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Comment: Re:Machine shop, anyone? (Score 1) 578

by Tjp($)pjT (#43762929) Attached to: Of 1000 Americans Polled, Most Would Ban Home Printing of Guns
The old style protection was that copy machines could not reproduce the exact color (and a small range around it) of the green in US currency. Then as they became more in use for creating or copying photos that fell to the technique of printing a pattern of yellow dots on all things printed by color copiers and color printers. Some high end printers tried currency recognition but the latest trend to monopoly money colors and changing artwork made it mostly useless to try to recognize it. Now the microprinting on the bill and watermark features as well as the specific florescence under black light of the polyester fiber embedded with the bill denomination, and much more, make color photocopy technology moot. The yellow dots still exist to trace a document to a specific color printer though.

The best the government might do, short of banning what is heralded as the biggest thing for consumers in the next decade by some, is to force 3D printers to embed the serial number of the device into what they produce, but that alone might interfere with the structural integrity of the object.

The whole concept is moot though as if one were a criminal, you could buy a gun on the street cheaper than making one. Take one from someone in a secured area easier than smuggling one in is another option. I recall as well that organized crime ran an operation at a New Jersey plant where they used the lighter staffed second and third shift to manufacture firearms by resetting the tooling then setting it back, so that first shift had no clue. It ran for at least five years according to law enforcement. So organized crime will just manufacture guns. Lower echelons will steal them or buy them from people who stole them. Or legitimately purchase them. Or pay someone to purchase them for them.

Hobbyist types will continue to make them. 3D printing is just one technology. For the price of the higher quality 3D printer used to make the functional 3D firearm (this was not RepRap technology!) one could purchase a nice combo lathe and mill, and the CNC kit for it. Then produce the parts in metal. The afghani people have used hand tools and sourced their raw materials from things like car axels and scrap sheet steel and used very minimal machine shop work (I presume to machine the barrel / bore it out / chamber it) and the rest by hand with drills and files and a smallish box and pan brake. They cranked out enough AK replicas that they used a 55 gallon drum of boiling "paint" to coat them with (after care to protect the barrel and friction surfaces). A 3D printer (in plastics) just makes it simpler to make a bad gun. And is very expensive as well in comparison to making one out of metal.

The purpose of the 3D printed gun was to underline dramatically how futile it is to enact gun control in the manner the US tries to do. Not to produce marketable or truly useful completely plastic devices. And it did that to great excess. And as to the undetectable nature. I could as easily CNC machine plastics or even unfired ceramics to the same end. Heck, some materials I might be able to cast from easy to make molds.

Lastly if one has a legitimate firearm, and one wants to make a replacement part for that firearm, then that should be allowed. Do I insert a FOID card into the machine to allow it (assuming the impossible technology to detect it is destined for a firearm and not a toaster or my car stereo)? This is not a tractable problem. This poll is selective and designed to get the response reported ... pure politics and feeds on question steering.

Comment: Re:Well... (Score 1) 578

by Tjp($)pjT (#43762591) Attached to: Of 1000 Americans Polled, Most Would Ban Home Printing of Guns

Acording to the last election there are at least 48% idiots in america. As an european, i would round that up to 96%, 'cause everyone who elects a president based on the color of his tie is an idiot...

It wasn't the color of the tie. It was much more subtle. It was the direction of the stripes diagonally. One is European. One is American. Oddly the only "American" striped tie I own was purchased in Ukraine.

Comment: Re:Welcome to Capitalism (Score 1) 611

And it is not an inflated price. A good political mailing list can cost upwards of $10 for highly qualified names. This is 170,000 highly qualified names. Well worth the asking price. Worth upwards to 1.7 million. $250K is a bargain. Any politician in this day an age that doesn't control the like named domain is just not being smart enough to vote for. Or has a plain enough name someone else beat them to it. The democratic National Committee should but the domain and mailing list and give the website / domain to Ron minus the mailing list. knowing ones anti-constituents has value too. They can filter what the send them and cause disarray among that particular libertarian group.

Comment: QR Codes have an edge ... (Score 1) 164

by Tjp($)pjT (#40985367) Attached to: Alternative To QR Code Uses NFC and Cheap Rectennas
QR codes have an edge because they are a free to use standard. and unlike the RF spectrum of the rectennas use, the optical spectrum allows as many QR codes and sensing devices as you can cram together because the optics are simple. The RF equivalent "optics" are a bit more. I also see a problem climbing the side of a building to get to the rectenna's near field range.

