Mathematically speaking, it would be stealing.

I have a complete hate for all Cellphone companies, they rip people off 24 / 7. This is simply shown in the math on text messages and how much they cost. Here is the math below, and I will explain it in a second. I try and show some of my work at the end btw.

Simply put, for those of you who don't want to have to muddle through my poorly explained thinking, we pay 2.5 cents a text when we should be paying 1 cent for 77 texts based on the amount of bandwidth required to send them. (this means that the amount of data every second talking is so much, and each text is so much data at the maximum. So when I say bandwidth, I mean data transferred.) This means they are charging you about 192 times per text more than they should. (192.5)

1000 bits = 1 kb (Kilobit)

8 bits = 1 character (a letter e.g: j)

Text messages:

200 characters maximum per text.

5.00$ for 200 text messages a month, 20.00 $ for unlimited per month.

For just 200, that would be 2.5 cents per text.

Talking on the phone:

960 Kilobits / minute (16 kb/s)

5.00 cents / minute

Ok, here is the math part, I am basically plugging in the known information above into my problem. I want to know, how many texts is it going to take to equal me paying the same for texts based on bandwidth used to me talking on the phone.

Talking on the phone, you pay 1 cent for 192 kb.

Texting at the rate of kb/s use for calling you pay 1 cent for about 77 texts

In reality, you pay 5.00 $ for 200 texts which means, you pay 2.5 cents per text. So, you pay 1.92 $ for 77 texts, which, as I previously said, is 1 cent of talk time bandwidth. That is for 77 texts using the maximum number of characters each text.

On an unlimited plan, if you pay 20.00 for unlimited texts, you need to send more than 800 texts to make it worth while to use their plan over the 5.00 plan. If you wanted to text enough to get the same amount of bandwidth required to get 20.00 $ worth of texts running on 192 kb for a cent, you would need to text 153,600 texts within a month just to equal the rate of 5.00 cents / minute of talking time (this would be paying for the 20.00) so get texting!!! you only have about 153,102 texts left, and you will be paying the same rate to talk on the phone as you will to text!

In summary, you must text 4620 texts a minute to be using the same bandwidth as talking on the phone, and you must text 153,600 times to equal 20.00$'s spent on normal minutes just to equal the bandwidth used when chatting on the phone. Which means, you are paying about 192 times more to text over what you pay to talk on the phone. So let them steal from you... what can we do!?! I don't have a solution, but if you have suggestions, feel free to do it. I have always felt this way, and I feel the first step at least in the solution is this: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5gVL6W3UjbldS3ZNTivfFptpARpOAD933HR680

In this article, he says that texting prices have doubled since in 2005...?!? they are already ripping us off, how much money are they getting from this racket.

Feel free to correct me, or just discuss this below, I tried to show my math below, I didn't show it all, but I tried to show a bit of what I did, all of it was simple math building upon itself.

(960 kb/minute * 400 minutes = 384000 kb in every 400 minutes.) / 2.5 kb per text = 153,600 texts.

(1000/8)*200 = 25000 bits per text message if you use all 200 characters possible.
25000/1000 = 2.5 kb per text.
192/2.5 = 76.8 kbps
.025*77 = 2.925
20.00 / .025 = 800

Peloponnesian War

This is just a project Mallory and I worked on for WH.

This was done seperately, but we worked together to gather various screenshots (images) of in game battles, so I have posted this as a double blog entry giving credit to whoever wrote each one above the post.

Benjamin Temple:

This is a first person account of an Athenian historian, although fictional, it has a basis for the facts that he records upon facts about the Athenians.

The year is now 431 BC, it is sad, we (the Athenians) have lost great numbers to a disastrous sickness that swept through our lands. It must be the wrath of the Gods on our disobedience. But what a time to avenge us as this, we have but few soldiers now to fight, and who will stand up against the traitorous Spartans. Didn't they have freedom, democracy, and peace? Why, would they want to turn around then, and fight us? What strength we had, is all but gone now, with our sailors destroyed at sea, and the rest wiped out by disease or war. What is driving these evil villains to want “freedom” from us. What more can they want than for all citizens to have equal rights? Must they murder their own babies, worship war, and beat their children? They are truly a vile group of unruly people without morals, wisdom, or intelligence.

