You could more or less count rammed earth, but mud brick doesn't qualify because it's built out of bricks made in forms, rather than made in a form. And if it's done by hand, it's really not printing, but that's a separate quibble.

Gamestop's main profit drivers are self-identified hardcore gamers who will come in to get every new iteration of whatever FPS is hot this year, and little kids. They don't even have PS2 games any more, they're just not a used game store. I go in there occasionally to see if I can score a good accessory, but the vintage accessories are pretty much gone now. I've got amazing things out of those packets over time, like a five dollar NegGCon and so on. They still have PS3 remotes and they're down to $13 now, so if you were wondering what kind of bluetooth home theater remote to pick up, hop in there while they still have those. I don't know of a cheaper bluetooth remote that's worth one tenth of one crap. Pairs with Android with the "bluetooth pairing" app. Various instructions exist for XBMC. etc. And, I went there to buy Ouya, because I wanted to walk into a store and pay with cash, so I've done the preorder shuffle because otherwise they don't get launch consoles. But why would you go there to buy a game? You can't get vintage games any more, and you can get newer used games cheaper online.

Brevity is the soul.

The law says you can resell it. But Microsoft is setting it up so that only they can resell it, and you get a cut.

What's best for everyone but the event/venue is if the buyer can confirm that the ticket is valid through a website or phone number, perhaps for a very small fee closely related to the actual costs, before making a purchase.

The USPS has a thing called media mail. You put the disc in a mailer, and you drop it in the USPS, and it goes very cheaply and in very reasonable time to the other party. Or, in a sane world, you simply either copy to an image and send them the image and they burn to a RW or play directly from the image, or you copy to a RW and send it to them. But since we are living with a bunch of insensible mostly useless copy protection and idiotic laws to support it, you have to be grateful that Microsoft will permit you to lend a game.

I don't know about that. Isn't it illegal to use a patented invention yourself, in some cases even not for profit? Couldn't you prevent resale on the basis of patent violation in the case of software protected by patent?

First Sale explicitly permits resale when there has been modification. It also requires the transfer of all materials involved. What copyright does it prevent distribution without permission. A modified item may be covered by the laws which address derivative works, but that's something else.

To be fair, it is stated numerous times in this thread by ostensibly Australians that they are not permitted to do the work themselves. If I have funny ideas about Australia, that's where they came from. I have only spoken in absolute terms about how it works here, because I've been involved in the process. I've been paid to do electrical work which was later blessed by a contractor before switch-on, at which I was present to see nothing blow up. Any monkey who can read a chart and use a tape measure can install house wiring.

Well for me basically what it came down to was WA or OR. There is still water there. Finding property that comes with any kind of water rights is the fancy trick. I love the land of CA but the politics here are completely wacky. This state is just too big and too heterogeneous to be managed by one government.

The only LED lamp that they sell at Home Depot that I will even buy is the Cree light, which is halfway across the store on an end cap (in Ukiah, CA.)

This is because it's the only one built worth a crap. After having two cheap LED lamps die on me, I swore them off until I saw the teardown of the cree lamp. Not only are the emitters properly heat-sinked, but the power supply looks to not be total crap as they are on most LED lamps.

About the same price as the others, ten year warranty...

I took various advice and finally got some cree lights from home despot, they have them on an endcap half a store away from the rest of the led lights so that you can't find them. The only way in which they seem disconcerting is the delayed instant-on, if you know what I mean. The light is great. They have all the warranty I could ever hope for. I could wish they were cheaper, but I can't actually complain about the price; a halfway decent Cree flashlight (just a 300lm ultrafire, but I find that's enough for my purposes and they don't require exotic batteries that are the same @#%!@# size as other batteries with which they must not be interchanged in most applications) is ten bucks, a cree bulb is ten or thirteen bucks depending on brightness. That's really quite remarkable given that they use three emitters and a pretty decent power supply.

Our senses, so far as we have been able to tell, are based on quantum affects. We've found quantum bases for smell and vision so far that I know of. Are our senses useless?

Disagree. Some traits provide an organism with greater advantage, and are based on earlier traits. Those later, greater traits? They're more evolved — they went through more evolution!

Now, that doesn't mean that the most highly evolved organisms are the fittest. We still have some of the oldest "designs" running around without significant changes. But just, you know, look around. Birds came from reptiles, and their adaptations permit them to inhabit more ecosystems. How are birds not more highly evolved than reptiles? It doesn't make them better people or whatever (I consider animals to be people, is that a separate conversation?) but it does make them able to function in more situations. As a group they can handle more situations, and the most adaptable birds are more adaptable than the most adaptable reptiles.

That was already true. While looking at which states I'd consider moving to, I checked out basics like laws affecting basic freedoms and OK was very fucking far from OK.

It's working great. It's working so well, that you're actually grateful for it. Mission accomplished! The line for castration begins to your left.

I hereby propose a law which prevents you from using the words "your" or "you're" in text since you are apparently incapable of selecting the proper one.

But if you install a proper outlet according to code, you really shouldn't go to the pokey whether you're a licensed electrician or not, if the house should happen to burn down and kill someone. I'm sure glad I'm allowed to make such trivial repairs to the house myself. I imagine you need to call a certified ball-scratcher if your nuts itch in Australia. We can do any electrical work we want, including installing all the wiring in our new house ourselves, but a licensed contractor has to bless the installation. He just certifies that it's up to code and not obviously bad and wrong, then throws the switch. I've replaced two outlets and two switches in this house, not to mention rebuilding the stove after rodent intrusion (with full custom insulation replacement since I couldn't find anyone to sell me the OE pad) and replacing the water heater. I imagine none of that would be legal in the prison colony down under. How does it feel to still be a prisoner today?

Well no, actually, it doesn't. Because in most places in the USA it is literally illegal to show a gun to someone if you're not about to use it. There are no statistics on crimes prevented by displaying a firearm, because this is a crime called brandishing. The system was deliberately designed not just to get people shot (if you threaten me with something that I claim looks like a weapon and I shoot you it's self-defense, but if I feel threatened by your actions and show you that I'm armed it's a crime) but also to prevent accurate reporting of statistics.