Actually, it might be a good thing. IIRC, numbers require more characters then letters, so it would actually be easier to say "elite" instead of "1337."
"Why should telemarketers want to call people who obviously have no interest in buying their products?"
Because the telemarkters are advertisers and not nesecarily the company they call to tell you about. And the advertising business tends to sell by the number of viewers or listeners or whatever and not by the number of successful sales. They don't care that you don't buy because your number helps them say "We called 10,000 people in your marketing area."
It's like the people who sell spam software. They say that they will help you send e-mail to thousands of potential customers, but carefuly neglect to say how many actual customers you'll get. And the fact that some businesses are just that gullible allows these slimey middle-men to stay in business (and why advertising mediums that simply don't work are still in use today).
But it won't stop the 50,000 non-profit debt consolidating people who want to "help" you pay for the lawyers, insurance, ambulance trip, etc...
Personally, I feel there's a problem with the current do-not-call list because of who is exempted: non-profit ponzi schemes and political campaigns, arguably the worst offenders of the bunch. I am of the opinion that, so long as these groups are allowed to slip through these do-not-call lists, the law on the books declares some speed more "free" than others and therefore violates the first amendment on its face.
Actually, my ultimate dream is an opt-in mentality instead of an opt-out.
"Nintendo rules the market, and it's going to be hard to beat them." but these were some of the same comments that were being made in 1995 when the PSX was introduced. the specs on these thing are unbelievable."
We're not talking about the console market, we're talking about the handheld one. Very different market, very different rules.
For example, you're basing your prediction on Sony's tech specs alone. But you're completely forgetting that, in the past decade or so, the Game Boy has never had the technological edge (with the possible exception of the GBA).
Lynx. Game Gear. Turbo Express. Nomad. Tiger.com. WonderSwan. WonderSwan Color. NeoGeo Pocket Color. Each and every one of these had better hardware than Nintendo's product at the time. And each and every one of them was brutally and severely bitch-slapped out of the market (and out of the continent in some cases). And I only use the term "bitch-slap" because I can't think of a term strong enough to describe just what Nintendo did to these poor, miserable bastards.
So it can play movies. Big whoop. Sega made a TV tuner for their Game Gear. Until Sony's answer to Pokemon comes out for the PSP, I won't expect it to last more than a year. The same Pokemon that not even Final Fantasy X has been able to touch.
Why the fuck must people use silly units like "milliamp-hours?" Is "about 8000 Coulombs" too cumbersome to say? The crazy Frogs and their SI gave us derivative units for a reason, people! Use them!
"But the conversion is too difficult to do in my head!" First off, if you can't multiply 3600 and 2.2 in your head, you don't even belong on Slashdot. They made remidial math for people like you. We're not exactly talking prime numbers here.
Secondly, what good is having batteries rated for their charge if you're not going to use said batteries in your TI-92+? Hell, you should be able to write a program to tell you exactly how many electron-volts you have in left in the battery!
I mean, at least "kilowatt-hours" has the excuse of being a completely different order of magnitude as Joules. Heck, even "Ampere-hour" makes more sense.
"you basicly have Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH), and Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd)."
No, nobody makes NiCd batteries any more. Aside from the problems of disposing them (they're toxic), but they don't even put out the same voltage as like-sized alkalines. All the cylindrical ones put out 1.2 V instead of 1.5 and their "9-volt" is really only 7.2 (1.2 * 6)
Personally, unless the device I use requires a lot of Watts (ie. digital cameras), I swear by the rechargable alkalines Rayovac sells. They have the same kind of Volt/Joule curve that normal alkalines have and they can hold a charge for forever and a day (they're sold fully charged, if that tells you anything). NiMHs are good for some things, but I want my calculator or GBA batteries to last more than a day.
"It's much easier and more profitable to be honest."
Only in the long term. Other costs of fraud (like the lawyers you mentioned) don't come into the picture until months or years after you got your first ill-gotten gains.
Sure, it's ultimately cheaper in the long term, but somehow I don't think the average day trader gives a damn about long-term profitability...
"If you want to be eligible to receive transplanted organs should you ever need them, you must be a registered organ donor."
Except I'd imagine a lot of the people who need organs don't have much in the way of usable organs themselves. Or are we so desparate that we'll take organs from smoking alchoholics?
"I'm sure that an India or Taiwan would be willing to take it on for less than $500 million."
