But cash has serial numbers! Production dates! Traceability through the Fed and member banks down to the ATM you withdrew from, and the account you used to withdraw, and who has been paying money into that account.

I post this kidding around, but I have to wonder if there has even been a truly dedicated group of people who have set to track a person that they could audit cash. I guess I'll know if I see a cashier scanning the bills I pay with.

I think Microsoft still has patents on puppy grinding.

Pro tip: evaporating water does not make it disappear.

The complaint is that a closed-cycle plant pulls water from the river and never returns it. Well, if they already lose 5% per pass due to evaporation and, when dirty enough, pipe the water to evaporation basins, doesn't that return the water to the environment?

That's the end game. Make sure everyone that pays in never winds up being more than some percentage of what they paid. 100% - their percentage = revenue. Then make insurance compulsory (auto insurance is in most places I've heard of) and now we have yet another industry that can legislate profitability. This kind of granular risk assessment, enabled by technology and data mining, is changing insurance from a risk and actuary game to "assurance" of profitability.

Also worth noting: a lot of folks are afraid of mass monitoring by government, but, really, our mass monitoring will be done by corporations who will freely open the data mines to government.

Those in the Revolutionary War. Granted the Bill of Rights was intended to counter the arguments that the Constitution paved the way for an oppressive government, as it was to replace the comparatively weaker Articles of Confederation (for which there was all actual fighting in the war), but the point is that it never would have happened if there was no independence, and the Kingdom of Great Britain was not (neither The Crown nor the Parliament) was about to give up her colonies on her own accord.

Because no one is willing to literally die or kill for it. Compare to the actual Bill of Rights.

They already sent a DMCA takedown request to Thingiverse to remove two models. Pictures here.

That said, there's more to resolution than layer height. That just affects the vertical resolution. For horizontal resolution, you also need a smaller nozzle. And while you could get them in 0.15mm, you also have to consider swelling (ABS swells more than PLA), clogging (smaller nozzles are less tolerant of dust and impurities), print speed (less plastic per second = increased print times & electricity). Then there's things like overhangs and then you soon realize there's significant work between pressing the print button and painting it.

Once you get it all dialed in, though, you have the potential to print an army out pretty efficiently. You can even print multiple copies (or just plain multiple objects) at once if you want: you're only limited by the build area.

Untrue.

First you have a CAD model, which you can calculate worst-case amount of material. Then the model gets sliced so that the printer knows how to draw each layer. Nobody that prints does so with 100% infill, most cross sections are filled with a web of plastic at about 20% - 40%, sometimes even hollow. I like 30% and it's plenty strong: especially with honeycomb fills instead of just straight lines.

The slicing process is more than just snapping cross-sections but rather describes an entire toolpath (gcode) along with a calibrated extrusion distance for the filament. Calibration being volume of plastic per mm of filament intake, with fine adjustments for bridges and start/stop cycles for multiple islands. The upshot of this is, at the end of generating the gcode you have a very precise accounting for the amount of plastic used. Now, one could argue that the length of plastic used isn't as useful as mass, but everything you need can be calculated from that length.

The de-facto slicer, Skeinforge, will even happily calculate the cost of raw materials when it's done, if you provide it with a cost per kg.

Now, the real factor in my mind is TIME. I've printed out a compact storage case for a board game, a small base, about 100mm^2 x 60mm total not discounting for holes where I actually store the cards and things, and it took about 10 hours to print at 0.1 mm layer height, 50mm/s drawing speed, 300mm/s travel speed (on an Ultimaker, which is probably closer to a RepRap instead of a Thing-O-Matic design, although closer to the Replicator design). I could have printed at a more coarse layer height, sure, but I had the feeler gauges and things calibrated extremely well for 0.1mm so I just left it.

10 hours is a pretty long time to stay within earshot of the machine and it takes a lot of faith in the machine to let it running without a human around considering the potential for something to go wrong with heaters and such.

To be fair, I did print off a few plastic octopi for friends, about 40mm^2 x 20mm, in about 30 minutes, not including slicing time and all the time (and plastic) spent practicing, calibrating. But I chalk that up to the cost to generate the experience to become a competent operator.

This is precisely why, in civilized societies, there is dispassionate legal system. There's a line between punishment of justice and vengeance of bloodlust that can only be crossed in a might-makes-right anarchy.

I find your choice of handle to be rather curiously, if the quote reflects your true feelings.

I'm just glad they didn't use EBCDIC.