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Cell Phone Is The Most Hated Invention
Romeo Elias Cabrera writes "The most hated invention in America -although also one of the most used- is the cell phone, according a
recent survey. The Lemelson-MIT Invention Index, an annual survey by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, found that among adults asked what invention they hate most but can't live without, 30 percent said the cell phone."
Turn it off and the boss freaks out and fires you. The demand for instant contact has spoiled people somewhat.
I understand what you say. I have a cell phone, but I keep it off, ALL THE TIME. I don't tell other people the number. I can use it if I get into a wreck (and I have), or if something else very important comes up. But I refuse to keep it on all the time. I can't even go one class in college now (even 45 minute ones with only a handfull of people) without a cell phone going off. And in my largest class (~1000 people) you could hear 3 or 4 if you listened every day. If people would just stop leaving the damn things on and answering every call even when they don't feel like it, they might not hate 'em so much.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
I was about to post this exact same comment. It's true, there was once a time where you could expect to get a person's undivided attention. Now, for some magical reason the phone gets priority over the actual person who's there. I'm going to start telling people how rude they are... I don't think they realize it.
It's amazing at how many people have the things surgically attached to their ear. In just a 5 mile drive from my house to the train station, there were no less than six cell users yapping away on their phones ignoring the driving task. They were swerving in and out of their lanes, and going 10MPH under the speed limit.
It just seems crazy on how so many people are addicted to the things. But I am supprised that 30% of the people out there recognize them as an annoyance... but I wonder how many of them are hypocrites.
Mewyn Dy'ner
eh? Hate? I can't say that I love MS Office. Like you say, "I use it because I have to" but I don't like it any less that I would any other Office Suite. I can honestly say that none pretty much all my co-workers feel the same way.
No sig
You can always turn it off. Of course, you can't make the dumbass in the movie theater turn his off.
It's good to use your head, but not as a battering ram.
It's not only the beeping of alarm clocks, or the fact that they wake you up in the middle of your threesome with Brittney Spears and Christina Aguilera.
Alarm clocks have some of the worst human interfaces around. Many make it far too easy to set the wrong time (the AM/PM dot hell), and many are a true pain in the ass to set, forcing one to take up to a minute just to cycle to the time you want.
Given that your typical alarm clock possesses a fraction of the technology of a simple PDA and designing the technology of one shouldn't be that complex, it's kind of pathetic that after all these years the design of your typical alarm lock user interface still sucks.
Sure, some people will probably laugh and blow off this criticism mere nitpicking, but I wouldn't be surprised if employees' difficulty setting alarm clocks has cost businesses as much per year as the common cold .
Ergonomica Auctorita Illico!
Hmmm.... I wonder why they hate it so much. It's probably not the irritation at hearing people speak on them in restaurants and such. People seem to feel like they are now tied to their cellphones. They choose to keep the phone on and with them. They choose the type of job and family life that ties them to the phone. They'd be tied to the job/family without the phone, but it gives them more flexibility. A person might be on call at all hours, but couldn't it be that without cell phones two people would do the job of the one person on call, one of the two people always at the office?
I have two eyes, I have two feet.
Food for thought: The Subaru Forester has almost an inch more ground clearance than a Ford Explorer.
Wah!
Heh. Where I live (Baltimore,) there are plenty of coffee-canned-for-performance econoboxes and SUVs to go around. What's more, we get enough snow that it hits a few times every winter, but not enough snow to for the city to qualify as "a city that gets snow". An inch causes consternation; three closes school; six shuts the city down.
Anyhow. The vehicles, and their drivers.
The Uber-Civics assume that, because they have zippy, lightweight front-wheel drive, they can drive like bats out of hell and stop on a dime.
By contrast, the Hummers et. al. assume that, because they have strong, beefy four-wheel drive, they can drive like bats out of hell and stop on a dime.
Of course, both sets of vehicles have roughly identical braking capabilities in snow--that is, utterly abysmal.
The econoboxes, by nature of their lightweight frame, plow about a foot into the snowbank, get lifted off the ground, and sit there looking all stupid 'cuz the 3-foot aluminum wing doesn't do jack shit if you're not moving. (I have yet to develop the heart to tell them that it's just as effective whilst cruising at 70 down residential streets, but this is for another time.)
The SUVs, by nature of their heavy frame, plow about four feet into the snow, where (to their shock and horror) the drivers discover that even their very, very masculine car can get high-centered. (You haven't lived until you've seen a Hummer owner waiting for a tow out of a snowbank.) Such high centering is invariably accompanied by heated cell phone calls, gratuitous gesticulation at various things, and the careful brushing of snow from various articles of outerwear.