For many years, I have played a game called Age of Mythology. Although this is just a computer game, I have found it to be extremely historically accurate. Such as each civilization is given different abilities, one of these, is the Athenians have advantage on the sea. Also, the Spartans and Athenians have a land unit called Hoplites, and the Spartans have the advantage on land. Also, various maps even portray the Peloponnesian war with an accurate map. Where Sparta and Athens city states are placed as a city around the Acropolis. This map even lets you pick one, and play as one or the either, although, Athens is almost hopelessly outnumbered. These historically accurate events, and people are all in the game. When I encountered the war in the World History text book, I was able to identify with each event that happened. It made me understand how they must have felt with many of their people wiped out in a plague, and the after effects of war. It even explained some of the reasons for the war, and advantages each side had through a text dialogue at the beginning of the battle. (There are screenshots of the game below, under Mallory's post.)

Jeremiah 34:17 says, “Therefore, this is what the LORD says: You have not obeyed me; you have not proclaimed freedom for your fellow countrymen. So I now proclaim 'freedom' for you, declares the LORD -'freedom' to fall by the sword, plague and famine. I will make you abhorrent to all the kingdoms of the earth.” We need to realize, that no matter what “freedom” the Athenians or Spartans may have been trying to attain, whether through democracy, or freeing themselves by control, without God. They will eventually “fall by the sword, plague and famine.” Without God, everything will fall apart.

Sources:

Peloponnesian War, Athens, and Sparta. World History. Greenville:BJU Press, 2007

Peloponnesion War. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peloponnesian_War

Hoplite. Wikipedia: The Free Encyclopedia.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hoplite

Mallory Moser:

Since Ben has already thoroughly explained the comparison to the game “Age of Mythology” and the Peloponnesian war, I will use my opportunity to create a first-hand account of a Spartan (fictional, of course) using extensive research as my basis for the character.

“Zeus has bestowed upon me, Eunomia, the privilege of being born strong. The name my parents gave me literally means “our way of life”. That is why the gods have chosen me to be a mighty warrior to survive against the Athenians. Sparta took this victory, thanks to our way of life and our gods.

Since the day I was born, I have been becoming stronger. When I was a young child, I had one fear: the dark. This fear weakened me, and it had to be overcome. When I was 6 years old, my parents gave me the privilege of overcoming that fear. I spent three days in the woods alone. My father gave me a knife and reminded me that if I was to die, it would mean that I wasn’t strong enough to deserve life from the gods. If I couldn’t kill my food, I would have to steal it. And when night rolled around, I would have to stay awake so that I would not be killed by wild animals. With only about 9 hours of day time sleep, and the loss of a finger, I returned home after three days. Blood was spattered on my clothes from killing my food and my finger was gone from stealing it. I wasn’t caught when I stole the fox from the market, but I hid it under my cloak so long that it had time to chew off my small finger. The entire purpose of this challenge was to make me overcome my insolent fear and teach me the toughness of war. No thought was ever given to my comfort or enjoyment. These things didn't help make me a stronger warrior so they were ignored.

Now I am 32, and we have just punished Athens for thinking they can make the Delian League their own empire just because they were the leader of it. No one rebels against Sparta. No one can rebel, because we are the strongest. The only way to survive on this earth is to be strong. Paintings and philosophy will get you no where in life. We only have a certain amount of time to live, so we must become as strong as possible and kill the weak so that, one day, all Greeks will be able to overcome the world with their power and strength alone.”

