I've always wondered why people are ditching their land lines and going to cellular phones. In my article "Telephones: Not Ready to Give Up my Land Line Yet", I gave four good reasons for keeping a landline. The fourth reason was sound quality.
Cellular service providers made a lot of compromises to sound quality in order to fit more channels, and hence more calls, into their networks. Those compromises degraded the quality of the sound to the point that it's become very frustrating to try to hold a decent conversation over a cell phone. Compounding the problem is the fact that the handset manufacturers have forgotten that a "smartphone" is supposed to be a telephone that does other stuff. Nowadays a "smartphone" is a palm-sized computer that also makes phone calls.
And the manufacturers have also built compromises into their hardware. The built-in speaker distorts the voice of the person on the other end. And the microphone, if it picks up your voice at all, also picks up a lot of background noise.
It doesn't have to be this way. You know those interviews on NPR, when the correspondent, sitting in the studio in Washington D.C. or Los Angeles, is having an interview with two people, one in Kabul and one in London, and it sounds like they're sitting right next to them? Yeah. Those are telephone connections, people.
Why are you settling for the tinny, fuzzy, static-filled, crap that comes out of your cellphone? A recent article in IEEE Spectrum tells why cellphone sound quality is so bad, and what can (and should) be done about it. The solutions are practical, and they are available today.
So why aren't we using them? I think it all boils down to money: the same reason that airlines are mashing seats closer together and making them more uncomfortable. It doesn't have to be this way. I'm not sure what to do about it, but I'll keep my landline until the day the phone companies get this mess figured out — and do something about it.
Showing posts with label telephone. Show all posts
Showing posts with label telephone. Show all posts
Wednesday, October 15, 2014
Wednesday, September 25, 2013
Things we don't do with a telephone or television anymore
With the advance of technology, there are some things we no longer do with our telephones or televisions, although we still use the words. For example:
"Pick up the phone" - It used to be that you answered a telephone call by picking up the handset while the phone was ringing. Or you initiated a phone call by lifting the phone off its hook or out of the cradle. Now you have to press a button to answer the phone or dial a number.
"Hang up the phone" - Most phones today, even cellphones, have a "hang up" button. But you no longer terminate the call and disconnect the line by hanging the handset on the hook on the wall.
"Dial a number" - Numeric touchpads have been de rigueur for over 40 years. I can't recall the last time I saw a dial telephone that still worked. Children and many young adults today don't even know how to use a dial phone.
"The phone is ringing" - Telephones today beep, chirp, warble, and blink. They can also sing you your favorite song or make burping or screaming noises to alert you to a call. But if you want a true ringing telephone, you'll have to download an, um, "ringtone" that sounds like a ringing telephone.
"Turn the TV on/off/up/down" - It used to be that every television had a rotary knob, labeled "ON/VOL" or "OFF/VOL". This knob was a combination on/off switch and volume control, and you had to turn the knob to perform any of the named actions. Other electronic gadgets also had rotary on/off switches, and so "turn me on" became a part of the vernacular. Today, rotary switches are a retro fashion, and they often don't have the same mechanical contacts behind them as the old ones.
"Tune in a channel" - The channel selector used to be a rotary dial with stops at channels 2 through 13. Don't ask about the 1. You wouldn't understand. But even if you turned the dial to, say, 5, channel 5 wouldn't come in clearly until you turned the fine-tuning dial to "tune in" the station. "Automatic fine tuning" was a fancy feature on new TVs in the 1970s, but it still didn't work perfectly. Today, you punch a channel number on the remote, and the TV's electronics take care of the fine-tuning for you. In fact, with digital TV, fine-tuning is a thing of the past.
What I said about TVs also applies to radios.
"Pick up the phone" - It used to be that you answered a telephone call by picking up the handset while the phone was ringing. Or you initiated a phone call by lifting the phone off its hook or out of the cradle. Now you have to press a button to answer the phone or dial a number.
"Hang up the phone" - Most phones today, even cellphones, have a "hang up" button. But you no longer terminate the call and disconnect the line by hanging the handset on the hook on the wall.
"Dial a number" - Numeric touchpads have been de rigueur for over 40 years. I can't recall the last time I saw a dial telephone that still worked. Children and many young adults today don't even know how to use a dial phone.
"The phone is ringing" - Telephones today beep, chirp, warble, and blink. They can also sing you your favorite song or make burping or screaming noises to alert you to a call. But if you want a true ringing telephone, you'll have to download an, um, "ringtone" that sounds like a ringing telephone.
"Turn the TV on/off/up/down" - It used to be that every television had a rotary knob, labeled "ON/VOL" or "OFF/VOL". This knob was a combination on/off switch and volume control, and you had to turn the knob to perform any of the named actions. Other electronic gadgets also had rotary on/off switches, and so "turn me on" became a part of the vernacular. Today, rotary switches are a retro fashion, and they often don't have the same mechanical contacts behind them as the old ones.
