No, I'm not exactly sure why I am in a gaming thread but I usually visit all of 'em - if not just to see what folks are yelling about today. However, between your post and their post, I got "CS." Everybody knows what Creative Suite is! LOL, I'm such a gamer!
(No, I'm really guessing it's Counter Strike. The rest is just gibberish to me.)
Actually, if you throw in the way it's threaded here - phantomfive's post is just above these two posts.
Here is an example of a 'rock' program, it basically overwrites every fifth memory address. The strategy is to quickly pass through memory, hopefully destroying the opponent by blind luck:
dat -1;data, also stores the bombing address add #5 -1;increases the bombing address by five mov #0 @ -2;this is the bomb, it copies the dat line to the address jmp -2;jumpbacktwoinstructions
If you write a program that is only one line long, then this program only has a 1/5 chance of winning. So the longer the program, the weaker it is against this one. Many complex, interesting programs have been written, only to fall to this bomber.
My theory is, if you could find a way to modify the system that would weaken this strategy, then it would allow longer, and more interesting programs.
There's some motivation for cheating right there. I don't play because CS:GO is fucking terrible compared to the original CS (1.3 was the best version, then they removed jumping but even 1.6 is better than GO) so I'm not sure how that translates but if it were just passively having the client running like TF2 you'd still have cheaters because dying means sitting in the time-out chair.
props for 1.3, back when the AWP was the AWP instead of the AWM or whatever.
I think I can be excused for not having a damned clue what's going on.;-) Oh, I think TF2 is Team Fortress 2. I was a bit of a gamer, I loved the Fallout 2 game. I then bought Fallout Tactics. I haven't played a game since except for trying to pick up Fallout 2 again a few times. Alas, Tactics killed not just the series but the entire gaming right out of me. I didn't have a whole lot of money then. Worse, I paid full retail for Fallout Tactics.
I'd even played a "Tactics" game before. I'd played Fallout before. I loved Fallout and Fallout 2. I had a great time with both games. I could even tolerate and enjoy some of the Tactics games. Somehow, they combined them in such a powerful manner that I haven't really gamed since - and not in a good way. It's sure as hell not like I'm thinking, "They'll never beat that, I'll quit while I'm ahead."
I don't think I've even paid for a game since then. Well, not for me. I've bought some for my kids and for other people. I've even donated to an open source game or two that I didn't/don't actually play. I've donated and played at an online game but that involved a whole lot of alcohol. No, Tactics pretty much killed games for me. I don't even play my beloved golf games any more. I've never even seen Fallout 3 played. I've heard that 4 is out there. I hear they aren't what I'd like anyhow as they're nothing like the original.
Ah well... I'm pretty sure the pre-release reviews were all faked. Tactics was good, they told me. Buy it, they told me. Buy it on day one, they told me. "Brilliant and eminently playable," they told me. "Bring back the joy of Fallout," they told me. A deal at twice the price, they told me.
I don't hold a grudge or anything. I don't even want my money back. No, it's best this way... I've just been disappointed for 15 years. It was like $60 too. I was pretty well off in 2001 but not wealthy or anything. We'd just expanded and I was paying myself less than I was paying some of the folks who worked for me. I had two kids (I guess I still have them). I had things like
Heh... I still have a KoL character. I took 'em out for a spin the other day. Well, like two months ago. After you've ascended enough times and gotten more meat than you can spend, it lost it's luster for me. Oh, my character's worth millions of meat. I could probably sell it on eBay or something but that's prohibited. It'd be nice to. I don't need the money or anything. It'd just be good to see the character go to someone who'd actually appreciate it the most. NS-12 was when I stopped, I think. I've logged in a few times and done some grinding, for my own amusement, but it's just not that interesting after a while. I guess there are a bunch of new quests. They didn't draw me back in. I should check again, maybe it's interesting again. Meh...
WTF is wrong with you kids today? Nah, there's a fine defense for trolling and a few trolls that are quite notable for their work. Why? Because of the amount of energy and effort they put into it. They need to teach this stuff in history class, lest the classics be forgotten - from grits to Yoda.
No, some trolls are funny as all hell. Some trolling is fantastic. There's a great amount of effort (and creativity) that goes into good trolling. Then, you've got long-con trolls that will set up the folks like bowling pins and then knock them down with one fell swoop! There's the one who slips in a casual mention and few notice - those are some of my personal favorites.
No, there's good trolling. Well, maybe not "good" by some metrics but good in that it is impressive and a good demonstration of what a quality troll can do to people. They are the experts in their field and some of them even make the world a better place. (I'm reminded of Banksy before he got a name for himself.) There are IRL trolls and internet trolls. There are good, bad, creative, and lazy trolls.
They come in all shapes and sizes and some of them accomplish meaningful things - even if it's just to make you laugh, or to think differently, or to (gasp) change your outlook on something. This doesn't mean that they're all good. It doesn't mean that they're all worth the effort. It does, sort of, mean that the name has been watered down to include just plain assholes.
An asshole isn't a troll. A troll can be an asshole. That's an important concept - as is the concept of LULZ (we can has them). They've created, destroyed, enlightened, and caused ignorance. A tool is a tool is a tool. What you use it for, what you create, what you do with that tool? Those are the important things. Those are the things that matter. No... Trolling is a art. Like any other art, it can be good or bad. It can be one to make you think or point out the obvious. Personally, as I said, I prefer the more subtle trolls...
I watched a movie, it was horrible, about a kid who played video games. His dad, a wealthy person, got him a special video game and it turns out that it was a real recruitment tool. They recruited him to become some sort of warrior, something to do with time was involved, and he had a friend who was also recruited - but his friend was evil.
It was a fantastic plot line.
That's the only redeeming quality that it had. It had bad acting, bad effects, bad settings, bad production, bad directing, bad script writing, and bad everything else. The plot? It was awesome! The movie could have been ten times as good and still been bad. Yup, nary a full order of magnitude's worth of improvements could have made that movie good. It was just that bad.
At any rate, it was based on a video game and you could tell they were trying to stretch it into a series. I have no idea what the video game was and I hope nobody paid to see this movie. I sort of paid, it was on Hulu+ and I was stoned. This was not actually all that long ago - late last year.
The Army recruitment tool made me think of it. I've no idea if the game is any good (I'm not actually a gamer) or anything like that. And, as an aside, I'd expect that anyone that paid to see that movie felt cheated - they were. If I were a gamer and a fan of that game, I'd feel cheated by such a bad movie. It's on the list of the crappiest movies that I've ever seen. It's near the bottom of that list (top?), meaning that it is horrible. I don't know if you're into bad movies or games but this movie is so bad that it needs to be used as an example in movie making school. Really, it is that bad.
I seem to recall some comments that indicated the game was good. I actually watched the entire movie but I've long since forgotten the name - I'm not what you'd call a movie buff. Meh, this is Slashdot. Someone knows the game, the movie, and one odd guy actually liked the movie. Time Warrior, maybe?
Somehow, it's in the positive star ranking but only at a 3.1. I even like some bad movies. This one? I think this is probably one of the worst ones that I've ever seen - if not the worst. And I've seen Gymkata! Hell, to put this in perspective, I kind of LIKE Gymkata. The Adventures of Remo Williams is almost my favorite movie (assuming documentaries aren't allowed on that list). No, Time Warrior was awful but could have been so great.
At any rate, the whole point of this was - as I mentioned - that it was about using a video game to recruit soldiers. It really had such great potential to be a good movie. The plot was one of the best I've seen - in a while. It was just so poorly executed that I have nothing good to say about it - except that it had great potential. It could easily have been a good movie. It should have been an excellent movie. It might have even been pretty easy to make it a phenomenal movie. Nope... It's so bad that not even *I* like it.
I am not a gamer but I've read about EVE. Even if they made a client for my system, I'd not play. Nope... Someone's gonna shoot someone over the antics in that game - by the players themselves. I've read stories about some of the greatest takeovers, robberies, and con jobs - and they all took place in EVE. Iceland has like a half dozen firearms, in the whole country. A bunch of crazy Americans are going to hop on a boat, row to Iceland, and just start shooting the developers.
Seriously, EVE is gonna result in someone waking up dead one day. I live vicariously through the stories. No, I seriously do look for the stories and read them. I like the long, exposé, types of stories that go into full details and actually describe what happened. It's like watching a wreck happen in slow motion where the people are cheering and wearing party hats. They know, they have to know, that they're going to die. I'm just waiting for someone to die in real life.
Hell, for all I know, it's already happened and I've just not read about that story yet. Someone, somewhere, is plotting how best to stitch another EVE player's skin into a body suit so that they can wear it while they kill the rest of the team. I'm not saying that I'd agree with such a person, or their behavior, but I'd have a little sympathy. I've read what those fuckers do to each other - intentionally.
It's an evil, vile, game that brings out the worst in people. That has some certain benefits to it and, from a pure outside view, it appears the owners actually appreciate, if not condone, that sort of practice. I know that I'd do so if it were my game to control. Absolutely... I'm just not sure how they'll deal with it when it spills over into the real world and people actually kill each other over their in-game antics.
"These people actively seek out pirated software, nobody made them download the trojan."
They're not entirely dissimilar concepts. They're also both true.
Is it okay if someone's getting pwned because they opened the keygen and ran it? A part of me says that it is not only okay but that it serves them right for pirating software and doing so in a dumb manner. I suspect that's the vigilante side of me.
I might have to look into it for the missus. I guess I can get her satellite if she really wants it. The place is covered in solar panels, it might as well have an uglier doodad sticking out of it somewhere.
I could have sworn there was a local site from maine.gov but I am not seeing it. You can put in Rangeley, Maine. My home is actually about 24 miles away from the village center. That site says nothing reaches me but neighbors have said that I should get it. I'm also way, way up on the side of a hill. I seem to recall one neighbor telling me that they even got some Canadian channels with their aerial antenna. I'm a wee bit more than 40 miles out - probably closer to 120 miles out, as the crow flies.
I am now a bit curious. I'll have to poke at it when I get home. It'll give me an excuse to get up on the roof and check the solar panels and see if any damage was done during the winter. Thanks! (No novel this time, I am tired.)
Yup. We used to have a contract with our ISP. They provided minimal speeds as per our agreement and repaired uptime per our agreement. Failure for them to actually maintain the minimal speed and uptime meant they got penalties. Some of those penalties were actually significantly more than we actually paid them. Assuming a reasonably optimal physical location, you can get a whole bunch of different contracts or even have a lawyer write one for you.
An outage of any significant duration would have cost us quite a bit of money. We had five offices and connectivity was a requirement. We had redundancy in the form of multiple connections coming in to the network connections - as in physically disparate connections. As it would have cost us a bunch of money to go down, there were penalties that were *higher than our bill* if they failed to give us the uptime per the contract and the minimal speeds in the contract.
I suspect that many consumers can actually access this service. I suspect that many consumers do not actually want to pay for this level of service. Yes, the penalties might have been tough for them but we paid them far more overall. I think we only had to do the penalty thing twice (that I recollect) and both times were fairly minimal and we just swapped to fail-overs. I do think customers want that level of service, however. Our main office had an OC-4 at the time. Maybe a T-4? I'm not actually sure of the difference - that's why I paid professionals. It did have a 4 in it!
At any rate... I'm not sure if people are actually aware of what they're wanting and what it costs to get that level of service. We paid a whole bunch for our connectivity. But, we paid for uptime and minimal throughput guarantees. We paid for true 24/7 support. We paid for something like a four hour window to have someone on-site if there was a problem that needed it. We paid for something like a 15 minute window for support. Those sorts of things were all line items in the contract(s) filled.
