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Comment Pageplus (Score 1) 91

by noopm (#44527721) Attached to: Crunching the Numbers On Shared Cellphone Contracts
From my experience: Pageplus Talk n Text 1200 is a very cheap effective plan for moderate users. $30/mo. including all taxes, uses Verizon's 3G network. (You can get further discounts ~10+% if you buy these pins online at http://www.pageplusdirect.com/ or wherever). 1,200 Minutes, 3,000 Text/Picture Messages, 500 MB Data. https://www.pagepluscellular.com/plans/talk-n-text-1200/ Buy a used HTC Incredible from ebay, activate it, save your money.
The Military

Submission + - There is Plenty to Cut at the Pentagon 2

Submitted by
Hugh Pickens writes
Hugh Pickens writes writes: "William D. Hartung, director of the Arms and Security Project at the Center for International Policy, writes that although we have been bombarded with tales of woe about the potentially devastating impacts of cutting the Pentagon budget 8% under the sequester, examples of egregious waste and misplaced spending priorities at the Pentagon abound and one need look no further than the department's largest weapons program, the F-35 combat aircraft which has just been grounded again after a routine inspection revealed a crack on a turbine blade in the jet engine of an F-35 test aircraft in California. Even before it has moved into full-scale production, the plane has already increased in price by 75%, and it has so far failed to meet basic performance standards. By the Pentagon's own admission, building and operating three versions of the F-35 — one for the Air Force, one for the Navy and one for the Marines — will cost more than $1.4 trillion over its lifetime, making it the most expensive weapons program ever undertaken. And in an era in which aerial combat is of diminishing importance and upgraded versions of current generation US aircraft can more than do the job, it is not at all clear that we need to purchase more than 2,400 of these planes. Cutting the two most expensive versions of the F-35 will save over $60 billion in the next decade. But some say the F-35 program is too big to kill. The F-35 funnels business to a global network of contractors that includes Northrop Grumman and Kongsberg Gruppen ASA of Norway. It counts 1,300 suppliers in 45 states supporting 133,000 jobs — and more in nine other countries, according to Lockheed. “It’s got a lot of political protection,” says Winslow Wheeler, a director at the Project on Government Oversight’s Center for Defense Information in Washington. “In that environment, very, very few members of Congress are willing to say this is an unaffordable dog and we need to get rid of it.”"
Bitcoin

Submission + - From the creator of MtGox and eDonkey, Ripple, the First True Bitcoin Competitor (privateinternetaccess.com) 1

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Ripple (XRP) is a new decentralized Bitcoin-like currency that doesn’t require a blockchain or mining. The Ripple network also supports sending and trading between any currency enabling true decentralized BTC exchanges. Ripple and Bitcoin can work together to expand each other’s reach.

In other news, Bitcoin breaks $30.
Piracy

Submission + - Copyright Alert System to launch Monday (dailydot.com)

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: Starting next week, most U.S. Internet users will be subject to a new copyright enforcement system that could force them to complete educational programs, and even slow their Internet speeds to a crawl.

A source with direct knowledge of the Copyright Alert System (CAS), who asked to not to be named, has told the Daily Dot that the five participating Internet service providers (ISPs) will start the controversial program Monday.

The ISPs—industry giants AT&T, Cablevision, Comcast, Time Warner, and Verizon—will launch their versions of the CAS on different days throughout the week. Comcast is expected to be the first, on Monday.
Government

Submission + - Will Cars Eventually Need a Do-Not-Track Option? (slashdot.org)

Submitted by
Nerval's Lobster
Nerval's Lobster writes: "Earlier this month, a very public argument erupted between Tesla Motors CEO Elon Musk and New York Times reporter John Broder, who claimed in a Feb. 8 column that his electric-powered Model S sedan had ground to a halt on a lonely stretch of Connecticut highway, starved for power. Musk retaliated by publishing the data from Broder's test drive, which suggested the reporter had driven the vehicle at faster speeds than he had claimed in the article (which would have drained the battery at a quicker rate) and failed to fully charge the car at available stations. Musk seems to have let the whole thing drop, but the whole brouhaha raises a point that perhaps deserves further exploration: the rising use of sensors in cars, and whether an automobile company—or any other entity, for that matter—has the right to take data from those sensors and use it for their own ends without the owner's permission. (For his part, Musk has claimed that Tesla only turns on data logging with “explicit written permission from customers.”) What do you think, Slashdot? Do we need the equivalent of a "Do Not Track" option for cars?"
Graphics

