Yes, Soul Calibur 2, being not a Nintendo game, falls outside of that range. THPS4 has noticeable load times, because they make a point of specifying "Loading".
I played a bit of Pikmin, and don't remember having an issue with load times there, but then again, I didn't play a whole it.
Nintendo develops their games to try and hide the loading times as much as possible. They're still there, if you look well - the lifts in Metroid Prime, for example. But they for the most part are not that bad.
It's a lot better than sitting and staring at "Loading..." like so many games have, because they couldn't be bothered to find ways to reduce them or blend them in.
Or perhaps the long load times on the other consoles cause you to fall asleep so you don't notice the wait, but the Gamecube ones aren't that long so you stay awake for them?
Agreed - science fiction does not have to be about the "impossible". In fact, such things are more in the realm of fantasy than SF. I like SF where things are definitely conceivable, where you can see a day where the things described are possible. Part of that is because it can insipre imagination and thought about what other things are possible from that point.
Accuracy is important, though definitely, as you state, not to be the only criteria. No matter how accurate and forward thinking the science is in a book, it won't save a weak story. And for those of us wanting SF and not fantasy, the reverse is also somewhat true - a good story does not make something with horribly inaccurate science any more qualified as SF. Though you usually don't see great stories with poor science, because people willing to put the effort into writing a quality book are going to take the time to learn about what they're talking about.
I like SF that posits advances that seem appropriate in the time range, and runs with whatever comes out of it no matter how odd some of those details may be. And don't ignore results that seem logical because you don't want it to affect your story - no matter what kind of "explanation" you can come up with. If you have people living in a world where nanotechnology has enabled people to cure cancer by fixing the DNA in the cells, don't pretend that society has decided as a whole not to use that to extend lifespans, for example, because that would complicate your story ideas.
Many, many things remain "beyond possible" for humans. Immortality? Faster-than-light travel? Societies that do not wage war?
I would think that anything you might want to classify as "beyond possible" would be something that we don't know now, we don't know how to do it, and we don't know how to get to the point where perhaps we could figure out how to do it.
Faster than light travel is currently one of those things that fits into "beyond possible". Other examples would be gates to other universes (or even being able to detect the existences of such).
The other two examples you give I do not think necessarily fit, though it depends on how you'd want to define "immortality". If you mean guaranteed to live forever, then yes, because of end-of-the-universe stuff and all that. However, if you mean unbounded lifespans, then that's in the possible area, because there appear to be means to get to that point. And societies without war are definitely in the possible area.
It's not the lack of imagination as much as the increasing difficulty in extrapolating into the future. Things are becoming more and more opaque.
Science Fiction requires the science to be believable in some manner to be any good. Whether that means following what we know, or just having advancements that seem to follow from what he have and where things are going. The Foundation Series, for example, a lot of that seemed logical extensions from things at the time. Of course, now we see gaps in it, areas where science has already beat out the books, but still.
Today, there is so much potential for change in the future, and not a long ways off, but much closer. Change that is possible to imagine can alter things enough to be unrecognizable. For example, the idea of the singularity seems to be building - maybe slowly, but more and more people seem to think it's possible to reach the point where things start changing incredibly quickly. If you have strong AI and full-on nanotechnology, so much can be done that even basic imagining of the changes make it clear it would be an alien world. How would you write about a world where people change bodies and forms at will, where you can live lifetimes inside computers in the space of a week, where perhaps you have for all practical purposes an unbounded lifespan? You can't, not with any quality.
I've actually seen somewhere where a Science Fiction author was complaining that science is catching up fast, and it gets harder and harder to see into the future to come up with ideas while still making it believable.
Perhaps the turn to fantasy is that due to the obstacles, quality science fiction is getting hard to write, leading to a higher amount of crap which turns people off.
Umm... Atari had nothing to do with those games. Pac-Man was Namco, licensed by Midway in the US. Joust was Williams.
