I don't believe genetics can select for a preference for generic healthiness. I don't see why not; one fundamental aspect of humanity is its ability to change the way it acts depending upon what culture it was brought up in (and thus the cultural values it was exposed to).
It's easy to reduce this down to "we're all animals", and whilst this is true there are certain areas in which humans really *are* different to most animals. Some of our closer relatives in the animal world (chimpanzees, etc) may show some basic "cultural" traits, but for the most part this is one area in which we're different.
My uninformed guess is that we're "hardwired" to be attracted to the look that we consider "healthy", *but* that this image of healthiness is in turn determined by our cultural upbringing.
... games cost $90 and we had to play them on the Sega Saturn. I was paying over $100 for Atari 2600 games when they came out. Asteroids, Pac-man, etc. That's nothing; I paid Ada Lovelace over $4000 for some games to run on the Difference Engine before it came out, and I'm still waiting for that damn piece of hardware to hit the shops.
Just make sure you build your data center out of bricks and not straw or wood. Big Bad Wolves aren't that common these days, and the risk of one actually having enough huff and puff to blow your datacenter down isn't that great anyway.
And even Third Little Pig hosting has sucked since it was taken over by one of its big name rivals.
Trust me, it's not that bad. The guy made one spelling mistake in a post that was otherwise correctly spelled, punctuated, capitalised, and generally better-written than a lot of the crap that's out there on the Net.
I don't follow your math. Did you do it with an Intel chip, by any chance? Poor Intel (boo hoo!), they messed up 13 years ago and people are still making jokes about it.
Reminds me of the old joke (stolen from here):
A man goes into a pub in a small town and, for whatever reason, gets introduced to the clientele. There's Farmer Jack, Barman Jim, Maurice "Dancer" and Sheepshagger John. After a few pints, the visitor's curiosity gets the better of him and he asks John what's with the nickname.
"See this pub?" asks John, "I built it, but they don't call me Pubbuilder John? I'm the local doctor, I saved Barman Jim's life once when he choked on a peanut, but they don't call me Lifesaver John. Every year, I supply a huge Christmas tree for the village green, but the don't call me Christmas Tree John.
"But you shag one lousy sheep..." (Note; since that Austin Powers film came out, I assume that you Yanks know what "shagging" is now).
The Amiga may have been a flop in the U.S., but it was very successful in Europe during the late-1980s and early-1990s. After the A500 came out and the price came down (the A1000 was *expensive* IIRC), it displaced the cheaper (but less impressive) Atari ST to become the desirable machine of choice, and was probably the leading 16-bit machine.
It eventually suffered in the early 1990s due to Commodore resting on their laurels, the ever-decreasing cost of PC clones at one end, and the success of the Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES at the other. But there was a period of a few years when it was one of *the* machines and it did quite well.
The ST had multitasking added later on. Not surprising; as far as I know the Amiga's better multitasking abilities (and probably most of its other OS strengths) had nothing to do with its superior custom chips.
Since both machines were based around the 68000 CPU (in fact, the ST's ran very slightly faster), I see no *technical* reason the ST wouldn't have been capable of running a very similar OS from the beginning.
The Falcon was a fine machine in the wrong housing. Yeah, from what I've heard, Atari stuffed it into an STFM-type case for cost reasons, and might have done more with it if it had taken off.
Having said that, as an ex-ST and Amiga owner, although the Amiga was the better of the two, I always preferred the ST's case. As such, I actually like the Falcon 030's "520STFM with dark keys and rainbow badge" look. But, it probably didn't help it to be taken seriously.
Let's be honest though. Atari were always pretty crap at marketing, and the ST market was in terminal decline by then. Even the Amiga (which later took over from the ST when its price came down) was suffering from the encroachment of the PC by late-'92. It was unlikely that the Falcon (or any new Atari computer) would have succeeded, especially as it would have been seen as a "next-generation ST". Even when it came out, I thought it looked nice, but knew it was incredibly unlikely to succeed. (Might have sold to musicians, but it would never have been anything other than a niche machine at best.)
