koiulpoi

I've always liked threads like this.

 

I'm not gonna post another picture of me because my profile pic is currently me.

 

Actually, I will post the full version:

 

 

Me eating some kind of sweet bean ice cream, in Arashiyama, Japan.

Yes, I did.  Do you have a problem with that, bro?

 

AJ

Oh c'mon, you're just being ridiculous!

 

I'm gonna go ahead and wax nostalgic about Phantasy Star now, and be sad that they let such a legendary series atrophy so badly. Ah well, c'est la vie.

I edited your list for you.  Sonic, yes.  The other franchises, no.  Only one Sonic the Hedgehog game might qualify as one of the 50 greatest video games of all time.  The Nintendo franchises that I mentioned would all have at least one game in that pantheon.  Some of them would have multiple games.  And that is by consensus.  Maybe you have odd taste, but Sega could not back up its hardware with enough compelling games.  That is what brought the downfall of Sega.

 

AJ

I'm sorry, did you just say that Soul Calibur (exceptionally popular fighting game series) and Phantasy Star Online (the freaking mother of all modern MMOs; a major paradigm shift for both the MMO format and for console games) aren't significant and important!? C'mon man! Don't do this to me!

Try this:

Home -> Menu -> Settings -> Application Manager -> All -> Internet -> Clear Data

 

Note that this will delete your browser history and bookmarks.

 

You could also try an alternative browser, like Chrome, Opera, or Dolphin.

 

If that still doesn't help, you may need to perform a hard reset.

It means the switch is borked. Call Sprint and let them know. *2. *nod*

Dude..how big r ur pants bro?

 

Sent from my Motorola Photon 4G using Tapatalk 2

I usually wear a 34 or 36 waist, depending. Now, I can do that in slacks or regular jeans (takes a little bit but it works); definitely can't with skinny jeans.

The specs are lower on the Mega 6.3 than the Note 2. It's unfortunate, but I figure if it has Tri-Band LTE then I'm getting it for sure. I love having strange phones, and what's stranger than a 6.3 in. phone?!

Eh, I realized the other day I could fit a 7-8" tablet in my pocket (it was an iPad Mini, to be exact). The Mega obviously doesn't go far enough!

http://www.theverge.com/2013/9/6/4701118/scientists-reveal-new-breakthrough-in-uncrackable-quantum-cryptography

 

Quantum Cryptography. Hack this NSA.

As long as humans are involved, anything is hackable.

And maybe that is a key reason why Sega got run out of the hardware business years ago.

 

 

AJ

Le shrug. It's one of many, many reasons. The Dreamcast was a great system with great games (it continued the trend of "Arcade at Home" that made the SNES so popular), but it wasn't fated to be.

 

I still have mine, several controllers, a bunch of games, and a larger bunch of burned games (another big reason it failed).

Oh, yes, what a glaring omission because my post was clearly intended as a full chronology of video game systems and generations.

 

 

AJ

Well, I actually pointed it out specifically, as it was a mid-generational device. Better than the PSX and N64 generation, but lesser than the PS2, Gamecube, XBox generatoin.

I am mainly giving you guys a hard time.  But I am half joking, half serious.

 

Like wireless airlinks, video game systems do tend to run in generations.  In the modern video game era, NES and Sega Master System were the first gen.  Much later, Nintendo 64 and Sony PlayStation were of the same gen.  Likewise holds true for Nintendo GameCube, Sony PlayStation 2, and Microsoft Xbox.

 

So, exclusion of Nintendo Wii U strikes me as odd.  Maybe the generation lines have been blurred a bit now.  However, Wii U clearly belongs more with consoles released in 2013 than those released in 2006.

 

AJ

So, where's the Sega Dreamcast in all that, huh!? HUH!?

What harm would it bring sprint to bring back silver and gold one year upgrades? Probably none because they have play money now but I don't think they want to. I would think it would be a good thing at least for me as I would be much more likely to upgrade every year rather than two if I could.

You'll note well that the Premier Gold one-year upgrades went away just about the time Sprint got the iPhone, also about the same time Early Termination Fees jumped from $200 to $350.

