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User: Russianspi

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  1. I've had them on Researcher Allows Sand Flea To Grow Inside Her Foot To Study It · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I lived and worked for years in a tribal village in Peru, and they were pretty common there. Studies seem to show that wearing shoes and socks helps keep you from getting bitten, but my anecdotal evidence seems to be that shoes and socks makes it worse. Sandals seem to be the best option. My kids always seemed to wind up barefoot no matter what they left the house wearing. Anyway, every night I would check each kid (waist down) for sand fleas with a flashlight. If we caught them early, they were no big deal, but if not...ouch! After 3 or four days, those suckers HURT! My son once had one when I went out of town that was probably a week and a half old, and it hurt so bad that he couldn't sleep. They almost had to anesthetize him to get it out (not a terribly safe proposition where we were) but with 5 adults holding him down, they were able to get it. Ugh. I would never let one of these grow in me on purpose.

  2. Re:Something wrong with this picture! on Peru To Provide Free Solar Power To Its Poorest Citizens · · Score: 1

    Not necessarily, considering chicken (pretty much all over the country) costs about S/.16 for a decent sized bird, and not much less for a small one. Food isn't cheap here in Peru, with the exception of veggies.

  3. Re:The actual producer? on Laser Intended For Mars Used To Detect "Honey Laundering" · · Score: 1

    Can't use them for this story anymore, now that you posted. Yes, I know, I know, *whoosh!*

  4. Re:Yay! on Matthew Garrett Makes Available Secure Bootloader For Linux Distros · · Score: 1, Informative

    I'm dying for a mod point here. I don't care if you're an AC. That's FUNNY!

  5. Re:Very strange. on Charles Carreon Drops Case Against the Oatmeal · · Score: 1

    Too bad. I misremembered this as being a "The Oatmeal" comic, but still, you need to take a look at this.

  6. I live in one of Peru's OLPC communities on OLPC Project Disappoints In Peru · · Score: 5, Informative

    I live in a tribal village in Peru, and the kids here have OLPC laptops. The trouble is bigger than teachers who have not been educated to make good use of the laptops (although that is an issue too). There isn't electricity here, much less internet (except my personal VSAT). While a computer loaded with educational resources is useful without an internet connection, it is a nice shiny green and white brick without power. For all of the hoopla about hand-crank or foot pedal chargers, I haven't seen one. When my solar panels are pulling in enough power, I'll charge one up for a kid or even let them on the internet, but my resources are limited in these areas too. So...it will be hard to REALLY evaluate the effectiveness of a machine like the OLPC until we have solved these basic infrastructure issues.

  7. Re:Not new on How Pre-Paid Energy Services Aid In Rural Electrification · · Score: 3, Informative

    I live in a rural village in Peru. There IS money here, even though everyone here is a subsistence farmer. There are some government programs that wind up putting a very small bit of money in people's pockets. Sometimes people will leave the village for a few months to work a menial job in town somewhere. And sometimes, people decide to grow a small amount of a cash crop (like coffee or cacao), which they can then carry two days to sell for $1-$2 per kilo. Once money is in the village, it gets passed around for work or in trade for produce or game.

  8. Re:Ping on ViaSat Delivers 12 Mbps+ Via Satellite · · Score: 1

    If your satellite provider is "doing it right" (and most of them do), they'll proxy everything on its way up from a datacenter somewhere with a fast pipe and send it all on up to your remote router in a chunk, and your request ends at the router in the next room. If they didn't do this, the latency would be a much bigger issue.

  9. Re:Ping on ViaSat Delivers 12 Mbps+ Via Satellite · · Score: 1

    Try having VOIP with 600ms of latency, or just a video chat. It is incredibly annoying.

    Much less annoying than having to route all of your communications through a short-wave radio. I'll take VOIP (or even video chat) over a terrible VSAT connection any day. In fact, I do. It's all a matter of perspective.

  10. Re:Ping on ViaSat Delivers 12 Mbps+ Via Satellite · · Score: 1

    Yup, most days, via a bi-directional VSAT connection. It's slow, but usable. I browse Slashdot while it loads up (30-60 seconds). Once it's loaded, it's pretty snappy. Honestly, though, I figured the fractional (split up to 10 ways) 256kbps that I pay over $300 for was more to blame than the latency, especially with Chrome's and Firefox's DNS caching. (I wish I had the VSAT pricing and competition available in the USA!! Alas, VSAT options in South America are pretty limited. I'll take a look at this service too, but I expect it won't be available here.)

  11. Shakespeare on Orangutans To Skype Between Zoos With iPads · · Score: 1

    I have this sneaking suspicion that no matter how may of them we give iPads to, we won't be seeing them produce Shakespeare's complete works anytime soon.

  12. Re:Also this is not the audience you want. on Ask Slashdot: Living Without Internet At-Home Access? · · Score: 1

    Actually, I've lived for a number of months in the last few years without internet access. The closest thing I had was a 3x/week short-wave radio check in for safety/big news. (I live the bulk of my time in a small, totally off-grid village in the Amazon.) My conclusion: VSAT. My new internet connection is ridiculously expensive, and worth every penny.

