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Admin
How can be everyone so clueless abot the importance of playing the game of dynamic Web site for your club?
Admin
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.
Admin
Clearly the win a ZEN contest is designed just to collect email addresses.
Admin
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.
Admin
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!
Admin
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.
Admin
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...
Admin
It's really 976,562.5 MiB
Admin
I'm shocked to learn that contests like this are actually just marketing ploys.
Admin
Super Contact Management 3D is one of the funniest things I've seen in a while. Thanks!
Admin
Admin
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.
Admin
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.
Admin
It's probably much cheaper to just collect email addresses than to go to all the trouble to actually sell something.
Admin
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...
Admin
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
Admin
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"
Admin
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.
Admin
YOU FAIL!
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!
Admin
The capacity of a 1 GB Zen is of course 1024 MB!!
Admin
The SI goons would like a word with you...
Admin
Why you are assuming that a hard drive has to be a hard DISK drive?
Admin
"Hot PockERROR" made me LOL
Admin
No the ANSWER is "What is the hard drive capacity of a ZEN Stone" it's a zen thing!
Admin
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
Admin
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...
Admin
...
Your response made me cry. Using 1024 bytes in a K, etc, that's 102410241024, 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.
Admin
Capacity of Zen Stone?
Mu.
Admin
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?
Admin
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
Admin
"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)
Admin
What is the sound of one Zen clapping, grasshopper?
Captcha: What is the sound of one captcha clapping, grasshopper?
Admin
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...
Admin
Andy works at my company. Howdy, mate!
Admin
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.
Correct, but those who take the money don't really deserve to have it either...
Admin
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.
Admin
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 ...
Admin
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 :)
Admin
Obviously they should have avoided confusion by using gibibytes.
(pukes)
Admin
I thought the Federation was at war with the Creens
Admin
It IS a trick question, but actually the trick is that the Zen Stone Plus has no hard drive. So the answer is 0.
Admin
I do believe you mean 1,073,741,824 bytes ;)
Admin
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.
Admin
Admin
It's hard and it's a drive. Therefore, it's a hard drive. It is NOT a harddrive, however.
Admin
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'
Admin
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.
Admin
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?
Admin
Unfortunately, 1 GB is 1024 MB which is 1024 x 1024 x 1024 bytes, hence 1,073,741,824 bytes.
Admin
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.