(Now, I'd never want to drive my Civic in the mountains after a snowfall--that's just suicide. The vast, vast majority of SUV owners, though, live in urban areas and use them for freeway commuting, shuttling kids, and grocery detail...)
Obliteracy: Words with explosions
Tell that to the Jeep I pulled out of the snow with my 1987 Golf (1) GL. SUVs are worthless on snow. American SUVs are worthless in general. I can honestly say that I have not ever seen a double-bogey Explorer (or whatever it was) more pitiful than last week at Tryvann ski center. 25 cm with snow at it was stuck and had to be pulled out and to asphalt with a tractor.
Then turn it off, forchrissakes! That's what voice mail is for!
The PAGER is a thousand times worse then a cell phone.
"Who hasn't slipped into the break room for a quick nibble on a love Newton before?" - Mr. Peterman.
I hate the computer. Without the invention of the computer, I wouldn't have a dead-end job while waiting for the economy to recover right now. I'd be turning dirt black like my proud ancestors.
In the same vein, Internet Explorer. Especially for web developers who understand how bad it is, yet still have to adhere to its "standards".
I'd have to say that EverCrack is pretty high up there on the list.
Alright, I had this great idea. I live in Providence, we have a lot of bike and pedestrian traffic and really shitty downtown and campus parking. I think they should paint ALL parking spaces the size of small cars and give $50 tickets to violators. Of course the city would have to put up a few more garages for SUVs and trucks, but the revenue from tose operations could go straight to the city.
Overall, driving expenditures, be it buying the car or paying gas just removes money from the local economy here. We'd be doing ourselves a huge favor here if we implemented strict laws to reduce dumb consumer spending.
"Sometimes, I think Trent just needs a cup of hot chocolate and a blankie." -Tori Amos on Nine Inch Nails
They were, I thought, at one time the most hated thing of all time. And we can't live without magazines, right?
We need to start making "democratic" phones using the bluetooth adapters. If a room has 10 people with mobiles, and 7 of them are set on silent, the others should be forced onto silent by some kind of broadcast signal and not allowed to be used for speech or any other noise generation (except calling 999/911).
You could even force people to send SMS, instead of "incoming call" they'd get "someone called, but nobody else in the room wants to hear your conversation, text them instead or walk outside.".
Unfortunately history has proven that you cannot really trust *people* (in general) with anything. Expecting the masses to be polite or even remotely considerate with something as "technical" as a mobile phone is a waste of time frankly.
I'm looking at the aricle, and something seemed a bit off to me. The picture. For one, the bottom slide is far more anterior then the top. For one, look at the shape of piriform and the optic bundle (it's what is optic nerve closer to the eyes.)
Beyond that, just look at the shape of the hippocampus, these slides are at least 2 mm seperated, if not more. I don't have a rat brain atlas in front of me. But the point I'm trying to make is it's not a direct comparison, and there are more blood ventricals in the second slide.
Second, this looks like a map2 stain, and if that is the case, dark brown signifies apoptosis, or quick sudden death of a neuron. But dark brown also comes from over freezing of the tissue, which is often cut at -40 C or below and can crack if flash frozen.
Furthermore, I'm skeptical that this sort of microwave radiation does much of anything to brain tissue over that sort of exposure periods, even at high doses. For some brain analysis, to freeze necrosis at the time of death and prevent breakdown of some neurotransmitters, rats are given a high dose of microwave radion to cook thier brain inside the head, which also makes it easier to disect, and I've never seen this sort of blood leakage.....but that's just me. I'd like to see the actual article though, because MAP2 staining here makes no sense....
Yep, you heard me. I'm a childless couple that REFUSES to comply with societal standards by NOT BREEDING. I don't want a crying, sniviling, little devil sucking the life out of me. They are FAR worse than cell phones in restaurants or elsewhere.
Remember that episode of The Simpsons a few weeks ago when the childless in Springfield rise up and take back the town from kids?! That was GREAT!!
I totally agree with you, there. I don't want a cell phone for the simple reason that if anyone can reach me 24 hours a day, then I no longer have the control over who can reach me and when. I have owned one in the past, and those things make me feel as though I'm at everyone's mercy. No longer could I plan my day the way I saw fit, but I had to plan my day according to what someone else thought I ought to be doing. To me, it's a freedom and privacy issue. I feel for those who are enslaved to those things.