Presto vs tickets

**EDITED BELOW. NEW INFO IS IN BOLD**
New info has been used by me personally when my step dad and i had to go somewhere today

Recently I bought a Presto bus pass and was able to use it for a bus trip down to a local Future Shop store. Years ago i use to have to buy bus tickets to travel on the bus which was a pain to do and why i stopped using the bus. Here is my list of the pros and cons between old paper tickets and the new presto card.
By the way, this is for the Greater Toronto & Hamilton Ontario (Canada) area aka GTHA but I do know that some cities in the USA and other countries have similar systems in place.

Presto Pros

1. Can reload online using interact online.
2. Can check your balance and see transit history as well as get a print out for Public Transit Tax Credit from the Presto website.
3. Just tap the card on a Presto card reader at any stop and on any bus.
4. No need to wait for a transfer to be printed, Presto's system will see your transfer as a transfer if tapped on a 2nd bus within an hour after you tapped on the first bus. So your ride would only cost you for that first bus ride.
5. Very handy for those on a fixed monthly income. Load the card when you get paid and don't have to worry if you have money for the bus close to the end of the month.
6. Only need to carry 1 credit card size card, no need trying to find a valid bus ticket.
7. Can travel from Hamilton via HSR to Pickering (or Pearson Airport) via Go train/bus then transferring to the TTC with just 1 card. No need to buy different fees and tickets for different public transportation.
8. Tap and go. No need to try to get your ticket or money into the fare machine and no need to worry if you have exact change. Fare fee is deducted out of your Presto account that the card is set to.
9. No monthly, yearly or load fees.
10. Uses NFC technology to transmit the card's number to the receiving Presto fare box.
11. Presto has discount rates for students and seniors.
12. Presto offers replacement card for lost, stolen or damaged cards without costing any extra and you don't lose your balance.
13. Saving trees since the card is plastic and not paper.
14. Can pay for multiple passengers with just 1 card.

Presto Cons

1. Their website is not mobile friendly yet but it is accessible from any smartphone.
2. Takes 24 to 48 hours for your card to be fully active and registered. Have to wait 24 hours before you can register your card on their website.
3. There is a $6 fee when you first buy it and only load it with $10. For Hamilton as a promotion, its $20 and the $6 fee is waived.
4. No mobile app yet but they do say on their FAQ that they are investigating on doing a app.
5. Can't put holes in the card because that can damage the antenna and chip that is inside of the card.
6. Can only buy the card on the Presto website and at certain stores. For Hamilton they are only sold at most Fortinos stores.
7. Balance does not get updated until the bus(s) or train(s) arrives as a Presto wifi update station. This usually happens at night when the bus/train pulls into its maintenance garage for the night to be cleaned and refueled for the next day.
8. When loading your card, it won't show up in the Presto card reader till the next day for the exact same reason as number 7.
9. Have to tap the main box first to pay for your fare then tap the transfer printer for each guest and wait for that guest's transfer ticket to be printed then can tap again on that same box for your next guest.

Ticket Pros

1. Can get on the bus at a cheaper rate than with cash.
2. Can gift the ticket to a friend or family member very easily.
3. Can write stuff on the ticket before putting it into the fare box.
4. Most stores sell bus tickets.
5. Most stores sell different bus tickets for adults, seniors and students all set at their discount price.
6. If you want to kiss your money goodbye you can wrap it around some weed and smoke it.
7. Can get on a bus as soon as you buy a ticket. No waiting 24 to 48 hours.

Ticket Cons

1. Very easy to lose, your screwed once lost.
2. Very easy to rip which could cause the fare box to void the ticket forcing you to buy another to get on the bus.
3. No mobile app or website to store your bus ticket on. Its paper!
4. Can only use one ticket per bus. Have to get a printed transfer if you are needing to ride more than 1 bus.
5. To go from Hamilton to Pearson Airport would require you to buy multiple tickets for multiple rides along your journey.
6. Sometimes difficult to get your ticket into the fare box. Box sometimes can get jammed or filled up with tickets.
7. Depends on how many tickets you buy can become very bulky in your purse or wallet.
8. Can run out of tickets and money close to the end of the month if on a fixed monthly income.

So there you have it. Thats my lists between Presto and tickets for public transportation in the GTHA.

Overall i have to say that Presto makes it super easy and worry free to use public transportation.
I can seriously go from my place in Stoney Creek all the way to Pearson International Airport and back with just 1 card and not have to deal with multiple tickets and fare prices.
Granted, HSR, Go and TTC all have different fare prices but those prices are deducted from my Presto account, all i have to do is check the prices for all 3 and add that amount to my card a day before my journey then just tap and go.
And Presto is working on ways to better improve the system so it will soon be even easier to use the card. I know delivery and taxi drivers all carry mobile interact machines so im sure Presto will use the same kind of technology as those machines uses so when you tap, the fare is deducted right there, no waiting 24 hours.

Anyways hope this helps explain how these new cards work. Happy new years world.

4 reasons why not to use public standalone for opensim.

First off just like to thank by buddy Tim from Zetamex with doing this list.
This list is for public use of standalones.

