I think it's more likely that more people are becoming obese because of exactly one factor: age. They are living artificially prolonged lifetimes due to access to adequate food and to medicine. It's easier to get fat when you are 50 than when you are 30 because of the natural changes in your metabolism.

:-)

You make it sound like starving people are getting fat too.

If they are becoming obese, the particular individual has a surplus of caloric intake, if only for this year or month. This is not to say that they have proper nutrition. So I am not at all clear that the fact that there is obesity in the third world is confounding evidence.

For most of the existence of mankind and indeed all of mankind's progenitors, having too much food was a rare problem and being hungry all of the time was a fact of life. We are not necessarily well-evolved to handle it. So, no surprise that we eat to repletion and are still hungry. You don't really have any reason to look at it as an illness caused by anything other than too much food.

Martin,

The last time I had a professional video produced, I paid $5000 for a one-minute commercial, and those were rock-bottom prices from hungry people who wanted it for their own portfolio. I doubt I could get that today. $8000 for the entire conference is really volunteer work on Gary's part.

Someone's got to pay for it. One alternative would be to get a corporate sponsor and give them a keynote, which is what so many conferences do, but that would be abandoning our editorial independence. Having Gary fund his own operation through Kickstarter without burdening the conference is what we're doing. We're really lucky we could get that.

We do charge entry to the convention. We get really nice facilities for the people who actually travel there and for the speakers. Last year's location was subperb. But I don't see why they should actually subsidize the folks who do not attend.

I think TAPR's policy is that the presentations be freely redistributable, but I don't know what they and Gary have discussed. I am one of the speakers and have always made sure that my own talk would be freely redistributable. I wouldn't really want it to be modifiable except for translation and quotes, since it's a work of opinion. Nobody should get the right to modify the video in such a way as to make my opinion seem like it's anything other than what it is.

If I remember correctly, it was 4 video channels last year: tracking on presenter, proscenium, audience, projector.

Yes. I put in $100, and I am asking other people to put in money to sponsor these programs so that everyone, including people who did not put in any money at all, can see them for free. If you look at the 150+ videos, you can see that Gary's pretty good at this (and he brought a really professional-seeming cameraman to Hamvention, too) and the programs are interesting. Even if at least four of them feature yours truly :-) He filmed every one of the talks at the TAPR DCC last year (and has filmed for the past 5 years) and it costs him about $8000 to drive there from North Carolina to Austin, Texas; to bring his equipment and to keep it maintained, to stay in a motel, to run a multi-camera shoot for every talk in the conference, and to get some fair compensation for his time in editing (and he does a really good job at that).

But an assembly line manned by robots? Why should that be cheaper in China? Is capital that much cheaper?

Even if wages and other costs were equal, the location advantage is substantial. It's not that it's cheaper in China, but that it's cheaper in the huge manufacturing hubs. You have suppliers and manufacturers for just about every single component you need without long-distance shipping, and a deep pool of design and manufacturing expertise working in the area.

That's not to say you can't manufacture efficiently elsewhere (we have plenty of recent examples such as the Raspberry Pi), but that the advantages has as much to do with the concentration of resources as with the cost of labour and regulations. And of course, as this inudstry becomes ever more automated, it no longer matters much for jobs where it happens any longer.

You can use the exact same arguments against fly-by-wire technology. Yet, that is now the norm, with not a mechanical linkage in sight.

Precisely. There's several copies of a prominent law professor's lecture on the subject and spells out PRECISELY why you don't do things like that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

Now, the burning question would be, "how did they get access to his encrypted system files?"- without a warrant, they're just as screwed in light of the recent Supreme Court rulings. You need a warrant for those things- and you need to state you're looking for a specific on them before they can legitimately reach the conclusion the Mass Supreme Court arrived at. Without that, it's just like the Fourth Amendment violation I experienced about 5 years ago. No *VALID* warrant? No case. No seizure allowed.

If so, it's not hard to have them get a warrant that specifies this, not a court order to relinquish the password. They're distinctly differing notions- and the Judges there overstepped their authority. If it's legit, they could've issued a warrant for specific information and as a part thereof, compelled the unlock of the secured device for that specific information. Since they didn't...doesn't meet the sniff test in light of current precedent.

Heh... Actually, that line of bullshit might be at risk with the recent unanimous decision that law enforcement needed a warrant for mucking about on a defendent's phone. Basically, this is the same thing and it's expected to be overturned by the SCOTUS if it gets before them.

And, in recent times (as in within THIS month...) the Supreme Court of the US handed down a UNANIMOUS decision that they had to get a warrant to go digging about on a defendant's phone- this is the same thing.

You have to have a legitimate reason and a warrant to do this. It's expected that this will go to the Supreme Court and be overturned just like the mobile phone story went down.