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Comment Re:T-mobile prepaid (Score 1) 273

At that level of usage, you might look at Page Plus (VZW MVNO); I pay $10 3 times a year for (each of) my kids' phones. It's 10c/min but no additional taxes (there is a 50c deduction per month service fee), so they basically get 20min/mo with roll-over. Not sure it would be any better for you, but the coverage is great (statistically) and I think it's always worth looking at options.

You can use any post-paid VZW phone except the iPhone (last I checked, they might be able to use the iPhone now, doesn't affect me). They also have an $80/yr 2000min plan that amounts to 4c/min (and under $7/mo) which I used to use - a great deal!

Comment Re:I got in on the Virgin plan at the $25 level. I (Score 1) 273

I pay $13.99/mo (no taxes/fees). $10/mo to ATT MVNO Airvoice for 250min/mo with rollover (which I never come close to using all of), Google Voice for all my SMS (unlimited) and the rare times I'm not on WIFI I have a $3.99/mo Freedompop 3g/4g Mifi (free if only 4g but Wimax coverage is spotty so I pay for 3g). The Mifi is only 1GB/mo, but like I said, it's rare I'm on in WIFI coverage anyway.

It's not for everyone, but it's great for me.

Comment Re:Lower the river, obviously (Score 1) 168

The author is correct, but he expressed it in a very awkward way: below Wanapum Dam is Priest Rapids Dam, and below that is the Hanford Reach, a free-flowing section of the river. If Wanapum fails, the Priest Rapids reservoir needs to absorb the entire flood; releasing it will cause flooding in the Hanford area.

Comment Re:It looks like a very nice library (Score 1) 216

A programming language with primitives like:

"Compile a list of all European Capitals"

sounds like a damned powerful language to me.

To me, that doesn't sound like a very powerful language, it sounds like a language with a huge standard library. Power comes from things like making

"Compile a list of all European capitals, but I don't consider Iceland to be part of Europe"

easy. If it's hard to step outside the limits of the standard library, it's not a powerful language.

Comment Re:leaded gas (Score 1) 266

I never understood why leaded gasoline was cheaper than unleaded back when both were for sale. They actually added the lead.

Because "unleaded" is a misleading name. There have been three major types of gasoline over the years:

1) Raw gasoline: unmodified crude-oil distillates. This is one of the original automobile fuels, and had a varying octane rating; this made building high-performance engines difficult.

2) Leaded gasoline: crude-oil distillates with Tetraethyl lead added to raise and stabilize the octane rating.

3) Unleaded gasoline: crude-oil distillates with additives other than tetraethyl lead used to raise and stabilize the octane rating.

Comment Re:Isn't TOR outdated? (Score 2) 109

it's said to be vulnerable to timing attacks esp. by those same entities with extremely large means. So why isn't this news about anonymous IM on a garlic routing network or something?, either switch to a new network or upgrade TOR and call it TOR 2.0 or TOR 1.1 or something but please, something has to be done.

There are networks that protect against timing attacks, but the nature of the protection makes them unsuitable for IM or other near-realtime communication. Basically, they operate by having nodes send constant-size data blocks on a regular schedule regardless of how much data needs to be transmitted. This increases latency -- sometimes to hours or days -- and puts a cap on the amount of data the network can transfer. It also wastes bandwidth when the network is operating at less than full capacity, since blocks with random noise need to be transfered to keep lulls in activity from being visible.

Comment Re:So, will a 2005-era routers get a firmware upda (Score 1) 264

Let's say the IoT existed in 1994 & you bought a new Kenmore IoT fridge running Linux 1.x. Fast forward to 2014--who today is doing anything with the Linux 1.x kernel? Nobody--including Kenmore support engineers.

In 1998, I purchased a computer running Windows. Shortly afterwards, I installed Linux 2.2 and a webserver on it. Strangely enough, the computer is still working, is running a modern kernel with full support for the hardware, and somehow managed to avoid being pwned at any point in the intervening 15 years.

The nice thing about open-source software is that you generally don't need to run obsolete software on ancient hardware. That Kenmore IoT fridge would probably run a Linux 3.x kernel without problems, as long as the software was genuinely open-sourced.

Comment Re:What's the difference? (Score 1) 462

This. I'll never understand why when someone "thinks they're the opposite gender" we don't try and fix their mind to match their body but instead are willing to send them through some incredibly dangerous and life-shortening medical procedures to do the exact opposite.

Because it doesn't work. In the century or so between when gender dysphoria was identified and when gender reassignment surgery became practical, any number of techniques to "fix their mind" were tried. None of them had any measurable success rate, and most of them resulted in the patient committing suicide within a few years of starting treatment.

Submission + - Slashdot Beta: Because They Hate You 3

boolithium writes: People on here are missing the point of the Beta roll out. The elimination of the existing user base is not a side effect, it is a feature. Slashdot as a brand has value, but as a site has limited commercial appeal. The users are the kids at the lunch table, where not even the foreign exchange students want to sit. Nobody ever got laid from installing NetBSD.

Once they are finished with their nerd cleansing, they can build a new Slashdot. A sexier Slashdot. A Slashdot the kids can dance to.

They aren't ignoring you. They are exterminating you.

Submission + - A Modest Proposal, re: Beta vs. Classic 19

unitron writes: Dice wants to make money off of what they paid for--the Slashdot name--, or rather they want to make more money off of it than they are making now, and they think the best way to do that is to turn it into SlashingtonPost.

They should take this site and give it a new name. Or get Malda to let them use "Chips & Dips".

Leave everything else intact, archives, user ID database, everything except the name.

Then use the Beta code and start a new site and give it the slashdot.org name, and they can have what they want without the embarrassment of having the current userbase escape from the basement or the attic and offend the sensibilities of the yuppies or hipsters or metrosexuals or whoever it is that they really want for an "audience".

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