“No king succeeds with a big army alone, no warrior wins by brute strength. Horse power is not the answer; no one gets by on muscle alone. Watch this: God’s eye is on those who respect Him, the ones who are looking for His love. He’s ready to come to their rescue in bad times, in lean times He keeps body and soul together.”
-Psalm 16- 19 (Message translation)

I think that this verse contradicts the Spartan’s way of life. It says that no king can succeed on an army or on strength alone. The Lord is the only one who can lead victory. This verse is the answer as to why Sparta’s empire fell not long after the war. Even though they were strong enough to fight off enemies and start wars, they were not strong enough (and without God COULD not be strong enough) to create a lasting empire.

Sources:

The Bible: Message translation. www.bible.com

“Forest, W.G. (1968). A History of Sparta, 950-192 B.C. New York: W. W. Norton & Co

“Greece” The Peloponnesian war. www.csun.edu 19 October 2005.

“Growing up Spartan” www.digitalsurvivors.com

Athenian army (blue) Spartan army (red) Battle on the plain near Megara.

The sacking of a small Athenian village.

It sold out!?!

Edit: Hahah I finally got it! It was reprinted, and was finally available in my size. This one was an instant buy :D. - 2008 / 09 / 20

I was doing some shopping on threadless because they had a 10$ a shirt sale, and I had to 25$ gift certificates that I could use there. I got to the checkout with this shirt in my basket with some other ones,

but then the site got bogged down, and I was unable to continue with my checkout. When I got back on a few hours later, it was sold out. This was one of my favorite shirts!!! and it sold out before my eyes. I want a reprint!!! It was a new shirt too, it sold out within a few days. I just hope they reprint it before the sale is over...

My Dad's old Kaypro

Well, I have finally gotten to posting about my dads old Kaypro which he got in 1983... It is an awesome computer, it replaced his super old crappy Timex Sinclair z.80 which he bought for $80 (he bought this in 1991 or 92 so he could test out what having a computer would be like and if it was worth it), the new Kaypro 10 which he bought for $2995 was a great replacement. When he bought the Kaypro he had to borrow a loan of $3,500 for this computer because computers (all good computers) were very expensive at that time. He got a Okidata Dot Printer with the other $500 he had borrowed. He got this computer for his business and so that he could learn how to program in some programing languages. It served him well for many years. I had heard about it from his stories he tells us, so I finally decided to have him get it out for me to play with. We did and after getting it out, we turned it on. At first we thought it was broken because the screen was blank for a long time, but then he remembered you could choose the screen brightness with a dial on the back. It was turned all the way down. Once we had that working we were able to turn it on and the menu he had programmed for it came up. I was very happy, other then accounting, word processioning, a few different programming languages, and a few other programs, it had two games on it. Ladder, (the original with a copy right by Yahoo Corp. which at that time was in a suite in New York or some other big city. (they weren't a big company at that time...) The other game it has was Cryptic Clue, By my Dad, it was one of his first programs and is a very challenging game. It is like Grand Master Mind, except lots harder. I have played this game more then ladder because it is such a challenging and fun game... A few other things of note, the computer has 10 MB of memory, and I am not sure how big the hard drive is, but it very small, I don't know right know but maybe I will find out from Dad later. It's screen is very crisp and in good condition too, the letters it displays are a bright green with no lines through them, my Dad has taken good care of this computer which has helped it through the years. Here are a few pictures I took of it:

The first picture is just a side view of the computer with it's stand up and the keyboard hooked up, the second picture is the same thing except it is a front view.

These are pictures of the keyboard, I couldn't get a good shot at the keyboard with th letters and numbers still legible so I took two.

This is just a back view with it all still hooked up.

This is a top bottom view, and on the second picture the stand that holds up the bottom when it is set up is down.

Thats all I guess hope you enjoy reading and looking at the pictures...
Ben

Upgraded my blog

I finally finished my blog, I upgraded to the beta version of blogger, and did alot of content revision. Some of that content revision included adding a shoutbox, friends, and links... I am very happy with it. I also finally got around to upgrading my Ubuntu 6.06 to Ubuntu 6.10... well I guess I can't say I have upgraded yet it is downloading right know but I will post about how I like it tomorrow.

