Nah, let's just get a few dozen of us to bring cameras on a weekend and we can take pictures of ourselves getting tackled by security. It'll take them all day to get all of us!

Among the many other problems already listed is whether or not paintballs will pop at 2.7 degrees kelvin.

Godwin's law at work...

Why can't we just do this to someone who is given the death sentence? Experimental evidence on what happens to a human in a pure vacuum would be worth the millions of tax dollars it takes to get them there.

I assume you're referring to human's nature to create?

What about human nature to be selfish? Hell, what about the human nature to survive by having a profession that is actually lucrative? It's easy for us, the consumers, to demand that all creators do their work for free because we only look at the exorbitantly wealthy publishers who profit from them. Do I like copyright laws? No, I don't, but to jump blindly to the other extreme is just naive. Just my two cents.

Just a thought... what if your boss reduced your pay by 50% and told you that "if you're only doing it for money, then you're doing it for the wrong reason"?

Of course the only reason I write is because I enjoy it. And submitting any of my work for publishing would have reward in and of itself, but to do so would require that I devote an enormous amount of time that I could otherwise spend earning money and providing for my family, which, right now, I consider the more important task.

Sorry buddy, "because FUCK the copyright holders!" is not an argument. You may be right in saying that we should have the right to do what we want with what we've purchased, but play the Devil's advocate for a moment...

The year is 2016: Every book that has ever been printed is now considered "public domain" since copyright laws have been abolished and you can find any literature you want just by googling the title and author. Sound great? Well it also turns out that books have annually been published 80% less since the copyright laws were struck down. Why is that, do you think? Perhaps it's because there's no longer any motivation for authors to publish their books since they aren't paid any money once they are published. They are made immediately available for the public's viewing. All the author gets is good feeling that people are reading their work. Reward enough? 80% of authors would say no.

Obviously it's a hypothetical argument, but I can say that as an aspiring novelist, my motivation to finish my book would be lessened if I knew that even if my work went viral, I would have nothing to show for it except for a few book readings at coffee shops.

http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138154/neil-gershenfeld/how-to-make-almost-anything?page=show

Within -- "An amateur gunsmith has already used a 3-D printer to make the lower receiver of a semiautomatic rifle, the AR-15. This heavily regulated part holds the bullets and carries the gun’s serial number. A German hacker made 3-D copies of tightly controlled police handcuff keys. Two of my own students, Will Langford and Matt Keeter, made master keys, without access to the originals, for luggage padlocks approved by the U.S. Transportation Security Administration."

The lower receiver is heavily regulated because it is the piece that can convert a semiautomatic rifle to a full automatic if you are able to manipulate it properly. A 3D printer could circumvent what was previously an extremely difficult task to convert the receiver from semi-auto to full auto.

And in the latter half of the paragraph, yet another reference to the TSA. How ironic.

Not so my friend... http://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/138154/neil-gershenfeld/how-to-make-almost-anything?page=show

You'll people are already making parts to guns and master keys that can unlock anything from baggage padlocks to police handcuffs. Yes, these are probably laboratory grade 3D printers, but it won't be long before the public can get their hands on something similar.

Places where it's raining? I dunno, just a thought.

Yeah, but nobody gets the missing corn that started this whole mess in the first place. Neither you or the pigs. I guess we all get gummy worms.

Ok, so I know there was a drought in the US for a ridiculous amount of time, but considering modern technology, I'm having a hard time understanding why this has to mean no more bacon. Why can't farmers just heavily irrigate their fields? Isn't pumping water where need it worth it to produce a good crop and, more importantly, still have bacon? It's not like we don't have water in the world. Don't we have the tech to get it where we need it to be? Or if heat is the problem, can't we cover the fields with shade sheets or something?

I live in Phoenix and we have terribly hot summers with extraordinary long droughts, but we still seem to do ok and there's never a panic among the farming community. Can't we avoid these crises with some simple planning?

Anyone who knows anything about farming, feel free to enlighten this ignorant city kid.

A useful hand-held US machine could assist in a variety of ways in the healthcare profession. It would mean that trained doctors without access to other, larger equipment (remote places) could reliably diagnose or rule out appendicitis (among many other disease processes). If paramedics were trained on the machine, they could quickly establish peripheral IV access to administer medication in life or death situations.

I work an emergency department with an emergency physician who uses a "large, clunky US machine" to evaluate for countless disease processes quickly in pt's rooms. He and many other progressively minded physicians would jump at advances in this technology that would make it easier to use them to use.

Do you really think that a significant amount of people in third world countries would get access to hand-held US (and know how to use it!) before they had access to an OB/GYN who could give them a sonogram anyways? The latter would, of course, thus allow them to determine the sex of their child and so have the same result.

Yes, that's already happening every day in China, but I personally, don't think hand-held US aren't going to make it happen any faster. Why would anyone spend $7000 on a hand-held US when they could go get a sonogram for $200? (Source: http://children.costhelper.com/ultrasound.html)

While I've heard that some House episodes are very educational, I can tell you that that House episode was just another medical TV show keeping the public sufficiently ignorant of medicine to ensure that we'll always need health professionals. What the HELL were they doing getting an US!?! I work in an emergency department and anyone with eyes can tell the difference between a foreign body and an air bubble on an X-ray. To my knowledge US is never used to evaluate for foreign body.

Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_body_in_alimentary_tract

GI tract example: http://emedicine.medscape.com/article/776566-overview - Is it a nail, or an air bubble???

However, just because US aren't useful for evaluating foreign bodies it doesn't mean that the technology isn't extremely promising for other factors of disease or (in the case of the article) complications with pregnancy. Can you imagine if these were widely available how easy it would be for a soon-to-be mother to learn the basics on what to look for to prevent a serious complication? Think about how many books and media a pregnant mother reads and intakes to educate themselves on pregnancy to ensure they have a healthy 9 months? If a 3-hour class was offered to mothers about how to look for an US complication and a hand-held US machine was loaned to them for their pregnancy, I'm confident that nearly all would jump at the opportunity. It wouldn't be training them to diagnose themselves or their babies with any disease it would be like, "If you see your baby's umbilical cord wrapped around his neck and you feel funny, then you should probably come see the OB/GYN immediately." That's something you could teach in a 3-hour class.