Oh, we paid out the ass but we got good service. The longest was an outage due to a weather incident and yes, we even penalized them for that. It was only out a few days but we had to flip on the backup, lost some valuable time doing so, and had to pay the costs associated with turning the backup on and buying bandwidth from a totally different provider. So, technically, there are options - the options are just not that feasible. The consumer (myself included) wants the best possible service at the lowest possible price. Most folks are unwilling or unable to negotiate either of those two things unless they really want a big internet connectivity bill.
Inside the chip, where the magic genie lives, obviously!
Also, this sounds like something *I* could do with a Pi and a few hours. If *I* can do it, it's not really impressive. I haven't done it, so I guess it's impressive that they did. It's not a great tech feat, it's a great feat in being less lazy than I - which is no great feat in and of itself. I do wonder how much bandwidth this is actually wasting - as in how often it is being tested and, also important, does it account for errors at the other end or does it assume all slow-downs are due to the ISP?
That said, seriously? I mean, seriously? Time and time again have I had cause to think my choice to utilize DSL was the best choice - for me. Add to that mix the protections given by the PUC and the nature of the State law, I'm even more often given cause to think that choice was best for me.
I did have to pay for a good chunk of telephone wire and a CO. It was still not far from what I was quoted for an ISDN line. It is also much faster than the ISDN would have been. I'd had satellite but, suffice to say, even getting two dishes didn't make it such half as much. They'd not even allow me to just pay for fewer limits and I understand why. I didn't even have to pay for all of (most of?) the labor to put the DSL in. I paid for the CO and the physical wires. That's it - I've had DSL since and they've actually increased my speed (multiple times) but not increased my bill.
It was 2.5 down and.250 up. It's now rated at 12 down and 1 up but I get 14-15 down and 1.5 up. I'm quite happy with that bandwidth but I do wish I could play with the numbers. I'd like to change them to something like 8 down and 4 up. It'd be even more awesome if I could play with those numbers as I saw fit. No reasonable amount of money seems to afford that as an option.
The thing is, if I don't like my ISP - I can kick 'em to the curb. If they screw with me, I have the PUC and Maine's PUC is pretty active - compared to other States. But, no matter what, I can get service from *anyone* willing to provide that service. The ISP has no choice but to lease the lines, reasonably unencumbered, to anyone wanting to service the area. I can, and have, used a different ISP. As I have multiple physical lines, I've even used more than one ISP at a time - which was by accident.
They're on the phone lines. That means they can't disallow access to any company wishing to service the area. They also have to do so with fair market rates, reasonable repair times, and things like that. If they don't, the PUC will yell at them, fine them, or even take away their right to do business in the State.
You don't get those protections with just fiber or with cable. If my internet slows down, I make a damned phone call. I live in a *very* remote area but I have fewer ISP issues than many of the people here - people who live in more populated areas and should have better service. Fairpoint knows that I can call GWI tomorrow, change no equipment, not have a disconnection in service, and have a new provider fully configured without doing a damned thing and only taking a few days to do some switching. I don't even experience a hiccup in service - I know, 'cause I've done it.
I don't need more bandwidth. I still go through scads of bandwidth. I use far more bandwidth than these monthly caps offer. I'm not home but popping up Slurm via remote tells me that I've used 140 GB since I rebooted (on a machine a half-country away where I'm not physically located) and running uptime says that I've used that much (it's only since last reboot) in the past 11 days. That's without me being home and streaming documentaries all night long, adding torrents, and is almost all uploading. They don't say a word to me and, for my needs, I have plenty of bandwidth. I actually have more bandwidth than I use.
Oh, I have two more physical connections and one of them does nothing except run torrents. 24x7, it runs torrents. Hmm... I didn't count the actual number. I've got something like
LOL I actually know that quote *mostly* from people relaying it to me. (I'm not sure how to take that.) On the other hand, I have watched quite a few episodes (including that one). They're online at Hulu+ which still has damned commercials. They're kind of funny. I've watched quite a few of 'em. I've even watched some other cartoons like that - I liked and have seen all of Futurama. I like Family Guy, American Dad is alright, and Southpark can be kind of funny.
Oh, a friend turned me on to another one. I go catch up on episodes when I think of it. WTF is the name? Oh! Ha! Squidbillies. That one cracks me up.
I'm not entirely a stick in the mud! I just don't watch television 'cause I hate commercials as they're an even greater waste of time. I've tried figuring out how to skip 'em on Hulu. I often will go pirate stuff instead of using my perfectly good lawful method. I also watch documentaries, almost exclusively, and I find those online and without commercials. My current series is still The Century of Warfare. It's pretty good, I've seen it a few times. It's not very deep or anything but I learn/remember something new with pretty much every episode.
I'm usually pretty careful to clarify 'cause some folks here can be a bit pedantic.;-) However, I actually even have (if you've been keeping track) cable here in Florida. I don't even want to know how long I've had cable or how long I have been paying it for. But, I have it. Err... I've got a pretty nice package, complete with HBO and Show. The missus flips it on sometimes and a few other people watch it. I have watched the news and even a football game on it. Meh, I'm still not going to get television when I get back home - unless the missus decides she wants it.
I've even watched some movies - in the theater! Err... That doesn't happen often but I recently saw The Martian flick. Back home, I get to cheat with movies. I have a buddy who owns a theater and I can't be much more specific because that kind of narrows it down - quite a bit. Hell, just saying that it narrows it down, narrows it down. (I'd probably ought to take that off-site.) Now that friend might, if you were interested enough, allow you a private showing - so long as the tickets are purchased and accounted for. They might allow someone to come in, as they're closing, and watch a movie if they're good friends. They might even let someone see a movie before it is released if they're good enough friends. I'm pretty sure that they'd lose their license if they did so, so I'm just going to speculate that it's possible.
So, yeah, I've even seen a movie. I've even seen a few of 'em! Hmm... I've even seen The Simpson's Movie. I even finished it.
But, back home at least, I do have televisions. I have several of 'em that are actually mounted and plugged in. I don't own any really fancy televisions. I did have satellite for a while but that got shut off, disconnected, the holes caulked and repainted, and never re-installed because I didn't watch enough TV to justify the thing hanging off the side of my house. I'm told I can get OTA, even with just an internal antenna, but I've never actually tried it and I don't believe them anyhow. The people who have told me this don't have OTA. They have satellite. I've never actually seen any of them with OTA TV that I know of. I'm assuming they're telling me the truth but a government web page told me that the signals did not propagate that far into North Western Maine. Err... I've never actually investigated any further than that. I'd probably watch MPBN (PBS) if it were available and I remembered when Nova or Frontline were on.
I didn't stop watching TV to make a point or anything. I didn't even stop to make a fashion statement. I was never a huge watcher but, sometime in the 1980s, they changed some regulations and that enabled them to play more commercials. Sometime around that time, I just started doing stuff during the commercials and not returning to television. It just kind of phased out.
Sock gnomes. They operate in the sock market. Bulls, bears, and buying socks in the sock market. I have this on good authority... It's from a very reliable source.
The belly button lint color remains a mystery. I'm glad that I'm not the only one - that was not the first time that I'd noticed blue lint in my belly button. I've got a bit of a hairy navel. I do not have, as a general rule, blue shirts. I have blue shirts, I just don't have that many and I don't wear them that often. I typically am found wearing green. That is not blue. I've not yet crunched the numbers but I'd suspect that I have more blue belly button lint than is warranted by the number of shirts alone.
I am curious if the reflected light is altered by default (during the construction process, perhaps) and that that process somehow alters the shape, consistency, or other traits to make the reflected light seem blue? Sadly, I would watch a documentary about this. I'd Google but I'm actually a little afraid of what I might learn and get started on as my next bit of education. I'm just not sure that's a rabbit hole that I should be going down?
To add to the complexity of data acquisition... I'm kind of colorblind. I'm not so colorblind that I failed the test to join the military. However, I do better or worse with identifying certain colors. Yellow/orange? Nope... Blue/black? Nope... I mess those up often. I'm told that I see other colors wrong. Pink vs. red? Not a chance unless it's really "bright" pink. It also seems to get worse with age. My eyesight isn't perfect but I'm not an eye doctor. I don't know if I'm losing rods, gaining cones, or if I'm just imagining the differences. I have issues with certain colors and they seem to be worse with age. That's about all I can say.
That said, unless I'm mistaken (how would I actually know?) this lint was of the blue that I'm pretty good at identifying. It did not appear to be close to black. As tempting as it might be, I'm not gonna dig it out of the trash and take a picture. Oh, it's not a matter of shame or pride. I'm just that lazy. Point being, and I have one, that I guess I probably shouldn't be considered the greatest source of data.
Oh yeah... The sock gnomes operating a sock market, on the New York Sock Exchange, was either in a book I read to my kids or some show they watched. I think... It was meant for kids. So, we'd not lie to kids, right? Surely, that means the sock market exists! At any rate, it reminds me a bit of Pratchett in my head but I don't think it was something he wrote. It might have just been a cartoon that my kids watched. Either way, I'm gonna believe in the sock market and sock gnomes. I mean, it's a good and logical conclusion... Someone has to be stealing the socks and they must have a reason.
I had a whole bunch of stuff typed out and then pressed the wrong key combination and ate it. *sighs* There are a couple of competing theories that I've heard as to why they're green. Do you want to hear 'em? Europe's signage is very different. They have blue and they don't, generally, have the reflective aspects to the same degree as those had in the US. That actually ties in with why they're green. It's not just paint that you get from the hardware store - there was/is an actual shortage.
Basically, green we could do with the materials on-hand. Europe is not the US and should probably not be compared to the US. They also have some variations. Blue, with the reflective nature, is fairly new. It's a matter of what wavelengths of light are reflected. Materials science has enabled us to get those results for blue but it's more expensive. I don't know if you know how much a sign costs but, with just the "regular" paint, the sign on an overhead pass (mounted to the side of a bridge) is $50,000. I shit you not... It's probably another $5000 just to paint it with the blue paint that you're seeing now but that's actually just a guess. (I'd take my word for it - it's probably a close estimate. I'm too lazy to find the actual numbers but I'm sure they are out there.)
Then, unless you have a compelling reason - you don't drastically alter signs. No, it's not less confusing to change the speed limit sign. If you're confused by speed limit signs, ever, then you should not ever be driving. Ever. Any lives or confusion you might save would be countered by the lives lost and confused people because changing them in drastic ways is a silly thing to do. That's why signs don't really change much - it's for a good reason. Just changing these fonts will actually probably mean that there's a small (and underfunded) educational campaign to go along with it. Again, I shit you not. I wrote about what it will probably look like, somewhere in this thread. I'll be found by searching for DMV, as I recall. If not, try searching the page for pamphlet.
Finally, I think, if you're going to put up a sign then it should be enforced. If it's not enforced then it is a suggestion. That applies to all signs equally. I do have a body of work that needs to be polished and published - and finished. I'm not a traffic engineer. I'm a mathematician who modeled traffic and worked in the industry as a traffic engineer - I wore many hats. Even a plain ol' "traffic engineer" wears many hats - it just goes with the job. Sometimes, we're (rarely) seen in hardhats. Sometimes you go on-site to collect data or just because the customer (your local municipality) thinks you're now an expert in road construction techniques and wants some free consultation. At any rate, signs that are selectively enforced are probably a bad idea. If they're not going to enforce them then they really didn't need to put the sign up.
