Comment On Super Contact Management 3D

How can be everyone so clueless abot the importance of playing the game of dynamic Web site for your club?

Clearly the win a ZEN contest is designed just to collect email addresses.

bstorer:

Clearly the win a ZEN contest is designed just to collect email addresses.

True, but the strange part is that they ask you what the capacity of a ZEN Stone is, when they have the size listed directly above it. They should probably have you click a link to look at all the Zens with their features so you have to sort through and maybe consider buying one. I guess having your email is more valuable than the possibility of looking at a ZEN and buying one.

bstorer:

Clearly the win a ZEN contest is designed just to collect email addresses.

Or, they follow Canadian guidelines that prohibit games of pure luck(here: getting drawn out of a pool of e-mail adresses): Usually this means they add an easy math problem.

bstorer:

Clearly the win a ZEN contest is designed just to collect email addresses.

Here in Germany these stupid questions have a simple legal reason: If you omit the question, it's considered a lottery - and you need a license for that.
By putting a stupid question on it, you don't need any special knowledge to participate - but from a legal perspective, it's a contest.

However, all of these "contests" are designed to collect addresses or make you call expensive phone numbers...

It's really 976,562.5 MiB

I'm shocked to learn that contests like this are actually just marketing ploys.

Super Contact Management 3D is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. Thanks!

dave:

It's a trick question!

The 1GB in the zen specs is a billion bytes but the 1GB choice signifies 1,024,000,000 bytes. The correct answer is none of the above, but since that's not listed, nobody can win.

Brillant!

Well, it's either 1,024,000,000 bytes or 1,073,741,824 bytes depending on how you count. Either way, your assertion is correct and <i>brillant</i> (not to mention funny)!

The "verify the size" is probably being used as a primitive CAPTCHA to prevent bots from spamming the form with useless information. Doesn't seem like a WTF to me.

These things have been around for years for exactly the reasons you state - to stop it being gambling. You usually have to call a premium rate phone number where calls cost three billion quid a minute with 12p going to charity to stop you feeling quite so ripped off.

The UK independent TV station ITV (the chav's station of choice!) in particular have been doing it for years and got raked over the coals last year for rigging phone in competitions like this.

akatherder:

I guess having your email is more valuable than the possibility of looking at a ZEN and buying one.

It's probably much cheaper to just collect email addresses than to go to all the trouble to actually sell something.

ohh eck. I was a dev on the CMS for one of thse, and currently work at one of the others... I don't think either are my fault though...

Here in Germany these stupid questions have a simple legal reason: If you omit the question, it's considered a lottery - and you need a license for that.

I don't know if it is for the same reason, but here in Brazil every contest coupon has the stupid question:

"What is the sweetest breakfast cereal ever made?

( )Sweet Fruit Cereal(r) ( )Other"

Jon B:

I'm shocked to learn that contests like this are actually just marketing ploys.

Shocked? In Europe's TV channels we have this commercials about winning something, but on TV! At any time! Example:

Want to win a Rambo Knife, send a message to 7777 RAMBO and the answer to: Who is the actor of RAMBO?
A: Homer Simpson
B: Sylvester Stalone
C: none of the above

Yes, many people fall for this, and the next day they ask them selfs why they are receiving viagra offers to their mobile phones.

"Win a 1GB Zen if you can identify the drive capacity of a 1GB Zen!"

YOU FAIL!

"Enter a contest to win one '30GB Zen Vision M' by guessing the drive capacity of a '1GB Zen Stone', and if you don't make it, then you will enter a contest to win one of ten '1GB Zen Stone'!"

Not that I like to be such a pedantic but this is so boringly common that I don't really see it as a WTF

PS: Oh, Creative, how low have you fallen!

The capacity of a 1 GB Zen is of course 1024 MB!!

jmroth:

The capacity of a 1 GB Zen is of course 1024 MB!!

The SI goons would like a word with you...

J Cooper:
A ZEN Stone uses flash memory. There is no hard drive.

Why you are assuming that a hard drive has to be a hard DISK drive?

"Hot PockERROR" made me LOL

No the ANSWER is "What is the hard drive capacity of a ZEN Stone" it's a zen thing!

Jon B:

I'm shocked to learn that contests like this are actually just marketing ploys.

I am appalled that you people think there is anything tricky going on here. I just have never had the luck to win any of these. Woe is me.

Now if excuse me I have to send my bank account info to a nice man in Africa

Those 'stupid question' contests are usually just a way around the lottery laws - you can't randomly give away prizes without applying for an expensive lottery license. You can give away prizes for skill though, even if the 'skill' is just reading two lines above...

...

Your response made me cry. Using 1024 bytes in a K, etc, that's 1024*1024*1024, or 1073741824 bytes in a gigabyte.

Which means, by the way, that you're getting 7% less storage when we use "a billion bytes is a gig" than if they used the original 1024-based units. Goes up to 10% with terabytes. That's right - if the drive makers are crafty enough, they can sell you 900 "real" gigabytes, and call it a "1TB" drive, thanks to this stupidity we let them get away with.

Capacity of Zen Stone?

Mu.

Am I the only one who thought the first WTF was the idea you could learn to do 3D graphics game development after watching 30-minute videos? The first two games, yeah - I wrote a PacMan in Apple ][ lo-res graphics when I was 15, Space Invaders would not be that much of a stretch - but the third?

