Really, just take any quad band GSM phone and buy a SIM card, and you should be set. If you need 3G speeds you'll probably need to check the specs of the phone and get one on the right 3G bands (US ones won't work but there are plenty of online sources for cheap Chinese phones). If you can get by in Chinese well enough to go shopping, and don't need the phone immediately on arrival, just buy one yourself once you get there. Same goes for the SIM card. I would recommend China Mobile as a carrier. They seem to have the best coverage and they're easy to recharge. China Unicom can get you better rates as of last time I was there, but they kinda suck in other ways.
If you do want to buy your SIM before you go, I highly recommend this site: http://www.china-mobile-phones.com/ Please note I have no affiliation with them, but I have used them extensively in the past. You'll pay a good bit more than buying once you get there, but unlike the other online places to order Chinese phones/SIM cards, they don't charge you outrageous fees for airtime and make you go through them to purchase more air time at 10x markup. You simply get a normal prepaid China Mobile (or China Unicom) SIM card you can recharge yourself any way you like. They also offer online recharge for almost any China Mobile or China Unicom SIM, whether it was purchased through them or not, so you can recharge airtime for other people too. This comes in really handy when you're outside the country and the phone you need to call is "guanji".
Finally, if you want easy call-out to call back home, http://www.didww.com/ (also no affiliation) offers Chinese DIDs (VOIP phone numbers) which you can connect to whatever SIP address you want. Otherwise, outgoing international calls can be expensive and you may (not sure if this still applies) have to register with the police to get international dialing enabled for your SIM.
If you want to make a stand against racism - and by racism I mean systemic racism, the power plus prejudice sense - the first thing you need to realize is that modern racism consists of "code words". It's not about people throwing around the N word - nowadays most people are smart enough to realize if they do that in public they're not going to be very successful staying in power. So instead you have code words. "Kids who listen to rap" is a code word for black youth used when you want to make generalizations about black youth while maintaining plausible deniability. The intended usage is that the person who hears you use the code word will agree with your racist assumptions, and you'll affirm one another's membership in the "club".
Assuming you're white (given your comments, the chances are at least 95%...), the responsible behavior when you hear people using racist code words is to call them out on it and let them know that you have no interest in being part of their club, and that you're offended that they assume racist behavior is okay with you just because you're white.
You spoke of a racist stereotype, compared it to a generalization about executives, and implied that these types of generalizations are morally equivalent. They are not. You then act like you some how "caught me" for picking up on the implied racist stereotype in your original post, as if there's something wrong or "racist" about identifying and calling out racism. This is all textbook behavior. I suggest you google "racism 101", "white privilege", "derailing for dummies", etc.
For what it's worth, I do know people who run businesses, some respectable, some not. Even the ones who are not are still nothing like the scum that are big banking executives.
Your equating of sweeping generalizations about executives with sweeping racist generalizations is a bad analogy and it's offensive. There is no context of systemic oppression whereby executives are denied opportunities and even their basic rights based on sweeping generalizations about their bad behavior; rather they're privileged BECAUSE OF their bad behavior.
Those aren't plugins, they're extension scripts. Opposites in many ways (binary-ware versus runs-from-source, etc.) even though the similarity of names is confusing...
Insightful? Have you ever encountered a single browser plugin that was actually beneficial to the user? Browser plugins are purely a malware vector, Flash included. Even if some were desirable, allowing binary-ware platform-specific extensions to the browser is not a desirable feature. It just locks people who need certain websites into using the platforms/browsers with the necessary plugins.
My favorite source for passive-cooled computers is mini-box.com. They have some great mini-itx boards (both integrated cpu and socketed) as well as ideal enclosures and power supplies for fanless operation. I'm using the board with the Atom D510 and M350 enclosure with M3-ATX power supply.
The plain pico-PSU power supplies are cheaper, but be aware that they pass the 12v rail from the DC input directly to the motherboard/drives and may not work if your 12v brick cannot deliver stable 12v. I like the M3-ATX because it handles wide input voltage range and I can use it directly with a 12v lead-acid battery system and charger and even hot-swap temporary power sources (like 8-10 alkaline D batteries) in as backup while servicing the main battery system.
Stop giving spammers discounts. Instead make it cost the same (or more!) as standard first-class to send junk-mail. Best of all, if this strategy fails, at least you end up saving a few million acres of forests in the process...
With cops, "the other 98%" are nowhere near innocent; they are guilty of covering the asses of the 2% committing atrocities. Although I suspect the numbers are closer to 70/30 or even 50/50.
There is nothing similar about the sexual assault accusations against DSK and Assange. The former is a tragic case of character-assassination by a powerful serial offender against a victim to the point where the prosecution would not follow through with her case. The latter is a lot more questionable and is either a case of a much lesser assault or of character-assassination by governments against a man who was blowing the whistle and not being very careful about where he got his whistle blown...
3-3.5 hours is nothing to brag about. A real laptop gets 10+ hours of battery life and costs about $650. (See Asus UL80VT) It also doesn't fall apart when you carry it in a backpack...
I am a white male who's flown single many times on one-way tickets, domestic and international, in the past 10 years, and the only time I was ever selected for additional security screening was in India and had nothing to do with the US. I don't buy your claim that ethnicity has nothing to do with it.
NetworkManager works perfectly well with Xfce. I've been using them together for several years with no major problems. Wicd is also usable for some people, but I had too many problems with it failing to connect to some WiFi networks I need and the inability to integrate Bluetooth tethering.
