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Comment Re:One hell of a slashvertisement! (Score 2) 15

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.

Comment Re:If you pay... (Score 2) 15

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).

Comment Re:n/t (Score 3, Insightful) 278

Some people are still screaming that it isn't happening.
Some have said OK, but humans aren't doing it!

And a lot of the people saying those things are the same people. They go through the same series of denials:

  1. The climate isn't changing.
  2. The climate is changing but it's natural.
  3. Humans are causing climate change, but it's no big deal
  4. It's a big deal, but the suggested changes to deal with it are acceptable.

The worst part is that they'll concede points through the list of denials in one argument, and then turn around and go back to the top the next time they argue the point. Going through the series of denying arguments and reverting after the end of every argument is the key sign you're dealing with somebody who isn't arguing the issue in good faith.

Submission + - Open Hardware and Digital Communications conference on free video, if you help (kickstarter.com)

Bruce Perens writes: The TAPR Digital Communications Conference has been covered twice here and is a great meeting on leading-edge wireless technology, mostly done as Open Hardware and Open Source software. Free videos of the September 2014 presentations will be made available if you help via Kickstarter. For an idea of what's in them, see the Dayton Hamvention interviews covering Whitebox, our Open Hardware handheld software-defined radio transceiver, and Michael Ossman's HackRF, a programmable Open Hardware transceiver for wireless security exploration and other wireless research. Last year's TAPR DCC presentations are at the Ham Radio Now channel on Youtube.

Comment Re:Virtual reality is coming (Score 1) 171

Because fascinating games with depth don't look like pretty like a Michael Bay movie. Go play Dwarf Fortress or Minecraft for a while and wonder why you look up at 5 am wondering where the night went. The same problems have hit Hollywood; When big money is involved you get people who are following the money without any passion for the craft.

Comment Re:Why is there a debate at all? (Score 1) 278

Why is there a debate at all?

Because people want it. Suppose (just hypothetically) you were getting a subsidy from the public, and that the subsidy served no useful purpose. Then suppose someone said, "Hey, this is getting expensive and unless we change the rules for how we compute your subsidy, it's going to get more expensive in the future."

You would call for debate. Why wouldn't you? What've you got to lose?

Futhermore, if you lost that debate, and then people started saying, "Let's change the rules for your subsidy, either eliminating or reducing it," you would call for debate, because since your subsidy serves no useful purpose, the rational course of action is going to be to eliminate your subsidy.

I think we're pretty much now at the stage, where we should start seeing some some great arguments for how pollution reduces crime (and pollution solves some other social problems as well), and that if you want to be tough on crime (and address other social ills), then we need to increase pollution. (That'll be the liberal argument, put forth by Republicans.)

This will be countered by the argument that increasing pollution just makes industries become dependent upon pollution, cleaning up the pollution is needlessly expensive, and industries that pollute could be just as productive without the pollution. (That's the conservative argument, put forth by Democrats.)

Comment Re:105 megabits per second (Score 1) 401

That's why I think internet speed should be measured in Gigabytes per month. Seriously. About once per week I get snailspam from CenturyLink, wanting me to upgrade from 7 bullshit units to 20 bullshit units. Except each "plan" is the same number of Gigabytes per month. So how it is an "upgrade?" Oh, if I give you more money, I'll be able to hit my cap faster? That's silly.

Now if you're telling me my cap will change from 200GB to 571GB, that is an upgrade I might be willing to pay for. Because then you'd be talking actually-relevant numbers.

Comment Unfortunately, this is a state's issue. (Score 2) 382

The reply is actually excellent. I was about to hate all over the page but actually read it first. Frankly, this is an individual states issue... Which only an act of congress can change, or have our local politicians change.

However, the auto dealership lobby is a serious nut to crack. With elections coming, I'm not sure many politicians are going to put their necks out so they can be labeled as against local businesses.

Comment Re:OK (Score 1) 79

What I don't want to see are solutions that are dependent on outside resources

This is totally understandable but TFA is about a tech, not a product. Relax. I think the whole point of this is that people will be able to build stuff out of this. i.e. you'll google "arduino thread" and instead of just seeing programmers talk about concurrency, you'll also see some networking stuff in your search re--

Fuck. Guys, why did you have to call it "Thread?" WTF were you thinking? I declare: strike one.

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