I think what made a lot of people think the ST was the superior machine was that gorgeously crisp monochrome screen, the relative lack of games, and the more no-nonsense and business-like look of the desktop. It looked and felt a lot like a Mac. I always felt that the ST desktop looked bare and lacking in features (yes, I used to own one); in fact, there didn't appear to be much there at all. Also, in low-res mode, it looked pretty chunky and unprofessional.
Maybe hooked up to a hi-res monochrome monitor (which the ST had good support for) it looked different, though.
Sound chip on the early Amiga's was better than Atari's of the same age. Sound chip on the early Amigas was *miles* better than the ST's. The ST used the same chip as the Spectrum 128Ks, the Amstrad home computers and even the Oric 1... a 3-channel square-wave chip, good for an 8-bit home computer, but you'd expect better from the next generation of 16-bit machines.
By contrast, the first time I heard an Amiga it blew me away, and even five years later when I got one it still sounded good.
Amiga never really updated the sound whereas Atari did in later models. I assume that you're talking about the STE. From what I've found out (never seen one in action), in addition to the legacy square wave chip, it added "a new 2-channel digital sound chip that could play 8-bit stereo samples in hardware at up to 50 kHz." That's nice- the sample rate might even be higher than the Amiga's, but it's still only two sample channels, versus the Amiga's four.
And the STE's extra facilities were never supported, because Atari got greedy and didn't make it the base model when it first came out. It launched circa 1989, temporarily (and without fanfare) substituted for the older STFM in packs. At the time I assumed the STE would replace the STFM at the same price. Oh, no. The STFM came back and they decided to charge extra for the STE. (We can assume that this was their original intention and the STFM-price launch was simply a response to shortages of the older model).
Stupid, because anyone who was going to spend more would have bought an Amiga, and others like me bought the STFM. By the time the STE became the base model (1991), the ST market was dying and it didn't really matter.
Third generation Amiga's supported 1280 natively well before Atari supported it. However, to be fair, the ST did non-interlaced "high-res" graphics (with a special monochrome monitor), which the early Amigas required an expensive "flicker fixer" for.
Uhh, you can make "mix CDs" on regular CDs too. You mean you can write to a "regular" stamped CD? Damn, that's going to need a high-powered laser;-)
Seriously, CD-Rs may be considered "regular" nowadays, but it wasn't always so- the technology didn't really become affordable for Joe Public until the late 1990s. By contrast, MiniDisc came out circa 1992, and even though it was probably overpriced for the youth market they aimed it at, I'd bet it was still more affordable than CD-R for a long time.
AFAIK, DAT was more fragile and less flexible from a random access point of view.
Everyone I know basically considers the AAA as cheap road insurance. (Flat tire, out of gas, etc.) They don't give 2 flips about all the rest of that stuff. Well, that's pretty much how the British associations (the AA- no, not *that* AA- and the RAC) are viewed as well. And to be fair, the GP had already conceded that they were really just glorified insurance/breakdown-services these days as well.
The AA and RAC *do* still run their own breakdown services for the most part though- it's more than just "insurance" in that sense. Not sure about their other rivals in the UK.
Well, as long as you are comfortable being completely prejudiced against things you apparently know nothing about, that's all that matters because there has never been a difference between informed opinion and willful ignorance. Care to let me know specifically what I said that this is supposed to relate to? Actually, care to explain how it relates *at all* to a matter of personal opinon?
In all honesty, what you said has the vague air of a generic statement designed to elicit a response. In other words, you're a troll.
Look at the WarioWare series of games, for example. If WarioWare: Smooth Moves on the Wii isn't an example of "reinventing the entire story behind a game" then, please tell us, what out there is? See, the problem with WarioWare is that even if the game is new, it still uses characters from the Mario "universe" (*).
And I hate to say this, but I've *never* been able to stand Mario and friends. I can't put my finger on why exactly, they just grate. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with the characters (Nintendo weren't that big in Europe until the SNES came out). But then, I hate Mickey Mouse too, despite being a fan when I was seven or so. And perhaps it's that (for me), Nintendo sometimes out-Disneys Disney in the worst way possible, with a healthy dose of Barney-style annoyingness thrown in... actually I'm not sure that's correct either, though.
