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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:don't drive with nobody in it? (Score 1) 435

Imagine long range trucking where the vehicle didn't need a driver and wasn't subject to driving limits. It would make trucking a lot more competitive against trains.

It would also make automated trucking a lot more competitive against human driven transport services...thus the unions will immediately be against it.

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:Pussy whipped bullshit (Score 2) 590

Better than someone with so little mental fortitude that they going into a bawling rage over a slight casting change on a comic-book they don't even read.

I don't think a comment of "sad" qualifies as a "bawling rage" and I don't think "a staple of the Marvel Universe and Norse mythology" being changed into a woman is "slight."

Comment Hairdresser (Score 1) 509

Tell her to go to beauty school and become a hairdresser.

1. It's not outsourceable.
2. It's unlikely to be automated due to the precision required involving sharp objects around the skull.
3. It's more an art than a science.
4. You get to meet people in your local community.
5. The hours are reasonable.
6. In general it's a respectable profession.
Power

People Who Claim To Worry About Climate Change Don't Cut Energy Use 710

schwit1 (797399) writes with news that a UK study has found that folks concerned about climate change don't do much to conserve power at home. From the article: Those who say they are concerned about the prospect of climate change consume more energy than those who say it is "too far into the future to worry about," the study commissioned by the Department for Energy and climate change found. That is in part due to age, as people over 65 are more frugal with electricity but much less concerned about global warming. However, even when pensioners are discounted, there is only a "weak trend" to show that people who profess to care about climate change do much to cut their energy use. The findings were based on the Household Electricity Survey, which closely monitored the electricity use and views of 250 families over a year. The report (PDF), by experts from Loughborough University and Cambridge Architectural Research, was commissioned and published by DECC. High power use doesn't have to be dirty: Replace coal, methane, and petroleum with nuclear, wind, solar, etc.
Earth

Fighting Climate Change With Trade 155

mdsolar writes with this story about the possible elimination of tariffs on environmental goods between the world's largest economic powers. The United States, the European Union, China and 11 other governments began trade negotiations this week to eliminate tariffs on solar panels, wind turbines, water-treatment equipment and other environmental goods. If they are able to reach an agreement, it could reduce the cost of equipment needed to address climate change and help increase American exports. Global trade in environmental goods is estimated at $1 trillion a year and has been growing fast. (The United States exported about $106 billion worth of such goods last year.) But some countries have imposed import duties as high as 35 percent on such goods. That raises the already high cost of some of this equipment to utilities, manufacturers and, ultimately, consumers. Taken together, the countries represented in these talks (the 28 members of the E.U. negotiate jointly, while China and Hong Kong are represented by separate delegations) account for about 86 percent of trade in these products, which makes the potential benefit from an agreement substantial. Other big countries that are not taking part in these talks, like India, South Africa and Brazil, could choose to join later.
Education

Geographic Segregation By Education 230

The wage gap between college-educated workers and those with just a high school diploma has been growing — and accelerating. But the education gap is also doing something unexpected: clustering workers with more education in cities with similar people. "This effectively means that college graduates in America aren't simply gaining access to higher wages. They're gaining access to high-cost cities like New York or San Francisco that offer so much more than good jobs: more restaurants, better schools, less crime, even cleaner air." Most people are aware of the gentrification strife occurring in San Francisco, but it's one among many cities experiencing this. "[Research] also found that as cities increased their share of college graduates between 1980 and 2000, they also increased their bars, restaurants, dry cleaners, museums and art galleries per capita. And they experienced larger decreases in pollution and property crime, suggesting that cities that attract college grads benefit from both the kind of amenities that consumers pay for and those that are more intangible." The research shows a clear trend of the desirable cities becoming even more desirable, to the point where it's almost a necessity for city planners to lure college graduates or face decline.

Comment Re:It's already going on... (Score 1) 353

I tend to agree with you. I'm not ignorant about my driving. That's the *reason* that I'm a conservative driver.

I've been a driver for 24 years. In that time, vehicles I own have been involved in 5 collisions. In two of those, the vehicles were parked and struck by other motorists. In one, the vehicle was stationary, but not parked, and struck by another motorist, in one, I backed into a car that was going around 25 mph through a gas station parking lot (lesson learned), and in one, I clipped some poor guy's '63 skylark with a humvee when doing a courier run at the very end of a 24-hour CQ shift (I still feel like a jackass about that one...I'd swear I looked right and things were clear, but I was obviously wrong).

Aside from that, I've had one claim arising from a hailstorm that beat the crap out of the family minivan.

I was not giving some list of things I do that make me perfect, because I'm not perfect. What I am is cautious, mainly because I'm not made of money, and deductibles are not my friend. I don't drive strictly the speed limit, but I always follow at a safe distance for the road conditions, and I pay attention to folks behind me who don't do the same. I let faster drivers pass me and move over to make that easier when possible. I signal lane changes and turns. I change lanes before the last minute so that I don't have to worry about cutting someone off.

I do all of those things for a couple of reasons. First, I don't want to be the cause of an accident and cause damage to myself, someone else, my car, or someone else's car because it sucks for everyone when that happens. Second, I don't want to pay any more money than I have to for the privilege of driving.

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