Posts by placidranger

goldengull3 said:Precisely. Americans have already demonstrated that selling music for 99 cents and providing streamlined streaming services for series and films significantly curtails piracy.

But developing an engine that requires hundreds of millions of dollars in R&D is an entirely different matter. In that sector, components will be fiercely protected. That said, a major advantage will be the ability to simply print what you need instead of waiting for a spare part to arrive from some distant distribution center. Naturally, this also reduces the number of workers required to maintain a functional service network.

In that scenario, expect industrial-scale piracy.
You wouldn't download a car? Please. You totally would.🙂

Yes, R&D costs hundreds of millions. But what if "development" just meant copying and tweaking something slightly? For everyone?
You have a public blueprint. If you’re just manufacturing that exact blueprint, a hundred other companies are doing the same thing—you have zero edge. To actually gain an advantage, you have to innovate. Since everything is publicly available, making a minor tweak to an existing design is where the profit lies. And those profits come from leveraging all the innovations others have already paved the way for.

That's essentially how 3D printers themselves evolved.
Essentially, I think the whole concept of copyright will be bypassed in many cases; blueprints will be open-source from the jump, making copying permissible—and eventually, that's where the real money will be made.

hollowtrucker77 said:I mean, let's be honest, you didn't actually explain anything there either; you just dropped a dogma and walked away.
🙂

Curious if you actually understand how molten plastic—or metal, for that matter—is shaped into 3D forms?

northernsailor8 said:This isn't really a question of whether copyright should exist, but rather its scope. I think most people would agree that limiting reproduction has become nearly impossible, but that's more a matter of distribution models, accessibility, and middlemen than the creators themselves.

In fact, it seems many people are actually willing to pay for high-quality service and bonus content if there are minimal intermediaries, the content is easy to find in one place, and the price is reasonable.

However, that mostly applies to the entertainment industry. Intellectual work that has practical utility—meaning its application creates tangible value—is a different story altogether. In those cases, the work becomes an intellectual tool in production, much like manual labor, machinery, or other physical assets. We are talking about the foundations of an economic system here. There could be a drastic decline if we rely solely on enthusiasts who prioritize the "public good."

I think you might be off by a century or two. Nowadays, you train a worker in a very short timeframe, and new technology is implemented within a few years. Welcome to the 21st century and our era of global knowledge and communication. 😉

The theory used to justify patents is fundamentally flawed. In fact, it likely stifles innovation rather than driving it.

What "foundations" are we even talking about? The hypothesis that people wouldn't bother innovating without patent protection? Where is the empirical evidence for that? It's empty theory. And it's wrong.

silvertiger11 said:I think the whole 3D printing hype is a bit much. It’s not like we’re all going to have them sitting on our kitchen counters in a few years. Honestly, I don't see it becoming a household staple even thirty years from now. If it ever actually hits the mainstream, it'll probably just be for making niche little figurines or something equally trivial. For the foreseeable future, mass-produced consumer goods will always be cheaper coming out of a massive factory than being printed one by one at home.
It’s a lot like bread makers. Mine sat on my counter for about a month before I realized I was better off just buying a loaf every morning like I always did.

Americans haven't historically been the type of people to chase every shiny new tech trend. We were still relying heavily on sail power nearly a century after the first Fulton steamships hit the water, right as internal combustion was just starting to make its presence felt. Even today, you can hardly find an individual or a small business in the States that understands how pick-and-place machines work for electronics manufacturing—and that technology isn't even forty years old. Yet, you can't build a single modern electronic device without them.
And then people start talking about "local manufacturing." What exactly are we manufacturing? Rubber boots?

In my opinion, most people discussing this topic are missing the real point. The issue isn't really about 3D printers or what they might produce; it's about whether we, as a society, are actually capable of keeping up with life in the 21st century.

People are overhyping them—3D printers aren't going to be sitting on every kitchen counter like a toaster or a microwave anytime soon. But make no mistake, they’ll be a cornerstone of this "new industrial revolution" we keep hearing about. It's less about consumer gadgets and more about shifting the gears of manufacturing entirely.

Industry innovation—the kind that actually sparks a revolution—isn't going to come from the big corporate giants anymore. It’s moving toward the hobbyists and the basement innovators. These are the people using 3D printers, tools that were themselves perfected in garage setups through random collaborations between total strangers. As Chris Anderson points out, the future belongs to the outsiders. www.diydrones.com It’s the exact same development model—everything open-source, everything laid out for hobbyists, enthusiasts, or any other firm that wants to take a page from their book. They make it easy to copy, yet they still manage to sell a finished physical product—in this case, an electronic flight controller.