"Tune in a channel" - The channel selector used to be a rotary dial with stops at channels 2 through 13. Don't ask about the 1. You wouldn't understand. But even if you turned the dial to, say, 5, channel 5 wouldn't come in clearly until you turned the fine-tuning dial to "tune in" the station. "Automatic fine tuning" was a fancy feature on new TVs in the 1970s, but it still didn't work perfectly. Today, you punch a channel number on the remote, and the TV's electronics take care of the fine-tuning for you. In fact, with digital TV, fine-tuning is a thing of the past.
What I said about TVs also applies to radios.
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
On Polls, Politicking, and Super PACs
About super PACs:
They're not fooling anybody, you know. They're a blatant move by the classic men-behind-the-scenes to control the political landscape and the political discourse like they used to do. They're not about free speech. They're about money and power. We all know that.
But they're frighteningly effective, and so are their tactics. Most voters in a given election will vote based on emotion, not logic or facts, and the super PACs' tactics are focused on manipulating voters' emotions.
About politicking:
You know, since we stopped subscribing to cable TV and watching network TV, we have missed all of the political ads. And when I say "missed," I mean "not seen" or "not been subject to."
When we listen to the radio, we change stations every time we hear a political ad. (In fact, we frequently change stations for any kind of advertisement.) In radio parlance, political ads are an automatic tune-out.
When we read the newspaper, we read the political ads for local issues or candidates, and then go to the Internet to find detailed, impartial facts and to read both sides of the issue.
We get most of our news today from the Internet. We read from a variety of news outlets, analysts, and opinion leaders. We assume that everybody has a bias, and so we make sure to take our news from across the political spectrum. Some of the most detached, unbiased reporting comes from overseas, from outside looking in, but even then we are careful to watch for hidden biases.
We've noticed a lot more political advertising on the Internet. We ignore all of it. (However, we are intrigued by which political ads AdSense chooses to serve up on places like Zyzmog Galactic Headquarters.)
We listen to speeches, or read transcripts of speeches, on the Internet. Sometimes we will find multiple versions of the speech. Sometimes it takes a little work to find an accurate video of the speech, unedited and uncut. We listen to some of the after-speech commentary, but not much. After 5 or 10 minutes, the commentators go into talking-head mode, and then it's time to move on.
About polls:
I used to participate in telephone polls and surveys, thinking that I was fulfilling my civic duty in making my voice heard. Boy, was I mistaken. It took me a while, but I finally caught on to the fact that a "poll" is not really a "poll": the pollster is pushing a specific agenda, and is politicking (or selling, if it's a consumer poll and not a voter poll) just like everybody else.
Caller ID is a wonderful thing. During election season (like, right now), we ignore incoming calls if we don't recognize the calling number, or if no number is shown. There's no law that requires you to answer a ringing telephone.
That short pause before the human starts talking is also a wonderful thing. One day autodialers will be fast enough to eliminate the pause, but for 2012, that brief time while the autodialer processes our "Hello?" and routes us to a human or to a recorded message, is just enough time to alert us to the fact that it's a call we can safely hang up on.
This year I'm going to try something new. If I answer a ringing telephone and I don't realize it's a political call until the caller starts talking, I'm going to abruptly and wordlessly hang up. It may be rude, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to them, any more than I have the time or inclination to listen to a door-to-door salesman.
To wrap up:
Politicians must hate voters like us. We think about the candidates, and the issues. We do our research. We look at all sides of the story. We judge the credibility of everything we hear or read, and we ignore emotional appeals. And we hate buzzwords, slogans, and cute catchphrases, with a hatred that surpasses all understanding. We don't vote a strict party or ideological line, although we prefer moderates over radicals because we know they will get things done and not just crow like a rooster all day long. We vote for what we think will be best in the long run for our community, our state and our country.
They're not fooling anybody, you know. They're a blatant move by the classic men-behind-the-scenes to control the political landscape and the political discourse like they used to do. They're not about free speech. They're about money and power. We all know that.
But they're frighteningly effective, and so are their tactics. Most voters in a given election will vote based on emotion, not logic or facts, and the super PACs' tactics are focused on manipulating voters' emotions.
About politicking:
You know, since we stopped subscribing to cable TV and watching network TV, we have missed all of the political ads. And when I say "missed," I mean "not seen" or "not been subject to."
When we listen to the radio, we change stations every time we hear a political ad. (In fact, we frequently change stations for any kind of advertisement.) In radio parlance, political ads are an automatic tune-out.
When we read the newspaper, we read the political ads for local issues or candidates, and then go to the Internet to find detailed, impartial facts and to read both sides of the issue.
We get most of our news today from the Internet. We read from a variety of news outlets, analysts, and opinion leaders. We assume that everybody has a bias, and so we make sure to take our news from across the political spectrum. Some of the most detached, unbiased reporting comes from overseas, from outside looking in, but even then we are careful to watch for hidden biases.
We've noticed a lot more political advertising on the Internet. We ignore all of it. (However, we are intrigued by which political ads AdSense chooses to serve up on places like Zyzmog Galactic Headquarters.)