Atari was Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Tempest, Centipede, Millipede, Star Wars, Gravitar, and others. Many of which still have incredible play value today.
No. Atari was split apart, with "Atari" referring to the home computer and console part, while "Atari Games" referred to the arcade division that was bought up and passed around and such for years.
After the Jaguar, which died due to a combination of lack of development tools making development difficult on the unusual architechure, weak third-party support, and mainly the horrible managment of the Tramiels (they hired someone to turn the company around, who promptly quit when Jack Tramiel continued to insist that he approve every Fed Ex package sent out). They merged with a low-quality disk drive manufacturer, and I'm not sure what happened to them after that.
Atari Games became part of Time Warner, who sold them to Midway at some point, and they ended up eventually under Infogrames which them became part of Hasbro, who seems to want to be using the name again.
Honestly, I'd love to see them pick up all the rights and property and whatever for all the Atari home stuff and combine it all back together again. Might help keep the name alive.
Look at Atari, they reigned supreme but then fell off the face of the planet with the 5600 and that stigma stuck with them as can be seen by the Jaguar.
Ummm... there was no Atari 5600.
There was the VCS, known as the 2600 later on. Then the 5200, and the 7800. Along with the 400, 800, and 1200 home computers. There was also a post 7800 system that came out after the NES, but didn't seem to do much - I do remember seeing commercials advertising that system, comparing the NES robot to the included light gun with the Atari system, and that it expanded into a computer or something like that.
I am completely fucking sick and tired over the way everyone trots this out as an example of how quick people are to sue, when all that person is doing is demonstrating their ignorance. Do you know the facts of the case? Do you know what happened, or are you going off of the fact that you heard someone sued because they spilled coffee on themselves.
The woman spilled a cup of McDonalds coffee on her groin. It didn't just hurt. It didn't just burn a bit.
She had to spend a significant amount of time in the hospital due to THIRD DEGREE BURNS, and required multiple skin grafts. They also found that McDonalds was serving their coffee significantly hotter than coffee is usually served. After all, it would have to be extremely hot to burn that badly. There was no reason to expect McDonalds coffee to be BURN THE SKIN RIGHT OFF YOUR BODY hot, but it was.
If you bought a beverage, spilled it on yourself, and as a result had to spend a week in the hospital, and had no prior knowledge that the beverage was that dangerous, would you think "silly me, I should have known this drink would hurt so bad even though I've never heard of this happening to anyone else", or would you think "how can they do something so dangerous without warning people?" I vote for the latter.
It's amazing how many people still believe that the problem with freedom is that everyone has it. They'd never admit it, but they seem to want to secretly go back to the days when only the landowners could vote, replacing landowners with some other qualification that includes themselves.
For years, the console world has been quick to jump on typos and hearsay as the truth and spread it around. There seem to be ridiculous levels of advocacy when it comes to them, and peopel will spout anything to support console A and attack console B. Heck, even the gaming magazines have jumped on board often - anyone remember how often one of the mags talked about how the Atari Jaguar was not really 64 bit? Heck, one claimed that they arrived by that number by just adding up how many bits each processor was, even though it was a blatant lie.
The best rule when buying a console is to assume that the only games that will ever be available are the ones currently out. If you're happy with what you can buy now, then what does it matter if another one never gets sold? That won't make the games you do have less fun - unless you let it.
I want to see more great Gamecube games, but I've got enough I like that I could easily handle them killing the entire Cube now. (which, fortunately, won't happen)
Your average movie DVD costs about, say $20. Your average music CD costs about, say $15. Given that the DVD probably has at least two hours of things to watch, and the CD is maybe an hour, it seems like the DVD is a better deal.
But consider how much you listen to a CD you like as opposed to a DVD you like. I know I've easily listened to some CDs a hundred times (such as REM's Automatic for the People), while I don't have a single DVD that I've watched even 20 times. The nature of music allows it to be enjoyed repeatedly much more than with a movie. You have to take into account long-term usage.
