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Morse Code Faster Than SMS
mentalflossboy writes "Engadget is reporting that Morse Code is actually faster than text messaging. According to the article, 93 year old Gordon Hill transmitted a message faster than 13 year old Brittany Devlin, despite Devlin's 'liberal use of texting slang.' And the fabulous quote they were they sending: 'Hey, girlfriend, you can text all your best pals to tell them where you are going and what you are wearing.'"
Newsflash:
Voice is faster then either Text Messaging or Morse Code, it's already included with your phone plan, and it doesn't make you look like an idiot.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
What hath Woz wrought?
what's more code for FP? hm? hm??
Get a first post?
....
beeeeep beep beep beeeeep
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Electronics companies, go on making the hardware. But let us screw around with the software. If you remember a little something called "the internet" you'll realize that there are a hell of a lot of good ideas out there (as well as a hell of a lot of really dumb ones, but let's not talk about that).
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
A phone with only dot and dash buttons!
You want to know who isn't running Firefox 2.x? They spell it "definately" and "rediculous".
But is Morse proficiency still required for amatuer radio licensing?
"Rocky Rococo, at your cervix!"
I'm a touch typist and what I think just goes to my hands. It's actually harder (and takes longer) for me to type "u" to mean "you" than it does to type "you" because I have to throw my brain into idiot mode and override my normal typing skills to get idiot-speak onto the screen.
After I learn morse code I'll have exactly zero friends to morse with, sort of like my current contact list.
93 year old Gordon Hill transmitted a message faster than 13 year old Brittany
Parkinson's disease helps...
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
My treo 650 works quite well (although I would wish for Dvorak). I've used the 12-button types as well, but never the fancy word guessing.
Transcend Humanity. Please.
I can't write TXT messages for my life. It takes me a 1/2 hour because I'm a spaz and can barely operate my phone :P
And the abacus is faster than a TI-89.
I feel jipped. I can't find what the 93-yr old was wearing ANYWHERE in tfarticle.
Aside from that, this doesnt suprise me, as the bottleneck was not the tech itself, but the input methods. And having 3 or 4 letters per key is NOT efficient.
** "It's not my job to stand between the people talking to me, and the ones listening to me." -- Pego the Jerk
"Sup g/f? U can txt all ur homies 2 tell dem wats da haps and wut u waring"
"This food is problematic."
And then he was arrested and charged with attempt to 'pick up' a minor in a chat room.
Go Boy!
I have a Motorola A630 with a full QWERTY keyboard. Your telling me he can type faster then I can with my keyboard over SMS? I don't think so...
Creative Demolition
I'm getting quite sick of this crap. A telephone is a telephone. It should be able to make and receive calls, and that's it. Nothing else. People who use those crappy technologies are just begging for the phone companies to add more bloated features to the telephones and to have more and more reason to charge you more. I mean seriously, you *must* have the new features, right? Otherwise you look like a geek-wannabe and are all of a sudden not so popular. Right?
was a telegraph operator for many years and from what he tells me an operator who can understand morse on the fly as it were. was extremely valuable and could actualy save lives can atext messege do that?
So, a 93 year old morse code veteran beat a 13 year old novice-at-typing child? Wow...good story!
In other, seemingly unrelated news: Big marbles are larger than small ones.
-.. ..- .... .-.-.-
(Damn Slashdot's filters. Telling me to use less junk characters. Morse code isn't junk! It's top quality characters!)
What's your damage, Heather?
Morse code may be the new thing in town then ... Not sure about the kids bringing their grandpas to school though. =/
Yeah! I always knew my ham radio license would turn out to be useful ...
One test between two people doesn't really prove Morse code is faster.
This testing sure wouldn't be considered very good science in Kansas.
Serves them well! Don't they remember what happened to Betamax vs VHS?!? ...Oh wait. Is this actually one of those rare news where that line doesn't apply. Oops. Sorry.
That 94 year old granny can SMS things faster than mind reading... b.t.w. Morse still tops them all says 144 year old mr. Jones.
Starting from scratch, one can reach over 20 words per minute solid copy in a matter of months, with only, say, an hour of regular training every day. 20 wpm isn't considered particularly fast amongst morse code operator: the EHSC for example requires its members to copy 60 wpm for 30 minutes. While this is at the extreme end of the spectrum, 20 wpm is attainable by anybody with a little patience and time.
Go here and try it out yourself, over the internet. You'll see 20 wpm is waaay faster than any SMS messaging.
So 150 years later we're worse off than we were before? Incredible! Then again, I would be able to text message much faster than using morse code, especially since I don't know morse code. I guess I'll just stick with calling people.
Then again, it's hard to translate "rofl, i luv wat u wearing gurlfrnd!" as well.
(Reuters) 6, May 2005. Following reports that communicating by morse code is actually faster than the transmission of a message using SMS (Short Message Service) technology, Nokia has revealed its plan to ship a new phone fall 2005 with only two buttons: . and -- Morse code will travel on its own radio frequency and phones capable of receiving it will emit the corresponding "beeps," though no testers were available for report due to a migraine epidemic. Nokia are thinking of having the phone just translate the morse code into ASCII characters on reception. Testers all liked the idea.
it seems that while SMS is shorter:2 #833555#844336#96668#88#777#3666444664#11#94433777 33#88777#4666444664#2663#96668#88#777#933277744466 41
;)
hey gf u can txt ur best pals 2 tel them wot u r doing, where ur going and wot u r wearing
SMS-TAP:443399#4333#222266#8998#88777#7223377778#
Compared to:
Hey, girlfriend, you can text all your best pals to tell them where you are going and what you are wearing. (translate that there - lameness filter
Morsecode is simply much more simpler to enter - only 3 different possible entrypoints opposed to 10-11 for SMS...