  13. Re:No, your profile is not public on Google Deleting Private Profiles · · Score: 1

    Yup, your gender choices are "Male", "Female", and "Other". That about covers everything...

  14. Re:Midrange on Amar Bose To Donate Company To M.I.T. · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I totally agree. My wife and I both graduated with BA's from Christian colleges. She had the typical college finance experience, with the school squeezing every penny that they could out of her, and then sending letters to her (probably for the rest of her life) asking for donations. She liked the school otherwise, but that (although typical) was/is irksome.

    I, on the other hand, went to Moody Bible Institute. It is a college that aims to prepare people to do full-time Christian ministry. Since most of these graduates wind up in fields that don't have great earning potential, they don't charge tuition. I'll repeat that: they don't charge tuition. It's not an easy school to get in to, (it's certainly not for everyone) and it is by no means perfect, but it was the right fit for me. (I'm a missionary, but I'm up late tonight doing some open source coding and getting distracted by Slashdot.) Anyway, Moody avoids charging tuition by having a profitable publishing house, as well as a radio station and broadcast media company. All of the profits that they turn from these (as well as some hefty donations) are what keep the financial wheels turning at the school. When I graduated in 2005, they estimated that for my graduating class, the waived tuition amounted to a $78,000 scholarship per graduating student.

    I receive letters occasionally from Moody asking for donations, and these are MUCH more easy for me to stomach. I don't have much in the way of spare money at the moment, but if/when I have the means, supporting Moody is something I'd like to do. I appreciate my education, and the fact that I could get through it without taking out ANY student loans, and I'd love to help present that opportunity to others if at all possible.

    Anyway, I realize that I'm on a tangent, but I think that Moody Bible Institute is as close to a true non-profit as I've seen any university be.

  15. Re:It needs to be a simple tax. on Senator Wants to Tax Internet Shopping · · Score: 1

    You would need to provide a shipping address to get a tax amount, but it wouldn't be that hard to code. You can get a database of tax rates by zip code pretty trivially. I think (when I programmed for a brick-and-mortar that delivered all over the state of CA) that we paid $100 annually for a CSV of the whole state's data, and if my memory serves me correctly, a national database was $500. It was updated from time to time, when tax rates changed, but it was a matter of dumping the CSV into a MySQL database a few times a year. I don't think that Amazon could legally set a flat "tax rate" and charge that for purchases, but charging by delivery zip would not be that hard.

  16. Re:Oldest file? on What's the Oldest File You Can Restore? · · Score: 1

    Yeah, I forgot my external hd was attached to my laptop when I went to move it. The enclosure is fine, but the 1 TB drive inside is toast. That happened last night. There went all my bt downloads...

  17. One Step Closer on White House Unveils Plans For "Trusted Identities In Cyberspace" · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I almost checked the "Post Anonymously" button on principle, but the difference is that I can choose what part of my identity to share with Slashdot. I just finished reading How to Access the Internet, A Guide from 2015 when I flipped to Slashdot and saw this article. Here's the first step. Creepy.

  18. Re:Give me half a million on Arlington National Cemetery's Many IT Flaws · · Score: 1

    Heck, for that price, I'd do it alone, and I'd throw in the hardware as an act of goodwill!

  19. Re:it's != its on Cleaners Paint Over Priceless Art · · Score: 1

    Whoosh!!

  20. Re:Do this, ground your kids, make them Engineers on What Advice For a Single Parent As Server Admin? · · Score: 1

    FWIW, I live in the Amazon rainforest, and I have no earthly idea how much rain we get in the average year. I don't much care either, as much as there are no massive floods or droughts.

  21. Re:Listen to the police on Chicago Debates Merits of ShotSpotter Technology · · Score: 1

    Hearing how Chicago is run, police opposition might just be the best kind of endorsement there is.

    But, of course, I could be wrong. ;-)

    Nope, you're not. Might it be that the cops don't want this so they won't get caught as easily? That would be my assumption, based on my years living in downtown Chicago.

  22. Re:The solution is easier than this. on Will Your Car Tell You To Put Down the Phone? · · Score: 1

    Ha, that's nothing! Try driving anything (or even walking) in a town full of cell phone using motorcycle drivers. (Maybe funny, but sadly true here.)

  23. Re:I get the on Rumor — AT&T Losing iPhone Exclusivity Next Week · · Score: -1, Offtopic

    OK, I'll take the bait. As much as a random Frist Ps0+ should be downmodded, why choose "Redundant"!? To quote Inigo Montoya "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." I'm impressed that the first thing in any thread can be called redundant!

  24. Re:Bing is pretty good on Bing Gaining Market Share Faster · · Score: 1

    Bing is actually pretty darn good. They don't have the countless integrated features that Google has, but for good, solid search results, in some cases, Bing returns better results than Google. Where I work, people there have set about half of the desktops' home pages to Bing, with the other half being Google.

    Wait, you work for Microsoft!? **ducks**

  25. End of the Road on End of the Road For NASA's Mars Rover? · · Score: 2, Funny

    Funny you should use that euphemism. A road would have helped the rover considerably.