Category: Uncategorized

50 Indians blind themselves searching the sky for a reported image of the Virgin Mary

About 3-4 years back I used Google adwords to advertise RakNet. It was a good deal then. My daily budget was $3 a day. I got $100 worth of clicks, with the average click through rate at 2% and the average cost per click at 5 cents.

At the same time I looked at regular banner advertising. It was like $1500 for one month with no guarantee of clicks at all. By an order of magnitude Google advertising was better than banner advertising. So I signed up, but due to lack of funds at the time without a proportional increase in sales I stopped it.

I’ve tried Google advertising again two weeks ago. Now I can’t even show up for the same terms, and they want $5 per click to do so! Outrageous considering 99% of people who click on an ad won’t buy anything. The average click cost is 25 cents, the daily maximum is $20 and there is a notice saying I am not receiving 79% of my eligible impressions. In other words, they want $5000 a month for what I did with $100 a month before. While I am getting clicks through the content network, I think most of those are fraudulent or not relevant. There are more guests online in the forum, but those are probably spam bots, since if they really were new users I would be getting a proportional increase in help posts, and I haven’t been. I’ve been also getting more junk email about website ranking, so that’s another sign it’s just bots.

I’ll give it another two weeks and cancel if I don’t see a justifiable increase in new user posts on the forum. No sense in paying money just to get more spam!

I’m going to also look into a banner ad on GameDev.net if the price is comparable. However, a friend who runs a major gaming site said he had to refund an advertiser’s money because it only got 3 clicks out of 2 million impressions. So I’ll have to ask them if they have any guarantee of clicks, and average number of clicks per ad.

Two close friends just had a baby together two weeks ago. Yesterday, they took the baby to the doctor because they found lumps growing on her chest. Turns out they were breasts.

My friends always buy the cheapest meat they can find from a major warehouse store, especially beef. Beef is pumped full or hormones like some chemical Frankenstein, to make the cows grow and produce milk as quickly as possible. These hormones get into the food supply, and cause many health problems

Hormones in beef linked to male fertility problems
Hormones in beef
Alarm over beef link to breast cancer
Artificial hormones in U.S. beef linked to breast cancer, prostate cancer

Chicken and other meats are no exception.

I’m trying to avoid meat and only buying organic from now on.

I’ve been trying to buy health insurance to cover myself as a private contractor. At every step where I deal with the insurance company I am reminded of the movie Sicko. I’m a healthy guy who has never had serious medical problems. I tried signing up for Health net 3 months ago. Part of the 50 page application form was to list every doctor visit in the last 6 years or so. So I put down two visits to the doctor two years ago, both for minor problems that cleared themselves up after a few days. 3 months and half a dozen phone calls later I get back a form letter asking for every imaginable detail of those doctor visits – who I saw, addresses, phone numbers, dates, treatment details, etc. It’s like if you get health insurance, you better not ever use it, because if you do you will never get insurance again. I was fed up so wrote back to them and told them to cancel my application. “I’ve already given you these details. You have authorization to look up my records. I don’t have the time or inclination to do your job for you. If this is how you treat a potential customer trying to give you money, how will you treat me when I actually need care?.”

Initially I was ambivalent about nationalized free health insurance. The free market’s incentives are to maximize profits. When it works, the way to do this is to provide the best service for the lowest possible price to attract and satisfy as many customers as possible. The government’s incentives are to satisfy their own customers, which are generally special interests or the bureaucracy itself. It’s different in every situation, but one doesn’t have to look far to find waste, fraud, or poor service where the government is concerned. Look at the lines at the post office or the DMV. There’s also the argument that when something is free you get unlimited demand. It is true this would result in longer lines and worse service compared to an ideal free market scenario.

However, after thinking this through I think nationalized health service is the correct choice. The free market doesn’t work where you have force or fraud – in theory it is the government’s job to prevent just that (although often the government is the cause of said force or fraud). Cox cable has a monopoly where I live. So when I had my cable modem installed I was forced to use their service. As a result, I had to pay $200 to lease a modem you could buy for $50, and a $300 installation fee for a guy to drop it off at my house, and the service didn’t work for a month and a half.