We listen to speeches, or read transcripts of speeches, on the Internet. Sometimes we will find multiple versions of the speech. Sometimes it takes a little work to find an accurate video of the speech, unedited and uncut. We listen to some of the after-speech commentary, but not much. After 5 or 10 minutes, the commentators go into talking-head mode, and then it's time to move on.
About polls:
I used to participate in telephone polls and surveys, thinking that I was fulfilling my civic duty in making my voice heard. Boy, was I mistaken. It took me a while, but I finally caught on to the fact that a "poll" is not really a "poll": the pollster is pushing a specific agenda, and is politicking (or selling, if it's a consumer poll and not a voter poll) just like everybody else.
Caller ID is a wonderful thing. During election season (like, right now), we ignore incoming calls if we don't recognize the calling number, or if no number is shown. There's no law that requires you to answer a ringing telephone.
That short pause before the human starts talking is also a wonderful thing. One day autodialers will be fast enough to eliminate the pause, but for 2012, that brief time while the autodialer processes our "Hello?" and routes us to a human or to a recorded message, is just enough time to alert us to the fact that it's a call we can safely hang up on.
This year I'm going to try something new. If I answer a ringing telephone and I don't realize it's a political call until the caller starts talking, I'm going to abruptly and wordlessly hang up. It may be rude, but I have neither the time nor the inclination to listen to them, any more than I have the time or inclination to listen to a door-to-door salesman.
To wrap up:
Politicians must hate voters like us. We think about the candidates, and the issues. We do our research. We look at all sides of the story. We judge the credibility of everything we hear or read, and we ignore emotional appeals. And we hate buzzwords, slogans, and cute catchphrases, with a hatred that surpasses all understanding. We don't vote a strict party or ideological line, although we prefer moderates over radicals because we know they will get things done and not just crow like a rooster all day long. We vote for what we think will be best in the long run for our community, our state and our country.
Friday, July 2, 2010
Telephones: Not Ready to Give Up my Land Line Yet
I like cellular phones. They have changed civilization as much as fire, the wheel, and indoor plumbing. I covet the iPhone and one day I hope to own one.
We're in a transition period, between a world that is 100% land lines (that's the new term for wired-into-the-wall-somewhere telephones) and a world that is 100% cellular phones. Most people or families have both. Some of my friends have gotten rid of their land lines and gone completely to cellular phones. They have several reasons for switching, some of which are listed below:
I'm not ready to give up my land line yet. My reasons for keeping it are listed below:
We're in a transition period, between a world that is 100% land lines (that's the new term for wired-into-the-wall-somewhere telephones) and a world that is 100% cellular phones. Most people or families have both. Some of my friends have gotten rid of their land lines and gone completely to cellular phones. They have several reasons for switching, some of which are listed below:
- convenience and portability
- freedom from the monopoly of "the phone company"
- one-stop shopping for voice, text, internet, whatever
- connectivity
I'm not ready to give up my land line yet. My reasons for keeping it are listed below:
- cost
- reliability
- latency
- sound quality
Cellular phone service has come down in price, but it still leaves a lot to be desired. The cellular phone companies are great at nickel-and-diming their customers for additional services and for miscellaneous fees, a technique carried over from their land-line billing practices. If times get hard and I have to trim my budget, I can save a lot more money by discontinuing my cellular service than by unplugging my land line.
Unfortunately, discontinuing one's cellular service is not that simple. Most cellular providers lock you into a service plan for a certain period of time. Some providers, such as Cricket, do not, but most do. This means that you won't start saving money until your contract ends.
Land lines have it all over cell phones as far as reliability is concerned. Cell phone service is always a gamble, and not just when you're driving in a car. Dropped calls happen at the most annoying times, even when you're merely sitting in your living room. In the event of a widespread power outage or other natural disaster, cell phones are useless as communication devices.
As for land line handsets, if you still have one of the old-fashioned Western Electric electromechanical phones (the kind that only plugs into the phone jack and not into an electrical outlet, and that has a real bell inside), you can send and receive phone calls through some of the worst disasters, including power failures.
Latency, in Cell Phone Land, refers to the delay between the time you say something and the time the person on the other end hears what you said. We have all experienced the awkward cellphone conversations where one person tries to respond too quickly, or both start talking at once and don't realize they're talking on top of each other for a second or two. Latency is a phenomenon dictated by the laws of nature. Like gravity, it's something you can't avoid.
With land lines, latency is near zero. Computers and modems can detect the latency on a land line, but humans can't. It makes for smoother conversations, less frustration and less stress.
And finally, the voice quality on most cellphone calls is terrible. I don't really understand why we spend more money to make our voices sound so bad - sometimes downright unintelligible. I often catch myself wondering if I sound as bad to the person on the other end of the line as they sound to me.
Cellphones are the future of mankind; it's undeniable. But don't be too quick to abandon the past. Some moves to embrace the future are not necessarily good moves (like "upgrading" from Windows XP to Windows Vista).
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