Uncompromising honor earc

Just spent my $15, will return to thread in 3-4 days.

cthia wrote:***Snipped****

Another failure of many smartphones, mobile phones actually, is the inability to disable the screen and or the bright light that could alert the criminal element of your location. I saw in a movie once where someone got killed because of the bright light given off in the dark room they were hiding in.

My Motorola T720 flip phone (the best phone ever made) had the ability in settings to disable the lighted screen when opening. Only the numbers were backlit, but subdued. One press of a side button brought the screen up. It was instrumental in saving sneers, jeers and thrown soda pop in movie theaters.

I have to explain to almost everyone I come in contact with why I prefer what they refer to as "stone age" technology compared to their iPhones or what have you. "You can afford a much better phone that'll do so much stuff."

That's why I don't want one. The only thing I want my phone to do, is act like a phone. Ring and be rung. Smartphones are so busy trying to incorporate and cater to so much stuff that it forgot its heritage. Heck, on many of the smartphones you have to pay extra for the simple telephone ring. Which I demand. Music or any of that other annoying crap will fail to get my attention. A regular telephone ring is distinctive. I'm sure you've noticed that that particular ring will get your attention even if its coming from the tv and sound like its in your own home.

Cellphone companies forgot that form follows function.

It seems to me that you prefer single use devices. Which is something, in general, that I also prefer. My phone never crashes or gets infected with malware as it is an old-fashioned, reliable landline that gets its power from the phone company. My ebook reader is a Kindle to immerse myself in the story I'm reading, not a tablet to get distracted with. The sole multi-function electronic device that I have and use for multiple purposes is my PC with Internet access. (Which while I do have nearly all of the Honorverse ebooks stored on it except for the latest in theManticore Ascendent series, I don't read books on it--just use my word processing software to look up passages for copy-and-paste for text evidence for use in posts on these forums.)

Seems we have strayed a bit from UH now..

And in my opinion a smartphone isn't a phone with a lot of extras, it's the other way around - it's a small computer that happens to have phone functionality added to it.

Vince wrote:

cthia wrote:***Snipped****

Another failure of many smartphones, mobile phones actually, is the inability to disable the screen and or the bright light that could alert the criminal element of your location. I saw in a movie once where someone got killed because of the bright light given off in the dark room they were hiding in.

My Motorola T720 flip phone (the best phone ever made) had the ability in settings to disable the lighted screen when opening. Only the numbers were backlit, but subdued. One press of a side button brought the screen up. It was instrumental in saving sneers, jeers and thrown soda pop in movie theaters.

I have to explain to almost everyone I come in contact with why I prefer what they refer to as "stone age" technology compared to their iPhones or what have you. "You can afford a much better phone that'll do so much stuff."

That's why I don't want one. The only thing I want my phone to do, is act like a phone. Ring and be rung. Smartphones are so busy trying to incorporate and cater to so much stuff that it forgot its heritage. Heck, on many of the smartphones you have to pay extra for the simple telephone ring. Which I demand. Music or any of that other annoying crap will fail to get my attention. A regular telephone ring is distinctive. I'm sure you've noticed that that particular ring will get your attention even if its coming from the tv and sound like its in your own home.

Cellphone companies forgot that form follows function.

It seems to me that you prefer single use devices. Which is something, in general, that I also prefer. My phone never crashes or gets infected with malware as it is an old-fashioned, reliable landline that gets its power from the phone company. My ebook reader is a Kindle to immerse myself in the story I'm reading, not a tablet to get distracted with. The sole multi-function electronic device that I have and use for multiple purposes is my PC with Internet access. (Which while I do have nearly all of the Honorverse ebooks stored on it except for the latest in theManticore Ascendent series, I don't read books on it--just use my word processing software to look up passages for copy-and-paste for text evidence for use in posts on these forums.)

Believe you me, I understand your pain. I don't mind multi-use devices. I got a bazillion of them myself. I have enough Raspberries to make pie. But the telephone is a very important device whose use shouldn't be hampered by bells and whistles.

I don't even mind my mobile having the bells and whistles as long as they don't interfere with its functionality and as long as it's designed with the telephone in mind first and foremost. Sometimes people don't know what they need until you give it to them. And many of us are dangerously impressionable.

My Mororola T720 was purchased in an era when miniaturization was all the rage and it came in at a steep price of 500 to $700 in 2002. Everyone wanted a very small flip phone. Then the industry told us that we need a bigger phone the size of a small tv. "Don't worry about the size, you can carry it around in a back pack or a fanny purse that we'll also sell to you. And because of the inconvenience, we'll throw in a bunch of other stuff like games to distract the hell out of you and your loved ones while you're driving."

What's amusing is if you grew up in the age of the telegram and was glad that tech is long since gone, you should find it hilarious that the phone companies have convinced us that telegrams, what we once hated, are what we really really want and need after all. "We'll just name them text messages." Isn't that what telegrams were?

