Put this in perspective for the cellphoneless among us. How large is the family's text message limit? And what do overages cost? I would expect in this day and age text messages could be sent at a price of about 100 messages per penny, but I know cell phone companies love to gouge their own customers, and anyway your post obviously implies that I'm wrong.
KIDS these days!!!
Back in my day, we had dial the phone number by turning a pain-in-the-ass wheel. Busy signals were a bitch. No call waiting!! No re-dial!
about to get
How did you find out about this before he?
I believe the family limit is 500 messages. The overage cost is 10 cents a message.
Ok, I'll say it: text messaging sucks. Of all the annoying, deficient modes of communication. What kind of system makes it a pain to use an 's'? I ask you.
What, you can omit the verb in a parallel construction like that. No?
Europeans, of course, all boggle at texting limits. They (the limits) are pretty goofy.
3: I would write that sentence as "before him". I'm not sure how to defend it grammatically, but "before he" clangs.
7: if you want it to sound like ass.
Do I sound like ass? Very well then, I sound like ass.
So only $120 dollars? That doesn't seem very bad.* What am I missing?
* I mean from your brother's perspective. From a marginal-cost-pricing perspective, it's obviously borderline criminal.
Does he also have a 402-minute phone call on his bill?
11—sounds like you contain multitudes.
So only $120 dollars? That doesn't seem very bad.* What am I missing?
I want to live in Brock Landers's neighborhood with the trees full of money.
I can just imagine--his thumbs bloody stumps from texting, his tongue dry from making the most of his free hours, the poor child must take his phone between his wrists and draw in the dirt to communicate.
Whoops. At ten cents a message, at least, he'll only do that once.
12: I think what you're missing is that text-messaging is a huge pain in the ass for anything but extremely short messages and even then it's a pain if it turns into back-and-forth and that BecksBrother cranked out at least 40 text messages a day on average which is a hell of a lot of hitting 7 four times every time you use 's' in a message, as indicated by ogged. That's a lot of texting and given the price of cell plans in general it's entirely possible that the $120 doubled their monthly bill.
Is he Finnish? Suppsedly the Finns are the most wired and cell-phoned people in the world because they're too shy to talk to anyone face to face.
And for that, I'm outing him.
Ok. This is funnier than poorly worked out Shakespeare jokes.
hitting 7 four times
I've only used text messaging like 2 or 3 times total; but my memory is that I didn't have to do this -- like there was some cool word completion stuff going on so I didn't need to press more than a couple of buttons.
Don't all phones have T9 or some other equivalent text-entry mechanism these days? Who hits 7 four times for an 'S'?
I went $100 over on my cell bill once. And might again. Thanks for the reminder to upgrade my plan, Becks.
No, I didn't mean it that way. $120 dollars is obviously a lot, and I wouldn't want to lose it. But spent on a full month's worth of entertainment it's not wholly unreasonable. He was sending over 40 messages a day, and I'm sure he thoroughly enjoyed every one. It's a far cry from waking up hungover in a Vegas hotel room and realizing you emptied your bank account and mortgaged your house the night before. Which was closer to what I was expecting, given the alarmed tone of Becks' post.
Considering his summer job pays $6/hour pre-tax, this is a pretty costly lesson for him.
What kind of system makes it a pain to use an 's'?
It is called English.
Im no fan of idiosyncratic protest spelling, but youre rarely making comprehension suffer when you dont include apostrophes.
Which was closer to what I was expecting, given the alarmed tone of Becks' post.
Given the title, too.
In Becksbro's defense, they (at least Cingular) charge for texts both sent and received, so he didn't crank out all 1700.
I screwed up once big time on a cell bill. Let's just say that the long distance plan that I thought included Canada totally didn't.
I love text messaging. I love the iTAP thing that guesses what you're typing but doesn't let you swear leading shivbunny to send more than a few messages about the "ducking" something or other.
Dude, I've got a fully QWERTY keyboard on my phone and I've probably sent 100 text messages a month, max. Maybe 150.
I find auto-complete to be a complete pain in the ass, too. It rarely suggests the right word and trying to use it throws me off my rhythm; as a gamer I have thumb coordination you wouldn't believe. So, 7x4=s it is.
I have a smartphone, and text messaging is easy. I mainly avoid it out of respect for my friends who don't have the all-you-can-eat plan, but when you are trying to coordinate with multiple people, it can be very useful. And it can also be very sweet when you're down.
I'll admit to being bad about not realizing that other people get charged when they receive messages. I have free text messaging so I was sending them cavalierly until someone sweetly informed me. (Sorry folks!)
Anyway, it's fine for all you bourgeois deskjob sons of bitches to hate on text-messaging, but any high school student working a $6/hr job is going to have a much harder time making IM or e-mail his primary mode of brief-note type communication. Just sayin'.
Aww! Americans!
BTW, I thinks it's timo to getcha another network..
this really seems like a pittance compared to parking ticket fines
Cala, you can select other words by hitting '0'. At least on my phone. That let me avoid ducking and ducked and so on.
Also: ringback tones: yay or nay?
