For some time now I have been mildly excited by the concept of 3D printing. For the most part people only see the technology in movies where the bad guy prints up a plastic gun to bypass the security scans. We read of amazing future possibilities with printing of human organs from hearts to more complex structures. Back in the wider real world the sales figures are not matching the hype. Yes, there has been some increase sales, primarily under the US$5,000 (175,700 baht) mark, but the higher end devices saw a drop in sales over the same period. For the time being at least it looks like the focus is on the fun, toy level of the marketplace.
The question then is why are sales so low? My theory is that after you print a couple of test items and the novelty wears off you are left with an expensive printer that is not really all that useful. Until someone comes up with a library of useful things and I mean a lot of them that are easy to print but hard to get otherwise then the 3D printer will remain a novelty. So what kind of things would fall into the category? Spare parts for common devices that break and are hard to replace like a plastic widget of some kind. How about a new plastic arm for your favourite sunglasses? The kind of things like this that people would want to print however, would not be in a typically print library and that is the problem. Until this is solved don't expect printers to suddenly jump in sales any time soon.
For those who use Microsoft Excel you may not be aware that there is a format other than .XLSX you can save to. Since 2007 there has also been the .XLSB or binary format. This is useful for large and complex spreadsheets that take up a lot of space and take some time to open. The functionality supported is the same is for the regular format everyone is familiar with but the file size is smaller and is optimised for performance. You can use a ZIP file handler to open it just like a regular Excel file, yes really give it a try, so the question is why not use this format all the time. I couldn't find a simple answer to this question.
For Nexus mobile phone owners you will have been lucky enough to get the latest Android patch updates from Google with 39 problems fixed as being the biggest for a month, ever. One fix was for an exploit that allows remote code execution on a compromised device. Some patches go back to version 4.4 but there are plenty to go around for the other versions. At the time of writing there was nothing from Samsung or LG, with Blackphone users most likely to get the patch next.
A reminder, if you post it online then someone will see it. Just ask the two French SFR employees who were sacked after they broadcast a live video of themselves trashing a customer's phone. The idea was they would claim the phone had come in that way. Rather than broadcasting on a private mates only setting they used a more public option. The golden rule is simple, if you post it on the Internet assume everyone will see it if not immediately then soon after.
In what I am sure will come as a complete shock to everyone China has decided to impose a real name policy for registration of Internet addresses. Facebook has a version of this so China is not setting any precedence here but unlike Facebook China's reasons are possibly less than innocuous. Basically any company that can set up URLs for people need to have the mechanisms in place to identify the owners and also have "the capability to provide long-term services as well as sound service withdrawal mechanism".
To be fair and realistic China has had similar systems in place for a long while and the new rules are simply a formalisation of the processes. Facebook has also faced strong criticism for their similar policies enacted to increase security and reduce abuse. China has shown that is uses such restrictions to arrest and imprison people that don't tow the Party line and in particularly to find those who criticise the Establishment.
Today's I love technology story comes to you from the University of Georgia and Ben-Gurion University. Between them they have built an electronic component so small that it can't be seen with a typical microscope. The collaboration built a diode using a single DNA molecule made up of a tiny 11 base pairs. Your DNA strands have 3 billion or so base pairs so there is not a lot of helixing going on with only 11. Yes, I did make that word up. As silicon technology begins to reach its limits alternatives are required and this new technology could be the beginning of a different approach to computing. A diode is a good start to a transistor and transistors make computers. Thinking ahead you could end up with a self-replicating computer sometime in the future.
James Hein is an IT professional of over 30 years' standing. You can contact him at jclhein@gmail.com.