Comment: Solutions (Score 1) 233

by Tjp($)pjT (#40701837) Attached to: Australian Consumer Group Wants Geo-IP Blocking Banned
Get a proxy or VPN account with a US provider. Hire a remailing service in New Hampshire. (one that gives a street address, not box number address) Get a US based Visa debit card.

Join the Virtual US!

YMMV, and you then must pay the shipping at consumer rates for hard goods, and then customs and import duties as required, and any local regional taxes on purchased materials above customs and duties fees, for example in Washington State we have a "use tax" on goods purchased out of state and brought into the state.

Compare cost to cost purchasing locally. Save? Woo Hoo!!! Lost money, welcome to the free market!

Comment: Re:are you free market? (Score 1) 233

by Tjp($)pjT (#40701751) Attached to: Australian Consumer Group Wants Geo-IP Blocking Banned
The free market also accounts for cost. If it costs more to sell somewhere, shopping, transit fees, etc. licensing agreements with the content providers included, you add those to the cost to buy in that area. Software comes with support issues as well. It could well be that in order to meet the requirements for service (like the whole one year versus two year current snafus) the cost is higher in another region. It is not because Apple or some other seller decided they don't like Australia (or some other region). They have actual cost differentials they add to the same base price to determine cost for a given market. And "free market" is more of a J.P. Morgan thing of "you charge what the market will bear"; suggested reading on this is "The Octopus". Free markets are about government controls, not financial decisions by the seller. Restricting the seller through legal means to a "level playing field" means lower cost to sell markets pay for selling in higher cost to sell markets, quite the opposite of a "free market".

Comment: Re:Efficiency? (Score 1) 248

by Tjp($)pjT (#40658675) Attached to: East Texas Getting Compressed Air Energy Storage Plant
Or since they burn natural gas in turbines to drive generators to generate the electricity to drive the motors to drive the compressors ... which will drive turbines to drive generators to generate electricity can't we eliminate everything after the first "to generate electricity" and if not because of peak demand issues store the natural gas instead and still short circuit a lot of this. I think thermodynamics is being monkeyed with here ...

Comment: Re:Obvious question missed (Score 1) 189

by Tjp($)pjT (#40643965) Attached to: Bas Lansdorp Answers Your Questions About Going to Mars
If you are looking at colonization, send 4 women and redundant cryopaks of semen. Women have less weight burden on average so cheaper on resources, and women stand high g flight better so less complications there. And to maximize diversity you'll need 30 people on average to become stable without in breeding issues. So also consider some frozen embryos.

But this expedition is likely not focused on colonization... That alone would change the cost and weight balance unfavorably. The only way these folks would likely see more people is if earth sends more people. So I was surprised no one asked if all the developed hardware and software and plans, etc. would be open sourced to encourage more people to follow in their footsteps and improve along the way without the need for reinvention!

Another YouTube Conversion Site Clipped 94

Posted by timothy
from the no-wall-just-this-thorny-hedge dept.
Hodejo1 writes "[Tuesday] morning we learned that Google fired the first volley against YouTube conversion sites by blocking's servers from accessing its service and sending a letter threatening legal action. It looks like the fast growing also got the letter based on the note posted on the site: 'We're sorry to announce this, but has shut its service down for good.'"

Comment: Consider these terms ... (Score 1) 384

After the initial period of software problem support of months additional support is at our customary hourly rate of $$$ adjusted annually by no more than 10% from the acceptance date of the contracted work. A prepaid retainer of $$$2 may be paid for a yearly support contract. The $$$2 amount may be adjusted downwards annually to reflect past performance and upwards for inflation.

Then make $$$2 be about 20% of the contracts value.

I have been nickel and dime'd to death by major industry players who feel they are entitled to infinite support and even "small changes" for free. Sometimes a small enough matter (or occasionally a big one time one) is done as "good will", but don't get sucked into free support forever unless you build that into your contracts price. As in for contracts under a years duration quote a price at least 20 times your cost if you are so foolish as to include lifetime support for no additional cost.