As for the body of work, it's a proposition that you can increase efficiency by a meaningful amount with just a couple of minor (overall) changes. The energy used in stopping and starting a vehicle is often needless and is a measurable amount - a significant amount. With properly educated and alert drivers, you can eliminate stop signs in preference to yield signs and rotaries (roundabouts). You can not, of course, eliminate stops entirely. You can, on the other hand, reduce them significantly and doing so will result in increased efficiency.
Oh, let's be clear, that will never, ever, be done. Ever. There's no political will. Even if I could demonstrate that it saved 10% of all fuel used, on average, and that it came with a pink unicorn for every little girl under the age of ten while costing the taxpayer absolutely nothing and solved the issue of world peace, it will not be acted on. There's no way... So, the paper and idea have sat unfinished and could use some cleaning up and then I'd submit it to be published in one of the journals. *sighs* It is on my to-do list but I have no idea if I'll get to it this decade.
I'm guesstimating and considering only installed software that came with my distro in my guess. I'm not actually counting, god no. The assertion is, by no means, substantiated or qualified with numbers. Well, no... There are some numbers and I'll even link to them as I go along. Those numbers paint the picture a bit "better" than they could be but you seem like you think that would be worse. I'm going to politely disagree. I'm also going to write a small novel for you.
No, really... I'm going to write a small novel for you. I have time and motivation. It's just for you but maybe someone else can take something from it. Mostly, however, it's just for you. I mean, yeah, I find it amusing that you'd think I might not know how my package manager works. I'd also find it amusing that you think this is in doubt. I even find it more amusing that you think that this is a bad thing. It's not - and I'll do my best to show you why. The way reality is, it's awesome when someone writes a security patch for you. The more the merrier! (Sort of... Within reason...) You're not going to get 100% secure/bug-free code. Getting that code maintained and fixed is awesome, and I am grateful for it.
But, I count the OS as a whole. Unless we want to just count the security flaws in the Windows kernel itself (number I have looked at to prove a point successfully) against Linux as just the kernel (which is unrealistic as nobody uses just the kernel) then Linux clearly gets more security updates and notices than Windows ever did.
Yes, if you want to count IE against Windows, I'm going to include Firefox with Linux. If you want to count Outlook then I'm going to count Thunderbird and LibreOffice. I'm okay with that and it's less relevant than people seem to think.
Are you using a computer? You're using an insecure device. Treat it that way and mitigate the security issues based on the goals you have and the risks you're willing to take to reach them. Security is a process, not an application. The greatest security appliance your computer can have is in the seat. Know that, beyond all doubt, you're using an insecure device to read this - regardless of OS. You can minimize the risks, you can not eliminate them.
So, yes... I count the whole OS and not just the kernel - unless you want to count just the kernel in Windows? I do not count stuff that I've installed. Just the default. I get the mailing list announcements and the subsequent discussions and can enumerate just those pretty easily. I do, sort of, keep track of them and there are a lot of them. The OS, alone and without any additional software other than the default installed with the OS, gets a bunch of updates - and often. That's not even counting the software in the repositories. That's just counting what is installed by default, when installing the OS, and comparing that same to Windows.
Yes, I'm quite familiar with the update mechanism. I've got scads of VMs that I can spin up, with nothing but the OS installed, to show this. I've even got MSDN licenses that are still valid so I can spin up a default Windows install (or ten) and do a direct, and actual, accounting if you're willing to compensate me for my time. If you wait, I'll probably do it on my own just to have the numbers. I can assure you that Linux will get far more security updates - and that's a good thing. Even if you want to go with *just* the kernel, the kernel will get far more updates (that include security fixes) than Windows will but that's just stupid because the kernels are useless on their own.
The important thing to take from this, if nothing else, is that it's insignificant. Those numbers, even if they appear to point to Windows, are rather meaningless if you're going to stop and think about it. It's GOOD that they're getting fixed. Take a LTS build from the year 8.1 came out and count the security updates, in total, for it between then and now. Do the same thing with a Windows box. Count only what is installed by default. Count only similar software if you want. Remove LibreO
I'm going to have to believe you - I am not an expert nor would I pretend to be. Even if I could pull it off, and I can't, it'd sully the good name of font designers. So, I'll have to take your word for it. I'm familiar with the three fonts in question (and a few others) I've got my opinions but I can't say one is better than the other and be an authority on the subject. However, my belief is that Clearview is probably among the best and that's a pretty well supported opinion. It looks clear, it's easy to distinguish, and I'm familiar with it.
I have no idea what makes the fonts that way, how to fix them, or what other people would prefer.
I do know that New York (State) did a few things right. They had a font that was awesome and they're one of the best about sign placement, information density, and information quality. Seriously, New York does the best signs in the country. No, I am not a New Yorker. They STILL qualify as the best but they changed the font (again) back in 2012 or so. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what they changed it to. Unless they're side-by-side, with a key, there's not much hope of me knowing which is which. But, it looks like Clearview or some very close variation.
Err... Yes, yes I did retire in 2008 and probably haven't worked directly with a consultant since 2004-2005. Yes, yes I still noticed that the font had changed. I don't actually know what it was before - I just know that it was different! (There were some rumblings in the system in 2004. I think that's when one of these fonts came down from on-high, at the Federal level, and that some folks didn't like it.)
As I am not a font guru and wouldn't even begin to pretend to be one, I have no idea what the font was on the New York signs before the last change. I'm speaking only about the New York State signs but, and this may be a matter of law or simply ease or funding, I did not notice any local municipalities that used a different font on their highway signs. I do believe that street signs (such as names) might be different in-town and off the limited-access routes. I spent quite a bit of time in Buffalo, and the surrounding area, when I started my wanderlust. I don't really take complete mental notice about signage fonts but I notice at some level - probably more than most but not nearly as much as a fonts person.
On the East Coast, Georgia has the most signs but not very good signs. Florida is pretty good but it looks like they consulted with the same guys that did the consultation for Georgia. You do not need 50 no parking signs, one every ten feet, on the side of a limited-access highway where the merge happens. No, you really do not need that many. Seriously, I am not kidding - you don't need that many. At some point, it's just absurd and probably has a finite value where people just start ignoring the signs. I suspect there's research on that.
Oh, and PA has the absolute worst signs in the whole nation. I've been everywhere - to every state. I do pay attention to signs. I'd love to give this to California but no... I don't know what font is being used (unless they replaced them - I didn't really notice much on my last trip down, I had a female with me and have been teaching her how to drive and sleeping with her) but once you're off the beaten track, the signs look like they're from the 1970s, at best. Contrast, reflectivity, and even the font are all off. I'd like to give that award to California but no... PA gets the worst signage award - and not due to lack of quantity. I think Vermont actually might have the fewest signs. They're straight up useless. They'd get the award if PA didn't swoop in and get it by having the actual worst signs.
Which brings me back to, I wonder if Comic Sans might actually be okay. I took a look at the font, I looked at it pretty close but I am not an expert. As strange as it sounds, it might actually be okay. I'd wonder if the body width (I forget the name) of the letters might be made a bit larger while keeping them stylistically similar? Oh, it's a horrible fo
I am gonna admit this in public... So, I just checked and I did, indeed, have belly button lint. I surely can't be the only one who checked or will I be the only one who admits it?
Oddly, it was blue. I'm wearing a green shirt and I'm quite positive that I showered today. I have no idea where/why I accumulated blue lint in my belly button. I'm half-tempted to take a picture.
I have invested in Yahoo! in the past. I am not currently invested at this moment in time. I may do so again in the future. It was pretty damned lucrative last time.
Also, I only know, off-hand, what is in my portfolio and not in the managed portfolio. The managed portfolio, I've seen some of the contents, is rather complicated and I don't actually know what I own. I have no idea if I still own shares in Yahoo! but, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to say that I do not.
At any rate, Yahoo! makes some money. I did exceptionally well with their shares. I don't even have a good strategy. I don't even know what I'm doing - but it appears to work now that I'm not drunk AND have learned a few things. I did not do well at first. I had no idea what I was doing. I'd trade stuff every day, multiple times a day, and watch investing news and read their publications. I did horrible...
So, I went back to what I know and where the smart people are. Yup... I take investing advice from Slashdot. Well, not directly... I read what people write, listen to that, do some looking, and then invest or divest based on what the smart people are saying. Slashdot is not my only source. I've even given a few suggestions to others - and they've had good luck. Err... I think one of the biggest was learning to stop reading the rags, stop trading all day (I might check prices once a week - at most), and get out after a reasonable period of time - don't be greedy.
Oh, and this was a big one... Err... So, it turns out that long-term investments are taxed at capital gains rates. Short-term is taxed at regular income tax rates. That's actually kind of important come tax time. No, nobody thought to tell me and I never looked it up. Now you know... That can actually save you a couple hundred grand. *sighs* You're welcome Uncle Sam. I didn't even need the money - I was just poking at my play portfolio. I missed some of them by a mere few weeks. I was also really drunk bank then. It was not a pretty thing.
I don't really watch TV and haven't really watched any since the 1980s. There were just too many commercials. I do watch documentaries online. That's been great for me.
So, I'm going to take your word for it and I'm not going to click that link.;-) It's like the missus when we go out to eat. She comes from a poor(er) family who has eaten mostly out of a box her whole life. I like to tease her about eating people food. She's forever saying, "This is the grossest stuff that I've ever tried, try it!"
"No, no dear... I am not going to try it. You just pointed out that it was the grossest thing you ever ate - I'm going to take you at your word." You can order anything on the menu (I don't think anyone else had ever asked me that question before) but that doesn't mean I want to eat it. (I also come from a pretty poor background but not that poor, we were fairly middle class. That and she finds it a bit endearing and amusing. Sometimes, I think she pretends just for our amusement. And no, I have no idea which fork gets used for what.)
To digress a little... I am both bored and talkative. I might as well write a little to share. I wasn't doing anything better. How about people?
So, no... I'm not gonna click that link. I'm gonna take your word for it. I'm going to trust it is every bit as bad as you indicate. There's no motivation for you to make that up, after all. It is a bit amusing, in a good way, to see the changes she's undergone from having to actually worry about money (having never had even $100 of her own) to being in a position where that just isn't a concern. Some might see it as a hardship but we laugh about it. It's odd, to the point where I kind of have to stress that she now has a debit card, in her own name, with no realistic limits and that it's her's to use - with no strings attached. No, I don't even want an accounting. It's a gift and no, even if she were to leave tomorrow, she owns everything in that account.
"Here's the receipt!" Umm... Thanks? That goes in the trash. No, no I don't want to check it, no I don't want to know. If I did then it wouldn't be *her* money. When it runs out or gets close, there's a nice older lady in Maine that she's never actually met yet (but surely will) who puts more money into the account for her. The essential thing is that it belongs to her, I've given it to her. She's not stealing it if she takes off with it. She's not stealing it if she spends it. It belongs to her.
That's a very unusual concept for her. It's also very new, as I'm sure it is with most people - it took me years to adjust. I imagine she'll go through a thrift phase, a spending phase, and then back to something in the middle. So far, as near as I can tell, she's pretty thrifty. That nice old lady in Maine will call me and bitch if she isn't. She's my accountant, it's what she does. I know it took me quite a while to get over that I could just buy shit and then settle down. It literally took me years. I sold and retired back in 2007 (though you could say finalized in '08) and actually have more money now than I had when I sold. I know how and why that is true but I'm not so sure it should work as well as it does. I literally make more now, doing not a whole hell of a lot and just by letting other people use my money, than I ever made while working. There's a lot to be said on that subject...
