Sigh. We supply text transcripts with almost all videos. Look for the link -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H... tells you how to use a hyperlink (or 'link' for short).

To see that link, click on the video's title or on the "read more" link below the video where it appears on the main page.

Have a nice day, and may everyone you meet be as courteous to you as you are to Slashdot staff!

Thanks,

- Robin

Unless a story or video is marked SPONSORED CONTENT or ADVERTISEMENT it is not a paid ad on Slashdot. Sometimes a Slashdot editor -- Tim in this case -- gets interested enough in a person, group, service or product to do a video interview with the person/people behind it. The theory behind the Dan Shapiro interviews (and we have two more to run after a while) is that they're a great primer on how to use crowdfunding to kickstart your company. His Glowforge product is obviously not unique, and we have said so and linked to several competitors, which should be a clue that it's not an ad.

We looked at what Shapiro had to say as good info for entrepreneurial Slashdot users who may want to start their own businesses one day. You may not be one of them. Please understand that many thousands of people hit Slashdot every day, and stories that interest you may not interest each and every one of them. And stories that interest some of them may not be your cup of milk.

A funny datum for you: We ran an excerpt from an interview at http://passionatevoices.org/ - whose owner Erik first contacted me about our videos; he wondered if they were paid ads. Obviously they're not, because when Erik submitted his first video on passionate voices, this is what happened: http://news.slashdot.org/story...

We are happy to accept and run reader-submitted videos and we love suggestions for people we should interview. You can use the submission form or email me, robin at roblimo dotcom.

Got any good ideas? :)

- Robin

I'm looking through my email archives, don't see anything from you about an interview request. Email me - robin at roblimo dot com - and we'll schedule it. Thx

I like most of the Sikhs I've met both in the U.S and India.

BTW: my friend Esther Schindler works for Jaspreet, editing Druva's corporate blog, and she thinks he's a pretty good guy.

My mistake. I meant to type 'Mumbai' but typed 'Bangalore' by mistake. Sorry about that.

So your suggestion for our next video interview is.....................? Please make sure you provide contact information.

And realize: 10,000 or 20,000 Slashdot readers might be interested in something that doesn't interest you. And you and a *different* 10,000 or 20,000 may be interested in something else that the first 10,000 have no interest in whatsoever.

And 'the staff being interested in it personally' means what? Slashdot only has three full-time people, plus me working part-time editing videos and setting up video interviews. 'The staff' each have their own interests. Something that catches a Slashdot staff person's eye is almost certainly going to be interesting to at last a decent-sized minority of users.

Now I'm going to go eat, then edit a video interview Tim did with a guy who makes clicky keyboards. Some Slashdot users will like it and some won't. And some will say they can read a transcript faster than they can watch a video. Me too! So we run written transcripts of virtually all videos and still get comments about the lack of transcripts.

I'm sure we'll also get complaints about background noise, since Tim shot this on a noisy show floor.

We have a significant number of readers who are only happy when they are disparaging something or somebody, and I have learned over the years to wear lots of skin thickener cream and ignore idiotic comments (which yours was NOT) and the cowardly anonymous ones, to whom I pay no attention at all.

Why not find a topic or interview subject that might be interesting to at least a substantial minority of Slashdot users? I'm married and Timothy has a g/f, so sleeping with us is a no-go. Bribes? Might as well just buy ads. Your content will then be marked "advertising" or "paid content" and will differ markedly in appearance from editorial copy on Slashdot. FYI, that's how you tell something on Slashdot is a paid ad. :)

Because this research is interesting for humans who reproduce and attempt to teach their offspring to act like adult human beings in 18 years or so. You may not have a reproduction partner at this point, but odds favor you finding one sooner or later. Every single one of your ancestors reproduced. Why should you be different?

To whose benefit? Slashdot readers who have or might one day have children, nieces, nephews, step-grandchildren, etc. I'm sure that Timothy doting on his toddler-age niece had nothing to do with his choice of this project. (wink)

You cannot rationally expect every Slashdot article or video to please everyone. It can't be done. There's a user subculture that hits Slashdot purely to complain. I love the ones who complain about the lack of video transcripts, which we supply almost all the time. Now the downer crowd will complain that the transcripts are in a font they don't like. Or something.

"Smile and nod," I say. And make sure you have put on your skin-thickener before hitting Slashdot.