Anyway, I'm glad that the DS doesn't seem to be overly reliant on the Mario franchise and Nintendo's kiddy-oriented past; I'd never have bought one if it had been.
Possibly someone will say that they enjoy playing Mario and "childish" games because they're past their adolescent obsession with "adult" sex and violence... but I don't like those games either. I like the games like Brain Training, Brain Age and so on- it's just that I find Mario genuinely childish. And believe me, for all that teenagers and adults enjoy indulging their childlike fun side with shows like Spongebob Squarepants (which can appeal to adults), when it comes down to something exclusively child-oriented like Barney the Dinosaur, it's not appealing to adults at all- at least not those who haven't grown up with it.
That's how I feel about Mario, and plastering the franchise (**) on a game is a near-guarantee that I won't want to buy it. Even hearing that Mario appears on the new DS version of Tetris is offputting.
Feel free to differ, but not all of us are Mario fans.
(*) Rather fanboyish expression, sorry.
(**) Damn, I hate that word too- or rather the new usage describing filmic and cultural "franchises" that has suddenly become so common in the past five or six years. (Ever notice that? In everyday speech, "franchise" always used to refer to some guy who got a license to run a Prontaprint photocopying shop, or whatever.) Even though it accurately describes the status of such things within Hollywood, it's still unpleasant- possibly for that exact reason. Or more likely because it makes us all sound like fanboys, and I hate that. Sorry, rant over:-/
It also could be argued that Slashdot 'comments'--which take up most of the average Slashdot user's time--actually diminish writing skills and intelligence (seriously, read somebody's comments; anybody). Could be worse. The comments on Digg are so moronic, other peoples' stupidity can cause passive damage to your own brain cells.
Sorry to bust your chops, but IIRC, Windows XP is NT 5.1. You're right about this, and for anyone arguing about what version XP is and isn't, just go to the Command Prompt and check which version number it gives. (This confirms that you are correct, BTW).
SP2 might have changed that to 5.2, but it's not #6. No, according to the Command Prompt on my copy of XP w/ SP2, it's still 5.1:-
Microsoft Windows XP [Version 5.1.2600]
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
"Zero price"... hmm, dunno. Can't see them using that in publicity.
I guess my objection to use of the word "free" is that its use there is too far from the original spirit of the word, but I can't think of an obvious, catchy alternative. "Included in cost of contract" is fine, but sounds like legalese.
Having said that, although I think most people realise at some level that they end up paying for their phone somehow (even at a discount), the telcos are still trying to give the impression that it's genuinely gratis. And let's face it, it lets people self-justify getting a new phone if they can kid themselves that they're not paying for it anyway, so in a sense it's colluding.
(BTW, I meant to reply to your suggestion, but got lost in that longwinded reply. Which should have cut to the most important point, namely that the problem causing our disagreement was simply that we had different ideas on what "free" was.)
I don't understand. You don't pay any money for it, as long as you sign a contract. The price of the contract isn't increased if you decide to get a phone, it's a fixed price. The price of the contract implicitly accounts for the cost of the phone.
For something to be free, must it be unconditional? That sounds more like free as in speech, and we're talking about free as in beer. As I understand it, "free" is meant to mean a gift, something that is "gratis". This should not entail any obligation. Modern usage stretches this to include the "free" toy in one's Rice Krispies, and I can live with that. However, as I said, I think applying "free" to something that requires you to enter into an expensive contract is stretching the definition too far.
Words are malleable and change over time; I accept that. I simply feel that claiming the phone is "free" dilutes the word to the point of meaninglessness.
A ridiculous straw man. Not at all; it wasn't meant as a representation of your position. It was an intentionally ridiculous example of something "free" as qualified by a footnote- or something even more prominent. It makes the offer clear, but doesn't change the fact it's a meaningless dilution of the word "free".