VisualD:

The BSOD must have been Tescos, my local store was the same over the weekend. They have a national content network for the creens as far as I can tell. The store near me is a superstore so i got a nice pic of 8 plasmas in a row all BSOD'd. Was gonna put it in the sidebar at some point.

Ok, I'll bite...

Just who are the creens and why do they get a national content network. I call discrimination. I'm not a creen and I want a national content network to.

-NotAn

"Attention shoppers, there's a special on Hot PockERROR."

That's a novel idea, but wouldn't all the chocolate melt??

(yes, I *know* it's "Hot Pockets" but my mind refuses to read it that way)

What is the sound of one Zen clapping, grasshopper?

Captcha: What is the sound of one captcha clapping, grasshopper?

Ubersoldat:

Yes, many people fall for this, and the next day they ask them selfs why they are receiving viagra offers to their mobile phones.

Or realize they're paying $2 per message for the privilege of being sent them. Read the fine print in some of those contests, they're just scary. Whoever falls for this deserves to have their money taken away from them. A fool and his money...

Andy works at my company. Howdy, mate!

Joshua Ochs:

That's right - if the drive makers are crafty enough, they can sell you 900 "real" gigabytes, and call it a "1TB" drive, thanks to this stupidity we let them get away with.

Not quite. 10^12 / 2^30 = ~931.3, so it's still more than 930 binary gigabytes. It would have made more sense to say that 1 decimal TB is only about 0.9095 binary TBs.

WhiskeyJack:

Whoever falls for this deserves to have their money taken away from them.

Correct, but those who take the money don't really deserve to have it either...

Actually, dave, 1 GB is not 1,024,000,000 bytes.
1 Kilobyte is 1024 bytes, 1 megabyte is 1024 kilobytes and 1 gigabyte is 1024 megabytes.
That works out to be 1073741824 bytes per gigabyte.

Not that it matters.

Andreas:

bstorer:

Clearly the win a ZEN contest is designed just to collect email addresses.

Here in Germany these stupid questions have a simple legal reason: If you omit the question, it's considered a lottery - and you need a license for that.
By putting a stupid question on it, you don't need any special knowledge to participate - but from a legal perspective, it's a contest.

However, all of these "contests" are designed to collect addresses or make you call expensive phone numbers...

Which brings up an interesting legal question.

In a lottery, your chances of winning are random, but practically zero.

In a "stupid question" contest, your chances of winning are non-random, but practically zero.

In a "stupid question with no correct answer" contest, your chances of winning are non-random, but guaranteed to be zero.

Although the third looks superficially like the second, I think there's a good legal argument to be made that it's designed to be much more like the first ...

Actually, the 1GB thing is a workaround for a law in Australia that requires games of chance to have a certified, tested random number generator selecting the result.

The certification process is quite involved and expensive, so to get around that they implements 'games of skill', and then someone can choose an entry manually without the need for a costly RNG certification.

You see it quite a lot on late night television game shows :)

Obviously they should have avoided confusion by using *gibibytes*.

(pukes)

NotAnEnglishMajor:

Just who are the creens

I thought the Federation was at war with the Creens

It IS a trick question, but actually the trick is that the Zen Stone Plus has no hard drive. So the answer is 0.

I do believe you mean 1,073,741,824 bytes ;)

It seems to me like it was an attempt to fool bots without having to have one of those pesky captcha's like the one I'm about to try to decipher. Oh goody, this one seems easy. But then again, there's no chance of a prize.

PeriSoft:

Obviously they should have avoided confusion by using *gibibytes*.

(pukes)

Yes, because "gibibyte" sounds so much worse than "gigabyte". (shudders)

J Cooper:

Actually, the answer to "What is the hard drive capacity of a ZEN Stone?" is ZERO. ZERO ZERO ZERO.

A ZEN Stone uses flash memory. There is no hard drive.

There should also be an answer option of "An African or European ZEN Stone?"

J

It's hard and it's a drive. Therefore, it's a hard drive. It is NOT a harddrive, however.

Actually, that's a safe assumption. A 'hard drive' (shortened for hard disk drive) is defined as a disk drive that reads media such as a hard magnetic or optical disc as opposed to a soft magnetic disc, such as a floppy. (you can look it up if you dont believe me)

A device that emulates a hard drive using flash memory is called a SSD (solid-state drive). flash memory does not employ disks or discs to store data, as such, should not be called a 'hard disk drive' or 'hard drive'

I get it now. When they say 'hard drive capacity', they mean they want you to use those demented units where 1GB = 1,024,000,000 bytes. So there is a correct answer, too.

Want to win a Rambo Knife, send a message to 7777 RAMBO and the answer to: Who is the actor of RAMBO?
A: Homer Simpson
B: Sylvester Stalone
C: none of the above

Yes, many people fall for this, and the next day they ask them selfs why they are receiving viagra offers to their mobile phones.[/quote]

Next day? Eh? You mean next minute, right?

Dylan:

I get it now. When they say 'hard drive capacity', they mean they want you to use those demented units where 1GB = 1,024,000,000 bytes. So there is a correct answer, too.

Unfortunately, 1 GB is 1024 MB which is 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes, hence 1,073,741,824 bytes.

I saw the BSoDs on Wednesday.
The smaller screens on some of the isles were still displaying adverts, though. Guess they must run off a different server.