No, it is not. Milling is a subtractive process, and 3D printing is an additive process. Plastics can be milled, too.

Put a law like that on the books, and I guarantee that retailers, hospitals, insurance companies, etc. will do everything they can to cover up breaches of their systems and these stories will all but disappear.

I used to put electrical tape over the camera lens on my work laptop, because I'm caring enough to save those poor IT security guys from having to see pictures of me picking my nose. I used blue tape, not black, because that was the first thing I grabbed off the shelf in the lab. One day I found that the camera could still see a blurry image of the room through the blue electrical tape. So, whatever kind of tape you use, do a quick test to make sure it's actually opaque enough. I now use copper foil tape, which we also happen to have in the lab. Aluminum foil tape should also work as well, and that should be commonly available in hardware stores.

Some services start even cheaper than $28. For example, OSH Park.

We need a sensible adult conversation in which the sensible adults show up with torches and pitchforks.

There's no need to imagine that. He quit his job at HP in order to launch Apple Computer with Jobs.

It's not just you. In my opinion, when a government agency appoints an "{issue} Czar", that's a sign that they intend to do nothing meaningful about {issue}. When an entire organization's charter is to misbehave badly, appointing one person to advise on the issue is a pointless gesture meant to distract people from the problem. The problem of tens of thousands of people working in concert to eavesdrop on the communications of innocent people will not be affected in the slightest by one lone figurehead adviser. Massive problems require sweeping changes, not token gestures. But the powers that be do not want to correct the problem. To them, everything is working just the way they want it to.

True, but they lack the personal touch of an enraged mob. :)

I look forward to a time when people respond to patent trolls with actual torches and pitchforks. Tar and feathers will also be acceptable.

Old habits die hard, I guess. I rework existing boards a lot more often than I do assembly. For changing out discrete resistors/caps/inductors, a pair of good irons works very well. An iron is also preferable for tacking wires onto test points.

Maybe your iron doesn't have good enough thermal control, and/or is at too high a temperature? I used to swear by Weller irons, until I was coerced into trying a Metcal. I was amazed at what a difference a really good iron makes. I routinely hand-solder down to 0402 size components without any problems at all. I often have to rework 0201 sized ones, and those are harder. But with a good iron, appropriate use of flux, good minimum-size tips that you don't use for anything larger than 0201, treat carefully, and definitely don't let anybody else borrow, it's not that bad. When I need to tune up an RF path at work, I'll end up changing the same few 0402 or 0201 passives a dozen times or more, without ever cracking a component or lifting a pad.

Oh, and one other thing: If the board was built with lead-free solder, wick that crap off and do your rework with proper 63/37 tin/lead solder! It'll make better joints, and it melts at a lower temperature.

Nonsense. Packages with exposed pins on the sides will typically have at least twice that pin pitch (0.5mm or larger), and they are certainly hand-solderable. Even if your wire solder is larger than the pin. In rework, this kind of stuff is done by humans, not by robots.

You will want a binocular microscope, available from eBay. And a GOOD soldering iron with good tips, such as a Metcal; also available from eBay, though you'll hunt a while to find one cheap. And some liquid flux to control surface tension and heat transfer. If the pins are not exposed, such as on a BGA, then you'll need a $100 hot air station. I've done this sort of stuff myself, and I don't have nearly as much skill as a good rework technician. At work, I even routinely perform rework involving soldering wires to individual 0.5mm pitch IC or connector pins. It's tricky with 30 gauge wire, since the wire is about as wide as the pin... so that's why we bought a spool of 38 gauge wire, which makes it pretty easy to do.

This sort of stuff takes a bit more practice than through-hole soldering, and it requires different equipment and techniques. But I could do it at home if I had to, where I've set up my bench with a pair of used Metcal irons and a binocular scope. I don't have a hot air station at home yet, but that's a $100 problem to solve when I need to do it.

Dub step? What happened to the hippity hop?

YOU YOUNG HOOLIGANS, WITH YOUR JUNGLE MUSIC!

(Yes, Mr. Filter, I know that using too many caps is like yelling.)

My relatives always said that the second and later kids take 9 months, but the first one can pop out any old time. :)