I mean really… if that really is for real, that is really, really quite something. That could put the entire reprap project forward by several generations… by entire dimensions. Depending on whether or not it’s possible to do this on a reprap.
And that’s the second thing in so many days to come out of Disney, of all places… it’s a bit like Yahoo back in the mid-2000s… when suddenly, a company that has fundamentally retarded DNA, starts hiring talent, and letting it do what it wants… before the bad DNA reimposes itself and the whole thing becomes hide-bound and sclerotic again, with all the sub-projects dying on the vine. This will happen to Apple soon enough. Apple is the last “great hope” of the copy-monopoly industries, and although it’s the richest corporation on the planet, it’s starting to fuck up already. Just watch as the “money men” drift up the hierarchy. It’ll be the new Microsoft inside 10 years.
I mean really – my 60 year old aunties have iPads… they’re the ones who bought hippie-wigs from woolworths at the end of Withnail&I, and now they’ve got iPads… and “the cool kids”? Are you kidding me? The ones that sleep outside Apple shops to be the first to buy whatever the new thing is? They’re fucking sheep. They’re a joke. The real cool kids all use Linux now. It’s not about “looking good”, it’s about not being controlled. All the shiny in the world doesn’t alter the fundamentally infantalising relationship between Apple and its flock.
Baaaaa… you see all those people in blue shirts? The ones who look like they really like you? They don’t. They’re paid to clap. They’re serving-staff, paid to be your friend… so long as you keep buying shiny things with patented curved corners.
Another video of the plastic stuff
In which the guy appears to be demonstrating a plastic paper-towel tube containing some absynth. He’s a glass 1/2 full kindof a guy. Anyone in sales has to be. Anyone who demonstrates anything, and starts with the words “What If…”, immediately looses me. That’s how people in movie-trailers talk… to an audience who they apparently think is about 12.
Still… the stuff that Disney has done with it is world-changing… so long as people other than Disney are able to work with it. Free of monopoly rents…. not that monopoly rents are imposable with 3D Printing… and therein lies the rub… that is why the fascist I talked about a couple of posts ago wanted to put some sort of tracking/DRM into stepper-motors. Into the DNA.
The War On Open Computing is a fight for the purity of its DNA… and it’s not some grand philosophical notion. It’s a simple flip of a switch in the mind of the designer. Do you control it, or does someone else?
Cool fibre-optic stuff though.
On Addiction
And The Void Mooned Back...
The Spirit Of The World
A Machine to Steal Souls
More Anti Digital
Thync
Robotic Sensory Loops and Whatnot
Cartestian Robot Roundup.
Post-Scarcity Link-Dump
Servo Bender
“sheep” you say? I take that to mean you know a better path?
What is a life with out aquiesing to the multi-national super-structure? We live off the blood of the starveing (here in the usa anyway). Every time I spend a dollar I suppprt the beast at every level. Every time I use gasoline, every time I shop for food, every time I sell my life hour by hour just to pay the intreast on my debt.
…then again that is why I grow food, that is why I give my time and energy to strangers in need, that is why I am not in debt and avoid useing money,
Here in washington state we have lots of apples that just fall on the ground to rot. Last week I built a cider press out of scrap lumber, a spare car jack, and some old 5
gallon buckets. The owner of the local u-brew gave us a pack of yeast, but I have a wild yeast culture started anyway. Supriseing how little work it takes, best cider I have ever tasted, and I will have hard cider ready for halloween gifts.
Thank you for your site it is one of the few that I regular.
re: “sheep”… yup, I do know a better path: Don’t buy from any computing device where someone else controls the root.
ie: Don’t buy Apple, buy Android. Use Linux.
Opting out of the commercial sphere entirely is bad communication – it’s creating an example that no one else can follow… so being a 100% eco-purist is not as effective as being 70%… or even 30%… but then I don’t think the world is likely to change through “individual consumer choices”. It needs to be changed through changing the way our institutions work.
Good luck with the cider – my dad tried that back in the 60s… it was utterly undrinkable… but we had pet pigs who loved it, and got very very very drunk. Running around playing and squealing and falling over. Then they lay down in the shade for a looooong time.
Very good, it seams we are in complete agreement!
i am thinking that what you said about computing devices could be applied more broadly.
Oh yes, and I left out the most important ingreadient to make good cider, the one thing your father didnt have… the internet!
There’s a temptation for that… but the open-computing thing is a very specific set of issues, with very specific and unambiguous rights/wrongs.
Indeed it is. ambiguity in moral issues is never benificial. It is very nice to be so well informed,most apple users could tell you what the differance between andoid an iphone is.