If you listen to CDs only a few times, then well, you're buying the wrong ones.
It also allows a lot more comics that are far from mainstream in their topic, but are well done, to survive with audiences of varying sizes. Yes, I agree, there are plenty of amateur comics around, plenty that haven't been updated in months (most of Keenspace's comics fit that), and so on.
But every once in a while one does well - such as Venus Envy. Perhaps only a few hundred fans, but very dedicated. Heck, the author needed a grand to make a move across the country, and the fans had no problem donating to her.
I wonder how many little webcomics with small groups of dedicated fans there are out there, especially as compared to failed webcomics.
1.Batteries are shyte. Even when brand new and fully charged you're lucky to get a full day of usage.
Not the new ones. I have an i90 here, with a used battery from the iDEN test lab (regular production battery), and it can easily last me an entire weekend left on. If I plug it in every night (which I usually do), I never have to worry about emptying the battery. Even with plenty of use here at work, I've had my phone on for weeks on end.
3. The tower spacing for Nextel is crap.
Agreed - this is probably the biggest problem with Nextel's service. We used to have service problems here inside Motorola, until they fixed that.
I wouuld like to see some interopability between the PTT on the Verizon phones and the Nextels. Overall Verizon getting into this market will hopefully bring more competitive pricing to the PTT market in general.
If there was ever any interoperability, you'd probably see significant reductions in the private call speed and quality when calling between systems. There are tight requirements on call setup and message sending times within the system, which is one of the reasons that things usually work so fast - it needs to be significantly faster than an interconnect call to be useful.
Dispatch calls are not directly phone-to-phone. They go through Nextel's system just like a phone call, as they have to locate the other person, determine if you can initiate the call and they can receive it, record billing information, etc. But the infrastructure does have separate boxes that handle setting up interconnect calls and dispatch calls, and dispatch calls are completely internal to the system. Perhaps Nextel's link to the regular phone system was down at the time?
Considering the number of candidates, what are the odds the new governor of Cali isn't going to have enough people against them to do another recall vote? Unless there's a landslide, whoever gets elected will face an opposition that's seen what a recall can do, and will likely be willing to go ahead with it.
We may see California's state government collapse into chaos as recall after recall occurs, each side wanting revenge on the other, until something happens that prevents further recall votes.
I really wish there was a way I could sign a contract that says "I will not use the socialist services provided by the gov't and I refuse to pay for them" and not go to the pen for tax evasion.
Ok, fair 'nuff.
You pay no more taxes, you get no more gov't services. Of course, you realize, that a bunch of us are going to come and beat you to a pulp and steal your land and your belongings, and the police will laugh since you're not paying for their services anymore. Or maybe we'll just set your house on fire, and the fire department will be on hand to protect the belongings of taxpayers.
Well, consider if the universe is actually a closed form like say a taurus
All of a sudden I got this horrible image of a universe trapped inside a mediocre American automobile, galaxies visible through the windows, stars and nebulae coming out the exhaust.
So does that make it so all that we have to do to make the universe no longer closed is roll down the windows? Or is that the problem, because the black holes have caused a short in the electrical system and the power windows can never be opened?
(Oh, I believe the word you were looking for was torus)
Until now, Motorola's iDEN system has been the only system that supports the walkie-talkie style calls.
Verizon making this available hurts Motorola, because they're not going to be using the Motorola iDEN infrastructure - which has been their most profitable sector over the past couple years. While all those layoffs were going on inside Moto, pretty much none of them came from iDEN.
And the system competing with iDEN will be using Motorola phones. I guess it's still better for Moto than NOT using Moto phones, but still.
The "xxx" indicates the urban area. Unless you're calling someone in another city via private call (the official iDEN term for it), you don't need this.