 

If they did, it would probably be in a way similar to how it used to be. Full "upgrade" pricing after 20 months (it also used to be 22, remember?), half that or worse after 12. So, since the current ETF is $350, they should give you around $175 off after one year.

 

The current "Upgrade Now" program does offer 12-month upgrade pricing. When you're at 12 to 14 months, your upgrade will cost you $200, on top of the price of the phone. In other words, your Samsung Galaxy S IV would cost you $400, giving you a total rebate of $150. That's double the old $75 off.

I would welcome an entry level tri-band device because that is probably what I will go with....Not everyone has $200-$400 to drop on a phone.

I know, and I understand that. I look at it differently: if your upgrade cycle is 20 months, an extra $100 is equal to $5 a month, while $200 is $10 a month. Most people won't miss $10 (and definitely not $5) a month, and you're going to get a lot more technology out of it.

 

It's just something I've noticed, working at two different stores (with two very different clientele). The major sellers are either flagships, or last year's flagships. Phones designed for the midrange (read: same price as "last year's flagship") tend to not get a second glance unless they're priced "Free".

 

That being said, I might still end up pushing people towards this, depending on our TriBand lineup in the coming months.

Ew, because we needed more badly-selling midrange phones. The Galaxy Victory was such a great success, after all.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtkdo7bOmJc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtkdo7bOmJc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

 

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rtkdo7bOmJc&feature=youtube_gdata_player

Seems you got stuck in a time warp yourself, posting that three times

I am looking for somewhat of an intellectual discussion. Not a donkey-fest.

I mean, you gotta' love those Cylons right?

 

How is Resurrection possible without some form of communication that isn't capped at the speed of light?

Sounds like you're down for nerdiness. I'll show you mine if you show me yours.

 

Anyways,

What I wanted to get at is if "sub-space" communication is actually feasible. Warp drives are feasible.

The problem is, warp travel is inherently unsafe, and communication through it just as bad. As points within the warp often have little relation to their realspace points, messages between even local star systems can take weeks, while across an entire segmentum could take only a day or so - if you're lucky, of course. Additionally, signal fading is a serious concern, as without enough signal strength, a message will arrive distorted, or not at all. And when you're dealing with things that take at least an hour minimum (say, from a ship in orbit to a planet), you don't really have the luxury of error correction. I'd say, as long as you've got the ability to utilize Vox communications (standard radio waves), go for it.

100Mbps/1Gbps is a speed floor (for theoretical peak speeds) not a cap. If it takes 67 MHz of spectrum to deploy a true 4G network, then that's what it takes. I agree with you that spectral efficiency matters more than raw throughput (as long as that throughput noticeably exceeds the top speed of the previous generation), but that's not how the ITU chose to define it. They own the trademark to the "4G" moniker, so they can define it however they like. I found it frustrating to see private industry abuse the term and defining it however they wanted to, which led to consumer confusion as each "faux-G" network performed very differently.

 

Hopefully the ITU has learned from that debacle and will be a bit more realistic about constraints on spectrum availability when writing the next set of IMT standards.

Whoops, misspoke. Meant speed floor.

 

I'm glad you agree that the ITU requirements are a little ridiculous, and as "they can define it however the like", that you agree that it's completely arbitrary.

 

My point is, when it comes down to it - "faux G" or no... It's one thing entirely to say "your technology must have a minimum peak downlink spectral efficiency of 15 bits/s/Hz" (to quote Wikipedia), and another thing altogether to say, as I've heard so many tech afficionados and media sites say, "ITS NOT REAL FOUR GEE UNTIL I GET A HUNDRED DOWN!!!1111". The first is a real technological advancement, the second is a dick waving contest, and has nothing to do with generational advancement.

Well, the speed benchmark is kind of arbitrary, but when they were writing the standard, a line had to be drawn somewhere. At the end of the day, speed (and ping) is what effects the experience of using data on a phone, and users don't know or care whether the data is circuit or packet-switched. If an "all-IP" network only ended up being capable of 4 Mbps instead of 3G Ev-DO rA's 2 Mbps, I wouldn't really consider that to be enough of a technological advancement to be worthy of being considered a new "generation."