Does force or fraud exist in the health insurance business? I think force is an inherent part of the equation – a sick or dying person has no choice but to accept the services that are available to them. With Cox I could at least go without or move if I wanted to, but the guy in the movie who had to choose which fingers he wanted reattached had no such option. Unlike a typical business, the insurance company makes money by NOT providing service – turning down sick customers, or denying those who are already sick. So it’s undeniable that there is an incentive to commit fraud. Usually lawsuits work out fraud, but a person who has just undergone a major health problem (and paid for it themselves) usually doesn’t have the time or money to fight the insurance companies. A dead person certainly doesn’t. The only people with the resources to take on the insurance companies, the super-rich, pay for their own services anyway.

The only question that remains is will the waste, lines, and bureaucracy of the government be better than what we have now?

I was reading How to tip like a gentleman. It seems like most people support what he wrote, but personally I think tipping is way out of hand.

One incident I remember was at Supercuts about two years ago. It’s $20 for a 20 minute haircut, they spent the whole time I was sitting there trying to sell me cosmetics, and did a bad job too. So for the tip I put a slash, and got a nasty look. Why should the lady expect a tip for doing her job at all, much less doing a bad job, and spending the whole time trying to advertise to me?

Another incident in was Las Vegas about 3 months ago in a taxi on the way back to the airport. The guy was nice enough but the fee is near $100 an hour. So I gave him like $40 for a $38 fair, told him to keep the change, and got a nasty look for it. I don’t know what’s supposed to be appropriate for a taxi, but good grief at that rate (if they keep half the money) they are pulling in probably 75K a year to drive a car, with no education and minimal training. I know it’s a risky job but it’s not like they are making minimum wage. That’s how it is in Europe, leave them the change if you want to, but it’s not expected. Now it’s like the opposite, you are expected to give a tip, so not only is a small tip not appreciated, they are mad for getting it.

About 3 months ago I went to semi-fast food restaurant. I paid by credit card, and there was a tip line to be filled in before you even got your food. And they didn’t even serve the food there, you had to get up and get it yourself. And even if they did, I don’t see the sense in tipping before I even get the service, so put a slash there. I got a bad look for that too.

A few dollars for good service is one thing. But I don’t think it should be expected, and certainly not for cases where someone is doing a job that is not interpersonal (driving a taxi, taking your order at a fast food outlet).

Empire Earth III, developed by Mad Doc Software, is an RTS where your civilization upgrades through the ages from about 1,000 BC to far in the future. This sounds like a fun design, like an RTS version of Civilization that goes beyond the modern era. The game is split into a world component (like XCOM) and an RTS component. In the world component, you assign each territory to produce military, commerce, research, or imperial points. You also move military units, and buy militia to defend provinces. There are several other AI controlled sides doing the same thing.

When conflict arises against either the native tribes defending each province, or an AI player, the game switches to the RTS map. Your starting units’ technology and numbers are based on your play in the world component. Base build-up is fairly standard, with the exception that you don’t really take specialized paths or make major decisions in base building. Most of the meat here lies in troop upgrades and deployment, with special abilities such as ranged units entrenching or using calvary vs. infantry.

The game was semi-fun for a day or so to see the different types of units you could get through research. However, I think the AI is too weak, and ultimately caused me to lose interest in the game. The main positive thing I can say about it is that your units will help each other out, so if someone is attacking you offscreen your units will move in to help out. On the negative side, units lack sufficient autonomous behavior, pathfinding is sometimes a problem, and most significantly about half the maps do not provide significant gameplay. Of those maps, half the time all opponents are neutral or cannot reach your base. So you build your base for 20 minutes until you have a good income stream, then just bribe all opponents to join your side, without a single bullet fired or sword swung. The other half of the time combat is not a significant challenge, and play progresses the same way. For example, if you build 3 towers (for nearly the same price as 3 regular units, buildable at any time) on most maps this renders you impervious. You could attack your opponents if you want, but it’s usually faster, cheaper, and easier just to save enough resources to bribe them. Towards the end I found myself dreading the RTS part of the game, trying to blow through the tedious parts as fast as possible so I could get back to the world component. On the last map I played before uninstalling, I built my base for 20 minutes, wondering where the attacking army was, and found them floating near the left edge of the world, never having disembarked their troop transports.

A few maps had pre-scripted challenges, and those were the most fun in the game. But they are far enough apart that it eventually became not not worthwhile to play through the unchallenging parts to get to them. It’s too bad too, I can see a lot of work went into the game, to have it all for naught.

I’d wait for this one to hit the bargain bin.

Yesterday, I was reading about the React Operating System. I was chuckling about this for the rest of the day. I really admire what they are doing and I agree with their premise and solution. It is true that Windows has the problems of being bloated and closed source. It is true that Linux has the problems of requiring non-trivial operations through the command line, and having compatibility problems. So their basic solution is correct – an open source rewrite of Windows that is binary compatible with existing programs.

