Finland Hosts Mobile Phone Throwing Championships 70
hypnosec writes "In this year's annual mobile-phone throwing contest held in Finland Ere Karjalainen has smashed the world record by throwing his phone 101.46 meters. The event, being held every year since 2000 in the town of Savonlinna, saw quite a few mobile-phone throwers participate. 2nd place went to Jeremy Gallop, a South African who managed to throw his phone 94.67 meters. Contest organizers are of the opinion that users can vent their anger on their phones and that this offers a unique opportunity to 'pay back all the frustrations and disappointments caused by this modern equipment.'"
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Re:Waste, pure unadulterated wasteful behavior (Score:5, Insightful)
With this attitude, how do you defend the cost of the electricity used by your computer while posting this comment? That resource could have gone to feeding a starving child somewhere. Even worse, how do you defend the time you spent writing that comment when that time could instead have gone to making money in order to feed starving children? By your own standard you are yourself despicable and so is every other person in the world. I agree that feeding starving children is a worthwhile goal, but I don't know that your perspective on the whole thing is very useful here.
On another note, flooding third world markets with free food is a disaster for the farmers in those regions who then can't sell their food and then there will be even less food grown in that region the next year. If the problem was as easy to solve as throwing some tomatoes at the third world, we'd have solved the problem completely by now because that is a very manageable proposition, but of course it isn't that easy.
Re:Waste, pure unadulterated wasteful behavior (Score:5, Insightful)
if all you seek to do is feed them, the starving children will just become starving adults.
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Starving adults with many starving children.
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Why not convert the starving children into food?
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I believe it was Jesus that said:
"If you give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day. If you don't, then there will be more fish for you tomorrow."
Or something like that.
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If the problem was as easy to solve as throwing some tomatoes at the third world
Well maybe someone needs to organize a competition where we throw tomatoes at poor and hungry people.
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WAAAAAAAAHHHHH!
those phones, when recycled (responsibly if possible) will yield more minerals than most natural deposits.
those tomatoes would not last the journey to "lol Africa is a country" and remain edible.
a big problem with the world is getting the abundance spread around. people don't want to lose their overabundance and will scream SOCIALISM!!1! at anyone who suggests they don't need that many phones or tomatoes. also, see what happens when you tell the Valencians they can't have their tomato figh
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Perfectly usable cellphones that could have found better usage in third world countries are being destroyed, just for the fun of it
Given that this is in Finland, they are probably Nokia phones... (post Microsoft acquisition, the N900 actually was a great machine...)
An idea (Score:4, Informative)
I would have thought Scotland. (Score:2)
They're the ones with the oddball "sports".
Re:I would have thought Scotland. (Score:5, Informative)
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We toss cabers [wikipedia.org], not cellphones.
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We toss cabers [wikipedia.org], not cellphones.
Well, you can alway throw base station towers.
I see... (Score:5, Funny)
They finally found a use for all those Nokia Windows Phones.
His phone preference (Score:4, Funny)
Re:His phone preference (Score:4, Funny)
Quite the opposite (Score:5, Funny)
Throwing most phones results in drag due to the device being constantly bombarded by signals from the carrier cellular tower.
The AT&T phones are mercifully free of such drag, and as a result can fly much further.
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Throwing most phones results in drag due to the device being constantly bombarded by signals from the carrier cellular tower.
The AT&T phones are mercifully free of such drag, and as a result can fly much further.
The enthusiasm caused by dropped calls also increases the distance of thrown AT&T based phones. A few have actually achieved low Earth orbit.
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He also looks forward to the new windows 8 phone built from the ground up for throwing, featuring a "chair leg" like feel, has been rumoured to be already in the hands of top MS execs.
Whew! (Score:3)
One last niche market for Nokia to fill. And it's local, too!
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Perhaps the winner could get a Windows phone. A Windows 8 phone, that it - no point in even giving away the current generation as you won't be able to upgrade them!
Official home site (Score:5, Informative)
Nice photo gallery too (but no mentions on the phone brands!)
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JavaScript white list, you'll thank me later.
Not Sure What to Make of This (Score:2)
Finn National Frustration Venting? Given that this is held in Finland, may be the expression the populace's frustration at its onetime darling Nokia throwing away the mobile phone market. Actually, I think I just invented a new word in honor of t
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Actually Nokia did make boots in the ancient history and Nokian jalkineet still does.
So mobile phone throwing was logical sport for modern people that evolved from bootthrowing.
http://bootthrowing.com/online/etusivu/ [bootthrowing.com]
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This is a contest that has been going on for something like 15 years. It's just a bit of silliness. The mobile phones are thrown and then gathered up and recycled.
Oh dear. (Score:5, Funny)
Ballmer: Windows Phones Flying Off The Shelves! (Score:5, Funny)
Hey, it's all in how you spin it!
There's no chance... (Score:1)
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His technique looks spot-on, a relaxed-looking throw transferring momentum from the legwork and also has his arm slightly extended. If you get the angle and the spin right on a fairly flat object it will fly 100m quite easily. I can throw flat things the length of a football field and could when I was significantly skinnier than this kid. It has very little to do with strength when throwing stuff that weighs less than say 200grams. Modern smartphones, that have fairly ideal shape, seem to weigh around 140g.
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it's a better object for throwing than your baseball and this is an annual competition. the record is unusual because it's ~20meters more than usual winners, the guy found a good technique and exploited it.
believe me, people would have bitched soo much if it didn't fly the length. finns are like that.
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I think I like girlfriend throwing better (Score:2)
Girlfriend+pier or pool=fun.
Hope Samsung didn't win (Score:2)
If a Samsung phone did end up winning, Apple might sue and argue that this was due to Apple's patented rounded corners being the most aerodynamically efficient design.
Better than on the London Olympics (Score:1)
Monty Python! (Score:1)