In this landscape, 3D printers aren't just gadgets—they’re tools that are fundamentally replacing much larger, far more cumbersome machinery. It streamlines the whole process and drives down production costs. Simple as that. Innovation. It’s a buzzword people love to toss around in boardrooms from New York to San Francisco—usually right before they announce something that isn't actually new, just rebranded. Everyone wants to be the next big disruptor, but most are just rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Real progress? That's rare. Most "breakthroughs" I see are just expensive ways to solve problems that didn't exist ten minutes ago.Innovation is finally trickling down to a much broader slice of the population than ever before.

Quinn:

Americans have never been the type of people to chase the latest tech trends—not in the past, and probably not in the future either. We were still out there sailing ships with canvas sails nearly a century after the first Fulton steamships hit the water, even while internal combustion engines were starting to make their presence felt. Fast forward to today, and you can't find a single person or company in the States that even realizes pick-and-place machines exist for electronics manufacturing—tech that’s been around for almost forty years. Yet, somehow, everyone expects us to build complex electrical devices without them. It's absurd.

We’ve got a massive pool of unemployed kids just drifting through the internet—maybe we can actually catch a wave and put that energy to use. 🙂

goldengull3 said:The concept of copyright is perfectly applicable to the digital landscape; you are simply attempting to convince me otherwise because you harbor a distaste for the idea of paying someone for their labor. 🙂

It is precisely mindsets like yours—where treating someone else's intellectual property as common loot is considered "normal"—that necessitate the ever-increasing expenditures on internet oversight. Those funds could be utilized far more intelligently, yet we cannot simply permit people to mock the fruits of another's toil. Through legislative updates, unconditional prison sentences, and more robust monitoring systems, order will largely be restored within a few years. After all, the internet today is subject to significantly more legal scrutiny than it was fifteen years ago; anyone who was online back then remembers when regulation was virtually nonexistent.

This is, of course, assuming we don't restrict authors from choosing to distribute their own work freely (though you haven't specified how many months of your own labor you've actually given away for free, or perhaps you simply don't value your own principles.

Just as many other amateur projects are open source, this doesn't change the fundamental reality. Much will remain protected behind industrial proprietary walls. In fact, the Chinese will likely become the primary global advocates for such protections within a year. 🙂

I don't like the concept of paying for digital copies. Paying for the actual labor is what makes sense. A digital copy isn't the work itself.

It's mindsets like yours—where taking someone else's stuff is seen as "normal"—that force us to pour endless amounts of money into internet surveillance. That capital could be used much more effectively. But we simply cannot allow people to mock the results of someone else's hard work. Between legislative updates, unconditional prison sentences, and better monitoring systems, things will largely fall into line over the coming years. After all, the internet today is under far more legal scrutiny than it was 15 years ago; anyone who was online back then remembers when there was virtually zero regulation.

At the exact same time that surveillance increases, software is being developed specifically to bypass it. TOR was mentioned, but there are other anonymization models out there that even the NSA won't be able to crack anytime soon. This kind of software facilitates everything from the narcotics trade to the free exchange of information. I'm talking about torrents and other P2P technologies that simply cannot be shut down.

Legal regulation doesn't have much leverage here because it doesn't know who to target.

(And yet, you haven't specified how many months of your own labor you've actually put into free distribution—or perhaps you just don't value your own principles.)

I don't put my work into free distribution, nor do I work for free, but I am more than happy to release copies of the software code I've written into the wild.

To be specific, for the last six months I've been working on a project that will end up entirely on my blog—meaning the full code along with implementation instructions for various systems. I'll send you the link once I'm done in about a month; you might find it interesting.

ruggedgardener2 said:Haha, honestly, I’m way more interested in that "robotic doctor" they supposedly built in San Diego—you know, despite everyone claiming nothing tech-related ever happens in America—which has apparently been sitting there gathering dust and doing absolutely nothing for four years now.
And hey, while we're at it, how about finally opening a robotics department at the University of San Diego?

Yeah, I was curious about the whole situation too, but I couldn't dig up much substance on it.

We just don't have any private hospitals with the guts to actually invest in surgical robotics.

There are at least five or six drug markets active on TOR today. You just place the order, send the payment, and it shows up right at your doorstep.

ruggedgardener2 said:What’s everyone’s take on this?

It’s just another copyright dispute. 😍

goldengull3 said:That isn't true; if you publish my book publicly without permission, I will pursue legal action against you without hesitation. In fact, enforcement might actually become easier, given how significantly Internet monitoring systems have improved in recent years.

