trapping people into spending... a cel phone ringer rant

[Chris]

I hope you brought enough for everyone. That's worth loading onto my phone.

Though I do like the idea of a $0.25 red box tone as well (still works in Canada if you can find an old enough payphone)

Do you just want me to email it to you?

[Deviant Ollam]

I'm a luddite

the history geek in me feels obligated to point out that while common usage has equated this term with anyone who has a sort of blanket resistance to technological devices (or technology's "progress") the original group of individuals known as Luddites were textile workers who destroyed machinery because it was costing them their jobs. in the truest sense, a luddite isn't opposed to machines and technology that can advance civilization, but rather technology that replaces people and thus diminishes the value of their lives.

now all we need today is a grocery store clerk revolution in which automated check-out lanes are smashed and disabled. (that both is and is not a joke. buy me a beer at the next con, anyone who's curious as to what i mean, and i'll give you the two minute rant about how economies exist to serve the people and propagate wealth through the cycle of community supply and demand. in a nutshell, the overuse of machines doing jobs that deskilled people do adequately leads to elimination of working people's wages which leads to a reduction in the public's ability to purchase goods and services. heh, i guess that was the two minute rant. i suppose you'll have to buy me two beers and then get the ten minute version instead.)

[TheCotMan]

the history geek in me feels obligated to point out that while common usage has equated this term with anyone who has a sort of blanket resistance to technological devices (or technology's "progress") the original group of individuals known as Luddites were textile workers who destroyed machinery because it was costing them their jobs.

Yep. I read a bit of history, but there is humor and art when taking an extreme view and applying it to a trivial case.
"He's an animal."
"She's made of ice."
"I'm starving."
It's like a form of hyperbole, where exaggeration manifests itself as a seemingly mismatched metaphor.
Where's the humor? A person who uses machines as part of their work, but who is passionate about destroying the very things that keep them employed. We have at least two kinds of irony here. :-)

But, now that I've explained it, whatever humor was there has evaporated into the ether.
:-P~~~ (rasberries.)

heh.

[renderman]

Do you just want me to email it to you?

No, I want you to fax it to me :)

[Chris]

No, I want you to fax it to me :)

Hmmm....let's see...

Renderman wants something from me.
I ask the preferred delivery method (ya know...email isn't the only one. We have accounts on the same systems where it could be placed in a home dir, I could put it on my website so you can download it, etc)
Renderman decides to be a smartass.....

So, to summarize, YOU want something from ME...and feel that being a smartass is the best way to accomplish acquiring it? Perhaps instead of jdumas I should have used Renderman...synonyms? You be the judge.

[renderman]

Hmmm....let's see...

Renderman wants something from me.
I ask the preferred delivery method (ya know...email isn't the only one. We have accounts on the same systems where it could be placed in a home dir, I could put it on my website so you can download it, etc)
Renderman decides to be a smartass.....

So, to summarize, YOU want something from ME...and feel that being a smartass is the best way to accomplish acquiring it? Perhaps instead of jdumas I should have used Renderman...synonyms? You be the judge.

Ouch, very nicely done. Apologies for the smartass'ness.

Email is easiest but I cetainly won't be offended if I get jdumas'd again and get sent goatse in it's place or something.

[converge]

I know, I know... I'll start a torrent, it will pwn!

fyi:
\http://www.modemsite.com/56k/trouble3.asp
\haven't found anything older than v.90 though.. should set up an old box for giggles

[noid]

Constantly Misplaced Cellphone Guy - You know the type. Each time their phone rings its like the first time its ever happened. They stand there with a look of panic and confusion that starts with 'WTF is that' then transitions to 'Oh, thats my phone' and ultimately ends up at 'Now where did I put it?'. This is a variation of Deviants theme of slow to answer cell phone users. The problem with this guy is that if he'd just put his phone back in the same pocket, he could get to it quicker; however he consistantly puts it back some place different each time he uses it. So now not only do you have to listen to 50 Cent's 'in da club' for a solid minute, you have to watch this tard flap his arms around wildly searching for his phone as if he was trying to get a bee off him.

Cellphone Drivers This is probably one of the most hot button issues with me. Ok, we're smart monkeys. We've mastered the wheel and the atom. The problem is, we are not good at multitasking. I will paint with a wide brush here, but I think its true: If you are talking on your cell phone while driving, you are driving like shit. You may not notice, and when not on the phone you may be a good driver, but when you try to do both, you drive like shit. The problem here is that everyone thinks everyone else drives like shit when they use the phone, but they drive like a pro when they do it (before the hipocracy comments start, NO I do not use my phone when I drive for exactly this reason). I think the part that really gets me is that you are endangering not just your own life (I'm all for morons weeding themselves out of the genepool) but you are needlessly endangering the lives of others. Thats what makes me mad. People that are so self absorbed that my safety and the safety of other drivers takes second seat to their goddamned convienence.

[renderman]

Pretentious Bluetooth headset guy - You know, the guy who always wears his BT headset, even when not on the phone. The guy standing beside you at the store who you can't tell if he's talking to the clerk or having a schizophrenic conversation with himself. The 'I'm so important I must be ready for a phone call from the queen at any moment' types. I have no particular issue with using them for long phone calls, while driving (safely), or other sensible hands free situations (phone sex). But those guys (and women) walking around thinking they are such hot shit because they look like a cyborg or something just grind my gears.