The "yyy" indicates fleet. Early on with the system, you could only private call others on the same fleet. Well before they realized how many people would be on the system. If you have your phone as part of, say, a company, then you'll likely all be on the same fleet (unless it is a LOT of people), and you probably won't need to use this either.
Actually, call setup time is pretty much the same for all of them, between 5 to 8 seconds.
That's wrong. Completely.
Calls between CITIES are required to have a call setup time of significantly less than that. And those calls are longer to set up than ones in the same city.
Call setup time and cell switching reconnect times are tightly watched during testing, and have to meet strict requirements. And the ones doing the testing are more than happy to log a defect against the system when the times exceed the requirements. And Nextel wouldn't be happy if the system didn't meet those requirements either - I suspect they're stated in the contracts signed between the two.
Perhaps something like this could be used for Slashdot. Before posting a story to the front page, the congnitive system can read the story, and then make all the obvious comments such as adding Simpsons/Futurama quotes, comparing it to one or another movie, and finding ways to attack Microsoft regarding the story. Then it can be posted, and we don't have to read the same 4-5 comments 50 times throughout the story.
Of course, if that was added, what would be left for the people on Slashdot to talk about?
I'm just waiting until they develop the first weapons that are powerful enough to break apart the planet. Then everyone will want one, and before long, at any moment, someone could destroy all of humanity. And most likely there are people who would do so if given the opportunity.
It saddens me that so many people look at others, and seem only interested in killing them or locking them up, and will spend ridiculous amounts of time, effort, and money to do such things. But consider trying to help people, to educate them, and suddenly there's no money available and no interest in doing so.
I'm starting to realize that we'll never all be able to get along - because there are plenty of people who don't want such a thing to happen. And so many more that don't seem to care either way.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes, Soul Calibur 2, being not a Nintendo game, falls outside of that range. THPS4 has noticeable load times, because they make a point of specifying "Loading".
I played a bit of Pikmin, and don't remember having an issue with load times there, but then again, I didn't play a whole it.
And SM Sunshine, well, no idea about that one.
Excuse me?
Nintendo develops their games to try and hide the loading times as much as possible. They're still there, if you look well - the lifts in Metroid Prime, for example. But they for the most part are not that bad.
It's a lot better than sitting and staring at "Loading..." like so many games have, because they couldn't be bothered to find ways to reduce them or blend them in.
Or perhaps the long load times on the other consoles cause you to fall asleep so you don't notice the wait, but the Gamecube ones aren't that long so you stay awake for them?
Agreed - science fiction does not have to be about the "impossible". In fact, such things are more in the realm of fantasy than SF. I like SF where things are definitely conceivable, where you can see a day where the things described are possible. Part of that is because it can insipre imagination and thought about what other things are possible from that point.
Accuracy is important, though definitely, as you state, not to be the only criteria. No matter how accurate and forward thinking the science is in a book, it won't save a weak story. And for those of us wanting SF and not fantasy, the reverse is also somewhat true - a good story does not make something with horribly inaccurate science any more qualified as SF. Though you usually don't see great stories with poor science, because people willing to put the effort into writing a quality book are going to take the time to learn about what they're talking about.
I like SF that posits advances that seem appropriate in the time range, and runs with whatever comes out of it no matter how odd some of those details may be. And don't ignore results that seem logical because you don't want it to affect your story - no matter what kind of "explanation" you can come up with. If you have people living in a world where nanotechnology has enabled people to cure cancer by fixing the DNA in the cells, don't pretend that society has decided as a whole not to use that to extend lifespans, for example, because that would complicate your story ideas.
>> But in this century, what is beyond possible?
Many, many things remain "beyond possible" for humans. Immortality? Faster-than-light travel? Societies that do not wage war?
I would think that anything you might want to classify as "beyond possible" would be something that we don't know now, we don't know how to do it, and we don't know how to get to the point where perhaps we could figure out how to do it.
Faster than light travel is currently one of those things that fits into "beyond possible". Other examples would be gates to other universes (or even being able to detect the existences of such).