But my point remains: you could spend two or three years laboring over a project and then release it freely. In fact, I believe anyone championing "open source" or the "abolition" of intellectual property should lead by example. They should say, "I spent two years writing this textbook, and now I am releasing it for public use," or "We spent five years developing this engine, and now it is available to everyone." It is best to back one's ideals with actual practice. Aside from a few Linux enthusiasts and some anonymous indie bands, I don't see many such examples. But we are drifting off-topic; feel free to start a separate thread for that.

3D printing will undoubtedly force the development of new models for protecting intellectual property. Innovation carries a cost. Knowledge and design deserve compensation. If you aren't willing to pay, then simply develop your own things.

Naturally, no one will bother you if you are printing something for your own private use, but if you intend to bring it to market, you will certainly be expected to pay.

You aren't getting it. Of course scientists and innovators need to profit from their breakthroughs. The issue is that the traditional copyright model is fundamentally broken in an era of anonymous internet publishing. I could upload a copy of your book under your name on my site or via torrents. You're stuck. You have no one to sue because you don't even know it was me. There's no way to scrub it, and the government isn't going to shut down the entire internet over a few books. It’s smarter to stop fighting the tide and start using the tech to your advantage—which is exactly what some authors are already doing. They put the book online for free and make their money through physical copies, speaking tours, film rights, or crowdfunding platforms... Copyright is becoming unenforceable. But again, let's stay on track.

The new industrial revolution definitely includes 3D printers. It's a massive leap forward (many of them are open source).

Then you have the DIY electronics scene—Arduino and all its various clones and derivatives (also open source). Innovation is migrating from massive factories into living rooms and basements. It's a dramatic surge in innovative potential.

And then there's the infrastructure and fuel that will turn those innovations into products for the masses—cryptocurrencies, specifically Bitcoin.

Robotics will likely plateau for another 5 to 10 years until we hit some major breakthrough, but we'll see automated drones everywhere.

northernsailor8 said:That sounds lovely. Let's just force everyone who spent decades studying, experimenting, and grinding to invent something into a system where any random person with more capital can simply snatch their idea, get rich off it, while the actual creators stay stuck in their basements struggling to get by.

It’s definitely a great way to encourage high-level scientific research. By the way, we saw a similar setup under old-school socialism, where the government automatically owned all patents. I suppose I don't even need to mention how those socialist nations fell so far behind in R&D that they basically lost the race against capitalism for good.

An individual researcher who gets robbed of their own work loses the drive to keep going. I guess I wouldn't feel much motivation to write anything useful if anyone could just read it and claim it as their own.

Terrible logic. There is a massive distinction between eliminating patents and copyrights—making everything public domain—and a dictatorial structure seizing ownership rights.
Furthermore, if others are allowed to copy you, then you should be able to copy them. A system where everyone copies from everyone else can actually function quite well if everyone wins. That’s why patent pooling and exchange agreements exist.

No matter how you spin it, effective copyright protection is becoming a thing of the past. Anything posted online—movies, music, 3D design files—is effectively public. You can always sell specific services, but information? Not so much. Once it’s copied once, it’s out there for free.

Jack Johnson6 said:We’ve been hearing this same story for five or six years now. They haven't exactly marched into every American home and revolutionized the world yet. In most scenarios, there are better, more efficient technologies already available. This will find its niche, and that's it. I expect the endless cycle of articles claiming 3D printers will change everything to keep coming.

In those five or six years, they've become about 50 times cheaper. Give it another year or two and kids will be playing with them like any other toy.

goldengull3 said:You have likely encountered the headlines—the proliferation of 3D printers is accelerating at a pace that many claim will trigger a second industrial revolution.

Billions are being poured into this development. In America, the primary driver is the desire to decouple industrial manufacturing from its heavy reliance on China. Much of what is currently handled by a largely semi-skilled workforce can already be printed, or will be within a few short years:
- plastic and similar components (this is already a reality)
- metal parts (already occurring sporadically)
- houses and similar structures (on the horizon)

The implications are simple. If you need a glass, you print it. If you require an auto part, a mechanic simply orders it from a "print shop," and a component is ready for installation in a matter of hours—eliminating the need for shipping or massive inventories.

Looking for specialized pasta? Even Kraft Heinz is exploring 3D printing:

In an era where a 3D printer can produce product prototypes, floor tiles, miniature replicas, aircraft components, or even custom sweets, it stands to reason that one could print bespoke pasta. This is precisely the objective of Kraft Heinz, which, in collaboration with the RAND Corporation in Silicon Valley, has begun developing a prototype device designed for 3D pasta printing.