At any rate, that's my kind of odd observation for the day. I've been observing the trend since back in late September, early October, and she seems to be settling down already. It was a kind of startling revelation for her as her parents are both now incarcerated and she's not long out of high school and was technically homeless (but not without a roof over her) when we met. To go from there to having access to more than many will make in their lives is quite a transition. And yes, yes it'd be really dumb of her to "steal" from me. She could just as easily go for the long-con and get a hell of a lot more. I'm old and stuff. She could even stick it out until I
Oh... I think the largest complaint was that it was all crony capitalism and a conspiracy involving sign makers. No, I kid you not... I seem to recall that being the most oft-quoted complaint but I am sure I have some confirmation biases and exposure biases. It wasn't even important to these people that these signs are probably made by hourly employees in direct employment of the government and that there is a sign-making cabal (they control the paint supplies) but those are usually used by smaller governing bodies who can not, in fact, afford their own sign printing shops. Imagine THAT... They'd not actually be making more money from making new signs. There's enough signs to keep them busy.
If there was any conspiracy, it was the damned paint vendors. Unless things have changed, there's not a whole lot of that paint and it's not that easy to make and rather expensive. Signs? No, these are Fed signs. They're built/printed by people who make an hourly rate and work for the government - for the feds. They even stamp their own plates. They even buy pre-treated steel so that they don't have to put on that strange chemical coating to protect 'em from the elements where they're unpainted. Those were the accused people for the conspiracy. Just over fonts... One might suggest it was because Bush was in office? I have no idea...
So, even the biggest complaint, and loudest complainers, didn't actually have a damned thing to do with fonts on signs. The font is, by itself, only part of the problem. That's a whole other bowl of wax and just adds to the complexity. I never once had a single expert listened to and a font changed from default - ever. Their consultation was paid for many times.
Whilst I don't actually disagree with any of the things you've written in your rebuttal, I have to wonder if you read the gibberish I posted and got anything from it. Even if you were to copy the font and were God's Gift to Fonts, you've got no chance in hell at making the new fonts to be used on the Federal Highway Department signs. You'd be lucky to get them on your friend Tom's bait shack and that's not a personal statement about you or your abilities.
As for just copying and editing them a little? Yeah... That has the very same problems that exist in you making one. You *might* get away with some of that idea/concept if you're a government agency and have some approval from on-high. Some of that concept...
I don't know if I've stressed exactly how serious these people (some of them) take their fonts. There was quite a stir the last time they changed them. As near as I recall, almost none of those complaints had a damned thing to do with the technical merits for any fonts involved. Yup... The people who complained the most were not actually involved in fonts, signs, or even the industry. I seem to recall being told that there was a *repeated* discussion about it on Fox News the last time they did this. I did not personally witness that.
So, no Joe... That's a good idea and I think your argument has merits and I'll grant you the tech skills by default. I'll even grant all the artistic skills you want me to assume. We can't even just pirate it and get away with it. Imagine trying to make a Slashdot layout change and have it accepted by people enough to where they'll all, mostly, agree that it's for the better. Now, add 514 forms (in triplicate), 298 secretaries, 3 Congressional oversight committee hearings, and some guy named Hank who has far more control than he should. Oh, and that's just to get your font looked at by whoever it is that's authorized to make these judgment calls.
I'll cede that you're either able to make a perfect rendition (but still pass copyright regulations) or that you can create the best font in the world. You've got a snowball's chance in hell at getting past secretary number two - and she has the forms needed to go up the chain and even find out who the hell Hank is. If you do get that far, they're gonna want proof (for some definition of proof) that this is something that they're not only willing to sign off on but that they're willing to take a bullet (full hearing in Congress) about it in five years time.
And that's just to change the font. Oddly enough, it's a frequently asked question - of sorts. More than one well-meaning soul has asked, "What if we had different fonts?" That's opening a whole bowl of wax and some people REALLY take fonts seriously. You're right - what you say is probably both logically sound and a good idea (I didn't notice any glaring problems). It's just not going to happen.
Hell, I wouldn't even bat an eye if there were a nationally televised tragedy involving some font maker and government regulations or customer frustration. I'd probably just sigh and say it was a long time coming. Depending on the situation, I might even side with the font maker or at least have a little sympathy for them.
That, my friend, is something we can all learn to be a bit better at. I'd submit that anyone who thinks they're an expert on that would be sorely mistaken and that includes the ones with doctoral degrees. But no, I'm guessing that YOU want to understand why they're working on HURD (and I expect you *DO* understand it just fine). I'm also guessing that if you didn't know, you'd go find out if you wanted to know.
The person who says, "I don't understand why those people all vote for $party" does not actually want to know why - and will wander off if you actually try to tell 'em. Hell, they'll repeat that same thing in three days, in a new thread, and pretend you didn't answer 'em the first time.;-) They don't seem too interested in actually understanding.
So long as their signs are in English, that'd be a good idea. Non-English fonts will not have (necessarily) the same appeal - even if they have English characters.
I shit you not, there are people who have devoted their entire careers to this. They often have a font portfolio (observation) that they're excited to show you. They have a few that are "going to be a real impact some day." I've gotten drunk with some and even paid for all the drinks.
Ever want to get to know a new industry? Take a few of the people who work in it out and ply them with booze - especially if it's not a very popular industry. They'll tell you all that you wanted to know and you can learn some interesting things. It works anywhere that you speak the language, but with diminishing returns. I have been using this mechanism to understand the basics of trades since I was old enough to drink. It has generally been successful and works in a whole variety of situations.
So, I've gotten drunk with the people who make the fonts you see on signs. They don't (usually) make just highway signs and even fewer make just fonts. If you look hard enough, tucked inside of an office - probably in the back or in the basement, is someone who actually is dedicated to making fonts and employed by a single municipality. I've yet to meet that person but I am assured they exist. I allow my imagination to work.
You see the last type at very large (or inefficient) municipalities that have their own everything department. They don't just have a highway department, they have a highway paint department, *multiple* signage departments, workers, and workers beneath them. See, New Jersey, Georgia, and Pennsylvania for examples that have cities with such monsters hidden in their basements or working directly for the State.
So, depending on where you live, you may actually be paying someone who does absolutely nothing but design, approve, recommend, and investigate fonts used on street signs. I have never met such a critter but I'm assured they exist. You might even be paying two, or more...
Someone, just the other day, was telling me that municipalities weren't that bad and I was unable to give a good example. This? This is a good example. It's worse when you HAVE to await their approval and you've not only not met them - nobody seems to know where this person's office is and the phone calls haven't been returned in two weeks. Why do you need their approval (when you're not changing or recommending changing a damned thing?) because, fuck you, that's why.
Oh, I can rant on this subject.;-) Boy have I got some stories for this subject. Hey, it's not exactly often that something this closely related to my career pops up and, for a change, I actually know a wee bit instead of always asking you guys why a global variable is wrong or how to cross-compile to run on the next(ish) x64 from ARM.
And, seeing as I'm here, I can't count the many things I've learned by getting people drunk. Seriously, if you're a manager, get a couple of the people that you interact with together and get them drunk. If you're hiring a new company, get a couple of their workers (not the management) drunk. Yes, it looks odd - try it like this, "Hey, so, I like to learn about the industries we work with and no, not your corporate secrets. I'd like to take a couple of workers out to dinner as my way of paying them for getting me up to speed on the complexity of your business. No, not the boss... No, not the manager. Seriously, the guy who empties the trash is fine..."
You'd be amazed what you'll learn about the business, the domain, and the person. They all want to talk. They all want to be listened to. Get 'em drunk and give them the chance - and actually BE interested in what they're saying. It'll make you a more knowledgeable person and a better manager for it. You'll learn not just about the industry but about the business itself. You'll learn about the people who will be doing things with your name attached. You'll understand their prob
I knew that signage was important. I did not know how serious a subset of people take signage. I did not understand the complexity but I knew the concept.
I simply modeled traffic (at first) and somehow we ended up dealing rounding up that information, the environmental impact, proposals, etc... There's a whole lot of complexity that goes into it - we weren't just traffic modelers or traffic/transportation engineers. It gets even more complicated when you transition to pedestrian traffic or mix them.:/ You'll need to know a bit of chemistry, climate, materials science, psychology, and the applicable laws and a whole lot more. I can't even begin to list all of the disciplines that are required if you want optimal solutions.
So, I knew about signs and the likes. I even knew a bit about why they might be important. I did not know that there were people who took it quite that seriously or put that much effort into it. I also had no idea about the many fonts and why they were so important. Well, I'd never really thought about it.
Oddly, that comparison to golf is not lost on me. It sometimes makes people wonder why I, who doesn't really even play much golf, watch golf. It's also capable of being made into a fine video game, or was in the past. I haven't played games in years.:/
An interesting conclusion for you to draw... I am not a Republican so I must support those who would do as you claim. (I'm actually a Libertarian but that'd be a long post and confuse the ever living hell out of you.) Also, he was at this spot (on the corner where I like to go for lunch - sometimes with some friends) multiple days in a row and for either long durations or at very sporadic intervals. I'm not sure we can claim that they're employed (gainfully) and I did not ask.
I increased highway safety, human efficiency, and decreased the emissions of untold vehicles. That is, at its root, exactly what I did.
It's pretty damned lucrative, actually. Well, it was until about 2010-2012. I was out in 2008 but a whole bunch of money was brought in (remember that 800 billion in "shovel ready jobs" that were all highway jobs?) and a whole bunch of new companies sprang up (who may or may not be good at it) and the value of the skilled labor decreased as the supply of labor increased. Note the careful application of the word "skilled." I might be both biased and not all that subtle. There might be added, needless, complexity and inferior workmanship at this point... I might have some less than stellar opinions about the business as a whole.
To rant or not to rant? It's not really on-topic but it might make your ego pump for a few minutes so I'll let ya have it...
See, when I was hiring C/C++ programmers they had to have some industry/domain knowledge and those were so rare that I had to even send some to school. In 1998 (and you can look this up) they were making about 120k to start. Today, a senior traffic engineer will make 80k. That's actually a reduction in wages by nearly half of what I'd have paid them (had they existed at that level).
Amazingly enough, if you pay people less - you get a lower quality of work. Yes, there's a finite return on that idea and a law of diminishing returns.
I have programmed. I am not a programmer. I hired programmers. I am (currently) associating with some programmers on this very site. I actually feel a bit sorry for some of you. (No, not all of you. Some of you can fuck right off.) Your industry has been pissed on and you make far less (on average) than you should make. This also means lower quality work from some peole. There is a point where increased numbers mean a decrease in quality. That point is varied and subjective. Pick your own numbers.
At any rate, and back to the point, I know quite a few Slashdotters in real life and a bunch more via the 'net alone. I can only use me as the example, I don't speak for others. You can seemingly do quite well at increasing efficiencies at the government level. It's been very lucrative. It's lucrative enough that I was able to retire in 2008. I was lawfully enabled to divest the shares in the now-parent company almost exactly 8 years ago. Between the cash and shares, I did quite well. Yes, I used some protections offered by the government to create that wealth. Yes, I paid my taxes. Copyright (and patents) are fine (in my opinion) but both are subject to abuse and both could use some refinements to reflect a more modern age.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup! Those are letters and numbers!