The other two examples you give I do not think necessarily fit, though it depends on how you'd want to define "immortality". If you mean guaranteed to live forever, then yes, because of end-of-the-universe stuff and all that. However, if you mean unbounded lifespans, then that's in the possible area, because there appear to be means to get to that point. And societies without war are definitely in the possible area.
It's not the lack of imagination as much as the increasing difficulty in extrapolating into the future. Things are becoming more and more opaque.
Science Fiction requires the science to be believable in some manner to be any good. Whether that means following what we know, or just having advancements that seem to follow from what he have and where things are going. The Foundation Series, for example, a lot of that seemed logical extensions from things at the time. Of course, now we see gaps in it, areas where science has already beat out the books, but still.
Today, there is so much potential for change in the future, and not a long ways off, but much closer. Change that is possible to imagine can alter things enough to be unrecognizable. For example, the idea of the singularity seems to be building - maybe slowly, but more and more people seem to think it's possible to reach the point where things start changing incredibly quickly. If you have strong AI and full-on nanotechnology, so much can be done that even basic imagining of the changes make it clear it would be an alien world. How would you write about a world where people change bodies and forms at will, where you can live lifetimes inside computers in the space of a week, where perhaps you have for all practical purposes an unbounded lifespan? You can't, not with any quality.
I've actually seen somewhere where a Science Fiction author was complaining that science is catching up fast, and it gets harder and harder to see into the future to come up with ideas while still making it believable.
Perhaps the turn to fantasy is that due to the obstacles, quality science fiction is getting hard to write, leading to a higher amount of crap which turns people off.
Umm... Atari had nothing to do with those games. Pac-Man was Namco, licensed by Midway in the US. Joust was Williams.
Atari was Asteroids, Asteroids Deluxe, Tempest, Centipede, Millipede, Star Wars, Gravitar, and others. Many of which still have incredible play value today.
No. Atari was split apart, with "Atari" referring to the home computer and console part, while "Atari Games" referred to the arcade division that was bought up and passed around and such for years.
After the Jaguar, which died due to a combination of lack of development tools making development difficult on the unusual architechure, weak third-party support, and mainly the horrible managment of the Tramiels (they hired someone to turn the company around, who promptly quit when Jack Tramiel continued to insist that he approve every Fed Ex package sent out). They merged with a low-quality disk drive manufacturer, and I'm not sure what happened to them after that.
Atari Games became part of Time Warner, who sold them to Midway at some point, and they ended up eventually under Infogrames which them became part of Hasbro, who seems to want to be using the name again.
Honestly, I'd love to see them pick up all the rights and property and whatever for all the Atari home stuff and combine it all back together again. Might help keep the name alive.
Look at Atari, they reigned supreme but then fell off the face of the planet with the 5600 and that stigma stuck with them as can be seen by the Jaguar.
Ummm... there was no Atari 5600.
There was the VCS, known as the 2600 later on. Then the 5200, and the 7800. Along with the 400, 800, and 1200 home computers. There was also a post 7800 system that came out after the NES, but didn't seem to do much - I do remember seeing commercials advertising that system, comparing the NES robot to the included light gun with the Atari system, and that it expanded into a computer or something like that.
We have people suing over spilled coffee,
I am completely fucking sick and tired over the way everyone trots this out as an example of how quick people are to sue, when all that person is doing is demonstrating their ignorance. Do you know the facts of the case? Do you know what happened, or are you going off of the fact that you heard someone sued because they spilled coffee on themselves.
The woman spilled a cup of McDonalds coffee on her groin. It didn't just hurt. It didn't just burn a bit.
She had to spend a significant amount of time in the hospital due to THIRD DEGREE BURNS, and required multiple skin grafts. They also found that McDonalds was serving their coffee significantly hotter than coffee is usually served. After all, it would have to be extremely hot to burn that badly. There was no reason to expect McDonalds coffee to be BURN THE SKIN RIGHT OFF YOUR BODY hot, but it was.