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Really, just take any quad band GSM phone and buy a SIM card, and you should be set. If you need 3G speeds you'll probably need to check the specs of the phone and get one on the right 3G bands (US ones won't work but there are plenty of online sources for cheap Chinese phones). If you can get by in Chinese well enough to go shopping, and don't need the phone immediately on arrival, just buy one yourself once you get there. Same goes for the SIM card. I would recommend China Mobile as a carrier. They seem to have the best coverage and they're easy to recharge. China Unicom can get you better rates as of last time I was there, but they kinda suck in other ways.
If you do want to buy your SIM before you go, I highly recommend this site: http://www.china-mobile-phones.com/ Please note I have no affiliation with them, but I have used them extensively in the past. You'll pay a good bit more than buying once you get there, but unlike the other online places to order Chinese phones/SIM cards, they don't charge you outrageous fees for airtime and make you go through them to purchase more air time at 10x markup. You simply get a normal prepaid China Mobile (or China Unicom) SIM card you can recharge yourself any way you like. They also offer online recharge for almost any China Mobile or China Unicom SIM, whether it was purchased through them or not, so you can recharge airtime for other people too. This comes in really handy when you're outside the country and the phone you need to call is "guanji".
Finally, if you want easy call-out to call back home, http://www.didww.com/ (also no affiliation) offers Chinese DIDs (VOIP phone numbers) which you can connect to whatever SIP address you want. Otherwise, outgoing international calls can be expensive and you may (not sure if this still applies) have to register with the police to get international dialing enabled for your SIM.
This is blatantly wrong. Maybe one crappy carrier uses CDMA, but the decent carriers, especially China Mobile, use GSM.
Apparently they also somehow failed to realize it was straight people, not gay people, having gay babies...
And look what happened to that site's domain....
If you want to make a stand against racism - and by racism I mean systemic racism, the power plus prejudice sense - the first thing you need to realize is that modern racism consists of "code words". It's not about people throwing around the N word - nowadays most people are smart enough to realize if they do that in public they're not going to be very successful staying in power. So instead you have code words. "Kids who listen to rap" is a code word for black youth used when you want to make generalizations about black youth while maintaining plausible deniability. The intended usage is that the person who hears you use the code word will agree with your racist assumptions, and you'll affirm one another's membership in the "club". Assuming you're white (given your comments, the chances are at least 95%...), the responsible behavior when you hear people using racist code words is to call them out on it and let them know that you have no interest in being part of their club, and that you're offended that they assume racist behavior is okay with you just because you're white.
You spoke of a racist stereotype, compared it to a generalization about executives, and implied that these types of generalizations are morally equivalent. They are not. You then act like you some how "caught me" for picking up on the implied racist stereotype in your original post, as if there's something wrong or "racist" about identifying and calling out racism. This is all textbook behavior. I suggest you google "racism 101", "white privilege", "derailing for dummies", etc. For what it's worth, I do know people who run businesses, some respectable, some not. Even the ones who are not are still nothing like the scum that are big banking executives.
Your equating of sweeping generalizations about executives with sweeping racist generalizations is a bad analogy and it's offensive. There is no context of systemic oppression whereby executives are denied opportunities and even their basic rights based on sweeping generalizations about their bad behavior; rather they're privileged BECAUSE OF their bad behavior.
Those aren't plugins, they're extension scripts. Opposites in many ways (binary-ware versus runs-from-source, etc.) even though the similarity of names is confusing...
Insightful? Have you ever encountered a single browser plugin that was actually beneficial to the user? Browser plugins are purely a malware vector, Flash included. Even if some were desirable, allowing binary-ware platform-specific extensions to the browser is not a desirable feature. It just locks people who need certain websites into using the platforms/browsers with the necessary plugins.
Now if only the government would grow some balls and make the same condition for government research grants...
My favorite source for passive-cooled computers is mini-box.com. They have some great mini-itx boards (both integrated cpu and socketed) as well as ideal enclosures and power supplies for fanless operation. I'm using the board with the Atom D510 and M350 enclosure with M3-ATX power supply. The plain pico-PSU power supplies are cheaper, but be aware that they pass the 12v rail from the DC input directly to the motherboard/drives and may not work if your 12v brick cannot deliver stable 12v. I like the M3-ATX because it handles wide input voltage range and I can use it directly with a 12v lead-acid battery system and charger and even hot-swap temporary power sources (like 8-10 alkaline D batteries) in as backup while servicing the main battery system.
Stop giving spammers discounts. Instead make it cost the same (or more!) as standard first-class to send junk-mail. Best of all, if this strategy fails, at least you end up saving a few million acres of forests in the process...
With cops, "the other 98%" are nowhere near innocent; they are guilty of covering the asses of the 2% committing atrocities. Although I suspect the numbers are closer to 70/30 or even 50/50.
DSK, not the maid, is the powerful serial offender. If your comment was intended as a joke, it's not funny. It's offensive.
There is nothing similar about the sexual assault accusations against DSK and Assange. The former is a tragic case of character-assassination by a powerful serial offender against a victim to the point where the prosecution would not follow through with her case. The latter is a lot more questionable and is either a case of a much lesser assault or of character-assassination by governments against a man who was blowing the whistle and not being very careful about where he got his whistle blown...
3-3.5 hours is nothing to brag about. A real laptop gets 10+ hours of battery life and costs about $650. (See Asus UL80VT) It also doesn't fall apart when you carry it in a backpack...
Does this mean an end to their crapware-filled laptops and $20 printers subsidized by $80/month DRM'd ink refills?
I am a white male who's flown single many times on one-way tickets, domestic and international, in the past 10 years, and the only time I was ever selected for additional security screening was in India and had nothing to do with the US. I don't buy your claim that ethnicity has nothing to do with it.
NetworkManager works perfectly well with Xfce. I've been using them together for several years with no major problems. Wicd is also usable for some people, but I had too many problems with it failing to connect to some WiFi networks I need and the inability to integrate Bluetooth tethering.