1. Strain of having grid services and region load on the same instance.
2. OpenSim's HTTP service can barely handle the requests it has now, forcing opensim to serve both as a standalone just makes things worse.
3. Standalones are not able to contain large traffic, and often need restarting.
4. Limited to just a few regions that the computer can handle‏.

These 4 reasons are why Tim doesn't offer standalones and why i always suggest not using it as a public grid.
I do use a standalone with 2 sims for personal use and testings but i made it so no one else can get on which is fine for just testing scripts but standalone for others to visit and use is very bad.
I lag with just 2 standalone sims on a 12GB ram, 3.1GHZ quad core cpu, but of course i load balance my 2 sims when i boot it up. Most of the time its just unused files on my 1TB hard drive. But I will be converting my standalone to Robust in a few weeks so I don't lag as much as I do right now with it being standalone.

I have seen people use standalones as a public grid and usually the person who made the grid would put up like 10 to 100 sims then complain on social media that they are lagging. Well gee i wonder why. You're using a standalone to host 10 to 100 sims.

Lets break it down to simple terms.

Opensim.exe can only mostly handle sim activity like walking, local chat talking, rezzing, prim settings, physics, scripts, lighting, terraforming, and parcel's. Thats it. You then make the program have to handle assets, inventory, IM's, groups, search, currency, profiles, and logins / logouts its gonna choke and cause lag, even if you have just 1 or 2 sims, Opensim.exe will choke.

This is why experienced grid admins like me, Tim and afew others always strongly suggest opening a grid with Robust.exe cuz that can handle assets, inventory, IM's, groups, search, currency, profiles, and logins / logouts allowing Opensim.exe to just handle all the actual region stuff. Granted Opensim.exe still has to do alot and still chokes and lags when in Robust mode but its less compared to when its in Standalone mode because it doesn't have to deal with everything else that Robust can do.

Also with Robust, you can get as many servers you can afford and host tons of sims across those servers that can connect to your one robust server acting as 1 grid. That's how Linden Labs does it with Second Life, and it's how other big grids like InWorlds, 3rd Rock Grid and Metro does it.
With Standalone, you can only have 1 server hosting everything off of 1 Opensim.exe

So next time you want to boot up a standalone, please remember this blog and go with Robust.

new found hope

Just when i was starting to think i suck at making websites and i should just give up, some moron comes around and says more, what they would think, hurtful things to me which actually made me realize the bright side of my situation.
I R SMARTZ.
Atek grid attacked me on G+ and said they are going to inform the FBI that im a hacker.
Ok first off, good luck, ill be over here in CANADA laughing my ass off.
Secondly, ill be here laughing while the fbi sees that i make secured websites.
Third, laughing over all cuz Atek has made me realize that I am good at php and lsl. I have a very secured website that uses php and mysql in a secured way. The cookies for users are encrypted (even the user ID in the cookie is hashed), my lsl sends and receives secured POST data, i use the latest recaptcha to prevent bots from joining my site, i use bitcoins as a form of premium membership payment (dont worry im looking, researching and testing ways to pay with in world currency as well), only iframes i use is for the recaptcha so no loading external websites, i have drop support for gravatar, and my site is mobile friendly which means the site will load and resize automatically to fit any window/screen size.
What does Atek website have? Lets do a compare on this.

Feature - Vampire City - Atek
Legit SSL (HTTPS) - Yes - No
Secured Cookies and Sessions - Yes - Unknown but probably not
Encrypted transmission of data - Yes - Unknown but probably not
Use of iFrame - only for recaptcha by google - all over the place
Use of latest software - Yes (php 5.4) - No (outdated old ColdFusion)
Is the site for a grid - No - Yes (Vampire City is NOT a grid)
Multi Grid support - Yes - No
Multi Avatar support - Yes - No
Mobile friendly - Yes - No
Does it violate privacy policy laws? - No (well i hope not) - Looks like the registration page does
Website engine - Nginx Community Edition - Apache
Obey Cookie Laws? - Yes - NOPE! (Atek places 2 cookies for just viewing the site without informing the visitor, Vampire City only places 1 for visitors and 3 more at login but users are informed)

So the question here is, which site is better? Ignore the fact that Vampire City is my site and just look at that over all and tell me which site you rather visit? Then ask yourself, is Chris a hacker or just a guy who really knows his stuff?

I did this blog because it was actually bugging me that someone from the Atek grid would say things to me and call me a hacker all because I found some problems with their website that could pose a security threat to their site. In fact it is the same problems as i found with the CloudServ website. Now im not going to make the problems public but i do hope Atek fixes the problems that i found and quit calling me a hacker. I spent 5 years as a real life security guard so i bring my experience from that plus doing websites for 15 years to the metaverse. I will admit i have had my ups and downs, Vampire City was hacked, SQL injected and DDOS'd in the past but those mistakes has helped me learn how to protect the site from attacks.
And i gotta say, looking back at the past history of Vampire City, compared with Atek, i gotta say i am doing a fantastic job now.
So heres to a bright future of making a site i been wanting to make for years. A social networking and role playing website for vampire and lycan lovers.