The goal is to engineer a printer specifically for restaurants aiming to offer a unique service: serving pasta in customized shapes and flavors, prepared almost instantly upon ordering.

Perhaps you need an entire house? That is also possible; walls can be erected in 24 hours:

On a cleared and leveled site, workers would lay down two rails a few feet further apart than the eventual building’s width and a computer-controlled contour crafter would take over from there. A gantry-type crane with a hanging nozzle and a components-placing arm would travel along the rails. The nozzle would spit out concrete in layers to create hollow walls, and then fill in the walls with additional concrete… humans would hang doors and insert windows.

http://www.psfk.com/2014/01/concrete...er.html#!sfIHV

Millions of jobs will vanish in the coming years. Of course, new ones will emerge—someone must design, assemble, and maintain these printers, just as someone must handle design, sales, and intellectual property protection.

What will undeniably disappear are the low-skill positions in manufacturing, logistics, assembly, and certain sectors of construction. This shift will carry profound political consequences; as the industrial structure shifts, so does the demand in the labor market. Developed nations will no longer be seeking factory workers, but specialists.

Ultimately, this is a subject of intense contemplation in developed nations, but I wonder if anyone here is truly paying attention.

Fortunately, we don't have many factory workers to begin with. 🙂

I don't think governments as entities have much say in this. It comes down to individuals who recognize the potential and push forward—and there are plenty of those people here, even if they're just working out of a garage.

The next industrial revolution won't happen in massive plants; it’ll happen in those garages, powered by the internet and new global financial systems built on crypto. You’ve got an invention in your garage and you need capital to scale up? You don't need a bank. You have global crowdfunding. You hop on a video call to pitch an investor halfway across the world.

nimblesailor85 said:It’s a nightmare trying to deal with a psychiatrist when they refuse to go—do we really have to wait until they become a danger to society before anyone steps in to help? We're just sitting here waiting, but I'm at a loss for words. I don't even know how to approach this or what kind of language to use to convince them to seek help with me... has anyone actually managed to pull this off without resorting to force???

Your best bet might be finding a psychiatrist willing to do home visits. I know of one specific instance where a doctor managed to talk a paranoid schizophrenic into checking into a psychiatric ward after three or four house calls—I can send the details via DM if you need them.

It's impossible to predict an outcome—it all depends on the doctor, the patient, the severity of the illness, and so on. And honestly, I assume the family needs to be fully on board too.

Bitcoin 😎

http://metro.co.uk/2013/04/11/what-i...rency-3592493/

Only 40 million? Dollars?
That amount is such a rounding error it’s a miracle it even made the news.

Used them for a few small projects. No complaints from my end. 🙏

You can find them on eBay. Usually around $200$100, depending on which model you're looking at.
Some people say it’s worth making a quick trip over to Canada if you live nearby. Otherwise, just grab them from Hong Kong via eBay. 🤷

bluecyclist64 said:Do you really think someone who actually mastered touch typing would be asking questions like this?

Actually, yes—that’s exactly where the friction lies. Once you've developed muscle memory for touch typing, you expect the 'y' key to be right where your fingers expect it, not swapped over with the 'z'. It's that classic "QWERTY vs QWERTZ" headache.

Noah Miller6 said:Good grief... 🤦
just swap the Z and Y keys and call it even.

This should be a championship run—it’s been a while since we actually saw one.

What if you aren't even looking at the keyboard when you type?

My Android keyboard is stuck on the English layout, so I’m constantly tripping over the Z and Y keys. Now it’s started happening on my PC too—just constant typos. I totally get the frustration.

If you just need to swap those two specific letters, this might do the trick:
http://www.randyrants.com/2011/12/sharpkeys_35.html

Frank Moore4 said:This is just another textbook example of how inhumane these self-proclaimed animal rights activists can be. Honestly, half of them probably haven't even walked a dog on a leash, let alone handled actual farm work or livestock. They claim they’re "protecting" animals, but they’d happily step over a human being to do it.

Unfortunately, this is just more evidence of how twisted these Western "liberal values" have become. It’s honestly shameful that our local police aren't stepping in to deal with people like this and filing formal criminal charges for their threats and harassment. At this point, we probably need the courts—and maybe a psychiatric evaluation—to get a handle on them.

Look, I’ll give you this: activism has definitely crossed a line, but it's obvious the community isn't okay with puppies being killed. We aren't talking about some organized group harassing an innocent guy who "accidentally" dropped a bag of shelter puppies into the river. This is about kids and regular people you run into every day—and whether or not they’re actually as innocent as they claim to be.