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Did Your Code Ever Make Anyone Deaf?
theodp writes "Siemens AG anticipates additional costs from a software problem with new mobile phones that has led retailers to suspend sales. Five models of its new 65 series can emit a piercing melody into users' ears if the battery fails during a call, causing hearing damage in extreme cases, according to a statement."
it.slashdot.org made me blind.
But if they looked at it they could have gone blind. Seriously, I've seen some messed up code, but deaf?
Eh, what was that? I couldn't hear you!
BTW, First Post!
Seems like a simple test case to me: battery fails during a call.
for people to use Nextels or push to talk cell phones in public, "just in case". Oh well.
-- NymblZ
Ignorance is a sty in the mind's eye
Can you hear me now? What?
i know you can't cover every corner case, but, er a cell phone hitting low battery is not what i'd consider a corner case. Now, if there was 3rd party this or that crammed in there after the fact (ie customer did that crap), now way to forsee that, but damn....hearing damage? C'mon, if i had to choose one of two options:
a) batt low, be fucking LOUD to warn of it..
b> batt low, warn, beep, blink, flash, beep more...and then even more...
hell, beep that ass off, but loud enough to damage one's ear? Fuck that. No one to blame, but the dudes that made it...period.
Good.
Sucks for Siemens. Heh... a twofer!
Worse than goatse :(
Any time your ears ring, it's "hearing damage". I play violin, and whenever I practice, and for a few hours afterword, I get a noticable ringing in my ears. It actually doesn't go away fully, I can always hear this ringing (sometimes a lower frequency buzzing) at night. This is hearing damage, but I'm not deaf. However, if this were caused by a cellpone, you bet I'd be suing.
Quid festinatio swallonis est aetherfuga inonusti?
Africus aut Europaeus?
What is the maximum volume on this phone? Why not just cap the volume at a non-hearing-threatening level and be done with it? If they don't do that, isn't it just a matter of someone cranking the volume too loud, or is the low battery warning allowed to exceed the regular max. volume level?
My gf bought one of these things a couple of days ago, when this statement was released the Dutch news networks thought it was important enough to put in the news on the radio. So I heard it driving home from work.
The first thing I did when I got home was telling the misses that that tune she always hears when the phone is actually ringing on the other side (when every phone user already has the thing to his ear) was not here to stay.
I am not sure if this is how it's done with every Siemens but with her it was menu option 3.8.3 (or Sound Options -> Other Tunes -> Connection Tune (on/off). Get rid of it.
I thought it said "Did Your Code Ever Make Anyone Dead?"
That time will come, but first the killer robots need some touching up around the joints...
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
Gee whiz, what are the chances of a user holding a mobile phone next to their ear? I always keep mine strapped to my elbow.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
whoever made the phone has very talented engineers.
what did they have 90 year old review the phone for them?
RArr!
That's what happens when you outsource the hardware to Singapore and the software to India.
"Soft beep" in Mandarin probably translates to "Loud, deafening tone" in Hindi.
Anyone know the db and frequency of any of the ring tones?
Could not find the info. Purposelly withheld from the articles?
100% Insightful
Will MS suspend sales of Windows and Office until all the bugs are ironed out?
Why not simply suspend purchases of Windows and Office? Switch to something better.
The driver and transducer should have been selected so that there was no possibility of dangerous sound levels, no matter what the software decided to do.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Editing code using vim with default syntax coloring has caused near-blindness on many a night.
-- n
Often upon seeing my solutions to the labs in my first programming class, the Professor would let out a shriek that caused hearing damage to virtually everyone within a 3 mile radius and killed several Koi fish in a nearby pond.
Take Care
A1miras
Captain Hector!
:-).
I haven't seen an Escape Velocity Reference on Slashdot before. It's pretty exciting.
I would write more but Stud Beefpile is chasing after me
Oh, and because I have never seen this flamewar before, Clarinet is so much cooler than violin.
Help I'm a rock.
I had a Samsung SCH-8500, SprintPCS. Sure it made sounds when the battery died, but it was usually a quiet beep. However, at times (and for causes unknown to me) it would beep really really loudly in my ear. Me being the idiot that I was, I never got it replaced. Probably should have. It may have been a heat problem (talking too long), but I'm not sure. It was loud enough to be painful.
