free cellphones by forwarding an email

> —–Original Message—–
> From: someone
> Cc: someone@delhi.india.nokia.com [poor chap 😀 if he really exists ! I removed his name here]
> Subject: NOKIA
> Importance: High
> Dear All
>
> I just want you guys to take hold of this
> opportunity from NOKIA.
>
> NOKIA is distributing cell phones for free over the
> internet to compete
> with Ericsson, which is doing the same. They want to
> be better known
> through
> the Internet by word of mouth and so they are giving
> away their new WAP
> phone. All you need to do is mail this to 8 of your
> acquaintances.
>
> In two weeks you will receive a NOKIA 6020. If you
> send this email to 20
> people or more, you will receive a NOKIA 6630 Phone.
>
> Don’t forget to mail a copy of this email to
>
>
> someone@delhi.india.nokia.com to
> ensure that your participation is noted.
>
> PLS: It’s not a joke
>
>
>
>
> ********************************************************************************
>
> The information in this mail is confidential and is
> intended solely for the
> addressee. Access to this mail by anyone else is
> unauthorized. Any copying
> or further distribution beyond the original
> recipient is not intended and
> may be unlawful. The opinion expressed in this mail
> is that of the sender
> and does not necessarily reflect that of Xyz.
>
> ********************************************************************************

——————–
Couldn’t resist giving this reply:

Before considering giving free cellphones or money from Bill Gates based on forwarded emails, it might be useful to have a look at the following explanation wrt exponential growth to get an idea about the actual feasibility of such a proposition:

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Take a sheet of paper of the ordinary variety – letter size for the Americans, A4 for the rest of the world – and fold it into half. Fold it a second time, and a third time. It’s about as thick as your finger nail. Continue folding if you can. At 7 folds it is as thick as a notebook. If you would have been able to fold it 10 times, it would be as thick as the width of your hand. Unfortunately, it isn’t possible to do so more than about 7 times. Try it for yourself. At seventeen folds it would be taller than your average house. Three more folds and that sheet of paper is a quarter way up the Sears tower. Ten more folds and it has crossed the outer limits of the atmosphere. Another twenty and it has reached the sun from the earth. At sixty folds it has the diameter of the solar system. At 100 folds it has the radius of the universe. “Preposterous!”, you exclaim. That is what I thought till I started calculating the thickness myself. If you do not want to pull out your trusty calculator here is a table that contains what I have described above.

http://raju.varghese.org/articles/powers2.html

———————

Here is another explanation on placing grains of rice on a chessboard. It starts with just one single grain of rice.

DESCRIPTION: The transparent chessboard serves as the starting point for the progression. Rice can be put on the chessboard for 1 through 25 (32) grains. Use beakers for 26 through 217 grains. (Note: 1 ml = 64 grains, approximately.) The approximate volume of rice for successive powers of two are:

CHESSBOARD AND RICE

————————

In fact I remember reading it as part of a story in one of the Tinkle comics, where a sage makes a request of “some rice” in such a fashion to an arrogant king who is initially contemptive that the sage could’ve asked so much more in terms of wealth etc, but ends up discovering that all the rice in his kingdom or the whole planet isn’t enough to fulfil the sage’s request 😉 [PS: btw I found this story in the same link above of Raju Varghese]

So not just Nokia or Erricson, but even all the cellphone companies put together in the world cannot afford even a primitive form of such a scheme!