I don't know what a ringback tone is, but nay.
Becks, you only send so few messages because I don't have your number hence I'm not drunk texting you.
but any high school student working a $6/hr job is going to have a much harder time making IM or e-mail his primary mode of brief-note type communication. Just sayin'.
Back in the day, most people's primary mode of brief-note type communication was either talking, or maybe a bona fide brief note. I am aware that neither of these is a realistic options in this digitial millenium but I'm still not quite sure why.
Fuck this! You can get Bible ringbacks but not al-Fatiha?
I'm still not quite sure why.
They require you to be in approximately the same physical location.
42 - You've got it now. (Although I won't have my phone working again until tomorrow.)
Texting is awesome when making plans because you don't have to engage in tiresome circular conversations.
37 - Also, you could still make IM or email your primary mode of communication if you had my phone.
Even full-qwerty texting is annoying; thumbs: not made for typing! Use the phone for talking, you aspergerians.
tiresome circular conversations
Three-way calling, invented sometime in the 80s, still awesome.
Texting's fun, people. And $120 ain't shit; back in the ooooold days those of us with ld relationships spent $400, $500 on phone bills. Which was real money back then.
Yeah, yeah. Time to resign yourself to curmudgeonhood.
You still have to deal with hemming and hawing. Texting is sooooo efficient.
Use the phone for talking, you aspergerians.
But then you might bother the person. And voicemail is annoying. For conveying information ("where are you?" "what time?" "I'm pregnant", etc.) a text is much better.
Right, with the smart txt turned on it's pretty easy, though it could be smarter—my phone ought to know by now that I'm trying to write "beer", not "adds".
Voicemail drives me crazy. The calling, waiting for the lady to introduce every goddamn message, listening to people lose their train of thought...I'd way rather recieve a text.
And $120 ain't shit; back in the ooooold days those of us with ld relationships spent $400, $500 on phone bills. Which was real money back then.
"Back then" meaning "back before my husband got his new job".
But then you might bother the person.
No, you'll bother the person if you text and he has to take three minutes to thumb back a one sentence response. Speak!
59 Amen sister!!
I HATE voicemail. Evern worse, people who leave 5 min voice mail messages. I AM NOT GOING TO LISTEN!@!@
63 nails it.
The rules for voicemail: Say your name. Say your number slowly, even though you know it really well and can say it superfast. Then say your message superfast. Then send me an email that starts, "If you read this, feel free to delete my voice mail."
60: Haha. It means when I was in college.
61: Noted. From now on I'll call you at work with whatever goofy little thought crosses my mind, k?
Actually, a co-worker called me this morning to ask when I'd be in. "I'm in my cubicle," was the response. Stealthy!
Voicemail drives me crazy. The calling, waiting for the lady to introduce every goddamn message
Right. And the converse—leaving a voice message—is just as painful. How come you can't call someone, hear it ring four times, hear the beep, leave a message? Has anyone ever pressed 1 for more options?
Has anyone ever pressed 1 for more options?
Read the archives, people; all your questions will be answered.
God, the internets have made us all terribly impatient. I remember when I thought VM was teh awesome, and now like everyone else, I hate it and let it sit for weeks.
Oh, look who the second commenter in that thread was. Damn you!
Voicemail drives me crazy. The calling, waiting for the lady to introduce every goddamn message, listening to people lose their train of thought...
Oh my god, yes, HATE. This is why I want the iPhone's "visual voicemail," so I can just see who left me a message, flip through and only listen to the one or two I feel I have to, and get the hell out of there.
Obviously the best default brief note communication medium is the Unfogged comments section.
You caveman, I'm talking about the phones I call, not my own.
Actually, a co-worker called me this morning to ask when I'd be in. "I'm in my cubicle," was the response. Stealthy!
I did that this weekend! I called my coworker's home number, got her mom, who said "she's not home, try her cell." And when I called her cell, I said, rather huffily, "I thought you were scheduled to be here at noon." To which she replied: "I am here. I'm in the back room, feeding the birds." This is significant, since we work at a pet store.
Boy did I feel stupid. Thanks for making me feel stupid all over again, Ogged. Damned stealth workers bees, doing their jobs all quietly and shit.
I'm talking about the phones I call, not my own
Just text them a link to the post, Smashman.
Damned stealth workers bees
If you work in a pet store, you can delegate some of your tasks to ninja bees? Awesome.
That was supposed to be "worker bees" not "workers bees," btw. But yes, we have the ninja bees, all dressed in black. They feed honey to the birds, who then fly a few mice over to the ball pythons for their lunch, and so on.
(We tried to get the mice more useful jobs than being lunch, but they're not as smart as Cinderella would have you believe. I think that dress was made by drawf rats or something. Maybe they tweaked the camera angles, like they do to make Tom Cruise look as tall as Nicole Kidman.)
Anyhoo, next we're going to work on getting the razor backed turtles to shave the beared dragons. I'll let you know how it goes.