Going by their roadmap they are on version .34 and have been doing it since 1996. That’s a long time, but when you consider it’s a few guys accomplishing in their spare time what a billion dollar company has done… Great job!

Tomorrow is the big voting day “Super Tuesday.” It will also be the first time I’ve been actively interested in a political campaign. Prior to this election I’ve always looked at the candidates and saw they were all crooks and liars, so why bother? It’s like voting for what kind of gun you want to shoot you in a firing squad.

I was telling my friend Ron Paul is the first candidate I’ve ever seen in my life that is honest. Whatever else you think about him, I think it is undeniable the other guys weasel out of questions they don’t want to answer. Every interview of Ron Paul I’ve ever seen has him saying nothing but the honest truth, and the truth does not depend on who he is talking to. Just last week I was watching an interview by MTV and a girl asked him what he would do about the high price of birth control. His answer was basically (paraphrasing) “The president is the commander in chief of the military, but the Constitution does not grant him/her powers over the economy. I would get goverment out of the industry, which would have the effect of lowering prices across the board.” I can’t imagine any other candidate giving such a candid and straight answer.

The problem with Ron Paul is most people don’t want to hear the truth. They don’t want to hear that the dollar is crashing, the state is bankrupt, and it’s our own government’s policies that blow terrorism back at us. But it’s all true and obvious to any educated and knowledgeable person. 6 years ago when I worked in Europe I was unhappy because the Euro was worth much less than the dollar. Now it’s worth much more. And it’s not like the dollar just magically becomes worth less. It’s because there are more dollars in circulation. When the federal reserve was created 5 cents back then was worth a dollar today. The debt is approaching 10 trillion dollars. I heard on the radio today it is estimated to be at 10.5 trillion by the time Bush is out of office. And that’s being creative; if you use corporate accounting methods Social Security and Medicare every one of us owes over $200,000. And who honestly believes that terrorists in the Middle East attack us because they hate freedom?

It’s not over – Ron Paul may win. Most state’s votes are not in yet. People’s awareness of Ron Paul is growing daily. I’m going to vote and do my part to help him win. But if he doesn’t I think he’s done a lot of good by campaigning. People are more aware now of the problems we are facing as a nation. If most people are not ready for Ron Paul this election, maybe they will be the next. Right now it’s only the smart and educated 15% that see this, but as conditions deteriorate and our freedoms are taken more people will sign on. This is truly a revolution, and like all revolutions it’s not about a single leader, but the people.

“Thus we can say with a high degree of certainty that there is a relationship between the counting method and the election results. The probability of the aforementioned discrepancies occurring by chance is less than 1 in 100 billion.”

http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/1/12/191247/981

So the chances of rigging are 99.9999999%. Obama won, Hillary lost.

How hard can it be to write a freaking voting machine? And if you want accurate results…

JUST USE OPEN SOURCE!

What do you expect when you have private corporations with vested interests write closed systems?

4 years ago they were talking about this exact same thing, vote flipping. I won’t bother finding the links but there are all over the place. I don’t mean half-assed speculation either, there is good statistical evidence for this and proof it can be done.

The only good thing now is they found it before we got a new president, rather than months after he is already in office.

It’s about time I put RakNet under source control. I wasn’t able to figure out how to host my own SVN server so after a few tries I got it approved by Sourceforge.

The upload process is very complicated and confusing. Right now I am stuck here:

I created the following directory structure.

RakNetSVN
RakNetSVN/branches
RakNetSVN/tags
RakNetSVN/trunk

Then I unzipped RakNet.zip, which has all the distribution files, to RakNetSVN/trunk

Then I right clicked on RakNetSVN, selected import for TortoiseSVN, and entered https://raknetjenkinsso.svn.sourceforge.net for the subversion server. I get a similar error to the one above.

Anyone know what this means?

Am I supposed to run Putty?

** EDIT **

‘renchap’ helped me with this.

The correct URL is https://raknetjenkinsso.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/raknetjenkinsso
You have to first checkout to the directory with your files.
Then you add your branches, tags, and trunk

He also helped me setup a bunch of other cool goodies.

1. Fixed the makefiles
2. Release notes automatically emailed, sent to RSS, and sent to IRC
3. Stopped hosting the Wiki myself

Sourceforge is very powerful!