I donâ(TM)t disagree with what you say. However, for a currency to work, it needs to be accepted by everybody as a medium of exchange. If I donâ(TM)t have confidence that the value is stable, and will be stable into the future, I wonâ(TM)t accept it as payment. Because I will be using the currency I receive in the future, not now. This is about perception and opinion, but a perception and opinion about what itâ(TM)s value will be in the future.

This has been the fundamental problem with all cryptocurrencies.
The point of a currency at its basic level is to facilitate exchange of goods and services. The principle being that: I will accept an amount of currency for giving you something, on the assumption that I will be able to exchange that amount of currency for something else of equivalent value (whatever that means) at any time in the future. Just to emphasise that last bit - AT ANY TIME IN THE FUTURE.
That last bit is important if we want to save our currency in, say, a bank account, for long periods.
Therefore one of the critical success factors for a currency is that its value is stable. That its value today will be roughly the same as its value in the future. Where a currency's value is as volatile as Bitcoin or any of the other ones, then they are as useless as Zimbabwean dollars.
So why is anyone buying them at all ? The only reason people are buying them is because they think there will be capital growth - ie they can sell them in the future for more money. It's the old Dutch tulip speculation all over again. Buying and selling something that has an intrinsically low value for an inflated price as speculation.
Of course there are some who are buying them because the privacy value of using bitcoin is worth this risk. But it would need to be a very risky transaction for that to be the case....
Until we can have a market where the value of bitcoin is stable, where trading in bitcoin itself has the same effect as trading in ordinary currencies (ie. small movements driven by mostly external economic factors), then it will never be used widely to facilitate transactions...
I don't know how you get there though. I wish I did ...

I know this is slashdot, but that's an absurd rant. The machine in the article looks very similar to the 3d printer on my desk. It just extrudes a different material to the plastic mine extrudes. Why the problem with the term 3d printed ? It's a perfectly useful term with a clear meaning, which in my view is used quite suitably in this context. Some here say the "correct" term is additive manufacturing - well I'd say that's just an alternative term. There's nothing incorrect about calling something 3d printing if it's coming from a machine that extrudes a material to create three dimensional objects layer by layer. And it's not a hype. It's an extremely useful technology that is now becoming cheap enough to be available domestically. It's like calling smartphones a hype ten years ago. Or the internet. Is that a hype ? I genuinely believe that all of these new and innovative applications of 3d printing, particularly with new kinds of materials, like in this article, are examples of they way manufacturing is being turned on its head. Extraordinary things are happening, and I for one am really interested in reading about them.

But people are always more comfortable with what they know. If that means that you never change anything, then where does that leave you in the long term ? Ultimately you need to make strategic long term choices with IT environments, and keeping yourself with old comfortable stuff isn't always the right solution, irrespective of any short term productivity losses.

Aha! You have proof of the effects of such a dastardly number! It must be true! I'm a little surprised that such superstitious nonsense is seriously put on a supposedly sensible site such as slashdot ... Maybe it's just me ;)

These books, contemporary to Tolkien, are pretty classic dark fantasy.

Just re-read and saw the reference to E1 link. I'm still interested it what it costs to run though.

Perhaps this is a dumb question, but does anybody know what the connection is between the Linux machine and the telephone network (so that external lines can be accessed) ? And what the cost of this connection might be ?

Who has invested heavily in the exercise of book scanning ? Google has. Do other companies have access to the same books ? Of course they do. Could they also invest in book scanning to create a competitor ? Of course! Will they ? Probably not, unless Google starts price gouging. Since Google has funded the whole exercise, they have a right to exclusivity on the scanned library they have created. We should not expect them to give this up for free, as that would discourage other companies from investing in similar digitisation initiatives. If you want a competitor, find an investor and start scanning! Otherwise your options are to rely on Google, or travel to the library to view the books. Sounds like a typical bureaucratic storm in a teacup.

Something which has not appeared to have been mentioned thus far is that if you are doing a project at a university, that means you are using resources (ie. computers, labs, access to professors and other staff, advice from supervisors etc) of that university. Universities shouldn't have to do all of this for free, they're usually pretty starved of funds as it is, and if they are legitimately contributing to the development of a project, then they may legitimately have a claim to part of it. We're all part of a bigger system. Good ideas are rarely the work of one individual in isolation.