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Comment Is that the only beatable one? (Score 1) 5

My understanding was that the other SimCity titles had no "victory" scenarios. I recall there were some versions (the Super NES version of SimCity comes to mind) that did have various (often amusing) failure scenarios where the game would not allow you to continue. I bought copies of SimCity 2000 and SimCity 4 through gog.com recently and started up SC2K recently in emulation and it works quite well. For some odd reason their release of SC2K installs through windows but runs through DOS.

I think I may have managed to find a copy of "Streets of Sim City" somewhere as well; I don't know if you remember that one but it lets you drive (or fly!) your city. I thought it was a clever idea but I haven't seen how good it is in execution.

And I really wish I could get RoboSport working, as well; that was a favorite of mine from the same group.

Comment Re:Gonna miss Snidely Whiplash (Score 1) 31

but calling atheism a religion is like calling abstinence a sex position

That depends. I have gotten into this discussion many times here on slashdot before. It is important to distinguish literal (or "classical") atheism from what represents atheism today. The literal definition of atheism is "without faith" or "without beliefs". However many people who call themselves atheists today explicitly demonstrate a belief in the absence of a deity.

A good way to model this is as a set of vectors. If a person rooted in their faith has a vector of magnitude 1 and a given direction, a modern atheist essentially has the same vector magnitude but the opposite direction. A classical atheist, by comparison, would have a vector of magnitude zero.

The importance of this is that many of the soviets were actually modern atheists, concerned with removing religion from their country. A classical atheist would not care about other peoples' faith(s).

Similarly your notion of atheism as

a set of beliefs

Distinguishes modern from classical. A modern atheist is often driven by their desire to remove others from their faith because they believe their faith in the absence of a god to be superior. A classical atheist would not waste time on it. An excellent example of the classical atheist in the modern society is Dr. Neill deGrasse Tyson; he simply doesn't care about other peoples' faith - yet he does not call himself an atheist either because he is aware of how loaded that term is in the current situation.

Comment Re:Why not self host? (Score 1) 6

That is an excellent idea, there. One change I would make to that suggestion though is to just do an install that doesn't include an x server (ie, either a "server" linux install [ubuntu server is OK though not great for this] or FreeBSD). Then you don't have to waste time and storage space installing a service that you're not going to run.

Another possible change on it would be to use a compact flash card in a CF->IDE (or CF->SATA, depending on the age of the laptop) adapter. I like to keep things internal as much as possible to reduce the likelihood of the storage getting knocked out physically by accident.

Comment Re:Why not self host? (Score 1) 6

I probably don't have a fixed IP address

That part is easy to address with dyndns or various other services.

I'd have to keep on top of security far more closely than with a PC

That depends on what you need. If all you need is to host a static website, the security concerns are actually pretty minimal. If you want php and a lot of goodies plus remote login and what-have-you then your concerns grow quickly.

I'd have to have at least two computers running 24/7/365 in case one went down, and I usually only have one or two running when I'm awake

Perhaps I underestimated the traffic volume for your web site, then. I know if my site is down occasionally (my personal server at home pulls five nines without much effort but there are sporadic things beyond my control like power / internet losses) it isn't a big deal.

The electricity alone would cost more than hosting.

I wouldn't be so sure of that. Again, if it is just a static page you could set up a really basic box (think mini-ITX) with as few moving parts as possible and your power consumption will be less than if you go to work and forget to turn off your coffee maker on the way out the door. I can tell you that the power consumption of my web server at home (an old P4 desktop I got for free some time ago) makes no notable difference on our monthly power bill.

You may have seen some of my JEs over the years where I have mocked the various attempts to compromise my home system via ssh. If I bothered to either change my ssh port or disable ssh entirely I would have basically zero attempts - I leave it where it is primarily out of laziness and my occasional needs to check in to my system remotely for various work-related functions.

Comment Re:Not to praise Apple, but... (Score 1) 208

Default Linux install (assuming dhcpd is the default). Boom. Owned.

You neglected your second - and more profound - assumption.