Anyway, I now have a Sanyo PM-8200 and I'm quite happy.
If you think that's funny try "mobile phone exploding" on Google =)
& q= mobile+phone+exploding
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&lr=&ie=UTF-8
Isn't there hardware in these devices that prevents very loud noises/extremely high pitched noise? I mean, how hard is it to put a volume hardware filter on these devices. There's no reason to have something as loud or as high pitched as was being described, is there?
As a side note, what if an mp3 is corrupted on my mp3 player and the corrupted data causes an extremely high-pitched tone to be emitted for a long duration...? Do mp3 players have hardware (like a volume filter, or a high pass filter) that would prevent me from going deaf?
The story on El Reg has a bit of helpful information (emphasis mine):
The flaw affects version 11 of the software of the C65, CX65, M65, S65 model phones, and then only if the phone has already issued three low-battery warnings.
With the "only after three" it sounds like this was meant a 'feature' where they assumed that if you didn't do something after the first three beeps, it must be in your pocket or somewhere else you can't hear it - so crank up the volume.
Obviously, they forgot that people won't immediately end their calls - rather, they'll stay on the call, because their phone is about to die, and they want to get as much info across before it kicks the bucket.
Golly gee Mr. Wizard, that's more than we wanted to know.
db is a unit. You're probably asking about the SPL.
--I'm so anal.
to the problem of all the lame asshats spending all their time with a cell phone stuck on their ear. /. moderators: please adjust moderation by 1/2 - the second paragraph was only HALF-joking...]
Anybody that spends that much time using a cell phone, the rest of us are probably better off - they go deaf, they don't need the phone anymore, right? No more talking & driving, talking & putting on makeup, talking & whatever.
[note to
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
Whats the big deal, I can read it.slashdot.org just fine. Maybe you should get your eyes checked out.
Wrote a post the other day about being discouraged (and pissed) about companies (and ultimately your fellow man) being willing to "fuck ya" just to get a buck, beat the "other guy" to market, and make another buck.
:(
Burns me up.
This is just not an "oversight"...surely they tested this....surely. All i can do is sigh and just....fuck it - makes me...just sad. This should have shown up in routine, run-of-the-mill tests...and they shipped it anyway.
Fuck it.
how many people can hear if you and deaf people can hear?
agreed
----
Running 'Nix is like owning a Lightsaber. It's "a more elegant weapon for a more civilized time."
Here's a horrible idea I know some l33t3r is probably working on right now. How about a worm that makes the screen strobe-flash red? I wonder how many poor kids some idiot programmer is going to put into convlusions to prove they have skills. Infect 1 million computers with this, and you can expect at least 100 seizures. You know someone is working on it.
"Curiosity killed the cat, but for a while I was a suspect."- Steven Wright
I mean, everytime I reload the OS, the apps, my data, and reboot, the system crashes yet again - and needless to add, I screeeeeaaammmm. This has happened since 1998.
I'm using Linux now, but I must say, the great majority of Windows+Office users' systems are relatively stable, aside from things that are beyond Microsoft's control, with WinME being the main exception. I've seen bad ram or heat problems give the appearance of buggy software, because often it'll cause them to fail in the same places each time, etc.
Just after the shriek, look for a bystander that hates cell phones, holding a gadget in his hand, and smiling.
Yes, you. Purposedly withheld? You bet. That's right, you. They're looking for you and now they've found you. Don't worry. It's just as you suspected. You and Mulder will be united^H^H^H^H^H^H reunited just as you predicted. You know as well as I know that they witheld this information just to trap you in their snare. Why o why did you give in. Why!! Ah crap... who cares..
Voice Over: This man is Ernest Scribbler... writer of jokes. In a few moments, he will have written the funniest joke in the world... and, as a consequence, he will die... laughing..... Somewhat like this situation, but totally different.
Tin foil hat brigade. Quick! We found another prospect!
I had a user complain that my website gave them a hairy palm.
One of the most serious software problems involved the Therac 25 computerized radiation therapy device. Several patients received exterme overdoses of X-rays due to a programming bug. It's a well-known case covered in some computer ethics classes. Unfortunately, most software is exempt from product liability claims.
