretty sad that "rich guy flips the bird to other rich people in revenge for not getting his way" pleases you more than "rich guy helps people get housing in one of the most expensive parts of the world". I mean, I enjoy the feel of a good "fuck you!" too, but if you like that *more* than what's essentially charity, well, that's kind of screwed up of you...

Seems like a reasonable claim to me! Resource supply is one of the key determiners of land value, and always has been. If it rains on my land, and I catch that rain before it wanders onto somebody else's land, how is that not my water?

I mean, there's lots of arguments for (and against) communal ownership of natural resources, but the current (and, for as far back as I'm aware, historical) rule is that they are part of the land value. You're going to have a hell of a time overturning that view. Some things, like rivers, tend to get a bit complicated - it's really awkward if your upstream neighbor feels like using his water (immediately before it ceases to be his) as an arsenic dump - but taking ownership of the water falling from the sky or coming up through the ground has never, so far as I know, *not* been part of land property rights.

I'm not actually sure which of use that tweet backs up; I thought he meant "I estimate we have an 80% chance of at least one landing by year's end, because there are lots of launches between now and then and there's a pretty good chance at least one will succeed." It would be pretty awesome if what he meant was "By the end of the year, we'll have so much more launch practice that, even though each launch has less than 50% chance of recovery right now, by year's end it should be about 80%." I hope the latter is the case, but the two are very different statements and the latter is much more optimistic. I was hoping you could indicate which one was more accurate.

Really, at the moment I have voice-only on a smartphone, through a third-party provider. I use wifi for data, but would welcome FM for such purposes.

Given that I also wrote much of the init.c in FreeBSD, you probably failed to fix that for me. :p

Actually, that one did. It resulted in both "Gulf War Syndrome", and a pretty big scandal where Monsanto brokered the deal to sell the machines to manufacture chemical weapons to them from a German company, said deal routed through France. But nice try.

PS: Plus we sold them the Sarin the used against their Kurdish separatists directly, so we knew they had it at one time, and were just hoping they hadn't used it all up so we could say "Aha! Stockpiles!".

"It will produce 50 million gallons of water per day and will provide 7% of the potable water needs for the San Diego region."

Cool. Now you only need to build another 14 of them to satisfy the water needs of the area...

Maybe robots could build desalination plants?

It''s pretty damn sure that humans never will; they'll plan them, and then shelve the plans, over and over. At least robots are single-minded enough to actually do the work.

It was definitely a "fuck you, this is a phone; this is not another fucking Newton".

Full disclosure: I was an Apple Core OS kernel team member at the time. I wrote 7% of the kernel that runs on the things.

That's a misdemeanor.

When someone preloads software that you request be preloaded on a device, that does *NOT* make the software vendor of that software a "subcontractor".

Unless, you know, (1) there was a contract between Apple and Pearson relating to contract line items, and (2) There was *no* contract between LA Unified and Pearson, and (3) LA Unified did not specify the curriculum software to use, and (4) Apple was acting as a slaes agent, rather than as an intermediary.

The breakdown they (LA Unified) gave was:

Special Case ($80);
3-year Apple Care warranty ($150);
Pre-loaded apps ($13-$21);
Pearson curriculum ($150-$300);
PD ($20); and
Buffer Pool ($20).

So it's pretty clear that they meet none of the criteria for subcontractor under the contract.