If you don't want the free phone, fine - you'll pay regular price for a cell phone contract. If I can get a comparable service without the phone for cheaper ("regular?") price, this demonstrates that the phone isn't really "free". As I said, this doesn't necessarily make it a bad deal.
If not, the fact that the phone company won't give you a discount for rejecting the "free" phone doesn't prove that it's "free"; it just means they don't want to change their offer for whatever reason. Maybe it's too much hassle for them to negotiate something different for one person. Maybe they don't want to admit that the phone isn't really "free".
Either way, the phone isn't gratis.
As a condition for getting that free can of soup, you have to buy another one for regular price. But the second one really is free - you don't pay any money for it. No, you have to buy the first can of soup for it. Hence it's not "free" in the traditional sense.
*I* didn't claim that Well yeah, you did. Well, no I didn't.
There's a free phone, It's not truly "free" as in "gratis".
and you're saying it's not free. Because it's not truly "free" as in "gratis".
You're saying the discount doesn't really exist. I don't see anything I said which could be interpreted that way. Can you please quote it?
I never claimed that things couldn't be cheaper with a contract; on the contrary, I'm quite happy to accept that for heavier users contracts are better value.
You're arguing that "stuff" is free because you don't have to pay any more. But my point was that the meaning of the word "free" you are relying upon is what I was complaining about. It's circular- whether you or I am right depends on which meaning you accept for the word "free".
As I said, things change- but in my opinion, claiming that the "free" phones which require an expensive contract (regardless of whether that contract is good value or not) is corporate distortion of the traditional "gratis" meaning beyond breaking point.
The reason I raised the issue in the first place is that someone suggested that you could buy a phone for $50, but implied that getting it "free" with a contract was preferable. Except that if you hadn't really needed the contract service in the first place, it *could* work out more expensive so it wasn't really free.
He said "free with a new contract". Free meaning zero price for the phone, with the clearly stated condition of signing a contract. How is that distorting anything? Because it's not really "free" by any reasonable measure.
And how is the contract requirement hidden? Perhaps "hidden" was a poor choice of word, but the cost of the supposedly "free" phone is simply incorporated within the contract itself.
And if you have a brain you can probably tell that's what it means without even reading the footnote. Of course, but it's still a misuse of the word to the extent of pointlessness. I'll sell you a "free" computer in exchange for £500, or somesuch nonsense.
I don't understand why people who don't like signing cell phone contracts claim that you don't really get a discount for doing it. *I* didn't claim that- I said "I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad deal". The contract almost certainly works out cheaper if you're using it a lot. OTOH, if you're a typical no-frills-phone user, you'll probably be better just using pay-as-you-go.
Who is more likely to do a good job--someone who is doing what they do because they *enjoy* doing it (amateurs and hobbyists) or somebody that is trying to get by at work without getting fired so that they get the paycheck and can maintain their Red Bull addiction? Devil's advocate time; those doing something because they enjoy it *may* do a better job. But they may also concentrate on doing things the way they enjoy them, or doing the bits that they enjoy.
Sometimes having a target, a clear idea of what needs to be done and a lack of time (or permission) to scratch one's intellectual itch can be more productive. Doesn't sound as nice, but it's true in *some* situations.
Then the rest of us can get back to enjoying our phones with Bluetooth, Java, IM, GPS, camera, web-browsing, calendar, PC synchronisation and MP3 playback. How basic!... don't you know that the latest phones all include a Teasmade and a trouser press as standard?
Last week I bought a T-Mobile pay-as-you-go phone for £10 ($20). UK pounds, unsubsidised pay-as-you-go, new phone for £10?
That is cheap if I understand you right; I'd expect the cheapest phone to cost £20 or so, maybe I haven't been paying attention to the market recently.
I used to have an old 'brick' which was run over by a lorry and survived.
Products today just aren't made with the heart, the only thing in the minds of the producers is money money money. Funny to think that a (now kitsch) symbol of the moneygrabbing 80s is being held up as an example of something with "heart" in the face of cynical modern phones:-)
I see what you're saying, but you forgot two important points. The 'brick' (80s model?) was probably horrifically expensive when it was new, and it couldn't have been made very small even if they'd wanted it to be.