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i normally rip on Michael for posting crap, but looking back over tonight he's done a fair job of picking good stories. i should probably post this on my own journal, but felt i'd make it public-like.
Seriously, nice track of stories tonight. Mod OT if you like, but i needed to post for the record (i'm not an ass). Fair is fair, Michael, you did alright by tonight. Peace, bro.
(relax, moddies, it is just a joke)
I will die laughing. JimD. I got kicked out of a bar in Spokane tonight. Having a white trash vacation to Silverwood.
My Iriver IFP195 occasionally emits a head blowing sound when the battery has almost lost all its power. I would estimate it way over 95 db.
It's neutered several and lobotomized a few others.
"Would you call that a design problem or a launch problem?" -Chris Knight
...I got a Blue Screen of Deaf once. Does that count?
<ducks>
In Soviet Russia, Chuck Norris will still kick your ass.
It's been a while so my memory is a bit fuzzy so I'm paraphrasing:
Back in High School, programming on Borland Turbo Pascal (6.0?), I noticed the following gem in the help file description of the sound generation function. In addition to the ususal function parameters, etc, there was an odd little anecdote about how the resonant frequency of a chicken head is about 3 Hertz and how one time a factory that generated this frequency at high volume ended killing all of the chickens in a neighboring chicken farm. It them went on to say that the resonant frequency of a human skull was about 1 Hz but that the PC speaker probably couldn't generate that frequency very well.
WTF!?!
When I first started programming with Turbo Pascal in the early 90s, I learnt how to make the PC speaker play a tune. However, I was never able to convince anyone to put their ear that close to my bigtower :-)
plenty of people have screamed :)
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
Anybody remember those cell phones by Sony that had the thumbwheel and a flip out microphone stalk? That was back before Sony got of actually making their own cellphones like 5+ years ago.
SprintPCS provided those Sonys. But, they had a problem (or at least the ones that my wife and I owned did) - sometimes the software would crash, perhaps related to a drop in signal level, hard to say because it was fairly rare. But when they crashed, they crashed LOUD.
The speaker, which you've got right up against your ear because you are in the middle of a conversation, would go blare out a constant tone at maximum volume when the software crashed. It was the kind of LOUD sound that would kick-off one of those reflexes that only makes it to the upper spinal cord before reacting - you'd be talking along and then all of a sudden your ear would be sore and you had just thrown the phone across the room and you weren't quite sure why.
Except for that, those were some damn good phones though! They survived being thrown across the room many times. The cheap shit you get today will break if you just drop it on a cement floor, never mind chucking it like it was a live grenade.
When information is power, privacy is freedom.
Yes, I know it screws up your tone a little. Better to lose tone than lose hearing. Plus, your neighbours with thank you for it.
...but I had a Motorola V120X that showed numerous interesting behaviors, especially when it came to ringing.
My (least) favorite was when I'd answer the phone, and the conversation would be connected, but the phone would continue ringing until the phone call ended. You can bet I made sure those calls were very short.
I hated that phone.
± 29 dB
I'd imagine it depends on the ring tone. And since 3rd party ring tones are pretty popular in Europe, there's probably not much point in specifying particular ring tones. You'll just confuse the customer.
And it's software is a piece of crap, full of bugs! I know there're software updates out there, but conveniently Siemens didn't supply the phone with a data cable. But hey, I could buy it for 30 euros! Brilliant, I can buy myself a right to patch the phone!! Or, as it turned out, I could find the single provider in my home town who's able to patch the phone. Though, I'm not sure if it's cost free even there..
Enough of personal whine, here're some of the most annoying bugs and misfeatures:
- The sounds are really loud, even in their lowest setting.
- Software crashes if I try to read SMS messages through a shortcut interface. Instead, I must go carefully through few extra menus not to crash the system.
- GUI jams if I cancel a call just after I dialed it in
- The battery dies in just a few days' casual use
- Sometimes during battery charging the screen backlight hangs on, so when you pick up your phone, the backlight has used all the power in the battery and it's all out again.
So, these are the "few" little bugs I'm experiencing. My previous phone was not totally bug free itself, but those few little hickups were nothing considered to these MAJOR bugs Siemens let in the wild with a crappy software on a good looking phone!
