In fact I received a call from an unknown number (that Google later showed as belonging to a local hospital) and the caller did not leave any message. A few days later someone called again and did leave voicemail telling me that a very good, old, friend was in the hospital and had left my phone number as a contact. He died several hours later.

While responding to the initial call would almost certainly have made no difference to my friend's survival, I wish that I had been alerted sooner. Just a "this is Dr. X calling about Mr. Y" would have been fine (and in fact was the content of the voicemail left in the second call).

When I got called, after they had me do some cool shit on my never-before-used Windows VM, the payoff was that they wanted me to purchase their tech support and software via credit card through one of at least a few online payment processors; we burned through three or four of them with my "bad" credit card numbers; finally they caught on to my scam.

So I don't think it's that they are looking for Command and Control nodes but just plain old fast cash. The prices for their tech support varied from around $300 down to around $200 or so after I balked at paying so much to fix my computer instead of just throwing it away and buying another.

It would be the same thing only if the postal service derived its revenue from junk mail.

They don't, so it's not the same thing at all.

Ha ha. Joke's on you. The USPS makes its living delivering junk mail.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/20/business/seeking-revenue-postal-service-plans-to-deliver-more-junk-mail.html

Nah You'll be fine.. At least in NYC you almost certainly won't be given a traffic ticket, let alone be charged with a crime.

http://gothamist.com/2012/02/15/heres_why_drivers_get_away_with_mur.php

http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2012/05/michael-mckean-hit-by-car-nyc-no-criminality-suspected.html

http://www.citylab.com/commute/2012/04/invention-jaywalking/1837/

For one thing, Chimps can't offer any definition of "person" at all, let alone explain why they would be included in it.

I wouldn't be so sure about that:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Washoe_(chimpanzee)

However you might not be able to understand what the chimpanzee was trying to say to you. That could be an inadequacy on your part.

Oops. That should be 397 miles, I originally calculated going from 75 to 85, not from 70 to 85. Maybe he means he'd save one hour on the round trip time, 1/2 hour each way.

Does Scott Sales provide the route he took between the "Brakken oil patch" and Bozeman? Because Billings, MT to Bozeman, MT is only 142 miles apart according to Google Maps, which lists the travel time as 2 hr 11 min.

He'd have to drive 637 miles before he'd "save an hour" going 85 instead of 70.

"I have a gum."

All the time you eat. That's a no good. We got to get-a money.
Right now, I'd do anything for money. I'd kill somebody for money.
I'd kill you for money.

Red looks slightly worried.

Ha ha ha! Ah, no, you're my friend - I kill you for nothing.

Red smiles.

And now I read just a little further down and learned from BronsCon that Verizon offers a SIM-based LTE network.

I'm pretty sure that Verizon doesn't operate a GSM network so saying that they won't support the unlocked SIM seems like a red herring. Verizon is, so far as I know, CDMA all the way.

I'm telling you Commander, that if we make it look like some pre-teen script kiddie, nobody will believe that it was NSA that erased her story.

Now she'll have to type it in all over again.

Next time let's encrypt the file and demand that she ransom it with her credit card, OK?

(of course that should have read "8.34lb/gal" for the units to work out correctly)

Not quite. You're converting "ounces" as a measure of weight. The "20 ounces" referring to soda is a measure of liquid volume.

Roughly, 1 gallon of water weighs 8.34 pounds. There are 64 fluid ounces in 1 gallon and 454 g in 1 lb.

(8.34 lb * 454 g/lb) * (20 oz / 64 oz/gal) = 1174 g.

Clearly this demonstration was designed by someone who was searching for the deeper meaning of the work of Jimi Hendrix:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eyGWbpNzH2o