Today's mobile phones today are cheap- *very* cheap. Yes, you can buy expensive ones, but a bog-standard one (even with a colour screen) is not expensive. Building them like tanks would ramp up the cost and size; it's easy to criticise the evil corporations for wanting to make money. However, the bottom line is they're much more affordable now, and people wouldn't buy a brick if they had to be twenty times the cost and twenty times the size.
can buy one new for ~$50.. but as with all cell carriers, its cheaper to free with a new contract This is one case where the commonly-accepted (and normally acceptable) distortion of "free" in modern usage is pushed beyond breaking point. You aren't being given a phone "free" (from obligation) in any reasonable sense if you have to take out an expensive contract to get it.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad deal, just that it's not really free and that the cost is being hidden elsewhere. If it's only for occasional use, you can bet your life the person is probably better off just paying $50 for a pay-as-you-go phone.
Slashdot Mirror
Would have got a +4 for sure if I'd thought to include that :-/
It's easy to reduce this down to "we're all animals", and whilst this is true there are certain areas in which humans really *are* different to most animals. Some of our closer relatives in the animal world (chimpanzees, etc) may show some basic "cultural" traits, but for the most part this is one area in which we're different.
My uninformed guess is that we're "hardwired" to be attracted to the look that we consider "healthy", *but* that this image of healthiness is in turn determined by our cultural upbringing.
... games cost $90 and we had to play them on the Sega Saturn. I was paying over $100 for Atari 2600 games when they came out. Asteroids, Pac-man, etc. That's nothing; I paid Ada Lovelace over $4000 for some games to run on the Difference Engine before it came out, and I'm still waiting for that damn piece of hardware to hit the shops.(And it were uphill both ways, etc...)
And even Third Little Pig hosting has sucked since it was taken over by one of its big name rivals.
Trust me, it's not that bad. The guy made one spelling mistake in a post that was otherwise correctly spelled, punctuated, capitalised, and generally better-written than a lot of the crap that's out there on the Net.
"See this pub?" asks John, "I built it, but they don't call me Pubbuilder John? I'm the local doctor, I saved Barman Jim's life once when he choked on a peanut, but they don't call me Lifesaver John. Every year, I supply a huge Christmas tree for the village green, but the don't call me Christmas Tree John.
"But you shag one lousy sheep..." (Note; since that Austin Powers film came out, I assume that you Yanks know what "shagging" is now).
The Amiga may have been a flop in the U.S., but it was very successful in Europe during the late-1980s and early-1990s. After the A500 came out and the price came down (the A1000 was *expensive* IIRC), it displaced the cheaper (but less impressive) Atari ST to become the desirable machine of choice, and was probably the leading 16-bit machine.
It eventually suffered in the early 1990s due to Commodore resting on their laurels, the ever-decreasing cost of PC clones at one end, and the success of the Mega Drive (Genesis) and SNES at the other. But there was a period of a few years when it was one of *the* machines and it did quite well.
Since both machines were based around the 68000 CPU (in fact, the ST's ran very slightly faster), I see no *technical* reason the ST wouldn't have been capable of running a very similar OS from the beginning.
Having said that, as an ex-ST and Amiga owner, although the Amiga was the better of the two, I always preferred the ST's case. As such, I actually like the Falcon 030's "520STFM with dark keys and rainbow badge" look. But, it probably didn't help it to be taken seriously.
Let's be honest though. Atari were always pretty crap at marketing, and the ST market was in terminal decline by then. Even the Amiga (which later took over from the ST when its price came down) was suffering from the encroachment of the PC by late-'92. It was unlikely that the Falcon (or any new Atari computer) would have succeeded, especially as it would have been seen as a "next-generation ST". Even when it came out, I thought it looked nice, but knew it was incredibly unlikely to succeed. (Might have sold to musicians, but it would never have been anything other than a niche machine at best.)