Submission + - NVIDIA's GeForce TITAN Scores Big, Tested In 15 Different Game Benchmarks (hothardware.com) 1

Submitted by MojoKid
MojoKid writes: NVIDIA's new GeForce GTX Titan graphics card, announced earlier this week, employs a massive 7.1 billion transistor GPU and 6GB of GDDR5 memory clocked at an effective 6GHz. With those kinds of specs, you can imagine the new GeForce cuts through gaming and graphics benchmarks like a hot knife through butter. Tested in fifteen different game benchmarks, in both single and multi-card configurations as well as overlocked, it's apparent that NVIDIA can easily lay claim to the fastest consumer 3D graphics processor on the market right now. And yes, it even runs Crysis 3 with ease. Regardless of resolution, the GeForce GTX Titan outpaces the Radeon HD 7970 GHz Edition and NVIDIA's previous high-end card, the GeForce GTX 680, sometimes by margins over 50 percent.
The Almighty Buck

Submission + - Major Corporations Screwed in IT Outsourcing Fraud

Submitted by Tontoman
Tontoman writes: The outsourcing craze of recent years has not out well for Corporate clients of a the Satyam company of India.
From the article: The original intent of shifting IT work like programming and database management to outfits like Satyam was to save on labor costs. The savings for many companies has been 15%-20% on their IT budgets. But for Satyam clients, a potentially expensive and complex process of disentanglement is beginning.
Hardware Hacking

Submission + - What to do with two spare computers?

Submitted by DissociativeBehavior
DissociativeBehavior writes: After buying a laptop to save space in a small apartement, I found myself with two unused desktop PCs. One is a Pentium 4 with a big 19' CRT screen and the other is an AMD64 without screen. Both have more than 1 GB of RAM and relatively good graphics cards. I was thinking about selling them on eBay but there are so cheap that it's probably not worth it. What use can you find for two spare PCs?
Programming

Submission + - Linux kernel 2.6.23 to have stable userspace drive

Submitted by
liquidat
liquidat writes: "Linus Torvalds included patches into the mainline tree which implement a stable userspace driver API into the Linux kernel. The stable driver API was already announced a year ago by Greg Kroah-Hartman. Now the last patches where uploaded and the API was included in Linus tree. The idea of the API is to make life easier for driver developers:

This interface allows the ability to write the majority of a driver in userspace with only a very small shell of a driver in the kernel itself. It uses a char device and sysfs to interact with a userspace process to process interrupts and control memory accesses.
(more...)"
It's funny. Laugh.

Submission + - John Edwards Second Life Campaign HQ Vandalized

Submitted by Anonymous Coward
An anonymous reader writes: It seems that a band of pranksters 'vandalized' the online campaign headquarters of John Edwards in the MMORPG "Second Life". The resultatory blog claims that those responsible were republicans. I can't imagine why...
Microsoft

Submission + - Microsoft launches the i'm Initiative

Submitted by
Khuffie
Khuffie writes: "Remember those stupid chain letters years ago, that claimed that Bill Gates will pay you for every person you forward the email to? Well, they've turned into reality...kind of. Microsoft has launched the i'm Initiative through Windows Live Messenger. Basically, you add an emoticon to your display name based on the charity you wish to support, and a portion of the advertising revenue generated from your usage of Messenger (remember, it has ads) will be donated to them. A neat idea, and they currently have nine charities to choose from, but unfortunately it is only available if you are in the United States."
Microsoft

Submission + - Bill Gates on 640k (1989)

Submitted by
billgatesforpresiden
billgatesforpresiden writes: "There's an article at NewsForge about a recently recovered talk that Bill Gates gave back in 1989. He covers many other topics, including OS/2, software piracy, the history of the software industry, and his role at Microsoft. In particular, Gates talks about how in 1981, he thought that 640k would be good enough for at least 10 years. Do we finally have proof of Gates' "640k ought to be enough for anybody" quote?"

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