That's the good thing about "money"...it solves the coincidence-of-wants problem, which is why people prefer to be paid in money instead of perks. However, with the government standing in the middle between your and your employer, you will never get a larger paycheck equal to the perks. Giving you the perks is more tax-efficient than paying you enough to buy the perks yourself.

Spending $30/(month*employee) on candy bars can simply be written off as an expense. If the company wanted to pay the employees enough to buy their own candy bars, they would actually have to pay all their people $50/(mo*employee) or so that they have $30 left after income tax. And you won't get a group rate on candy.

All things being equal, perks are a better value. Hope you like going to the gym that your employer uses for its gym membership program, hope you enjoy the coffee they buy, the healthcare plan that they offer, and the groceries at the company store (not quite, but we are getting there).

Perhaps more illustratively, you can buy 5-10 such guns for the price of a 3D printer, have a gun that works (better than a printed gun) and does not need assembled.

I have a fairly universal AVR firmware that I use for electric brewing. It's not fully automatic, just a way to do simple temperature and boil control. My brew setup is very KISS and this is the sweet spot for me.

https://github.com/Fasrad/brewtroller/tree/fancy

GPL of course

After re-reading your post, I think that you may have been saying (when you emphasized that a PRINT is an object) that the physical photograph is objective/physical, but the image conveyed by the photograph is not an object. And if so, I agree with you completely; this is a point I have never wavered from. This is what causes people to think that photographs and information images are similar things--they both are typically used to convey visual information--but they are not similar, anymore than any other physical thing can be similar to information. In order for them to be similar things, they would first have to both be THINGS in the first place. Books and eBooks, for example, are not similar things, in fact, they both aren't even things.

If you think that only prints (Nth-generation photographs; N>1) are "photographs" then you are using a different definition of the word than I am. I am using the term "photograph(1)" to mean "an object onto which light has caused a physical change, forming a visible image". This means that photographic negatives, photographic prints, photograms, blueprints (the old kind) and color slides are all examples of "photographs(1)". An undeveloped negative or print is not yet a photograph, because the image is not yet visible until it's developed--you could call it a potential photograph, but if you admit that then everything is a potential photograph.

I agree that a print (assuming it's a photographic print i.e. made with light) is a photograph. I also agree that making a photograph is a process, but I don't see what point you are trying to make there, other than to state the obvious. We already agreed that the image formed by a photograph is subject to all kinds of interpretation by both the creator and the viewer, and that both photographs and "information images" are similar in that regard. It still seems like are trying to refute the argument that photographic images are somehow more veracious that informational ones, which is a point I never tried to make in the first place.

You are refuting a point I did not make. Please re-read the rest of the sentence you quoted: " The extent to which [they] can be said to represent reality is totally open (see Jerry Uelsmann) and I'm not talking about that kind of interpretation in the "viewing space" ".

So I specifically addressed the point you think you are refuting and agreed with you on that point--the point being that neither the images experienced when viewing photographs(1) or digital images(2) has any relation to reality apart from its presentation by the artist and reception and interpretation by the viewer. There is nothing about an image viewed by silver gelatin that makes it more veracious or reality-representing. I never said that and never will.

My central point is only that photographs(1) are objects, thus it is possible to apply the concept of an "original" to photograph(1)s, which can exist in objective reality as objects, however reality-representing their images may or may not be, and however useful or useless that "property of realness" may be (and I agree that it is of quite limited usefulness) in ascertaining the extent to which said photograph(1)'s image may be a representation of reality. That is all. Many people (yourself apparently included) do not observe this distinction, and I think this is a category error which leads to things like "unmanipulated photo(2) contests" which I think are comical in their not-even-wrongness.

That's exactly what I always do to digitize my darkroom prints...I use a Nikon D70 on a copy stand, which is much much easier for me than using a flatbed scanner. When I post images of my prints online, the images say "Nikon D70" in the EXIF data, even for an image of a cyanotype. That's just how I digitize my prints for posting on the web. So I can show you plenty of "raw files" "proving" that my images were "unmanipulated"...and I guess you are supposed to believe me that I found an alternate universe that is bluish monochrome.

When I see any modern "photo contests" that require images to be "unmanipulated", I just shake my head. Not because I don't think that manipulation is good or bad, but because I don't think the idea of "manipulation" or "unmanipulation" is even a coherent concept in the context of what I call "information images", colloquially called "photographs(2)", which by their nature are manipulated and interpreted, and the authenticity of such information images has no meaning apart from the manipulative choices of the artist/programmer(s). A digital image can be considered no more or less authentic than a painting. They must always be considered interpretations because that's what they are, by their very nature; they have no nature apart from such interpretive manipulation; they must be interpreted to even be experienced. The common man only clings to the idea of an "unmanipulated image" because he thinks digital images are some different type of photograph(1), when in reality an "information image" (photograph(2)) is actually a fundamentally different (no matter how superficially similar) thing to a physical photograph(1). This is an example of the kind of "counterproductive metaphor or analogy" that Dijkstra talks about in one of his EWDs about radical innovations. The shift from photography to digital imaging is actually what EWD considers a "radical innovation" not some kind of evolution, and failure to understand this, evidenced by the fact that the common man thinks that digital images and photograph(1)s are similar things, is a tragic, limiting and counterproductive semiotic "false friend" that is only the more inevitable because the two things are so superficially similar.