Maybe hooked up to a hi-res monochrome monitor (which the ST had good support for) it looked different, though.
By contrast, the first time I heard an Amiga it blew me away, and even five years later when I got one it still sounded good. Amiga never really updated the sound whereas Atari did in later models. I assume that you're talking about the STE. From what I've found out (never seen one in action), in addition to the legacy square wave chip, it added "a new 2-channel digital sound chip that could play 8-bit stereo samples in hardware at up to 50 kHz." That's nice- the sample rate might even be higher than the Amiga's, but it's still only two sample channels, versus the Amiga's four.
And the STE's extra facilities were never supported, because Atari got greedy and didn't make it the base model when it first came out. It launched circa 1989, temporarily (and without fanfare) substituted for the older STFM in packs. At the time I assumed the STE would replace the STFM at the same price. Oh, no. The STFM came back and they decided to charge extra for the STE. (We can assume that this was their original intention and the STFM-price launch was simply a response to shortages of the older model).
Stupid, because anyone who was going to spend more would have bought an Amiga, and others like me bought the STFM. By the time the STE became the base model (1991), the ST market was dying and it didn't really matter. Third generation Amiga's supported 1280 natively well before Atari supported it. However, to be fair, the ST did non-interlaced "high-res" graphics (with a special monochrome monitor), which the early Amigas required an expensive "flicker fixer" for.
Seriously, CD-Rs may be considered "regular" nowadays, but it wasn't always so- the technology didn't really become affordable for Joe Public until the late 1990s. By contrast, MiniDisc came out circa 1992, and even though it was probably overpriced for the youth market they aimed it at, I'd bet it was still more affordable than CD-R for a long time.
AFAIK, DAT was more fragile and less flexible from a random access point of view.
The AA and RAC *do* still run their own breakdown services for the most part though- it's more than just "insurance" in that sense. Not sure about their other rivals in the UK.
In all honesty, what you said has the vague air of a generic statement designed to elicit a response. In other words, you're a troll.
And I hate to say this, but I've *never* been able to stand Mario and friends. I can't put my finger on why exactly, they just grate. Maybe it's because I didn't grow up with the characters (Nintendo weren't that big in Europe until the SNES came out). But then, I hate Mickey Mouse too, despite being a fan when I was seven or so. And perhaps it's that (for me), Nintendo sometimes out-Disneys Disney in the worst way possible, with a healthy dose of Barney-style annoyingness thrown in... actually I'm not sure that's correct either, though.
Anyway, I'm glad that the DS doesn't seem to be overly reliant on the Mario franchise and Nintendo's kiddy-oriented past; I'd never have bought one if it had been.
Possibly someone will say that they enjoy playing Mario and "childish" games because they're past their adolescent obsession with "adult" sex and violence... but I don't like those games either. I like the games like Brain Training, Brain Age and so on- it's just that I find Mario genuinely childish. And believe me, for all that teenagers and adults enjoy indulging their childlike fun side with shows like Spongebob Squarepants (which can appeal to adults), when it comes down to something exclusively child-oriented like Barney the Dinosaur, it's not appealing to adults at all- at least not those who haven't grown up with it.
That's how I feel about Mario, and plastering the franchise (**) on a game is a near-guarantee that I won't want to buy it. Even hearing that Mario appears on the new DS version of Tetris is offputting.
Feel free to differ, but not all of us are Mario fans.
(*) Rather fanboyish expression, sorry.
(**) Damn, I hate that word too- or rather the new usage describing filmic and cultural "franchises" that has suddenly become so common in the past five or six years. (Ever notice that? In everyday speech, "franchise" always used to refer to some guy who got a license to run a Prontaprint photocopying shop, or whatever.) Even though it accurately describes the status of such things within Hollywood, it's still unpleasant- possibly for that exact reason. Or more likely because it makes us all sound like fanboys, and I hate that. Sorry, rant over
This has been proven in "OMG!!!! The coolest article EVER! You must see this!!!!!1111"
(C) Copyright 1985-2001 Microsoft Corp.
