@sil…is that really you? 
happy to put my hands up to not knowing about guns, which is deliberate policy on my part. @bryanlunduke is probably field-stripping a tactical nuclear device as we speak, assuming that it runs Android
I have to admit, I did LOL at this. 
You can already easily circumvent registration laws.
You can buy an 80% AR-15 lower receiver on Amazon for $100. You need to a drilling jig ($100 - $200) and a drill press and a couple other tools to convert it into a fully functional lower receiver.
This is Choose Your Own 3d Printed Guns Policy, an adventure where YOU are the hero!
You are the government Secretary for Guns. You’ve set up a council of people to help you see varying viewpoints on particular issues as they become apparent. These Special Counsels will give you a range of answers when presented with a problem. One day, you listen to Bad Voltage and hear about 3d printing of guns, and you go to your group for counsel, with the following point: “oh no! These 3d printer things that geeks go on about: you can use them to print guns! What are my options here?” Your council counsels counsel as follows:
Special Counsel 1: if anyone can print a gun out, then it’s trivial to avoid the existing laws about selling guns: needing a background check, not being a felon, and so on. We should ban 3d printers because they can be used for bad things!
SC2: Abusus non tollit usum. It’s always been possible to make your own guns: all you need is a drilling jig and a hundred bucks to Amazon. We’re not currently doing a ton of work to stop people doing this: instead, we just keep an eye out for people who are doing it and then go and hit them with the you must be a licensed gun dealer stick. Making guns is not in itself a problem; that’s allowed, as long as you’re licensed to do so.
SC1: Ya, but we can currently ask Amazon for a list of people who’ve bought an 80%-completed lower receiver, or we can just read that information out of something PRISM-ish from the NSA; people making guns is clearly a national security issue. We can’t do that if you run a printer from raw materials in your own house; what are we going to do, call everyone who buys nails a terrorist?
SC3: Some people think that registration laws are themselves a bad idea. Without wishing to comment on the righteousness or otherwise of their position, we the government don’t want people to be able to trivially circumvent the law (that’s why it’s called the law) and an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Why don’t we treat a 3d printer blueprint for a gun as though it were a gun, as @jeremy suggested on Bad Voltage; require Thingiverse to be licensed to distribute it, exactly as if it were an actual gun?
SC2: man, you don’t understand how the internet works. They treat censorship as damage and route around it. We can’t stop copies of films being distributed; what makes you think we can do it for CAD models of guns?
SC3: we can’t, of course, but it’ll be black market. There’s already a black market in guns; we’re not making it any worse.
If you agree with Special Counsel 1 that the risks from 3d printing (you can make guns) outweigh the benefits (you can make all sorts of things that are not guns), go to page 32.
If you agree with Special Counsel 2 that people should be able to print stuff if they want to, and if that stuff is guns and that makes it harder for law enforcement to police unlawful weapons, too bad, because your Constitutional right outweighs police convenience, go to page 55.
If you agree with Special Counsel 3 that some sort of wishy-washy middle ground where a picture of a gun is as heavily regulated as a gun itself is the way forward, go to page 19.
predicting the future is hard… but what we can see is general trends that should show the direction that things might follow.
I think you are missing the point on talking about guns as the disruptive force in 3D printing. A 3D printer can print a 3D printer. The reprap type of design consists of about 60% of the parts being 3D printed. This means that a 3D printer is able to improve and repair itself. This is the embodiment of the software freedoms in hardware. So we should see the exponential innovation as more people get printers, improve and adapt those printers.
No it can’t.
A 3d printer contains circuit boards and motors. Currently, a 3d printer can print the box those things come in. When I can make a 3d printer which can print its own circuit boards and its own working motors then I’m interested. Not when it can print a few plastic cogs.
You are selectively quoting my post. I agree that we cant print circuit boards and electronics, but lots of people are working on those problems. But a 3D printer can print the essential and non commodity parts of itself.
Agreed that it can. But that’s a far cry from “a 3d printer can print itself”. The meme being pushed by fans of 3d printers is that they’re part of a singularity; that once you’ve got one, you can make more, and that’s a snowball effect. This annoys me massively because it’s completely not the case. Having a 3d printer doesn’t make it particularly easier to get a second 3d printer; you still have to buy all the complicated bits, at which point it’s not exactly a big deal to also buy the plastic cogs and nozzles instead of printing them 
Re: Linux upstream/downstream
Wait a second there, have you ever used systemd?! What do you mean no one wants it?!
I was on Slackware previously but when the mailing list erupted with ad-hominen attacks against the author of systemd I decided to give it a try, to see what all the fuss was about. Now I run Arch - which uses systemd - and it’s awesome!!! It’s fast and so much easier than rc scripts.
I think the main reason people are opposed to systemd, and other new infrastructure in Linux, is simply because it is new.
Sing it, brother.
While on the 3D printer topic, Makerbot has announced a couple interesting new devices at CES: http://ces.cnet.com/8301-35284_1-57616660/makerbot-announces-new-3d-printers-including-mini-and-industrial-strength-models/
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I’m disappointed this show wasn’t called “Murderous Corned Beef”
When it comes to upstream/downstream, os versus distribution discussion as an end user I don’t really care all that much. I just want to install it, have it work and have the software that I want available.
But as a developer I just want to write an application, I don’t want to write a Fedora app or an Ubuntu app. I want to write an app and have it work on as many distros as possible. As long as I’m not forced to use a toolkit that is distro specific I’m a happy dev. I just worry that it will go that way.
From my point of view, that’s like saying “as a developer I just want to write an application. I don’t want to write a Windows app or an Android app. I want to write an app and have it work on as many devices as possible.” And I think that that’s unrealistic. I want my applications to work with the stuff that the platform provides; Android apps have a left-hand sidebar; Windows apps install context menu extensions into Windows Explorer. That’s what makes your app good; that it works the way the other apps on that platform do. Fedora and Ubuntu are different platforms, in my opinion, in just the same way that Windows and Android are. There certainly are tools that reduce that cross-platform impedance; you can write the core of your app in QML, or in HTML and use PhoneGap, or in PyGtk. But integration into the OS is, to me, a critical part of elevating your app to actually feel native… and if you don’t care about feeling native, then write a web app and you get support on every platform everywhere for free.
I totally understand that and as a user of course I want my app to leverage as much as possible from the platform.
I suppose it’s because I don’t really see Fedora, Ubuntu and as different platforms. But as mentioned in the podcast they increasingly are. There is just something about that, that irks me. I’m not sure what, probably the natural inclination to resist change.
To be honest most of my time is spent writing web apps, and one of the reasons that I do that is it will work anywhere.
Your point here is important, I think, because I think your feeling is a good example of how lots of people think. There is nothing wrong with Fedora and Ubuntu defining some individuality so long as that individuality is Free and Open…but for some reason it irks people.
I think the reason it irks people is because traditionally the notion of a distro being individual was frowned upon, but now the culture is changing, and personally, I think that is a good thing.
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It’s an emotional response. It’s that initial entrenched feeling when the ideas are brought up. But when you sit down an think about it you realise its not all a bad thing.
At the end of the day this is the most important part. If its free and open then I can develop for it a hell of a lot easier than if it wasn’t.
As a user the move of distros to being more individual is going to be nothing but a win. The competition will hopefully be healthy and spur on interesting innovation and experimentation.
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Part of it is people think that if there’s only one project then all developers work on improving it, but if there are 2, developers are split so both get half the improvements. It is not true, but some people feel that.
Also people using xyz distro with 0,001% marketshare are very happy to get bugfixes from people working on the #1 distro just because they use the same library or app.
The least of 3 evils.