Photographs(1) can be manipulated, and the extent to which their image can be said to represent reality is totally open (see Jerry Uelsmann) and I'm not talking about that kind of interpretation in the "viewing space". I'm just saying that in the objective space, the ideas of an "authentic" or "original" photograph(1) at least is a concept that can be understood, that COULD make sense, however useful or useless it may be. With digital photographs(2), the concept does not philosophically exist (in my opinion) and only exists as some kind of mass illusion, where people declare an photograph(2) "unauthentic" because "I know it when I see it" (except they demonstrably do not).

Mark Twain: "If you don't read the newspapers, you are uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you are misinformed."

Gun crime has plunged, but Americans think it's up, says study

http://www.latimes.com/news/nation/nationnow/la-na-nn-gun-crimes-pew-report-20130507,0,3022693.story

Are laws passed on actual data? No, they are passed based on popular support. Obtaining and maintaining popular opinion is what the media do.

Also engineer; concur with parent.

You make my point for me. You DO NOT have to "qualified and liscenced" to have black powder. You DO NOT have to tell anyone (cops included) 'where you got it' anymore than you have to tell them where you bought your sneakers. What's the point in detecting something that is perfectly legal?

It's sulphur, salpeter and charcoal.

Black powder is perfectly legal.

Why should black powder residue constitute probable cause of anything, if possession and use of black powder is actually legal?

In theory, I could go shooting my historical weapons that use black powder, which is also perfectly legal, or go to a war-between-the-states reenactment, and then walk through downtown Boston. Nevermind, that would be outside the ordinary, prescripted "safe area" of human activity that "most normal people" do, and therefore suspicious and therefore probable cause. Got it.

I'm old enough to remember the pre-cellphone days...and I actually remember thinking "nobody is going to carry a phone with them all the time; who needs to talk on the phone that much that they would carry a phone everywhere they go, that would be so self-important that people will be embarrassed, I mean who's going to just whip out their phone wherever they are and start talking to someone, what a dork".

I also thought that nobody would ever use bluetooth headsets, for the same reason.

In 10-15 years, people will probably read these old /. posts and they will sound just as out-of-touch as my prediction that nobody would need to carry a phone with them.

Most of this stuff should be done with PLCs and/or microcontrollers. The reason they use PCs is just because "let's use a PC for everything". It was easier for THEM to use a PC and hire cheap fresh-out-of-college hackers than to engineer a competent, embedded system to a higher standard. And it worked, because we (industry) bought it.

I used to work for Papa Johns, back before I was into computers at all. They call their homegrown system the "Profit System" and based on what I remember and now know, it uses a Unix box in the office of every store. All the terminals out by the phones are honest-to-God dumb terminals running off serial connections. The user interfaces are TUI, blazingly responsive, and extremely fast to use once you memorize the zillions of shortcut combos...no keyboard of food icons...but all they need is cheap hardware, normal keyboards, and they can run a whole store (internet orders, inventory, everything) off of a slow modem with no problem.

When I say "lifetime" I meant "lifetime without being touched" (no defrags, no driver updates, no service packs; nothing). In my facility, incrementing a software revision, even if it changes nothing except for some trivial thing like enabling a faster serial port, can take 6 months to a year of testing before it will be approved to run production. "Conservative" is not even the correct word, because NOT upgrading is obviously a risk as well; "change averse" might be the correct term.

I work in a very large semiconductor fab that is full of dozens, probably hundreds, of DOS, Windows 2000, Windows 98, Windows ME, and Windows XP machines. They will never be upgraded or patched.

Is this stupid? Yes. Is there anything I can do about it? No.

I just got done negotiating the purchase of a 2-million-dollar piece of equipment that comes with Windows. We actually have a purchasing requirement that all software be provided with patches as necessary, including OS upgrades, and that all source code be held in escrow in case the company goes under. However, when we negotiate the purchase specs, those lines get crossed out, because the vendor refuses to comply and we have no leverage, so we buckle.

Personally I think that anyone who uses something like Windows (a desktop OS with known, SHORT service lifetime, suitable for desktop computing in non-critical applications) in an industrial tool with 10+ year lifetime, should be fired immediately, and this should have been the case from the very beginning, but I was not around back then, and it became acceptable. Nobody ever got fired for buying Microsoft, even when it's an idiotic thing to do.