If you bought a beverage, spilled it on yourself, and as a result had to spend a week in the hospital, and had no prior knowledge that the beverage was that dangerous, would you think "silly me, I should have known this drink would hurt so bad even though I've never heard of this happening to anyone else", or would you think "how can they do something so dangerous without warning people?" I vote for the latter.
It's amazing how many people still believe that the problem with freedom is that everyone has it. They'd never admit it, but they seem to want to secretly go back to the days when only the landowners could vote, replacing landowners with some other qualification that includes themselves.
Considering I'm female, I doubt I'd get any value out of one of those. :)
I don't get guys and their porn...
For years, the console world has been quick to jump on typos and hearsay as the truth and spread it around. There seem to be ridiculous levels of advocacy when it comes to them, and peopel will spout anything to support console A and attack console B. Heck, even the gaming magazines have jumped on board often - anyone remember how often one of the mags talked about how the Atari Jaguar was not really 64 bit? Heck, one claimed that they arrived by that number by just adding up how many bits each processor was, even though it was a blatant lie.
The best rule when buying a console is to assume that the only games that will ever be available are the ones currently out. If you're happy with what you can buy now, then what does it matter if another one never gets sold? That won't make the games you do have less fun - unless you let it.
I want to see more great Gamecube games, but I've got enough I like that I could easily handle them killing the entire Cube now. (which, fortunately, won't happen)
I'm going to disagree with that sentiment.
Your average movie DVD costs about, say $20. Your average music CD costs about, say $15. Given that the DVD probably has at least two hours of things to watch, and the CD is maybe an hour, it seems like the DVD is a better deal.
But consider how much you listen to a CD you like as opposed to a DVD you like. I know I've easily listened to some CDs a hundred times (such as REM's Automatic for the People), while I don't have a single DVD that I've watched even 20 times.
The nature of music allows it to be enjoyed repeatedly much more than with a movie. You have to take into account long-term usage.
If you listen to CDs only a few times, then well, you're buying the wrong ones.
It also allows a lot more comics that are far from mainstream in their topic, but are well done, to survive with audiences of varying sizes. Yes, I agree, there are plenty of amateur comics around, plenty that haven't been updated in months (most of Keenspace's comics fit that), and so on.
But every once in a while one does well - such as Venus Envy. Perhaps only a few hundred fans, but very dedicated. Heck, the author needed a grand to make a move across the country, and the fans had no problem donating to her.
I wonder how many little webcomics with small groups of dedicated fans there are out there, especially as compared to failed webcomics.
I was just about to post about this - I'm suprised you were the first to mention it. It's a rather serious goof.
:)
Either that, or I'm a dorkette.
Don't answer that.
1.Batteries are shyte. Even when brand new and fully charged you're lucky to get a full day of usage.
Not the new ones. I have an i90 here, with a used battery from the iDEN test lab (regular production battery), and it can easily last me an entire weekend left on. If I plug it in every night (which I usually do), I never have to worry about emptying the battery. Even with plenty of use here at work, I've had my phone on for weeks on end.
3. The tower spacing for Nextel is crap.
Agreed - this is probably the biggest problem with Nextel's service. We used to have service problems here inside Motorola, until they fixed that.
I wouuld like to see some interopability between the PTT on the Verizon phones and the Nextels. Overall Verizon getting into this market will hopefully bring more competitive pricing to the PTT market in general.
If there was ever any interoperability, you'd probably see significant reductions in the private call speed and quality when calling between systems. There are tight requirements on call setup and message sending times within the system, which is one of the reasons that things usually work so fast - it needs to be significantly faster than an interconnect call to be useful.
