DENTIST HIRES 60 PEOPLE TO GET HIM PS3S (from Digg) – Murray Newlin, a dentist in Columbus, Ohio, wants to buy 15 PS3s this holiday season for his grandchildren, nieces, and nephews. A feat not even Santa Claus himself could accomplish. So he set out to do the impossible by paying 60 different workers to take eight hour shifts waiting in line in at four different Wal-mart stores in the Columbus area. Ouch! Similar to the Japanese business Eiji who paid homeless people ~$200 for each PS3 they obtained for him, but the difference being, he’s planning to KEEP these friggin’ PS3s.
I’m assuming these are legit workers who work for minimum wage (I’m guessing is around $6/hr). He could’ve also hired illegal immigrants for a lot cheaper, but I don’t think there’s too many of those in Ohio. But who knows how much he is paying. Let’s just assume the worse. The entry mentions he paid 60 people for 8 hours shifts each. So that means each PS3 probably has 4 person waiting for it and at $6/hr, that’s $2880. If the launch is at midnight, then they probably started lining up around 4PM on 11/15 since the PS3 launches on 11/17. If stores open around 8am, those people probably started lining up at midnight of 11/16.
Actually even though that $2880 might look like a lot, consider the fact that the retail of the PS3 is around $500 – $600, making 15 PS3s an investment of $7500 to $9000. If he buys in the aftermarket, where prices are ranging between $1500 to $2500, we’re seeing a savings of over $10,620.
However, not everything is happy and cheery for PS3 resellers either. PlayStation 3 fetching mostly ho-hum prices on Japan Net auctions (from Digg) – But some of the 4,000 PlayStation 3 consoles up for auction on Yahoo! Japan Wednesday were downright bargains. Some had game software thrown in with the machine, selling near the retail price of about 60,000 yen (US$510; €400) for the more expensive model with a 60-gigabyte hard drive, and 50,000 yen (US$420; €330) for the cheaper model. Ouch!
Sony taking big hit on each PS3 sold; Xbox 360 in the black – what’s interesting about this article is the fact that the Xbox 360 might not be sold at a loss anymore. Also, if you haven’t noticed, there might be a (BIG) chance that Amazon.com will be selling the Xbox 360 core system for $100 next Thursday. There will only be 1000 units and I believe the selling starts at 11am PST on Thanksgiving. Go to their homepage and vote for the Xbox 360 system.
Random Crap:
Owner claims kittens have dog-like traits (from Digg) – Brazilian student Cassia Aparecida de Souza, 18, claims her cat’s offspring has been born with dog traits last Friday, three months after mating with a neighbour’s dog in the Brazilian city of Passo Fundo.
(image from Yahoo!)
Ten things not to do with your data (from Digg) – Deaths at the hands of bananas, smelly socks and WD-40 are some of the unusual fates to have befallen innocent hard drives, according to a data recovery company that has released a list of the most remarkable cases of data loss witnessed this year. I original read this article on BBC, but it appears they have pulled the article.
And a university professor appeared not-so-clever when he heard a squeaking noise from the drive of his new desktop and decided to open the case and spray in some WD-40. Although successful in stopping the drive from squeaking, this was largely because he had also stopped the drive from working.
Easy Mental Multiplication Trick (from Digg) – How to transform a multiplication into addition through the drawing of a stool. It works with any numbers if you keep the right partition. You can verify with your calculator! an interesting trick, but I highly doubt it’s faster than straight out multiplication, especially when dealing with large numbers. What essentially the person is doing is straight multiplication. 2×3 = 6 because 2 lines intersect 3 lines 6 times. With the curves the person draws, that’s the addition part, where you’re suppose to add multiple lines together. The diamond shape is used for the shifting where if you recall, the each additional number in the bottom multiplier, an extra space you give it before you add.