Crap! "beared dragons" s/b "bearded dragons"
or "beered dragons," take your pick
I can't even type with all 10 fingers and a keyboard. Clearly I'd suck at text messaging.
i usually don't lsiten to voicemails, i just call the person back if i see they left a message when i open my phone
Our grandchildren are totally not going to believe that the order of invention for technologies was: phone, e-mail, texting. In reality, it clearly must have happened the other way, and it's our grandparently senility that's confusing us.
I can't even type with all 10 fingers and a keyboard.
After hesitation I am also compelled to draw your attention to your mention of "drawf rats". Could be an R.A. Salvatore race of beings I suppose.
40: Right, but it just jumps to the next word in the dictionary, which isn't 'fucked.' My phone s a polite phone. But I need to type "what the fuck?"
There's also shivbunny's approach to dictionary-style texting: get annoyed at mistyping or misspelling a word and just leave it as it is, figuring that I can figure it out. It's like our own secret code, except one that leaves me saying "babe? what was that about rhubarb?"
God help you if you're one of those people who can't bring themselves to abandon conventions of punctuation and sentence structure. While I concede the efficiency of texting, I still hate it.
Texting is equivalent to CB radio. Wildly useful in its small niche. Totally un-worth the bother for most communication.*
*Although I believe you no longer need to know Morse Code to get your ham radio license.
Come now, cerebrocrat. It's all about context and purpose. Text messaging is informal and tongue-in-cheek. It's meant to be goofy, d00d.
Back on the veldt, Becksbro's forebearers once burned a year's supply of firewood sending smoke signals to a not-far-off tribe. They survived the year by burning a year's supply of puppies, and the world became a sadder place
American phone plans are fucked up. Texts in Europe don't cost the recipient money. Neither do calls unless you're "roaming" outside your home country. Hence the charm of prepaid phones - you control your own expenditure. Over here Becks' brother would've had his own mobile for about the last 4 years. You can buy one in Ireland for about €60 with €70 call credit included, and I think we're one of the more expensive countries.
Also, while phone conversations may be superior to text messages for making plans etc, text messages are superior to voicemail. So if communication is likely to be asynchronous, or all you want is to leave a message, you text.
about €60 with €70 call credit included
So if you buy just the phone with no call credit, do they refund you €10?
people, in addition to the T9 predictive text input there is also the "insert word" option which opens a window in which 4 7's does equal 's', and then you save that word. it appears in the sms where you want it, and the next time you type that combination of numbers that word appears, either first if it is unique or as one of the alternates if not. this is an area in which the nokia system is more intuitive to manage, but they all have this feature.
It seems to be a serious failure of capitalism that European style phone plans haven't driven the alternatives out of the market in the US. I put £50 advance payment on my phone every few months (using the phone top do so), and then forget about it. Nobody else pays anything. What's not to like.
91: Believe it or not I gather this is because of excessive US regulation of the free market. If what I've heard is correct, when cell phones first became widespread the idea was that it would hurt competition if cell phone numbers could be identified as such (consumer will discriminate against business that only have cell nos.) Therefore it couldn't be made more expensive to make a call to a cell phone, and the cell phone owner had to absorb the difference. This makes prepaid plans less useful. Whereas in Europe there is a cost differential b/t calling a landline and a mobile but the gap is shrinking all the time. (I think I know fewer people under 40 with a landline than without one.)
90: this is how you teach your phone to curse. Also, the words "this is an area in which the nokia system is more intuitive to manage" could be pretty much applied to every mobile phone feature.
Emir hasn't got her iPhone yet. (I kid, neither have I.)
I'm kinda sceptical that the Apple phone will be all that wonderful as a phone (IIRC somebody else owns the name iPhone). I think "see your voicemails" is the Better! Thing! that would make it attractive. 9 times out of 10 if I knew who the message is from and when it was sent I could just delete it. Also, I often don't want to have to listen to the unheard ones before I hear the latest one.
92: An additional factor in some European countries is that getting a landline installed is traditionally attended by staggering bureaucratic inefficiencies, whereas you can get a mobile by walking into a shop and buying it. So I think the younger generation are simply voting with their pocket books.
people, in addition to the T9 predictive text input there is also the "insert word" option which opens a window in which 4 7's does equal 's', and then you save that word.
Way too much effort.
I just left a voicemail violating all the rules. Two full minutes of me rambling and sputtering, then my number, mumbled and lightning-quick, then "please call soon, thanks". The end. I dislike the recipient, and lord knows he deserves it, but I still feel a little dirty.
After hesitation I am also compelled to draw your attention to your mention of "drawf rats". Could be an R.A. Salvatore race of beings I suppose.
While my many failings include poor typing skills, convoluted sentence structure, and overall incomprehensibility (a word? I doubt it), they do not extend, in this instance, to domesticated fauna. There is such a thing as a dwarf rat. And they are rather cute.
Now I need to go google R.A. Salvatore.
IIRC somebody else owns the name iPhone
Dude, where you been?
Ooh, dwarf rats! Smarter and tamer than mice, and almost as cute. Hmmm....
Isnt mrh supposed to be in trouble? The wife isnt home yet?