Comment: Re:You americans are THEIVES!!! (Score 0) 259

by Tjp($)pjT (#39835637) Attached to: Aussie Parliamentary Inquiry Into Software Pricing Announced
Lower your import duties and maybe the price will be closer to a real parity. And wait for the middle of the night to call all the support calls in. Stuff a hundred million more users into Oz then get back to me about the strength of the Aussie dollar being something important in Adobe's pricing model. Alternately we subsidize worse economies than ours, so while yours is going stronger you can subsidize ours ...

Regards shipping products, I can't get half the eBay Aussies to ship to the US at all, and when they do it takes 3-4 weeks ... So that shipping thing goes both ways. I got a package from Kazakhstan faster than any from Australia. So ... Buy from Amazon us. Get yourself a US credit card and buy it with that. Send it as a gift to yourself. Use the bank as the US remitter address. It will cost you a little bit each month for the account and a bit each time you fund it but _might_ work out to be a bargain in some cases.

Just make sure inland revenue or whatever the Oz tax agents are, get their due, that way you get to pay the import taxes directly! I wonder which Adobe CS6 package he was talking about ... You might also download the demo versions, then pay by US credit card (above) to get the registration code ... No shipping involved.

Comment: A different world view is ... (Score 1) 272

by Tjp($)pjT (#39702447) Attached to: Netflix CEO Accuses Comcast of Not Practicing Net Neutrality
In a different world view, and one that is equally valid, is Comcast provides multiple products over the same pipe. The "Internet connection" is capped per the subscriber agreement (which by the way, pay approximately $50 more a month for a business Internet connection and caps go away and you can get static IPs to host your own services). The Comcast Xfinity App is provided under a different access arrangement. That they happen to use the same pipe is not meaningful. The Comcast Xfinity user is paying for an additional service bundled into their cable TV service. Likely Comcast VOIP service does not count towards the cap while Vonage likely does.

I have a solution for Netflix, as Comcast makes profit from the Cable subscription supporting use of the Xfinity App, Netflix could pay Comcast a portion of their profit to move Netflix into an additional service branded as Comcast Netflix... So it is not like Comcast is "giving away" the bandwidth for Xfinity usage. It is part of the bundled cost of cable tv service.

Comment: Ultimately (Score -1) 877

by Tjp($)pjT (#38769838) Attached to: 2011 Was the 9th Hottest Year On Record
Man is not to blame. See the effect of solar output here. The nay sayers that attempt to put done the solar effect look at sunspot activity not total solar output. Man is a speck on the surface of the planet.

The earth's rotation will continue to slow down more and more. Dino-days were shorter. And eventually we will lose more and more atmosphere to space. And the radioactive material that keeps the earths interior molten will all graceful move towards iron, and the lower magnetic field will mean even more atmosphere erosion. The surface will be very very hot. No life as we know it will live there as the temperature will be over that of boiling water, our atmosphere will be much less dense and unbreathable, and the solar radiation will not be deflected because our magnetic field will have weakened and collapsed to far. Depending on your science this is 500 million to 1 billion years off. Earth will be a lifeless rocky planet.

Generally warmer climates predicted by the global warming fanatics are in the range of normal variation, the last warming period allowed the renaissance by longer growing seasons and thus more plentiful food in Europe.

We are "overdue for an ice age" (well and a eruption of the super volcano in west central US but that's another paranoid's dream). If and it is a horrendously HUGE if, mankind is contributing to global warming, then hurrah. Just learn when to stop. Worldwide food production will increase, and contrary to intuition the desert areas will actually subside because the alterations to the weather patterns will allow for more rainfall. We owe it to mankind (and Canada) to help stop the next ice age. Not likely we can, any more than we cause global warming.

The fundamental question is not is global warming happening (as in in the 1970s the next ice age was coming, same science behind both). The question is, "Is man causing global warming?"; the answer to that is no. To many facts show the effects of man are minor in comparison to natural events, like volcanos, slides of methane hydrates under water (don't tell the doomsday makers, but the North Atlantic has enough methane in seabed ice/methane hydrates to _really_ cause global warming). We don't as a species even try to track things like the effects of undersea earthquakes as they relate to global warming. There is a lot going on. Look for the strongest correlation. Occam's razor says solar output is the biggest contributor by far to global warming. Studies that dismiss it only look at selected portions of solar activity that support their hypothesis.

Line Printer paper is strongest at the perforations.