Why would they? The PRC/India space rivalry isn't so much about exploring space as much as breaking into the lucrative satellite business. Things that look down are far more profitable than things that look up, at least in the relatively short term.
(BTW, Taiwan doesn't have a real space program outside of what the US lets them launch from Cape Canaveral. You meant mainland PRC.)
"If you care about your health (Ok, I guess there are suicidal people in the world) you shouldn't smoke."
"Yet, people still do it. Why? Think about it."
Are you trying to imply the recipient was suicidal? If he was, then that's a nauseating waste of perfectly good organs that could have gone to someone who wasn't in such a rush to hurry along their demise. After all, it's not like he's going to be leaving any usable organs behind.
"If you understood more about what all was involved in people smoking despite the risks to their health, it would be unlikely that you would have the opinion you do now."
Please try to enlighten us. I personally agree with the parent poster and, short of illteracy (unable to read the Surgeon General's warnings that have been on the damned things since before most of us were even born), fail to see why these people deserve pity.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, it might be a good thing. IIRC, numbers require more characters then letters, so it would actually be easier to say "elite" instead of "1337."
"With a radio, you don't have to pay for air time,"
Keep your voice down! ClearChannel might hear you...
"There will be a tremedous job loss, and it will be lost jobs for the poorest and least-educated people."
... that it will be unemploying lots of middle-class (by their standards) Indians instead.
"Why should telemarketers want to call people who obviously have no interest in buying their products?"
Because the telemarkters are advertisers and not nesecarily the company they call to tell you about. And the advertising business tends to sell by the number of viewers or listeners or whatever and not by the number of successful sales. They don't care that you don't buy because your number helps them say "We called 10,000 people in your marketing area."
It's like the people who sell spam software. They say that they will help you send e-mail to thousands of potential customers, but carefuly neglect to say how many actual customers you'll get. And the fact that some businesses are just that gullible allows these slimey middle-men to stay in business (and why advertising mediums that simply don't work are still in use today).
But it won't stop the 50,000 non-profit debt consolidating people who want to "help" you pay for the lawyers, insurance, ambulance trip, etc...
Personally, I feel there's a problem with the current do-not-call list because of who is exempted: non-profit ponzi schemes and political campaigns, arguably the worst offenders of the bunch. I am of the opinion that, so long as these groups are allowed to slip through these do-not-call lists, the law on the books declares some speed more "free" than others and therefore violates the first amendment on its face.
Actually, my ultimate dream is an opt-in mentality instead of an opt-out.
"Nintendo rules the market, and it's going to be hard to beat them." but these were some of the same comments that were being made in 1995 when the PSX was introduced. the specs on these thing are unbelievable."
We're not talking about the console market, we're talking about the handheld one. Very different market, very different rules.
For example, you're basing your prediction on Sony's tech specs alone. But you're completely forgetting that, in the past decade or so, the Game Boy has never had the technological edge (with the possible exception of the GBA).
Lynx. Game Gear. Turbo Express. Nomad. Tiger.com. WonderSwan. WonderSwan Color. NeoGeo Pocket Color. Each and every one of these had better hardware than Nintendo's product at the time. And each and every one of them was brutally and severely bitch-slapped out of the market (and out of the continent in some cases). And I only use the term "bitch-slap" because I can't think of a term strong enough to describe just what Nintendo did to these poor, miserable bastards.
So it can play movies. Big whoop. Sega made a TV tuner for their Game Gear. Until Sony's answer to Pokemon comes out for the PSP, I won't expect it to last more than a year. The same Pokemon that not even Final Fantasy X has been able to touch.
"ConnectediToaster000034433003482774464 is just as bad as 3ffe:ffff:0100:f101:0210:a4ff:fee3:9566"
Now there's a question: if we all switch to IPv6, will we all have to then worry about running out of MAC addresses?
Maybe IPv6 is really just a big conspiracy by Linksys to get more homes to buy routers...
"about 2200 mAh"
Why the fuck must people use silly units like "milliamp-hours?" Is "about 8000 Coulombs" too cumbersome to say? The crazy Frogs and their SI gave us derivative units for a reason, people! Use them!
"But the conversion is too difficult to do in my head!" First off, if you can't multiply 3600 and 2.2 in your head, you don't even belong on Slashdot. They made remidial math for people like you. We're not exactly talking prime numbers here.