No, I'm not exactly sure why I am in a gaming thread but I usually visit all of 'em - if not just to see what folks are yelling about today. However, between your post and their post, I got "CS." Everybody knows what Creative Suite is! LOL, I'm such a gamer!
(No, I'm really guessing it's Counter Strike. The rest is just gibberish to me.)
Actually, if you throw in the way it's threaded here - phantomfive's post is just above these two posts.
Here is an example of a 'rock' program, it basically overwrites every fifth memory address. The strategy is to quickly pass through memory, hopefully destroying the opponent by blind luck:
If you write a program that is only one line long, then this program only has a 1/5 chance of winning.
So the longer the program, the weaker it is against this one. Many complex, interesting programs have been written, only to fall to this bomber.
My theory is, if you could find a way to modify the system that would weaken this strategy, then it would allow longer, and more interesting programs.
There's some motivation for cheating right there. I don't play because CS:GO is fucking terrible compared to the original CS (1.3 was the best version, then they removed jumping but even 1.6 is better than GO) so I'm not sure how that translates but if it were just passively having the client running like TF2 you'd still have cheaters because dying means sitting in the time-out chair.
props for 1.3, back when the AWP was the AWP instead of the AWM or whatever.
I think I can be excused for not having a damned clue what's going on. ;-) Oh, I think TF2 is Team Fortress 2. I was a bit of a gamer, I loved the Fallout 2 game. I then bought Fallout Tactics. I haven't played a game since except for trying to pick up Fallout 2 again a few times. Alas, Tactics killed not just the series but the entire gaming right out of me. I didn't have a whole lot of money then. Worse, I paid full retail for Fallout Tactics.
I'd even played a "Tactics" game before. I'd played Fallout before. I loved Fallout and Fallout 2. I had a great time with both games. I could even tolerate and enjoy some of the Tactics games. Somehow, they combined them in such a powerful manner that I haven't really gamed since - and not in a good way. It's sure as hell not like I'm thinking, "They'll never beat that, I'll quit while I'm ahead."
I don't think I've even paid for a game since then. Well, not for me. I've bought some for my kids and for other people. I've even donated to an open source game or two that I didn't/don't actually play. I've donated and played at an online game but that involved a whole lot of alcohol. No, Tactics pretty much killed games for me. I don't even play my beloved golf games any more. I've never even seen Fallout 3 played. I've heard that 4 is out there. I hear they aren't what I'd like anyhow as they're nothing like the original.
Ah well... I'm pretty sure the pre-release reviews were all faked. Tactics was good, they told me. Buy it, they told me. Buy it on day one, they told me. "Brilliant and eminently playable," they told me. "Bring back the joy of Fallout," they told me. A deal at twice the price, they told me.
I don't hold a grudge or anything. I don't even want my money back. No, it's best this way... I've just been disappointed for 15 years. It was like $60 too. I was pretty well off in 2001 but not wealthy or anything. We'd just expanded and I was paying myself less than I was paying some of the folks who worked for me. I had two kids (I guess I still have them). I had things like
Heh... I still have a KoL character. I took 'em out for a spin the other day. Well, like two months ago. After you've ascended enough times and gotten more meat than you can spend, it lost it's luster for me. Oh, my character's worth millions of meat. I could probably sell it on eBay or something but that's prohibited. It'd be nice to. I don't need the money or anything. It'd just be good to see the character go to someone who'd actually appreciate it the most. NS-12 was when I stopped, I think. I've logged in a few times and done some grinding, for my own amusement, but it's just not that interesting after a while. I guess there are a bunch of new quests. They didn't draw me back in. I should check again, maybe it's interesting again. Meh...
WTF is wrong with you kids today? Nah, there's a fine defense for trolling and a few trolls that are quite notable for their work. Why? Because of the amount of energy and effort they put into it. They need to teach this stuff in history class, lest the classics be forgotten - from grits to Yoda.
No, some trolls are funny as all hell. Some trolling is fantastic. There's a great amount of effort (and creativity) that goes into good trolling. Then, you've got long-con trolls that will set up the folks like bowling pins and then knock them down with one fell swoop! There's the one who slips in a casual mention and few notice - those are some of my personal favorites.
No, there's good trolling. Well, maybe not "good" by some metrics but good in that it is impressive and a good demonstration of what a quality troll can do to people. They are the experts in their field and some of them even make the world a better place. (I'm reminded of Banksy before he got a name for himself.) There are IRL trolls and internet trolls. There are good, bad, creative, and lazy trolls.
They come in all shapes and sizes and some of them accomplish meaningful things - even if it's just to make you laugh, or to think differently, or to (gasp) change your outlook on something. This doesn't mean that they're all good. It doesn't mean that they're all worth the effort. It does, sort of, mean that the name has been watered down to include just plain assholes.
An asshole isn't a troll. A troll can be an asshole. That's an important concept - as is the concept of LULZ (we can has them). They've created, destroyed, enlightened, and caused ignorance. A tool is a tool is a tool. What you use it for, what you create, what you do with that tool? Those are the important things. Those are the things that matter. No... Trolling is a art. Like any other art, it can be good or bad. It can be one to make you think or point out the obvious. Personally, as I said, I prefer the more subtle trolls...
I watched a movie, it was horrible, about a kid who played video games. His dad, a wealthy person, got him a special video game and it turns out that it was a real recruitment tool. They recruited him to become some sort of warrior, something to do with time was involved, and he had a friend who was also recruited - but his friend was evil.
It was a fantastic plot line.
That's the only redeeming quality that it had. It had bad acting, bad effects, bad settings, bad production, bad directing, bad script writing, and bad everything else. The plot? It was awesome! The movie could have been ten times as good and still been bad. Yup, nary a full order of magnitude's worth of improvements could have made that movie good. It was just that bad.
At any rate, it was based on a video game and you could tell they were trying to stretch it into a series. I have no idea what the video game was and I hope nobody paid to see this movie. I sort of paid, it was on Hulu+ and I was stoned. This was not actually all that long ago - late last year.
The Army recruitment tool made me think of it. I've no idea if the game is any good (I'm not actually a gamer) or anything like that. And, as an aside, I'd expect that anyone that paid to see that movie felt cheated - they were. If I were a gamer and a fan of that game, I'd feel cheated by such a bad movie. It's on the list of the crappiest movies that I've ever seen. It's near the bottom of that list (top?), meaning that it is horrible. I don't know if you're into bad movies or games but this movie is so bad that it needs to be used as an example in movie making school. Really, it is that bad.
I seem to recall some comments that indicated the game was good. I actually watched the entire movie but I've long since forgotten the name - I'm not what you'd call a movie buff. Meh, this is Slashdot. Someone knows the game, the movie, and one odd guy actually liked the movie. Time Warrior, maybe?
Oh. Yup. That's the name... Time Warrior:
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt20...
Somehow, it's in the positive star ranking but only at a 3.1. I even like some bad movies. This one? I think this is probably one of the worst ones that I've ever seen - if not the worst. And I've seen Gymkata! Hell, to put this in perspective, I kind of LIKE Gymkata. The Adventures of Remo Williams is almost my favorite movie (assuming documentaries aren't allowed on that list). No, Time Warrior was awful but could have been so great.
At any rate, the whole point of this was - as I mentioned - that it was about using a video game to recruit soldiers. It really had such great potential to be a good movie. The plot was one of the best I've seen - in a while. It was just so poorly executed that I have nothing good to say about it - except that it had great potential. It could easily have been a good movie. It should have been an excellent movie. It might have even been pretty easy to make it a phenomenal movie. Nope... It's so bad that not even *I* like it.
I am not a gamer but I've read about EVE. Even if they made a client for my system, I'd not play. Nope... Someone's gonna shoot someone over the antics in that game - by the players themselves. I've read stories about some of the greatest takeovers, robberies, and con jobs - and they all took place in EVE. Iceland has like a half dozen firearms, in the whole country. A bunch of crazy Americans are going to hop on a boat, row to Iceland, and just start shooting the developers.
Seriously, EVE is gonna result in someone waking up dead one day. I live vicariously through the stories. No, I seriously do look for the stories and read them. I like the long, exposé, types of stories that go into full details and actually describe what happened. It's like watching a wreck happen in slow motion where the people are cheering and wearing party hats. They know, they have to know, that they're going to die. I'm just waiting for someone to die in real life.
Hell, for all I know, it's already happened and I've just not read about that story yet. Someone, somewhere, is plotting how best to stitch another EVE player's skin into a body suit so that they can wear it while they kill the rest of the team. I'm not saying that I'd agree with such a person, or their behavior, but I'd have a little sympathy. I've read what those fuckers do to each other - intentionally.
It's an evil, vile, game that brings out the worst in people. That has some certain benefits to it and, from a pure outside view, it appears the owners actually appreciate, if not condone, that sort of practice. I know that I'd do so if it were my game to control. Absolutely... I'm just not sure how they'll deal with it when it spills over into the real world and people actually kill each other over their in-game antics.
I'm not gonna go with the vigilantism but...
"These people actively seek out pirated software, nobody made them download the trojan."
They're not entirely dissimilar concepts. They're also both true.
Is it okay if someone's getting pwned because they opened the keygen and ran it? A part of me says that it is not only okay but that it serves them right for pirating software and doing so in a dumb manner. I suspect that's the vigilante side of me.
I might have to look into it for the missus. I guess I can get her satellite if she really wants it. The place is covered in solar panels, it might as well have an uglier doodad sticking out of it somewhere.
According to this site:
https://transition.fcc.gov/mb/...
I get nothing...
I could have sworn there was a local site from maine.gov but I am not seeing it. You can put in Rangeley, Maine. My home is actually about 24 miles away from the village center. That site says nothing reaches me but neighbors have said that I should get it. I'm also way, way up on the side of a hill. I seem to recall one neighbor telling me that they even got some Canadian channels with their aerial antenna. I'm a wee bit more than 40 miles out - probably closer to 120 miles out, as the crow flies.
I am now a bit curious. I'll have to poke at it when I get home. It'll give me an excuse to get up on the roof and check the solar panels and see if any damage was done during the winter. Thanks! (No novel this time, I am tired.)
Yup. We used to have a contract with our ISP. They provided minimal speeds as per our agreement and repaired uptime per our agreement. Failure for them to actually maintain the minimal speed and uptime meant they got penalties. Some of those penalties were actually significantly more than we actually paid them. Assuming a reasonably optimal physical location, you can get a whole bunch of different contracts or even have a lawyer write one for you.
An outage of any significant duration would have cost us quite a bit of money. We had five offices and connectivity was a requirement. We had redundancy in the form of multiple connections coming in to the network connections - as in physically disparate connections. As it would have cost us a bunch of money to go down, there were penalties that were *higher than our bill* if they failed to give us the uptime per the contract and the minimal speeds in the contract.
I suspect that many consumers can actually access this service. I suspect that many consumers do not actually want to pay for this level of service. Yes, the penalties might have been tough for them but we paid them far more overall. I think we only had to do the penalty thing twice (that I recollect) and both times were fairly minimal and we just swapped to fail-overs. I do think customers want that level of service, however. Our main office had an OC-4 at the time. Maybe a T-4? I'm not actually sure of the difference - that's why I paid professionals. It did have a 4 in it!
At any rate... I'm not sure if people are actually aware of what they're wanting and what it costs to get that level of service. We paid a whole bunch for our connectivity. But, we paid for uptime and minimal throughput guarantees. We paid for true 24/7 support. We paid for something like a four hour window to have someone on-site if there was a problem that needed it. We paid for something like a 15 minute window for support. Those sorts of things were all line items in the contract(s) filled.