Sorry. We're skipping part three and going directly to four. :)

Believe it or not, we're getting a whole new audience on http://slashdot.org/videos. Our corporate masters finally stopped with the autoplay stuff and let us have an HTML5 alternative. And beta.... gone gone gone. Things are looking up.

And yes, we're always looking for interesting people to interview, and mindful that "interesting" to one person is often "boring" to somebody else. You can't please everyone, so you might as well please yourself. https://www.youtube.com/watch?...

After a day of the Dead though my new speakers, a Ricky Nelson tune is a good end to my day.

Where in this article you love so dearly is a mention of crowdfunding? In the part that's behind a high-cost paywall? If so, tough luck. Slashdot has rarely -- really never -- linked to paywall-restricted articles.

++ And FYI, I personally love to interview people like Dr. Mason. I think I'll send him a message through YouTube now, since that seems to be where he's most active online. Thanks for the tip, which you can stop repeating now. I read it the first time, believe it or not.

It's biomedical research, which is interesting to at least some Slashdot readers. The fact that Timothy dotes on his toddler-age niece is surely irrelevant.

So something like this is interesting to a subset of Slashdot users, including Timothy Lord (and me, to a lesser extent since I have a toddler-age granddaughter). Not everything on Slashdot is interesting to every user. This one should be interesting to parents, grandparents, uncles, aunts, and anyone else who may be attached to a trainee human in the future. Which, silly stereotypes aside, describes the vast majority of Slashdot. users.

Thanks for noticing. Fixed.

In Baltimore or DC you could have arranged for me or my buddy Charles to meet you at the airport in a clean stretch limo, complete with soft drinks and bottled water in the ice box, for about 20% more than a *legit* cab fare, and *less* than a jacked-up one. And we had maps and could find literally anything. Nowadays, of course, everyone has GPS. But there have always been small, squared-away local car services and limo companies. You just had to be smart enough to find them, maybe by using that Inter Net thing I keep hearing about. Or recommendations from friends or business associates. Our basic business model was to be just like your private chauffeur, except you only paid for us when you needed us, not all the time.

Most of our transport customers, after the firs year, were regulars. You could be on your way home after an exhausting flight, and know the driver who was picking you up well enough that you could go to sleep in the car. We knew where you lived, and were kind enough not to wake you until we had your luggage out of the trunk and (if applicable) got your wife/gf/bf to come wake you up with a kiss.

It's a service business. We succeeded by giving better service than our competition. And that red carpet we laid down all the time? Remnants we got for $2 each. Why didn't other transport companies do that? Got me. And on hourly charters, a rose for each lady -- or femme-ish gay.

We had all kinds of customers, which is what made the business fun.

If my eyes hadn't gotten shitty and if I still had any stamina, I'd go back in the limo biz. Still have the roblimo.com URL. :)

"Shouldn't the existing laws be sufficient to shutdown uber?" They usually are, if anybody bothers to enforce them.

I jumped out of the cab into a "limo' that was a heavily-waxed Buick with "for hire" plates and commercial insurance. I sat on the Hyatt's parking apron and the doormen and concierges referred rides to me, and I gave them 10%. Totally legal. And over the next few months I built enough private trade that I didn't sit in front of the hotel very often, and not long after that I bought an old but low-mileage stretch -- and did well enough with it to buy a house trailer on a very nice lot in Elkridge, MD.

Uber isn't the first company that has taken on the cabs. How about Boston Coach? Or Carey Limo? Or.... hell, there's lots of them out there, all making a decent living. Uber just whines louder than the others, and is bilking investors in a big way instead of quietly running a transportation business.

I had to get a background check and provide proof of commercial insurance to operate a limousine in Maryland. The insurance was not expensive due to my clean driving record and extensive experience as a cab & limo driver, and the background check was maybe $25, plus I had to supply 2 passport-sized photos for my passenger-carry license. BFD. Took me maybe a couple of hours, and once I was in business I did just fine.

I'm starting to think 'Uber' means 'crybaby' in the Shoshone Indian language.

AND - my friend Cate, who used to drive for Uber and Lyft at the same time, has now dropped Uber. 'They're just too flaky,' she says, and tells me just sticking with Lyft has made her life easier without cutting her income. Nicer customers, too, she says.