__
Zarathustra.fi
Modern man has no goal, no aim, no ideals.
Danger levels 95 dB - 4 hours 100 dB - 2 hours 110 dB - 30 min 120 dB- 7.5 min http://www.hearnet.com/at_risk/risk_aboutloss.shtm l
Sound level
Maximum allowable duration per day
90 dB
8 hours
92 dB
6 hours
95 dB
4 hours
97 dB
3 hours
100 dB
2 hours
102 dB
1½ hour
105 dB
1 hour
110 dB
½ hour
115 dB
¼ hour or less
I submitted a comment accidentally without the proper references, but basically, OSHA says that
m ent?p_table=STANDARDS&p_id=9735
Sound level:
Maximum allowable duration per day
100 dB: 2 hours
102 dB: 1½ hour
105 dB: 1 hour
110 dB: ½ hour
115 dB: ¼ hour or less
Reference: http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_docu
So, unless your cellphone is expressing 115db ringtones, for over 15 minutes, and you're STILL listening to it, you have nothing to worry about. DUH!!!!!! This is a case of hot coffee from McDonalds. If you're having a painful noise injected into your ear, you remove yourself from the source. Hot coffee is even MORE of a reason to sue than this. WAKE UP PEOPLE.
It them went on to say that the resonant frequency of a human skull was about 1 Hz but that the PC speaker probably couldn't generate that frequency very well.
Sorry to disappoint you but there is no way that any PC Speaker would be able to generate the resonance frequency required to kill chickens or blow up skulls. I heard that there is this song by RMS that causes exploding skulls but it doesn't use resonance freq to do so...
3 hz? 1 hz for the human skull? maybe if someone hits your head once a second... but otherwise, i think not.
I've owned an Ericsson phone, and it had a similar flaw. After hitting the Automatically Redial option when a number is busy, when the phone is able to go thru, it plays a LOUD tone. And, this is done even when the phone is on "Silent" mode. Newer Sony-Ericsson models only do this when the "Silent" mode is off. Even though, nowhere in the manual does it say that you should NOT hold the phone next to your ear when using the Automatically Redial option.
It's evident, Siemens signed a contract with Britney .
I, like most people, have fell for the "it's past midnight, I'm wearing headphones so as not to disturb the spouse" situtation, when I visit this flash site, for which the author felt like a loud metal theme would do it justice. So you end up with jumping off your chair, waking up the wife, with a temporary buzzing in the ears, not to mention "pillow talk" for half an hour.
Older siemens mobile phones had two speakers. One was normal speaker and the other was just for ringing. When batteries reached minimum the ringing speaker sounded with ear piercing beeps but fortunately the speaker was placed on the side of the phone.
Todays phones have one speaker for both communication and ringing. So siemens probably sticked to their software design and implemented it in the modern phones. The result is obviously not so satisfying considering those high pitched tones resonating in your ear.
Trolls are like broken clocks. They show the truth two times a day. The rest of the day they talk nonsense.
it's the most annoying thing to have your phone constantly beeping at you when it needs recharging - for no other reason than it is using quite a lot of its precious battery life to make an annoying beeping sound.
I can't say for sure if it was one the models in question but a few weeks ago, I was eating dinner at a Mexican restraunt and some lady had her phone start making a really loud high-pitched constant tone. A rough guess is that it was in the 4-8KHz range and loud enough that it was unpleasant from 20-30 ft away.
The worst part is that she wasn't smart enough to remove the battery from the device, so this went on for a good 5 minutes.
my sig's at the bottom of the page.
But I've been known to have thrown a few backs out when picking up the resulting scrap metal :)
:)
Experience varies directly with equipment ruined.
Truer words were never spoken
John
I dream in binary.
and till date(thank god )i havent had any software problem.Over 2 and half years and no crashes due to buggy software.i must have dropped it about a 100 times and despite a cracked screen it still works.
Sometimes,old is really gold.
Wanted : A Signature.
