OT: old farts recollecting -- Re: ASR1002

Thu Jan 21 04:29:59 UTC 2010

On Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:01:50 -0600
Jorge Amodio <jmamodio at gmail.com> wrote:

> > "The telephone, for those of you who have forgotten, was a commonly used
> > communications technology in the days before electronic mail.
> > They're still easy to find in most large cities." -- Nathaniel Borenstein
> >
> > i'm guessing this is before the mobile phone explosion.
> 
> Good old one.
> 
> It's funny how we circle around with technology, folks are dumping
> their phone land lines and adopting wireless/mobile that required a
> substantial technology leap and investment and now we are using the
> mobile phone to "text" an incompressible dialect worse than the early
> teletype/telex days but with a humongous infrastructure to support it.
> 

I'm not sure how it is in other countries, but here in .au they're a
fixed and predictable price before you pay it, are significantly
cheaper than an equivalent phone call, and if you have anything that
requires accurate recording e.g. email addresses, geo addresses or
phone numbers, far less prone to errors. 25c for a text with 160
characters, or 50c flag fall for a phone call before I've even said a
word and I don't know how many I'm going to say? I know which one I'm
going to prefer..

> Ohh yeah, now we can send sort of a telegram with multiple fonts and
> colors almost from anywhere...
> 
> Cheers
> Jorge
> 