Oh, we paid out the ass but we got good service. The longest was an outage due to a weather incident and yes, we even penalized them for that. It was only out a few days but we had to flip on the backup, lost some valuable time doing so, and had to pay the costs associated with turning the backup on and buying bandwidth from a totally different provider. So, technically, there are options - the options are just not that feasible. The consumer (myself included) wants the best possible service at the lowest possible price. Most folks are unwilling or unable to negotiate either of those two things unless they really want a big internet connectivity bill.
Inside the chip, where the magic genie lives, obviously!
Also, this sounds like something *I* could do with a Pi and a few hours. If *I* can do it, it's not really impressive. I haven't done it, so I guess it's impressive that they did. It's not a great tech feat, it's a great feat in being less lazy than I - which is no great feat in and of itself. I do wonder how much bandwidth this is actually wasting - as in how often it is being tested and, also important, does it account for errors at the other end or does it assume all slow-downs are due to the ISP?
That said, seriously? I mean, seriously? Time and time again have I had cause to think my choice to utilize DSL was the best choice - for me. Add to that mix the protections given by the PUC and the nature of the State law, I'm even more often given cause to think that choice was best for me.
I did have to pay for a good chunk of telephone wire and a CO. It was still not far from what I was quoted for an ISDN line. It is also much faster than the ISDN would have been. I'd had satellite but, suffice to say, even getting two dishes didn't make it such half as much. They'd not even allow me to just pay for fewer limits and I understand why. I didn't even have to pay for all of (most of?) the labor to put the DSL in. I paid for the CO and the physical wires. That's it - I've had DSL since and they've actually increased my speed (multiple times) but not increased my bill.
It was 2.5 down and .250 up. It's now rated at 12 down and 1 up but I get 14-15 down and 1.5 up. I'm quite happy with that bandwidth but I do wish I could play with the numbers. I'd like to change them to something like 8 down and 4 up. It'd be even more awesome if I could play with those numbers as I saw fit. No reasonable amount of money seems to afford that as an option.
The thing is, if I don't like my ISP - I can kick 'em to the curb. If they screw with me, I have the PUC and Maine's PUC is pretty active - compared to other States. But, no matter what, I can get service from *anyone* willing to provide that service. The ISP has no choice but to lease the lines, reasonably unencumbered, to anyone wanting to service the area. I can, and have, used a different ISP. As I have multiple physical lines, I've even used more than one ISP at a time - which was by accident.
They're on the phone lines. That means they can't disallow access to any company wishing to service the area. They also have to do so with fair market rates, reasonable repair times, and things like that. If they don't, the PUC will yell at them, fine them, or even take away their right to do business in the State.
You don't get those protections with just fiber or with cable. If my internet slows down, I make a damned phone call. I live in a *very* remote area but I have fewer ISP issues than many of the people here - people who live in more populated areas and should have better service. Fairpoint knows that I can call GWI tomorrow, change no equipment, not have a disconnection in service, and have a new provider fully configured without doing a damned thing and only taking a few days to do some switching. I don't even experience a hiccup in service - I know, 'cause I've done it.
I don't need more bandwidth. I still go through scads of bandwidth. I use far more bandwidth than these monthly caps offer. I'm not home but popping up Slurm via remote tells me that I've used 140 GB since I rebooted (on a machine a half-country away where I'm not physically located) and running uptime says that I've used that much (it's only since last reboot) in the past 11 days. That's without me being home and streaming documentaries all night long, adding torrents, and is almost all uploading. They don't say a word to me and, for my needs, I have plenty of bandwidth. I actually have more bandwidth than I use.
Oh, I have two more physical connections and one of them does nothing except run torrents. 24x7, it runs torrents. Hmm... I didn't count the actual number. I've got something like
LOL I actually know that quote *mostly* from people relaying it to me. (I'm not sure how to take that.) On the other hand, I have watched quite a few episodes (including that one). They're online at Hulu+ which still has damned commercials. They're kind of funny. I've watched quite a few of 'em. I've even watched some other cartoons like that - I liked and have seen all of Futurama. I like Family Guy, American Dad is alright, and Southpark can be kind of funny.
Oh, a friend turned me on to another one. I go catch up on episodes when I think of it. WTF is the name? Oh! Ha! Squidbillies. That one cracks me up.
I'm not entirely a stick in the mud! I just don't watch television 'cause I hate commercials as they're an even greater waste of time. I've tried figuring out how to skip 'em on Hulu. I often will go pirate stuff instead of using my perfectly good lawful method. I also watch documentaries, almost exclusively, and I find those online and without commercials. My current series is still The Century of Warfare. It's pretty good, I've seen it a few times. It's not very deep or anything but I learn/remember something new with pretty much every episode.
I'm usually pretty careful to clarify 'cause some folks here can be a bit pedantic. ;-) However, I actually even have (if you've been keeping track) cable here in Florida. I don't even want to know how long I've had cable or how long I have been paying it for. But, I have it. Err... I've got a pretty nice package, complete with HBO and Show. The missus flips it on sometimes and a few other people watch it. I have watched the news and even a football game on it. Meh, I'm still not going to get television when I get back home - unless the missus decides she wants it.
I've even watched some movies - in the theater! Err... That doesn't happen often but I recently saw The Martian flick. Back home, I get to cheat with movies. I have a buddy who owns a theater and I can't be much more specific because that kind of narrows it down - quite a bit. Hell, just saying that it narrows it down, narrows it down. (I'd probably ought to take that off-site.) Now that friend might, if you were interested enough, allow you a private showing - so long as the tickets are purchased and accounted for. They might allow someone to come in, as they're closing, and watch a movie if they're good friends. They might even let someone see a movie before it is released if they're good enough friends. I'm pretty sure that they'd lose their license if they did so, so I'm just going to speculate that it's possible.
So, yeah, I've even seen a movie. I've even seen a few of 'em! Hmm... I've even seen The Simpson's Movie. I even finished it.
But, back home at least, I do have televisions. I have several of 'em that are actually mounted and plugged in. I don't own any really fancy televisions. I did have satellite for a while but that got shut off, disconnected, the holes caulked and repainted, and never re-installed because I didn't watch enough TV to justify the thing hanging off the side of my house. I'm told I can get OTA, even with just an internal antenna, but I've never actually tried it and I don't believe them anyhow. The people who have told me this don't have OTA. They have satellite. I've never actually seen any of them with OTA TV that I know of. I'm assuming they're telling me the truth but a government web page told me that the signals did not propagate that far into North Western Maine. Err... I've never actually investigated any further than that. I'd probably watch MPBN (PBS) if it were available and I remembered when Nova or Frontline were on.
I didn't stop watching TV to make a point or anything. I didn't even stop to make a fashion statement. I was never a huge watcher but, sometime in the 1980s, they changed some regulations and that enabled them to play more commercials. Sometime around that time, I just started doing stuff during the commercials and not returning to television. It just kind of phased out.
Yes, that means th
Sock gnomes. They operate in the sock market. Bulls, bears, and buying socks in the sock market. I have this on good authority... It's from a very reliable source.
The belly button lint color remains a mystery. I'm glad that I'm not the only one - that was not the first time that I'd noticed blue lint in my belly button. I've got a bit of a hairy navel. I do not have, as a general rule, blue shirts. I have blue shirts, I just don't have that many and I don't wear them that often. I typically am found wearing green. That is not blue. I've not yet crunched the numbers but I'd suspect that I have more blue belly button lint than is warranted by the number of shirts alone.
I am curious if the reflected light is altered by default (during the construction process, perhaps) and that that process somehow alters the shape, consistency, or other traits to make the reflected light seem blue? Sadly, I would watch a documentary about this. I'd Google but I'm actually a little afraid of what I might learn and get started on as my next bit of education. I'm just not sure that's a rabbit hole that I should be going down?
To add to the complexity of data acquisition... I'm kind of colorblind. I'm not so colorblind that I failed the test to join the military. However, I do better or worse with identifying certain colors. Yellow/orange? Nope... Blue/black? Nope... I mess those up often. I'm told that I see other colors wrong. Pink vs. red? Not a chance unless it's really "bright" pink. It also seems to get worse with age. My eyesight isn't perfect but I'm not an eye doctor. I don't know if I'm losing rods, gaining cones, or if I'm just imagining the differences. I have issues with certain colors and they seem to be worse with age. That's about all I can say.
That said, unless I'm mistaken (how would I actually know?) this lint was of the blue that I'm pretty good at identifying. It did not appear to be close to black. As tempting as it might be, I'm not gonna dig it out of the trash and take a picture. Oh, it's not a matter of shame or pride. I'm just that lazy. Point being, and I have one, that I guess I probably shouldn't be considered the greatest source of data.
Oh yeah... The sock gnomes operating a sock market, on the New York Sock Exchange, was either in a book I read to my kids or some show they watched. I think... It was meant for kids. So, we'd not lie to kids, right? Surely, that means the sock market exists! At any rate, it reminds me a bit of Pratchett in my head but I don't think it was something he wrote. It might have just been a cartoon that my kids watched. Either way, I'm gonna believe in the sock market and sock gnomes. I mean, it's a good and logical conclusion... Someone has to be stealing the socks and they must have a reason.
I had a whole bunch of stuff typed out and then pressed the wrong key combination and ate it. *sighs* There are a couple of competing theories that I've heard as to why they're green. Do you want to hear 'em? Europe's signage is very different. They have blue and they don't, generally, have the reflective aspects to the same degree as those had in the US. That actually ties in with why they're green. It's not just paint that you get from the hardware store - there was/is an actual shortage.
Basically, green we could do with the materials on-hand. Europe is not the US and should probably not be compared to the US. They also have some variations. Blue, with the reflective nature, is fairly new. It's a matter of what wavelengths of light are reflected. Materials science has enabled us to get those results for blue but it's more expensive. I don't know if you know how much a sign costs but, with just the "regular" paint, the sign on an overhead pass (mounted to the side of a bridge) is $50,000. I shit you not... It's probably another $5000 just to paint it with the blue paint that you're seeing now but that's actually just a guess. (I'd take my word for it - it's probably a close estimate. I'm too lazy to find the actual numbers but I'm sure they are out there.)
Then, unless you have a compelling reason - you don't drastically alter signs. No, it's not less confusing to change the speed limit sign. If you're confused by speed limit signs, ever, then you should not ever be driving. Ever. Any lives or confusion you might save would be countered by the lives lost and confused people because changing them in drastic ways is a silly thing to do. That's why signs don't really change much - it's for a good reason. Just changing these fonts will actually probably mean that there's a small (and underfunded) educational campaign to go along with it. Again, I shit you not. I wrote about what it will probably look like, somewhere in this thread. I'll be found by searching for DMV, as I recall. If not, try searching the page for pamphlet.
Finally, I think, if you're going to put up a sign then it should be enforced. If it's not enforced then it is a suggestion. That applies to all signs equally. I do have a body of work that needs to be polished and published - and finished. I'm not a traffic engineer. I'm a mathematician who modeled traffic and worked in the industry as a traffic engineer - I wore many hats. Even a plain ol' "traffic engineer" wears many hats - it just goes with the job. Sometimes, we're (rarely) seen in hardhats. Sometimes you go on-site to collect data or just because the customer (your local municipality) thinks you're now an expert in road construction techniques and wants some free consultation. At any rate, signs that are selectively enforced are probably a bad idea. If they're not going to enforce them then they really didn't need to put the sign up.