Dispatch calls are not directly phone-to-phone. They go through Nextel's system just like a phone call, as they have to locate the other person, determine if you can initiate the call and they can receive it, record billing information, etc. But the infrastructure does have separate boxes that handle setting up interconnect calls and dispatch calls, and dispatch calls are completely internal to the system. Perhaps Nextel's link to the regular phone system was down at the time?
Considering the number of candidates, what are the odds the new governor of Cali isn't going to have enough people against them to do another recall vote? Unless there's a landslide, whoever gets elected will face an opposition that's seen what a recall can do, and will likely be willing to go ahead with it.
We may see California's state government collapse into chaos as recall after recall occurs, each side wanting revenge on the other, until something happens that prevents further recall votes.
I think we're only seeing the start of things...
I really wish there was a way I could sign a contract that says "I will not use the socialist services provided by the gov't and I refuse to pay for them" and not go to the pen for tax evasion.
Ok, fair 'nuff.
You pay no more taxes, you get no more gov't services. Of course, you realize, that a bunch of us are going to come and beat you to a pulp and steal your land and your belongings, and the police will laugh since you're not paying for their services anymore. Or maybe we'll just set your house on fire, and the fire department will be on hand to protect the belongings of taxpayers.
Well, consider if the universe is actually a closed form like say a taurus
All of a sudden I got this horrible image of a universe trapped inside a mediocre American automobile, galaxies visible through the windows, stars and nebulae coming out the exhaust.
So does that make it so all that we have to do to make the universe no longer closed is roll down the windows? Or is that the problem, because the black holes have caused a short in the electrical system and the power windows can never be opened?
(Oh, I believe the word you were looking for was torus)
Until now, Motorola's iDEN system has been the only system that supports the walkie-talkie style calls.
Verizon making this available hurts Motorola, because they're not going to be using the Motorola iDEN infrastructure - which has been their most profitable sector over the past couple years. While all those layoffs were going on inside Moto, pretty much none of them came from iDEN.
And the system competing with iDEN will be using Motorola phones. I guess it's still better for Moto than NOT using Moto phones, but still.
xxx*yy*zzzz
Quick decode for those curious.
The "xxx" indicates the urban area. Unless you're calling someone in another city via private call (the official iDEN term for it), you don't need this.
The "yyy" indicates fleet. Early on with the system, you could only private call others on the same fleet. Well before they realized how many people would be on the system. If you have your phone as part of, say, a company, then you'll likely all be on the same fleet (unless it is a LOT of people), and you probably won't need to use this either.
The "zzzz" is your individual private id.
Actually, call setup time is pretty much the same for all of them, between 5 to 8 seconds.
That's wrong. Completely.
Calls between CITIES are required to have a call setup time of significantly less than that. And those calls are longer to set up than ones in the same city.
Call setup time and cell switching reconnect times are tightly watched during testing, and have to meet strict requirements. And the ones doing the testing are more than happy to log a defect against the system when the times exceed the requirements. And Nextel wouldn't be happy if the system didn't meet those requirements either - I suspect they're stated in the contracts signed between the two.
Perhaps something like this could be used for Slashdot. Before posting a story to the front page, the congnitive system can read the story, and then make all the obvious comments such as adding Simpsons/Futurama quotes, comparing it to one or another movie, and finding ways to attack Microsoft regarding the story. Then it can be posted, and we don't have to read the same 4-5 comments 50 times throughout the story.
Of course, if that was added, what would be left for the people on Slashdot to talk about?
I'm just waiting until they develop the first weapons that are powerful enough to break apart the planet. Then everyone will want one, and before long, at any moment, someone could destroy all of humanity. And most likely there are people who would do so if given the opportunity.
It saddens me that so many people look at others, and seem only interested in killing them or locking them up, and will spend ridiculous amounts of time, effort, and money to do such things. But consider trying to help people, to educate them, and suddenly there's no money available and no interest in doing so.
I'm starting to realize that we'll never all be able to get along - because there are plenty of people who don't want such a thing to happen. And so many more that don't seem to care either way.