"Zero price"... hmm, dunno. Can't see them using that in publicity.
I guess my objection to use of the word "free" is that its use there is too far from the original spirit of the word, but I can't think of an obvious, catchy alternative. "Included in cost of contract" is fine, but sounds like legalese.
Having said that, although I think most people realise at some level that they end up paying for their phone somehow (even at a discount), the telcos are still trying to give the impression that it's genuinely gratis. And let's face it, it lets people self-justify getting a new phone if they can kid themselves that they're not paying for it anyway, so in a sense it's colluding.
(BTW, I meant to reply to your suggestion, but got lost in that longwinded reply. Which should have cut to the most important point, namely that the problem causing our disagreement was simply that we had different ideas on what "free" was.)
Words are malleable and change over time; I accept that. I simply feel that claiming the phone is "free" dilutes the word to the point of meaninglessness. A ridiculous straw man. Not at all; it wasn't meant as a representation of your position. It was an intentionally ridiculous example of something "free" as qualified by a footnote- or something even more prominent. It makes the offer clear, but doesn't change the fact it's a meaningless dilution of the word "free". If you don't want the free phone, fine - you'll pay regular price for a cell phone contract. If I can get a comparable service without the phone for cheaper ("regular?") price, this demonstrates that the phone isn't really "free". As I said, this doesn't necessarily make it a bad deal.
If not, the fact that the phone company won't give you a discount for rejecting the "free" phone doesn't prove that it's "free"; it just means they don't want to change their offer for whatever reason. Maybe it's too much hassle for them to negotiate something different for one person. Maybe they don't want to admit that the phone isn't really "free".
Either way, the phone isn't gratis. As a condition for getting that free can of soup, you have to buy another one for regular price. But the second one really is free - you don't pay any money for it. No, you have to buy the first can of soup for it. Hence it's not "free" in the traditional sense. *I* didn't claim that Well yeah, you did. Well, no I didn't. There's a free phone, It's not truly "free" as in "gratis". and you're saying it's not free. Because it's not truly "free" as in "gratis". You're saying the discount doesn't really exist. I don't see anything I said which could be interpreted that way. Can you please quote it?
I never claimed that things couldn't be cheaper with a contract; on the contrary, I'm quite happy to accept that for heavier users contracts are better value.
You're arguing that "stuff" is free because you don't have to pay any more. But my point was that the meaning of the word "free" you are relying upon is what I was complaining about. It's circular- whether you or I am right depends on which meaning you accept for the word "free".
As I said, things change- but in my opinion, claiming that the "free" phones which require an expensive contract (regardless of whether that contract is good value or not) is corporate distortion of the traditional "gratis" meaning beyond breaking point.
The reason I raised the issue in the first place is that someone suggested that you could buy a phone for $50, but implied that getting it "free" with a contract was preferable. Except that if you hadn't really needed the contract service in the first place, it *could* work out more expensive so it wasn't really free.
Sometimes having a target, a clear idea of what needs to be done and a lack of time (or permission) to scratch one's intellectual itch can be more productive. Doesn't sound as nice, but it's true in *some* situations.
That is cheap if I understand you right; I'd expect the cheapest phone to cost £20 or so, maybe I haven't been paying attention to the market recently.
I see what you're saying, but you forgot two important points. The 'brick' (80s model?) was probably horrifically expensive when it was new, and it couldn't have been made very small even if they'd wanted it to be.
Today's mobile phones today are cheap- *very* cheap. Yes, you can buy expensive ones, but a bog-standard one (even with a colour screen) is not expensive. Building them like tanks would ramp up the cost and size; it's easy to criticise the evil corporations for wanting to make money. However, the bottom line is they're much more affordable now, and people wouldn't buy a brick if they had to be twenty times the cost and twenty times the size.
I'm not saying it's necessarily a bad deal, just that it's not really free and that the cost is being hidden elsewhere. If it's only for occasional use, you can bet your life the person is probably better off just paying $50 for a pay-as-you-go phone.