As for the body of work, it's a proposition that you can increase efficiency by a meaningful amount with just a couple of minor (overall) changes. The energy used in stopping and starting a vehicle is often needless and is a measurable amount - a significant amount. With properly educated and alert drivers, you can eliminate stop signs in preference to yield signs and rotaries (roundabouts). You can not, of course, eliminate stops entirely. You can, on the other hand, reduce them significantly and doing so will result in increased efficiency.
Oh, let's be clear, that will never, ever, be done. Ever. There's no political will. Even if I could demonstrate that it saved 10% of all fuel used, on average, and that it came with a pink unicorn for every little girl under the age of ten while costing the taxpayer absolutely nothing and solved the issue of world peace, it will not be acted on. There's no way... So, the paper and idea have sat unfinished and could use some cleaning up and then I'd submit it to be published in one of the journals. *sighs* It is on my to-do list but I have no idea if I'll get to it this decade.
At any rate.
I'm guesstimating and considering only installed software that came with my distro in my guess. I'm not actually counting, god no. The assertion is, by no means, substantiated or qualified with numbers. Well, no... There are some numbers and I'll even link to them as I go along. Those numbers paint the picture a bit "better" than they could be but you seem like you think that would be worse. I'm going to politely disagree. I'm also going to write a small novel for you.
No, really... I'm going to write a small novel for you. I have time and motivation. It's just for you but maybe someone else can take something from it. Mostly, however, it's just for you. I mean, yeah, I find it amusing that you'd think I might not know how my package manager works. I'd also find it amusing that you think this is in doubt. I even find it more amusing that you think that this is a bad thing. It's not - and I'll do my best to show you why. The way reality is, it's awesome when someone writes a security patch for you. The more the merrier! (Sort of... Within reason...) You're not going to get 100% secure/bug-free code. Getting that code maintained and fixed is awesome, and I am grateful for it.
But, I count the OS as a whole. Unless we want to just count the security flaws in the Windows kernel itself (number I have looked at to prove a point successfully) against Linux as just the kernel (which is unrealistic as nobody uses just the kernel) then Linux clearly gets more security updates and notices than Windows ever did.
Yes, if you want to count IE against Windows, I'm going to include Firefox with Linux. If you want to count Outlook then I'm going to count Thunderbird and LibreOffice. I'm okay with that and it's less relevant than people seem to think.
Are you using a computer? You're using an insecure device. Treat it that way and mitigate the security issues based on the goals you have and the risks you're willing to take to reach them. Security is a process, not an application. The greatest security appliance your computer can have is in the seat. Know that, beyond all doubt, you're using an insecure device to read this - regardless of OS. You can minimize the risks, you can not eliminate them.
So, yes... I count the whole OS and not just the kernel - unless you want to count just the kernel in Windows? I do not count stuff that I've installed. Just the default. I get the mailing list announcements and the subsequent discussions and can enumerate just those pretty easily. I do, sort of, keep track of them and there are a lot of them. The OS, alone and without any additional software other than the default installed with the OS, gets a bunch of updates - and often. That's not even counting the software in the repositories. That's just counting what is installed by default, when installing the OS, and comparing that same to Windows.
Yes, I'm quite familiar with the update mechanism. I've got scads of VMs that I can spin up, with nothing but the OS installed, to show this. I've even got MSDN licenses that are still valid so I can spin up a default Windows install (or ten) and do a direct, and actual, accounting if you're willing to compensate me for my time. If you wait, I'll probably do it on my own just to have the numbers. I can assure you that Linux will get far more security updates - and that's a good thing. Even if you want to go with *just* the kernel, the kernel will get far more updates (that include security fixes) than Windows will but that's just stupid because the kernels are useless on their own.
The important thing to take from this, if nothing else, is that it's insignificant. Those numbers, even if they appear to point to Windows, are rather meaningless if you're going to stop and think about it. It's GOOD that they're getting fixed. Take a LTS build from the year 8.1 came out and count the security updates, in total, for it between then and now. Do the same thing with a Windows box. Count only what is installed by default. Count only similar software if you want. Remove LibreO
I'm going to have to believe you - I am not an expert nor would I pretend to be. Even if I could pull it off, and I can't, it'd sully the good name of font designers. So, I'll have to take your word for it. I'm familiar with the three fonts in question (and a few others) I've got my opinions but I can't say one is better than the other and be an authority on the subject. However, my belief is that Clearview is probably among the best and that's a pretty well supported opinion. It looks clear, it's easy to distinguish, and I'm familiar with it.
I have no idea what makes the fonts that way, how to fix them, or what other people would prefer.
I do know that New York (State) did a few things right. They had a font that was awesome and they're one of the best about sign placement, information density, and information quality. Seriously, New York does the best signs in the country. No, I am not a New Yorker. They STILL qualify as the best but they changed the font (again) back in 2012 or so. Unfortunately, I'm not sure what they changed it to. Unless they're side-by-side, with a key, there's not much hope of me knowing which is which. But, it looks like Clearview or some very close variation.
Err... Yes, yes I did retire in 2008 and probably haven't worked directly with a consultant since 2004-2005. Yes, yes I still noticed that the font had changed. I don't actually know what it was before - I just know that it was different! (There were some rumblings in the system in 2004. I think that's when one of these fonts came down from on-high, at the Federal level, and that some folks didn't like it.)
As I am not a font guru and wouldn't even begin to pretend to be one, I have no idea what the font was on the New York signs before the last change. I'm speaking only about the New York State signs but, and this may be a matter of law or simply ease or funding, I did not notice any local municipalities that used a different font on their highway signs. I do believe that street signs (such as names) might be different in-town and off the limited-access routes. I spent quite a bit of time in Buffalo, and the surrounding area, when I started my wanderlust. I don't really take complete mental notice about signage fonts but I notice at some level - probably more than most but not nearly as much as a fonts person.
On the East Coast, Georgia has the most signs but not very good signs. Florida is pretty good but it looks like they consulted with the same guys that did the consultation for Georgia. You do not need 50 no parking signs, one every ten feet, on the side of a limited-access highway where the merge happens. No, you really do not need that many. Seriously, I am not kidding - you don't need that many. At some point, it's just absurd and probably has a finite value where people just start ignoring the signs. I suspect there's research on that.
Oh, and PA has the absolute worst signs in the whole nation. I've been everywhere - to every state. I do pay attention to signs. I'd love to give this to California but no... I don't know what font is being used (unless they replaced them - I didn't really notice much on my last trip down, I had a female with me and have been teaching her how to drive and sleeping with her) but once you're off the beaten track, the signs look like they're from the 1970s, at best. Contrast, reflectivity, and even the font are all off. I'd like to give that award to California but no... PA gets the worst signage award - and not due to lack of quantity. I think Vermont actually might have the fewest signs. They're straight up useless. They'd get the award if PA didn't swoop in and get it by having the actual worst signs.
Which brings me back to, I wonder if Comic Sans might actually be okay. I took a look at the font, I looked at it pretty close but I am not an expert. As strange as it sounds, it might actually be okay. I'd wonder if the body width (I forget the name) of the letters might be made a bit larger while keeping them stylistically similar? Oh, it's a horrible fo
I am gonna admit this in public... So, I just checked and I did, indeed, have belly button lint. I surely can't be the only one who checked or will I be the only one who admits it?
Oddly, it was blue. I'm wearing a green shirt and I'm quite positive that I showered today. I have no idea where/why I accumulated blue lint in my belly button. I'm half-tempted to take a picture.
I have invested in Yahoo! in the past. I am not currently invested at this moment in time. I may do so again in the future. It was pretty damned lucrative last time.
Also, I only know, off-hand, what is in my portfolio and not in the managed portfolio. The managed portfolio, I've seen some of the contents, is rather complicated and I don't actually know what I own. I have no idea if I still own shares in Yahoo! but, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to say that I do not.
At any rate, Yahoo! makes some money. I did exceptionally well with their shares. I don't even have a good strategy. I don't even know what I'm doing - but it appears to work now that I'm not drunk AND have learned a few things. I did not do well at first. I had no idea what I was doing. I'd trade stuff every day, multiple times a day, and watch investing news and read their publications. I did horrible...
So, I went back to what I know and where the smart people are. Yup... I take investing advice from Slashdot. Well, not directly... I read what people write, listen to that, do some looking, and then invest or divest based on what the smart people are saying. Slashdot is not my only source. I've even given a few suggestions to others - and they've had good luck. Err... I think one of the biggest was learning to stop reading the rags, stop trading all day (I might check prices once a week - at most), and get out after a reasonable period of time - don't be greedy.
Oh, and this was a big one... Err... So, it turns out that long-term investments are taxed at capital gains rates. Short-term is taxed at regular income tax rates. That's actually kind of important come tax time. No, nobody thought to tell me and I never looked it up. Now you know... That can actually save you a couple hundred grand. *sighs* You're welcome Uncle Sam. I didn't even need the money - I was just poking at my play portfolio. I missed some of them by a mere few weeks. I was also really drunk bank then. It was not a pretty thing.
I don't really watch TV and haven't really watched any since the 1980s. There were just too many commercials. I do watch documentaries online. That's been great for me.
So, I'm going to take your word for it and I'm not going to click that link. ;-) It's like the missus when we go out to eat. She comes from a poor(er) family who has eaten mostly out of a box her whole life. I like to tease her about eating people food. She's forever saying, "This is the grossest stuff that I've ever tried, try it!"
"No, no dear... I am not going to try it. You just pointed out that it was the grossest thing you ever ate - I'm going to take you at your word." You can order anything on the menu (I don't think anyone else had ever asked me that question before) but that doesn't mean I want to eat it. (I also come from a pretty poor background but not that poor, we were fairly middle class. That and she finds it a bit endearing and amusing. Sometimes, I think she pretends just for our amusement. And no, I have no idea which fork gets used for what.)
To digress a little... I am both bored and talkative. I might as well write a little to share. I wasn't doing anything better. How about people?
So, no... I'm not gonna click that link. I'm gonna take your word for it. I'm going to trust it is every bit as bad as you indicate. There's no motivation for you to make that up, after all. It is a bit amusing, in a good way, to see the changes she's undergone from having to actually worry about money (having never had even $100 of her own) to being in a position where that just isn't a concern. Some might see it as a hardship but we laugh about it. It's odd, to the point where I kind of have to stress that she now has a debit card, in her own name, with no realistic limits and that it's her's to use - with no strings attached. No, I don't even want an accounting. It's a gift and no, even if she were to leave tomorrow, she owns everything in that account.
"Here's the receipt!" Umm... Thanks? That goes in the trash. No, no I don't want to check it, no I don't want to know. If I did then it wouldn't be *her* money. When it runs out or gets close, there's a nice older lady in Maine that she's never actually met yet (but surely will) who puts more money into the account for her. The essential thing is that it belongs to her, I've given it to her. She's not stealing it if she takes off with it. She's not stealing it if she spends it. It belongs to her.
That's a very unusual concept for her. It's also very new, as I'm sure it is with most people - it took me years to adjust. I imagine she'll go through a thrift phase, a spending phase, and then back to something in the middle. So far, as near as I can tell, she's pretty thrifty. That nice old lady in Maine will call me and bitch if she isn't. She's my accountant, it's what she does. I know it took me quite a while to get over that I could just buy shit and then settle down. It literally took me years. I sold and retired back in 2007 (though you could say finalized in '08) and actually have more money now than I had when I sold. I know how and why that is true but I'm not so sure it should work as well as it does. I literally make more now, doing not a whole hell of a lot and just by letting other people use my money, than I ever made while working. There's a lot to be said on that subject...