I have no idea if this phone was designed in Germany or in some outsourcing place in the middle of Kuala Lumpur, but it says, to my mind, a lot about the pressure the engineers and designers are under, in order to keep costs low and deadlines held. So much so that, in order for the phone to make it to market in time, some marketing fuckhead decided to skip the QA altogether.
I bet he's looking for a new job now.
Have you ever sat on a bus while some asshole's ringtone phone is ringing, and he takes 10 seconds to pull it out and open it so that the whole bus can hear his incredible jazz-version of some Christmas carol ringtone?
Ringtone phones make me want to kill someone. If you have one of these phones and I end up sitting next to you on a bus, don't be surprised if I pluck the fucking thing from your fingers and whip it out the window.
So, so very wrong. The instant it opened an eardrum-shattering scream let loose through the mighty, three figure dollar amount speakers. I instantly closed out the game only to find that a persistent buzzing sound was present. At this point I think my friend stopped breathing (fearing the speakers were totally ruined) and I thought, hey no big deal, I'll just reboot. Buzz sound was still there. Well no big deal, let's just power down and unplug everything. Buzz sound still there. I didn't think it was that bad, but this nameless friend of mine couldn't stand it and bought new speakers.
And I now have a pair of Klipsch speakers that make a rather obnoxious buzzing noise. But they were free! So, in a sense, this bad sound code that almost ruined these speakers (they're worthless in dollar terms, no way I could sell them on eBay, etc) also provided me with free speakers that I never would have bought with my own funds.
I must therefore both curse and thank the developers of Acid Tetris, and more likely the folks in charge of backwards compatibility at Microsoft, and my own stupid self for running an old program and trusting XP to not bork itself.
If you've read this whole thing you're a brave, yet sad soul... but stay tuned for further adventures in computing with your hero(or nemesis?), the one and only Michael "Mad" Raymer!
"To confine our attention to terrestrial matters would be to limit the human spirit." -Stephen Hawking
I've got a Nokia 7650 and it's got two speakers, one that is the earpiece - and outputs _just_ phone conversations when I'm talking to someone - and the external speaker which is situated on the top edge of the phone - ringing, speaker phone, and alerts all come out the top speaker.
It's good. I get the little "alert" tone - phone's dying, calling coming in, phone's dead - and all without the blips and beeps coming through the earpiece speaker so I don't have to worry about hearing damage just because I've got the earpiece up loud so I can hear the silly buggers that talk as though their phone can pick up their speech from a foot - 30cm - away and I still hear the important blips and beeps.
Seriously, if you buy a phone and it emits an ear piercing shriek when the battery's flat directly into you ear, take it back. Get a decent fucking phone and get on with your life.
If you don't have the brains / cojones to do that, then give up on mobile phones and all other technology - you are too much of a mentally piss-weak cunt to use "advanced hi"-tech, go back to the rotary pulse dial*.
*Yes, I am a jaded technical support guy - "The computer is a moronic but fast counting machine. It's yes and no questions with explanations in plain fucking english people!".
As the owner of a Siemens Series 65 phone, you have the responsibility to care for it. If you didn't feed your child, it would cry loudly, would it not?
That the Siemens Series 65 phone emits an ear bleeding shreak when starved for energy (and obviously attention as well) is just survival of the fittest. Other phones may be regularly left to starve until shutdown, but with the Siemens, that is likely to never happen a second time.
I for one welcome our ear destroying, power requiring, attention demanding Cellular Overlord®.
--- Generation X: The first generation to have SIG lines inferior to their parents... ---
maybe a beeper to let you know you are getting a phone call. Have it in your wristwatch, a light flashing.
I've always thought that beeps/warnings when a battery is about to run out are a waste - couldn't the energy used be better spent in continuing normal operation for a little longer until there's NO energy available at all?, after all by the time the warning appears it's usually too late (changing the battery will cut the call in any case), when my phone cuts off and shows a blank screen it doesn't take much thought to figure out the most likely problem...
a) Remove ear from speaker when loud annoying noise kicks in.
Glad i could be helpful.
I'm surprised some of the code from olden days hasn't made anyone deaf yet, with all that shouting..
.. okay, bad joke..
10 REM HELLO WORLD
20 CLS
30 PRINT "HELLO WORLD!"
what's the chance of this occurring? Answers may include any fraction of a percent.