Remember Western Union telegrams didn't have a period so they included the word STOP to indicate the end of sentences. When people send me text messages I want to respond like the telegrams they really are...

>>> I don't want to communicate this way STOP sending me this junk STOP and realize that's an actual phone in your hands STOP abusing it just STOP <<<

I never wanted to carry a mobile around with me anyway, but the demanding world demands that I do so. The same world is demanding that I also carry a word processor, game boy, Western Union, internet, Mahjongg, camera, voice recorder, hotspot, tv, music player... enough already. I have as much in my pocket as a woman has in her purse. Apparently progress doesn't like me to have downtime, alone time, me time or happy time. People drink at bars because their mobile is annoying the hell out of them. They call it happy hour. You are allowed one hour. I don't drink so where's my hour?

What's with the industry forcing people to purchase devices with a learning curve so steep they never learn to use them anyway? Which also serves to annoy the hell out of me constantly teaching them the same thing over and over. You can teach a dog new tricks but apparently not some people. But it really isn't their fault. It's the industry forcing their hand because they won't manufacture a dumbed down smart phone that only knows how to be a phone. Some people simply need a mobile shaped like the small yellow school buses with the light on top.


To be honest, I crave the time when phones were not portable at all. You simply had to wait for the intended victim to return home to annoy the hell out of them. If you needed to call someone while you were out you used a payphone. We really screwed up when we tipped our hand to the phone companies that we were willing to purchase cords that reached outside in the courtyard after the original telephones became somewhat portable. The original phones were so heavy they tended to remain anchored by their own mass wherever you directed the phone company to place them. They were like massive and indestructible Sherman tanks.

In fact, they would warn you beforehand to seek out a territory of your home where you were going to want it placed, because the beasts equaled the mass of a small rhino.

Then they got small enough to be called desk phones. Even these were formidable enough weapons which would crack long after someone's skull.

Eventually they became manageable with long cords that twisted so badly that you had to hold the receiver up once a week and let it spin itself out. More often if you were lucky enough to have five sisters. When we began to purchase cords that will reach to the neighbors home, phone companies began to take notice. "What if we manufactured a phone that doesn't need a cord that'll wrap you up like an anaconda, and you won't have to fight your five sisters for access."

I tease my sisters that their species is who's responsible for the development of mobiles in the first place. It's concept was originally only intended to be mobile enough for brothers to hijack and run from their sisters long enough to ring their girlfriends. Remember when we hated party lines? Now the phone companies have somehow gotten us to love them by calling them chat rooms.

My grandfather had the 1907 model and it was so heavy it was literally anchored, not mounted, to the wall. One of my brothers got it. He's was a programmer for the phone company eons ago. The Princess phone of 1959 was probably our downfall and the beginning of our age of innocence.

I had a BMW 850 once that came with a built in phone that reminded me of the huge military brutes used to call in air strikes. The mobile phones are threatening to reach those proportions again, and most of you are gobbling them up as if you're expecting to call in an airstrike of your own! In fact, I've seen some mobiles so large that I wasn't sure if I should hit the ground.

"Incoming!"

cthia wrote:

Annachie wrote:At 70% or so, I'm starting to get sick of it.

Well that's a cliffhanger of a review; do clarify. Is that a good sick or a bad sick. Sick or sick.

Or a bad sick or a badd sick.

I really don't want to say too much, because I forgot this was a spoiler free thread when I posted, but...

I'm up to a part that could be described as depressing, whilst going through a depressive time in RL.

That was just too much.

Joat42 wrote:Seems we have strayed a bit from UH now..

And in my opinion a smartphone isn't a phone with a lot of extras, it's the other way around - it's a small computer that happens to have phone functionality added to it.

Then why call it a smart "phone?" Which is as dumb as the phone.

Some smart phones are telephones with split personalities too strong for the real personality to emerge. Or they've been hijacked by the demon that jumped out of Linda Blair...

"He's no longer in here. Your mother does this $%*&$%n^&%$."

That's why many people have to seek out exorcists. They call them tech support to throw off the demon.

Keith_w wrote:

cthia wrote:
<Snipped because it was getting too long.>

Cellphone companies forgot that form follows function.

cthia:

Personally, I use my phone more for email and texting than I do for telephoning. I am pretty sure that most (especially the young) do the same, so I am pretty comfortable with "phone" being an app. You are, quite obviously different, and that is fine as well, our differences are what make the world go around. My spouse carries a flip phone too, which she rarely turns on. That's how she wants to use it, and that, mostly, except when I want to phone her, is fine.

I would insist my wife leave her phone on. She may not have time for it to boot if she's in real danger.

Hutch wrote:Just spent my $15, will return to thread in 3-4 days.

I'll return in six months, or whenever the book rolls fresh off the press. Keep things going 'til my return, will ya?

Classified threads are punching me in the gut, because curiosity kills the cat. So... until then.