It's completely artbitrary, because it depends on the amount of spectrum you're using and the spectral efficiency of your technology. The first depends entirely on licensing schemes, and has nothing to do with technology. The second involves new engineering, and is indicative of a new generation. Are you seeing the problem? By assigning an arbitrary speed cap, an arbitrary assumption of (iirc) 67 MHz (for 1 Gbps fixed) worth of spectrum being the minimum to run a network was put in place. Having more spectrum to use doesn't make your technology new, it just means... you have more spectrum. Spectral efficiency? Yes, that matters, a lot. It also is something end users don't know a thing about and don't care about. Engineering standards should not be measured by how an end user perceives it. That's dumb and silly and we should stop. Providing a good user experience is a worthwhile goal, but that's not what my first post was about.

Actually, most fast food restaurants are franchises and can choose not to participate in most promotions. Most do to increase customers coming in from the national advertising, but they are not required to in most cases.

It's not really the same situation. Preferred retailers don't have a choice of what promotions they're participating in; if there's a Galaxy S4 BOGO, you're going to offer it and the signage is going to be in your store, period. Similarly, they don't have an option to participate in promotions like the Upgrade Now offer. It would be like going to a franchise McDonald's store, asking for the McRib, and getting told that that's only at Corporate McDonald's stores, we aren't allowed to offer it, you're going to have to drive another 10 miles if you want it. Sorry.

I'm glad this infographic actually mentioned the fact that 4G vs 3G is a move from a switched network to an all-IP one, which is one of the biggest, real broad changes between generations (along with increases in spectral efficiency, etc.). Sadly, it falls in to the "numbers" trap, quoting the (often touted and completely, utterly arbitrary) "100 Mbps" number.

An active (not blocked) CDMA1X carrier will never have Ec/Io greater than about -2 dB because the sync channel and paging channel take up some of the total channel power.  In other words, the pilot channel cannot take up all of the channel power.  If it did, then Ec/Io could be 0 dB.

 

AJ

Eheh, whoops. I should have specified. Yeah, my 1X is sitting around -2.0 dB. The -0.1 (which is now -0.5) is EV-DO/eHRPD.

Bumping this so I don't make a new thread.

 

How exactly is Ec/Io measured? My (very tiny) understanding was that it was very similar to signal to noise ratio, just, um, reversed. Logarithmically.

 

I just spotted an Ec/Io of -0.1. Does that basically mean "You're on a sector by yourself and the neighboring sites aren't interfering at all".

Outside of asking one of the employees working there, how would one know if it is a corporate store or not?

Like Rocket87 said, the easiest way is to go to storelocator.sprint.com, type in your area, and look. Any store that says "...by Galactic Communications" isn't. Just "Sprint Store"? Yep.

 

The frustrating part is being in a market where there just AREN'T any corporate stores unless you want to drive for 2 or more hours.

That's gotta lead to confusion and anger.

 

For the record, it seems Account Services (aka the "Save Desk") has a separate, very similar offer that can be applied to the bill, and does not require a trade-in of the phone. Appears to be limited to them, and without a direct number (which you can find with some searching) or good old flipping out, good luck talking to them.

It would make things more uniform. We regularly get people that are pissed because care tells them about it, but then go the indirect store here and are shitty when they can't do it and God forbid they have to drive 10 minutes to the corporate store so we can do early upgrade. Sent from my HTCONE using Tapatalk 4

I don't know about other markets, but it's actually a rather large problem here in West Michigan, along with other things only corporate stores can do. There are 21 stores in the "Greater Grand Rapids" area. 4 are corporate stores. 81% of stores around here shrug and say "Yeah we can't do that." Most people have no idea the difference, and assume, since there's the Sprint logo on the wall, it's all the same.

 

People will complain about just about anything, especially a 10 minute drive inconvenience.

Nice! Now, if only the Indirect channel could take advantage of it...