At any rate, that's my kind of odd observation for the day. I've been observing the trend since back in late September, early October, and she seems to be settling down already. It was a kind of startling revelation for her as her parents are both now incarcerated and she's not long out of high school and was technically homeless (but not without a roof over her) when we met. To go from there to having access to more than many will make in their lives is quite a transition. And yes, yes it'd be really dumb of her to "steal" from me. She could just as easily go for the long-con and get a hell of a lot more. I'm old and stuff. She could even stick it out until I
Oh... I think the largest complaint was that it was all crony capitalism and a conspiracy involving sign makers. No, I kid you not... I seem to recall that being the most oft-quoted complaint but I am sure I have some confirmation biases and exposure biases. It wasn't even important to these people that these signs are probably made by hourly employees in direct employment of the government and that there is a sign-making cabal (they control the paint supplies) but those are usually used by smaller governing bodies who can not, in fact, afford their own sign printing shops. Imagine THAT... They'd not actually be making more money from making new signs. There's enough signs to keep them busy.
If there was any conspiracy, it was the damned paint vendors. Unless things have changed, there's not a whole lot of that paint and it's not that easy to make and rather expensive. Signs? No, these are Fed signs. They're built/printed by people who make an hourly rate and work for the government - for the feds. They even stamp their own plates. They even buy pre-treated steel so that they don't have to put on that strange chemical coating to protect 'em from the elements where they're unpainted. Those were the accused people for the conspiracy. Just over fonts... One might suggest it was because Bush was in office? I have no idea...
So, even the biggest complaint, and loudest complainers, didn't actually have a damned thing to do with fonts on signs. The font is, by itself, only part of the problem. That's a whole other bowl of wax and just adds to the complexity. I never once had a single expert listened to and a font changed from default - ever. Their consultation was paid for many times.
Whilst I don't actually disagree with any of the things you've written in your rebuttal, I have to wonder if you read the gibberish I posted and got anything from it. Even if you were to copy the font and were God's Gift to Fonts, you've got no chance in hell at making the new fonts to be used on the Federal Highway Department signs. You'd be lucky to get them on your friend Tom's bait shack and that's not a personal statement about you or your abilities.
As for just copying and editing them a little? Yeah... That has the very same problems that exist in you making one. You *might* get away with some of that idea/concept if you're a government agency and have some approval from on-high. Some of that concept...
I don't know if I've stressed exactly how serious these people (some of them) take their fonts. There was quite a stir the last time they changed them. As near as I recall, almost none of those complaints had a damned thing to do with the technical merits for any fonts involved. Yup... The people who complained the most were not actually involved in fonts, signs, or even the industry. I seem to recall being told that there was a *repeated* discussion about it on Fox News the last time they did this. I did not personally witness that.
So, no Joe... That's a good idea and I think your argument has merits and I'll grant you the tech skills by default. I'll even grant all the artistic skills you want me to assume. We can't even just pirate it and get away with it. Imagine trying to make a Slashdot layout change and have it accepted by people enough to where they'll all, mostly, agree that it's for the better. Now, add 514 forms (in triplicate), 298 secretaries, 3 Congressional oversight committee hearings, and some guy named Hank who has far more control than he should. Oh, and that's just to get your font looked at by whoever it is that's authorized to make these judgment calls.
I'll cede that you're either able to make a perfect rendition (but still pass copyright regulations) or that you can create the best font in the world. You've got a snowball's chance in hell at getting past secretary number two - and she has the forms needed to go up the chain and even find out who the hell Hank is. If you do get that far, they're gonna want proof (for some definition of proof) that this is something that they're not only willing to sign off on but that they're willing to take a bullet (full hearing in Congress) about it in five years time.
And that's just to change the font. Oddly enough, it's a frequently asked question - of sorts. More than one well-meaning soul has asked, "What if we had different fonts?" That's opening a whole bowl of wax and some people REALLY take fonts seriously. You're right - what you say is probably both logically sound and a good idea (I didn't notice any glaring problems). It's just not going to happen.
Hell, I wouldn't even bat an eye if there were a nationally televised tragedy involving some font maker and government regulations or customer frustration. I'd probably just sigh and say it was a long time coming. Depending on the situation, I might even side with the font maker or at least have a little sympathy for them.
That, my friend, is something we can all learn to be a bit better at. I'd submit that anyone who thinks they're an expert on that would be sorely mistaken and that includes the ones with doctoral degrees. But no, I'm guessing that YOU want to understand why they're working on HURD (and I expect you *DO* understand it just fine). I'm also guessing that if you didn't know, you'd go find out if you wanted to know.
The person who says, "I don't understand why those people all vote for $party" does not actually want to know why - and will wander off if you actually try to tell 'em. Hell, they'll repeat that same thing in three days, in a new thread, and pretend you didn't answer 'em the first time. ;-) They don't seem too interested in actually understanding.
So long as their signs are in English, that'd be a good idea. Non-English fonts will not have (necessarily) the same appeal - even if they have English characters.
I shit you not, there are people who have devoted their entire careers to this. They often have a font portfolio (observation) that they're excited to show you. They have a few that are "going to be a real impact some day." I've gotten drunk with some and even paid for all the drinks.
Ever want to get to know a new industry? Take a few of the people who work in it out and ply them with booze - especially if it's not a very popular industry. They'll tell you all that you wanted to know and you can learn some interesting things. It works anywhere that you speak the language, but with diminishing returns. I have been using this mechanism to understand the basics of trades since I was old enough to drink. It has generally been successful and works in a whole variety of situations.
So, I've gotten drunk with the people who make the fonts you see on signs. They don't (usually) make just highway signs and even fewer make just fonts. If you look hard enough, tucked inside of an office - probably in the back or in the basement, is someone who actually is dedicated to making fonts and employed by a single municipality. I've yet to meet that person but I am assured they exist. I allow my imagination to work.
You see the last type at very large (or inefficient) municipalities that have their own everything department. They don't just have a highway department, they have a highway paint department, *multiple* signage departments, workers, and workers beneath them. See, New Jersey, Georgia, and Pennsylvania for examples that have cities with such monsters hidden in their basements or working directly for the State.
So, depending on where you live, you may actually be paying someone who does absolutely nothing but design, approve, recommend, and investigate fonts used on street signs. I have never met such a critter but I'm assured they exist. You might even be paying two, or more...
Someone, just the other day, was telling me that municipalities weren't that bad and I was unable to give a good example. This? This is a good example. It's worse when you HAVE to await their approval and you've not only not met them - nobody seems to know where this person's office is and the phone calls haven't been returned in two weeks. Why do you need their approval (when you're not changing or recommending changing a damned thing?) because, fuck you, that's why.
Oh, I can rant on this subject. ;-) Boy have I got some stories for this subject. Hey, it's not exactly often that something this closely related to my career pops up and, for a change, I actually know a wee bit instead of always asking you guys why a global variable is wrong or how to cross-compile to run on the next(ish) x64 from ARM.
And, seeing as I'm here, I can't count the many things I've learned by getting people drunk. Seriously, if you're a manager, get a couple of the people that you interact with together and get them drunk. If you're hiring a new company, get a couple of their workers (not the management) drunk. Yes, it looks odd - try it like this, "Hey, so, I like to learn about the industries we work with and no, not your corporate secrets. I'd like to take a couple of workers out to dinner as my way of paying them for getting me up to speed on the complexity of your business. No, not the boss... No, not the manager. Seriously, the guy who empties the trash is fine..."
You'd be amazed what you'll learn about the business, the domain, and the person. They all want to talk. They all want to be listened to. Get 'em drunk and give them the chance - and actually BE interested in what they're saying. It'll make you a more knowledgeable person and a better manager for it. You'll learn not just about the industry but about the business itself. You'll learn about the people who will be doing things with your name attached. You'll understand their prob
I knew that signage was important. I did not know how serious a subset of people take signage. I did not understand the complexity but I knew the concept.
I simply modeled traffic (at first) and somehow we ended up dealing rounding up that information, the environmental impact, proposals, etc... There's a whole lot of complexity that goes into it - we weren't just traffic modelers or traffic/transportation engineers. It gets even more complicated when you transition to pedestrian traffic or mix them. :/ You'll need to know a bit of chemistry, climate, materials science, psychology, and the applicable laws and a whole lot more. I can't even begin to list all of the disciplines that are required if you want optimal solutions.
So, I knew about signs and the likes. I even knew a bit about why they might be important. I did not know that there were people who took it quite that seriously or put that much effort into it. I also had no idea about the many fonts and why they were so important. Well, I'd never really thought about it.
Oddly, that comparison to golf is not lost on me. It sometimes makes people wonder why I, who doesn't really even play much golf, watch golf. It's also capable of being made into a fine video game, or was in the past. I haven't played games in years. :/
An interesting conclusion for you to draw... I am not a Republican so I must support those who would do as you claim. (I'm actually a Libertarian but that'd be a long post and confuse the ever living hell out of you.) Also, he was at this spot (on the corner where I like to go for lunch - sometimes with some friends) multiple days in a row and for either long durations or at very sporadic intervals. I'm not sure we can claim that they're employed (gainfully) and I did not ask.
I increased highway safety, human efficiency, and decreased the emissions of untold vehicles. That is, at its root, exactly what I did.
It's pretty damned lucrative, actually. Well, it was until about 2010-2012. I was out in 2008 but a whole bunch of money was brought in (remember that 800 billion in "shovel ready jobs" that were all highway jobs?) and a whole bunch of new companies sprang up (who may or may not be good at it) and the value of the skilled labor decreased as the supply of labor increased. Note the careful application of the word "skilled." I might be both biased and not all that subtle. There might be added, needless, complexity and inferior workmanship at this point... I might have some less than stellar opinions about the business as a whole.
To rant or not to rant? It's not really on-topic but it might make your ego pump for a few minutes so I'll let ya have it...
See, when I was hiring C/C++ programmers they had to have some industry/domain knowledge and those were so rare that I had to even send some to school. In 1998 (and you can look this up) they were making about 120k to start. Today, a senior traffic engineer will make 80k. That's actually a reduction in wages by nearly half of what I'd have paid them (had they existed at that level).
Amazingly enough, if you pay people less - you get a lower quality of work. Yes, there's a finite return on that idea and a law of diminishing returns.
I have programmed. I am not a programmer. I hired programmers. I am (currently) associating with some programmers on this very site. I actually feel a bit sorry for some of you. (No, not all of you. Some of you can fuck right off.) Your industry has been pissed on and you make far less (on average) than you should make. This also means lower quality work from some peole. There is a point where increased numbers mean a decrease in quality. That point is varied and subjective. Pick your own numbers.
At any rate, and back to the point, I know quite a few Slashdotters in real life and a bunch more via the 'net alone. I can only use me as the example, I don't speak for others. You can seemingly do quite well at increasing efficiencies at the government level. It's been very lucrative. It's lucrative enough that I was able to retire in 2008. I was lawfully enabled to divest the shares in the now-parent company almost exactly 8 years ago. Between the cash and shares, I did quite well. Yes, I used some protections offered by the government to create that wealth. Yes, I paid my taxes. Copyright (and patents) are fine (in my opinion) but both are subject to abuse and both could use some refinements to reflect a more modern age.