Secondly, what good is having batteries rated for their charge if you're not going to use said batteries in your TI-92+? Hell, you should be able to write a program to tell you exactly how many electron-volts you have in left in the battery!
I mean, at least "kilowatt-hours" has the excuse of being a completely different order of magnitude as Joules. Heck, even "Ampere-hour" makes more sense.
"you basicly have Nickel-Metal Hydride (NiMH), and Nickel-Cadmium (NiCd)."
No, nobody makes NiCd batteries any more. Aside from the problems of disposing them (they're toxic), but they don't even put out the same voltage as like-sized alkalines. All the cylindrical ones put out 1.2 V instead of 1.5 and their "9-volt" is really only 7.2 (1.2 * 6)
Personally, unless the device I use requires a lot of Watts (ie. digital cameras), I swear by the rechargable alkalines Rayovac sells. They have the same kind of Volt/Joule curve that normal alkalines have and they can hold a charge for forever and a day (they're sold fully charged, if that tells you anything). NiMHs are good for some things, but I want my calculator or GBA batteries to last more than a day.
"and the bits it consumes are usually a lot less than reading Slashdot."
Now are you talking about the message alone, or the Flash ad the message tries to pull from a website?
"what took IBM so long to do this? Or are their lawyers that slow?"
They get their kicks by watching their victims wiggle and squirm around a bit before finally squishing them.
Now if only the DOD would get around to putting that kind of technology into their smart bombs. :)
"The Atacam desert is the driest place on earth counting humidity."
Humidity? In Antarctica? It's kinda hard to keep water in any phase more energetic than solid when you're dealing with tempuratures beyond -40.
" Like the miranda stuff,"
Yeah, only us barbaric heathens would want the accused to know their rights in tricky situations. WTF?
"12 people which know nothing of the law"
You know, if you don't want a jury trial, you don't have to have one.
" If the game has done so much to steal his identity, then why has he waited two years since the game was released to sue?"
Maybe because he's not a gamer and doesn't spend a few hours a week perusing on-line reviews or looking at what the local EB is selling?
"It's much easier and more profitable to be honest."
Only in the long term. Other costs of fraud (like the lawyers you mentioned) don't come into the picture until months or years after you got your first ill-gotten gains.
Sure, it's ultimately cheaper in the long term, but somehow I don't think the average day trader gives a damn about long-term profitability...
"39cents + 3cents/minute, anywhere in the US to anywhere in the US or western Europa ."
Jesus Christ! Only $0.39 to talk to someone on a Jovian moon? Why hasn't NASA signed up for this?
I guess they make up their money by charging you for the minutes taken up by the light lag.
"If you want to be eligible to receive transplanted organs should you ever need them, you must be a registered organ donor."
Except I'd imagine a lot of the people who need organs don't have much in the way of usable organs themselves. Or are we so desparate that we'll take organs from smoking alchoholics?
"I'm sure that an India or
Taiwan would be willing to take it on
for less than $500 million."
Why would they? The PRC/India space rivalry isn't so much about exploring space as much as breaking into the lucrative satellite business. Things that look down are far more profitable than things that look up, at least in the relatively short term.
(BTW, Taiwan doesn't have a real space program outside of what the US lets them launch from Cape Canaveral. You meant mainland PRC.)
"(6) knowing this is NASA, it'd take a decade to get that sort of things built and launched."
Hey, they can do it! Just look at the way the space shuttle was rolled out early enough to boost Skylab back into a stable orbit!
Oh, wait...
Are you trying to imply the recipient was suicidal? If he was, then that's a nauseating waste of perfectly good organs that could have gone to someone who wasn't in such a rush to hurry along their demise. After all, it's not like he's going to be leaving any usable organs behind.
"If you understood more about what all was involved in people smoking despite the risks to their health, it would be unlikely that you would have the opinion you do now."
Please try to enlighten us. I personally agree with the parent poster and, short of illteracy (unable to read the Surgeon General's warnings that have been on the damned things since before most of us were even born), fail to see why these people deserve pity.
Welcome to Slashdot, where unsubstantiated hyperbole is labelled "insightful!"
"For the simple reason that it'll be the only open handheld games console."
Who cares about the design philosophy if the game still suck?
Make the fake cop a "her" instead of a "him" and have said cop selling pr0n, and I wouldn't mind in the least. :)
Fine. You go off and try to Slashdot something on a network where you can't even find what you're trying to Slashdot. :)