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.

Sure you can. Just put some teeth behind privacy policy violation. If a company says it will do one thing and does something else, penalize it. Defining appropriate (and scalable) penalties would require some thought; you need to make sure that it will hurt no matter how big the company is, and you also need to ensure that companies don't get slammed for the actions of one malicious or negligent employee, but that they do get smacked if there's evidence of a pattern of encouraging or even tolerating such employees. But I think that could be defined with some time and some thought.

Further, it would be a good idea to direct legislatively that the policies covering a given piece of information are the policies that were in place at the time the data was collected. No retroactive policy changes, not without specific, positive permission from users.

I think that approach would strike the right balance, assuring that individuals have the right to trade their personal information for services if they so choose, but ensuring that companies can't arbitrarily change the deal.

Boy, a lot of comments show people got bent out of shape by the "natural materials" phrase. I loathe new agism and other "natural is good" holiness as much as the next guy, but I didn't sense that at all.

When I read "natural materials", I read, "cheap, easily-available in massive quantities materials". as opposed to current, much more exotic materials.

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.

Actually, let's see them ignore letters from lawyers in the inevitable class action lawsuit.

"77 terabytes last month. WTF are you doing?"

"I run a small web site that was quoted and slashdotted."

Seems like they could be heading for legal problems, where sales are, and simultaneously are not, actual sales, depending on which laws they are trying to dodge.

It's not sales to they can dodge warranty and liability laws, but it is sales so they can get money, but it's not so people can't resell discs, but they do anyway, so it is so we will do it, but it's not because we will force you to give us a cut of something you already bought from us, but didn't.

Ammunition is readily available in Switzerland, including for the military calibers. They no longer issue the sealed ammunition package to be kept with the rifle, but that's no obstacle. Actually, if you go to a government-sponsored gun range you can buy ammunition with a government subsidy, and without any paperwork. Technically you're supposed to use fire all of the ammunition at the range, but no one checks. Or you can buy it at a gun store, where you'll have to do some paperwork which includes a background check, but it's not at all difficult.

I'm also expecting to see some hybrid designs that use cheap, readily-available steel parts that require little to no modification plus 3D-printed plastic components for the more intricate bits. With that approach, you can fashion something that has the strength to be safe but is considerably more sophisticated than could be constructed out of metal without the services of a good metal shop and significant gunsmithing skill.

Suppose, for example, that you used a steel pipe for a barrel and maybe a block of metal for a bolt face, then were able to print a reliable fully-automatic action and a high-capacity magazine. You could easily assemble the rough equivalent of a machine pistol. It would be less reliable, less durable, bigger and in many other ways not as good as a manufactured gun, but could be created at home with minimal skill and expense (other than the printer... but those are going to get much cheaper) and would be reasonably safe to operate.

You experience is very different from mine. I wonder if something is wrong with your car.

You say you get 4.9 mi/kwh -- with a 24 kwh battery that means you should get 118 miles on a full charge. If you're only getting 70 then your battery is only holding 14 kwh, 60% of its rated capacity.

Personally, I routinely get 120 miles out of a charge when I stay off the freeway and don't need climate control. Just yesterday, for example, I made an 80-mile round trip to the airport using just over half of the battery, driving on surface streets, averaging about 45 mph. The car says I averaged 5.4 mi/kwh which should get me nearly 130 miles.

I do agree that at 90 mph you're not going to get 70 miles. I didn't mean to imply that, though I can see that's a reasonable conclusion from what I wrote. One of these days I should test my range at 80 mph (freeway speed around here). Rarely do I drive more than a few miles on freeways, though, so it's not all that relevant to me.

Anyway, I think you've suffered some really serious battery degradation, and you should get it looked at.