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Comment Re:Still better (Score 1) 292

What's making is cost more are monopolies. If only one provider is allowed to service an area, they can set their prices, and people have to pay. It's a little better, but not much different if there are two or three providers and they collude among themselves. In such cases, subsidies will only channel money from the government to corporations. In order to really lower costs, all that's needed is allowing competition.

Comment Re:Stupid 16:9 (Score 1) 234

I think it depends on how big the screens are. If you have a really big screen (like 30''), then I would imagine that wider is better. If not, those extra pixels at the bottom count more.

Also, the common choise is between 1920x1080 and 1920x1200. If those are your only choices, you get extra pixels at the bottom almost for free, they are only slightly smaller at the same diagonal. Again, with bigger screens and bigger resolutions I would imagine this matters less and width matters more.

Comment Doublethink (Score 4, Insightful) 385

This is a textbook example of doublethink. Nobody actually believes that elephants have evolved over millions of years, but Adam was just put there. So apparently a quarter of people have an inconsistent belief system, or just two conflicting ones - let's say one from school and one from church - without realizing it. I'm sure if they were confronted with this, they would make some sort of excuses or explanations.

Transportation

The Feds' Freeway Font Flip-Flop (citylab.com) 182

McGruber writes: Citylab has the news that the U.S. Federal Highway Administration is revoking its 2004 approval of the "Clearview" font for road signs. Clearview was made to improve upon its predecessor, a 1940s font called Highway Gothic. Certain letters appeared to pose visibility problems, especially those with tight interstices (or internal spacing)—namely lowercase e, a, and s. At night, any of these reflective letters might appear to be a lowercase o in the glare of headlights. By opening up these letterforms, and mixing lowercase and uppercase styles, Clearview aimed to improve how these reflective highway signs read.

Now, just 12 years later, the FHWA is reversing itself: "After more than a decade of analysis, we learned—among other things—that Clearview actually compromises the legibility of signs in negative-contrast color orientations, such as those with black letters on white or yellow backgrounds like Speed Limit and Warning signs," said Doug Hecox, a FHWA spokesperson, in an email. The FHWA has not yet provided any research on Clearview that disproves the early claims about the font's benefits. But there is at least one factor that clearly distinguishes it from Highway Gothic: cost. Jurisdictions that adopt Clearview must purchase a standard license for type, a one-time charge of between $175 (for one font) and $795 (for the full 13-font typeface family) and up, depending on the number of workstations.

That doesn't seems like a very good use of tax money, for something that can be nondestructively reused once created.

Comment Re:Proof? (Score 1) 728

I have to call bullshit on that. 16% of France means 10 million people, while the same article claims there are only 5 million muslims there. I'm also pretty sure not all muslims support ISIS, and I'm even more sure that there aren't 5 million non-muslim ISIS supporters there.

Also, if the article is correct, we have failed as a species and are doomed.

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