You have to have bash installed as well in order to be vulnerable. Not every linux install installs bash by default.

In other words, you are comparing an OS that has a vulnerable shell by default (OS X) with an OS that has a vulnerable dhcp by default (Linux) and making an assumption that the Linux install has the vulnerable shell as well.

Comment Re:Gonna miss Snidely Whiplash (Score 1) 31

Some day you will learn the concept of peaceful coexistence...

I mean, I live in a low crime neighborhood. Thanks for pointing out the crime of having offered up "southern conservative". Indeed, I live south of the Potomac, and embrace the traditional "conservative" values of individual liberty, equality before the law and private property that are currently under such systematic attack by godless Commie sodomites. Guilty.

Comment Re:You are wrong! (Score 1) 25

I wasn't quoting. I was paraphrasing. So, you seem to be espousing Evolution here, amIright? I'm still trying to work out the shift from inorganic to organic chemistry. In particular: why does it take less faith to subscribe to Evolution than any other of the alternatives (without bothering to espouse any one of them).

Comment Re:Gonna miss Snidely Whiplash (Score 1) 31

And you only want to "rein in" the feds to extent that your corrupt local authorities have more power to practice their bigotry and demand conformity to your culture/religion/whatever. It is your own disregard for the truth that is on display here. I don't care how much you deny it. I know what "southern conservative" means.

Wow, I think you've reached damn_registrars levels of making stuff up out of whole cloth. Everything I say underscores disregard for truth? You've moved past strawmen to a comprehensive sort of Dyson sphere of tautology surrounding me now. Let me give you a golf clap. [clap]. Does the sound penetrate this bubble in which you've encapsulated me?
Can I ask where this bubble is going, since you're doing all the driving?

Comment And two more makes 36! (Score 1) 6

I picked up an insightful and a troll on the same comment at some point today. One of the insightful mods was undone (note that it doesn't tell me if it was this one or a different one) which moves the score down to (+2, insightful).

Comment Re:Patch? (Score 1) 14

Sorry, didn't see this JE until now.

Thank you for finding this and offering your insight.

I just edited the headline to fix the cutoff. It works now because the original headline included the words "Obamacare Website", which I replaced with "Healthcare.gov" to make it fit.

I hadn't noticed that change, thank you for pointing it out. I find it interesting that the editor who posted the story didn't notice it before letting it loose on the front page.

As for the rest: no, we don't cater to any political base (though we get complaints daily about being too liberal/conservative/libertarian).

I respectfully disagree with that, based on two things in particular:

  • The stories that make the front page, which frequently favor the American conservative viewpoint or frequently trash any other viewpoint (and the general absence of the opposite).
  • The high frequency of conservative advertisements on here (even when I view the site without being logged in, or not logged in and from a computer / device that is not mine)

I have also noticed that when I post something here that is does not favor the conservative viewpoint, it is often moderated "overrated" - which everyone knows is immune to meta-moderation and hence a permanent negative mark on a comment.

Comment Re:Gonna miss Snidely Whiplash (Score 1) 31

So, other than strawmanning and boorish browbeating in the face of reasoned responses, and projection, do you have anything? Anything at all?

Your "concentration of power" nonsense is exactly that. The real complaint is its proximity, or rather, the lack thereof. You want your people to impose the rules.

What I actually want is to constrain the Federal government to its original enumerated powers. But the truth doesn't seem to amount to much with you anymore.

Comment Why not self host? (Score 1) 6

I don't recall now what your internet connection situation is like at home, but hosting your own site is becoming much more viable for a lot of people now thanks to high(er) speed connections being so very cheap. I have a basic cable modem and do my domain through dyn.org (I know, a lot of people hate them but I'm happy with them for $10 per year). Then I can host as much of whatever as I want. Granted, your site probably gets a lot more traffic than mine, so that might not be as great, but you could always try it as a mirror initially and see how it goes (or even do some clever cross-site-scripting to pull files from your home host while the main page is still hosted at your current provider).

Oh, and I think you meant to say "no scripting whatsoever" in referring to your page, rather than "no scripting whatever". :)

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