Ben

A shoutbox and much more...

Well, I finally got a shout box, hope you all post on it. Also if you don't know about online wishlists, http://metawishlist.com/ is the site. My wishlist is under the user name h4ck3r, check it out :). Also I have been disecting my favorite picture book lately. Trouble for Trumpets is the most detailed, and captivating story book I know of. It is a fabulous book which my Mom bought afew years ago for 20 or so dollars. It is worth about 100 dollars know. I enjoy looking through it finding all the hidden things in it such as faces and multiple things written in the grumpet alphabet that the artist made. There are hidden things throughout the book and discounting those things the book is amazingly detailed. My brother and I both pooled 18 dollars to buy the sequel Trumpets in Grumpet Land to the book which was almost as good but not as detailed. Still it was a great buy.

Ben

Old and new anime

Well, even though I haven't been active lately I just got an urge to post about one of my favorite animes of all times. The main reason I say that it is old and new is I haven't looked at it for awhile but just recently got it again, and have been watching it. The anime Tsubasa Chronicle is a wonderful, well drawn anime. It has a good plot with only one draw back, it doesn't leave off at a good place. This 26 episode anime should have another 26 episodes in my opinion. Although I just found out that they have more episodes, I haven't been able to get them. The basic plot is a girl loses her memory in the form of feathers which are spread out over many worlds. She will die after a time if she doesn't get them all back. So Sakura and Syoran are transported to the dimension witch to get the ability to go between worlds so as to get her feathers back. They meet up with two other people all running from something. For this ability the deminsion witch asks for something from each of them. From Syoran he takes everything about him from Sakura's memory (basicly they were in love). From Fye the wizard, she takes a special tattoo on his back. From Kurogane the sword fighter she takes his sword. Eventally they all gain weapons of different types back as they go from world to world getting Sakura's memory fragments back, as she gets them back she is able to remember many things but always can't remember Syoran. Although she isn't able to remember him she does build up another relationship with Syoran as he protects her. Maybe just maybe she might fall in love again ;). Here are a few images of the main characters and afew links to resources on the anime:












http://www.animenewsnetwork.com/encyclopedia/anime.php?id=4591
http://www.animenfo.com/animetitle,1682,sakpxt,tsubasa chronic.html

h4ck3r

Windows - Linux program equivalents.

Hey, If anyone is wondering what programs would replace you old programs that you used to use in windows then I have found a great website that tells some equivalents. Here it is:

http://wiki.linuxquestions.org/wiki/Linux_software_equivalent_
to_Windows_software

I thought it was pretty cool about all the different programs that replace the windows programs. If anyone can think of a program equivalent that is not on that list please post a comment and I will try and give you one plus update the wiki :). So please ask anything you want.

Ben T.

Maps

I think everyone knows about Map Quest and Yahoo maps well google has just released Google maps.

The address is : http://maps.google.com/

It is so cool I love it ! ! ! You can search for businesses, addresses, and directions to somewhere. Also instead of just doing a search for addresses, businesses, and directions you can zoom around all over the map, just hold down on left click with your cursor over the map and drag around it is awesome.

Ben

Ad

I just got the funniest ad ever (my dad sent it to me). Everyone should check this out.

http://www.novell.com/linux/windowstolinux/publicservice/index.html?sourceid=ENTWAD0401

Click on that link and watch it. It is realy funny, oh and by the way if you were wondering, I run Debian Linux.

Ben

School

Well another 4 school days to go. I reviewed some new cool stuff in my math about circles. I also learned some cool things in new world history. (I am learning about the eskimo's)

Ben

New blog. Good day!

I hope you like this blog. I have had a good day (in most ways). I heard a new PhilColins song on the radio today Woot! But I still can't get my wireless network card on my laptop to work :( (I am on a wired network right now), but I am going to have dad help me fix the wireless network :). Hope everyone else out there had a good day.


Ben.