Yep, it caused hearing damage alright...about as much damage that you could have a nice lawsuit and get a little payola from the companies.
Wonder how many people are going to try and find these phones and all of a sudden develop "hearing loss" and try to blackmail these companies now.
People suck sometimes....
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Back in the late 80s I was messing with a the PC Speaker sound command in Pascal. Neadless to say I found the sound command before the sound off command. And it was suck on a high pitch squeel for about 5 minutes while I had to go to the program put a sound off command recompile and run.
I wasn't popular that day... Come to think about it I was never popular. Oh well
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Just a funny thought, but I wonder if Siemens corporate has noticed a dip in sales from Siemens Hearing and is attempting to boost sales in the hearing aid sector.
I find them tasteless and disgusting. But then I really don't have a sweet tooth.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
My first programming teacher, this was in high school so it was a teacher, had slightly crossed eyes. So any advanced or crazy code was said to be a try at uncrossing her eyes.
I have somehow stumbled upon the toner cartridge for it.slashdot.org that you ordered a few weeks ago. It was sent here by mistake. I have repeatedly tried e-mailing it to you guys with the subject line "Increase your toner size!" but I don't think it ever gets through. Any suggestions? Thanks.
I remember using QBASIC in my primary school classes, it went something like this, a lot of fun:
;)
FOR A = 37 TO 10000
SOUND 10,A
NEXT A
Usually it gave them enough time to flee
Did Your Code Ever Make Anyone Deaf?
No, but I have written an IE exploit that can make your computer emit the Brown Noise and you'll shit your pants.
Sincerely,
Eric Cartman
"All things are marklar."
out of curiosity I opened up their website, and I found a strange new concept of UI, where the links keep on disappearing and moving while you try to track them down to click them..hmm..
You Americans have a weird taste to sweets....but its fun playing with(at least for the first 2 mins).
The lunatic is in my head
My code has certainly made people dumb. But not deaf AND dumb.
the way people often yell into their phone makes me think they're already deaf. You dont have to yell, the phone is there to make you heard over a long distance.
No one can understand the truth until he drinks of coffee's frothy goodness.
--Sheikh Abd-Al-Kadir, 1587
Actually, "Soft Beep" would translate into "Soft Beep"
Not if the translators aren't paid enough.
ANYTHING to keep people off of their cell phones in public places or in the car next to me...
It's even more annoying than, say, a screaming baby. I understand why parents have a baby there - they need to take care of it, by law and also as common human decency.
I honestly can't think of the last time I heard a cell phone conversation that was really, truly necessary.
Test case #348b: Battery Low
- Install undercharged (6%) battery into phone
- Wait for battery level to drop to 5%
- Alarm Sounds
#348b: passWhat they really needed to do was Test Case #348c: Battery Low While In Use, but they didn't because:
Yeah, right.
winamp, ogg vorbis and Creative have all helped, along with whoever coded the synths that Deep Dish use.
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
You'd expect your code to be safety-critical on a jetliner or a radiation therapy machine, but would it occur to you to worry about danger to humans in a cell phone UI?
This makes at least two places that cell phone embedded software has safety implications. The other is charge control on lithium batteries: a lithium fire in your pocket is enough to ruin your whole day.
I almost made my roommate deaf after screaming at my code.
Is this anything like the way-too-loud-and -obnoxious 3-note tune the telephone screeches in your ear (at least in the US) whenever you trigger the "we're sorry, the call cannot be completed as dialed...." message? Somebody should be sued over that! It's made my ears ring at times. If there is a god, the guy who came up with that will spend eternity with that screech blasting him over and over and over...
I had that loud 'battery low' beep in my ear once. It was so loud that my initial reaction was to kill the phone. I body slammed it into the pavement so hard, parts went flying everywhere. It never did that again.
"But after viewing tubgirl, I did go blind."
Ok, so now you're blind.
"(same with goatse)"
Ok, so you're blind, and you went and looked at goatse and became blind again. Nothing wrong with that... nope...
How could I say to men: "Speak louder, shout! For I am deaf!"? -Ludwig van Beethoven
This is actually a feature designed by their other department to increase revenue.