[Beginner]

I've tried many times to get the annoying startup and shutdown tones off my phone but I cant do it.

The people with the bluetooth headsets I find extremely irritating, but what I hate the most is not the people with the ring tones that are irritating but the songs, those MP3 songs played at full blast at a poor sound quality from tiny ass speakers. These are mainly teenagers but sometimes I walk through a convience store and I hear a highly distorted version of something Tupac wrote. Not even being used as a ringtone but just played like they are playing it through a boombox like everyone else wants to hear it.

[simple3]

the answer lies in motorola. while the ui is harder to master, but still very powerful (hey that shouldn't be a problem here though), motorola phones have many of the featurees you are asking for. viberate then ring, allows you to silence or even cancel a call before it begins to ring by pushing the side button. but if you are trying to do this in your pocket people may look at you funny. yes- the beep when trying to silence and silent when trying to turn the ringer on is annoying, but open the flip and the volume goes down a lot. i think they have this so if your phone is in a bag or pocket and the button gets pushed so the phone goes to silent you know and can change it back.

motorola and many other manufacture are switching to mini usb. it reduces the number of external ports on the phone. it can charge, connect to pc, connect to headset, etc... however you can expect that not all companies will switch to this. why? they are businesses that exist to turn a profit, and cables and stuff is a big market with high markup. you are more likely to see this on high end and smart (pda) phones.

motorola bluetooth headsets- the hs700, and hs850 feature a folding boom microphone that automagically powers the headset on and off. open it to turn it on, close it to turn it off. receive a call and open it put it on your ear and you're ready to go in seconds. some people are just on the phone too much though to use this. i use about 5000 minutes a month on my business phone. i am not going to be fumbling around with the headset every time i make or receive a call, but i do take it off afterhours/on lunch or when i am in a grocery store or something.

tired of cell phones ringing in the movies etc? i cannot imagine it would be hard to develop a system(using bluetooth, which is now beginning to make its way into low end handsets even, or some other short range technology) that alerts phones that they are in an inappropriate environment and automagicall switches them to vibrate. to prevent abuse and home made cell phone silencers (see DoS) it could be tied in with the carriers for authentication. write it, patent it, and wait for the royalties to roll in(you don't even have to market it, see the recent RIM v. NTP patent lawsuit. just wait for someone else to come up with the same i dea and sue the shit out of them AFTER they roll it out!).
i had an idea a couple years back, that i talked to twinvega about, to develop a system for cellphones to seemlessly hand off traffic through a wi-fi internet connection. the call is already being encoded and sent digitally, how much harder could it be to route it through another network? I never followed up with this and handsets with this capability are currently rolling out in europe and soon to come here.

... steam running out.... need smoke.... mm death lolipops!

edit:
and as far a using a cell phone while driving: a person using a cellphone without a handsfree set has just about the same increase in accident rate as a person driving with a BAC above the legal limit (.08 in CA). so yeah, this is why we are seeing many laws enacted banning the use of cellphones without a handsfree kit while driving(as i see a cop drive by on the cell phone...)

[Chris]

Ouch, very nicely done. Apologies for the smartass'ness.

Email is easiest but I cetainly won't be offended if I get jdumas'd again and get sent goatse in it's place or something.

If you weren't being a smart ass I wouldn't believe it was you

Did you get the email?

[astcell]

and as far a using a cell phone while driving: a person using a cellphone without a handsfree set has just about the same increase in accident rate as a person driving with a BAC above the legal limit...

How about typing a full email on a Blackberry while driving?

[octalpus]

to continue along this sort of theme, what about this as a different but also good option...

a ringer mode called "delayed audible" or something like that. in this mode, the phone would vibrate for the first four or five seconds. during that period of time, the user would have the ability to either excuse themselves and answer it surreptitiously* or they could press a button to stop the alert**. if they failed to do either of these things, the phone would assume that it wasn't directly on the owner's person and would then alert with noise at a pre-determined volume. you could even have two such modes... "delayed ringer" and "delayed single beep" (self-explanatory)

Motorola has this too, with a "vibe then ring" option, not to be confused with "vibe and ring", which is also quite useful at appropriate times.


And Renderman - you might check with DA on that red box dial tone. He has something cool in that vein, but I can't think of what it is offhand.

[mfreeck]

but ring audibly with whatever sounds you've selected while it's attached to a charger (and hence the phone realizes that it's not likely in your pocket at that particular moment).

do any vendors put a feature like that into their equipment?

I believe I had a Kyocera 2255 that would ring and not vibrate when plugged into the charger. Unfortunately, my new phone I usually have on ring because i just don't feel it on vibrate. I just make sure to remember to change the settings. Also, I've given the number to few people and just do smsing on it, so 90% (at least) of the phone calls I receive on it are from russians or other wrong numbers who didn't understand the last two times that when I said "you're dialing the right number, but this is the wrong number for your party," I meant PLEASE STOP CALLING ME.