Not quite the same thing, but on a couple of occasions, I lost the caller I was talking to, while not realizing it. They called right back while I still had the phone at my ear, which of course blasted an ear-piercing ring tone into my ear.
I don't think I suffered any hearing damage, but... OUCH!
-judging another only defines yourself
... one shade of red on another. Yes, I had a co-worker who liked this. Seriously. I don't know which would be worse.
If deafened, just call 911 on a Nextel phone.
(I'm trying to find a good article explaining it, though I swear I read it here. Essentially, a bug in Nextel phones caused them to lock up whenever the GPS was turned on. Dialing 911 was one way to ensure this happened, so, effectively, it was impossible to call 911.)
________________________________________________
suwain_2
Besides now she picks up Nasa communications to the mars rover. It keeps her entertained between episodes of CSI
In fact, I used to work on a PC-based hearing aid fitting system with a rather complex custom sound card. One time, while testing the code for the clinician's monitor, I frobbed the upper dB limit on one of the outputs - which happened to be connected to headphones I was wearing at the time. When I ran my test code, I was immediately hit with a really loud 1000Hz sine wave. It hurt.
The good news is that I don't appear to have done noticable permanent damage. My ears did ache for a few days afterward, though, and upon consultation with (and brief examination by) one of the staff audiologists, I was told that I had probably pulled the muscles in my inner ear.
So, no deafness, but my code resulted in me pulling the smallest muscles in my body.
OK,
- B
http://www.bradheintz.com/
- updated
I suspect at least one of your small distal interphalangeal joints is malfunctioning, as your sentence capitalization is incorrect/absent. Perhaps you will consider using another joint while you get the defective item repaired or replaced.
As to your questions, I categorically avoid holding a 'battle of wits' with unarmed persons.
Cheers, "mate"
Yeah, right.
I think is's fully appropriate for people to receive pain from their annoying ring tones. After all, they are a constant pain to us! I had already pictured Hell as a continuous version of this for certain people...
-- You are in a maze of little, twisty passages, all different... --
No, it's called covering all your bases. The hardware should do all it reasonably can to filter out possible problems. So should the operating system. So should the applications--right down to where the functions receive input. That way nasty bugs (or malicious acts done by users) will not cause nasty problems.
Are you a Windows programmer or something?
I had no idea that it-posessive was spelt it's. I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
Yeah, right.
I have a Samsung VGA 1000 picture phone. It's very buggy. One of the most annoying bugs is the fact that when you pick up a call, you have to be careful.
The cell phone rings until you pick it up, but sometimes it rings once more. This is especially bad because the ringer speaker and the reciever are in fact the same speaker. So, just before you talk to someone at a quite volume only your ear can hear, it rings at a volume that can be heard from 200 feet away. YAY!
Most cellphone users are half deaf anyway.
Your violin weeps loudly. /joke
Installing the setmixer Debian package on the PowerBook can be dangerous for the ears too. I was listening to music with a headset when I installed it, and I won't do that again! After that, I'd had a headache for several hours.
The Motorola I58SR phone for Nextel has two speakers, one at your ear, and a "speakerphone" speaker elsewhere in the handset. Due to assinine design, there is a loud "beep" generated in the _ear_ speaker when a call is lost due to low signal. The ear speaker is also where ring tones
come out - so you'd better pray nobody is calling you if you put in your earphone and try to make a call...
Of course, the low signal beep comes only when you've cranked up the volume and have the phone (with its water-resistant rubber seal) pressed tightly to your ear to hear the difficult-to-hear caller whose signal you're losing. I've actually thrown the phone in pain (once it broke my car windshield) after getting "beeped".
What's even stupider is that previous phones (like the I1000) had the same problem, but there was a software patch issued almost immediately to move ringing and "beep" to the speakerphone speaker. Now Motorola and Nextel tech support departments both deny any knowledge of ever having heard of the problem, ever having had anyone report the issue (even though _I_ have, and I know several others who have - note to all tech support departments: if you don't bother to track bugs, you can just deny you've ever heard of them before, and never have to fix them!).
I'm sure this would make a nice class action lawsuit, if any legal beagles are reading...
-- No No No NO, Don't tug on that! You never know what it might be attached to. - Buckaroo Banzai