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
Has anyone else ever tried to tell someone that the beeping that their Nokia phone makes when they receive a text message is Morse code for SMS? I have yet to meet a single person who's known that. I swear, Morse code is a dying language that will soon go the way of languages such as Latin and Aramaic - famous, scholarly, the old guys like it, but no one else gives a crap.
Hello, girlfriend??
It's called ASCII BINARY!
He can send morse faster than you can type. He can probably type faster than you can too. For commercial telegraphers and wireless operators, 60 wpm was unexceptional. I inherited my grandfather's 'bug' (automatic key). Its slowest speed is faster than my fastest speed.
Morse was how these guys made their living. They were very good at it.
BTW. For some handicapped folks, a telegraph key works better than a keyboard.
On some Nokia phones a ring signal for messages is the morse code for SMS, that is:
... -- ...
The radio operator I knew said that one killer feature for him would be if the phone instead of that could play the whole message in morse code when it came - no need to pick up the phone to see it, you could just hear the message (and obviously annoy everybody else).
Yeah, but I was born a Mr Microphone man and I'll die a Mr Microphone man: 'Hey good lookin', we'll be back to pick ya up later!'
- First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then ???, then profit.
This wasn't morse code against sms. This was the older generation (93 year old) against the younger generation (13 year old). And the younger generation sucks. Although I'm sure that even at the same age, a person using morse code can beat a person using sms.
Reminds me of my two old pals: OZ1RO and OZ2LW who could morse faster than they could speak.
And you can do so while drinking a P35 with your XYL.
(P35 is a beer and XYL is a x-young-lady: your wife)
....and Gordon Hill dropped dead from exhaustion right after he was done :)
BTW, if you think that's a nasty comment, you really don't get the 'quote'
-- Waht? Tehr's a preveiw buottn?
violation on the push to talk patent *rim shot
Its just that those fat old bastards are annoyed beyond hell, and just want to prove kids they are cool-er than them.
losers..
...many mobile phones already come with Morse support. Just dial the person you want. Most phones already have the Morse protocol activated at this point so you can launch right into it. To send someone a dot say "DIT" into the microphone. To send a dash say "DAH". Remember to put short spaces between your words. For example if you're having an emergency you can say DIT-DIT-DIT DAH-DAH-DAH DIT-DIT-DIT. With a little practice you'll find that this is much faster than texting, something you'll appreciate if you are ever in a real emergency.
Doesn't it make you feel good to know that our freedoms are protected by politicans, lawyers and journalists.
Its obvious - Morse requires fewer bits per character.
I want to delete my account but Slashdot doesn't allow it.
'm getting quite sick of this crap. A telephone is a telephone. It should be able to make and receive calls, and that's it. Nothing else.
Yew damn kids and yer technological machinations. Ah don't understand none of yer something-or-others cavortin' like sheep all over the place with yer compewtors an' whatnot. Yer all goin' ta hell and that's the trewth!
A scientific experiment to ask a 13 year old girls to tell some geeky adult what they are wearing.
Not really science. Creepy 40 year old men have been doing that in their basements on AOL for years.
At his success, Gordon started dancing around and waving the apparatus screaming, "This is what god hath wrought, bitch." he then proceeded to throw the telegraph at the insolent child but was taken down by spectators.
[dash dit / dash dash dash / dash
dit dash]
dit dit dash dit / dit dit / dit dash dit / dit dit dit / dash
dit dash dash dit / dash dash dash / dit dit dit / dash / dit dit dash dash dit dit
Silly lameness filter...
Ok, so when can I get morse code recognition built into my phone?
I've long thought, "Wow, that's useless" when it comes to SMS messaging due to having to basically peck out each key. However, I've known morse code since I was about, oh, 11. You wouldn't have to pick your finger up at all - just alternate between pressing and not pressing - and wouldn't need to look at the phone.
Plus, it has real-life (ie, survival) applicability in many situations. I suspect that most of the armed forces know it as well (not really familiar with their training practices, but I'd sure as help hope at least 90% know it).
~/ssh slashdot.org ssh: connect to host slashdot.org port 22: too many beers
The girl lost partly because she mistakenly added 4 extra words to the message, among other things.
Would someone with points mind going back and modding the following page-widening posts into oblivion? Those of us browsing with smaller screens would appreciate it. Thanks.
this is supposed to be a surprise?! OF COURSE MORSE CODE IS FASTER!!!! Would anyone have thought otherwise?
A sergeant I used to have used to be a morse code operator before she transferred to my career field. She had to switch because the started dreaming in morse code, and had to see a shrink about it.
I don't imagine that could happen with SMS text, but still, I'd much rather get a small keyboard with my phone.
Those who can't do, teach. Those who can't teach either, do tech support.
I generally send my sms messages from web services if I am at home or close to a computer connected to the Internet. Do not try to tell me that morse code can be done faster than I can write on a keyboard. OK, I write a lot of useless information like this comment here on Slashdot, so I have the advantage of writing fast, but still.. Morse may be faster than using those user-unfriendly mobile phone keyboard, but not faster than typing on normal keyboards..!
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
can u pls xlate ths stry nto txt i dnt undrstnd tht old englsh. thx
I find T9 predictive input input a real help, much quicker than even the folks that use "u", "m8" and other abbreviations.
Still annoys me when people (really had to concentrate and not type "ppl" then) try to use SMS to see if I want to go for a beer tho... I always end up calling 'em, it's far cheaper and quicker. Texts seem so impersonal sometimes too...
Okay so, how long until we see phones with 2 keys:
0 1
0: power off
1: power on / BIP (for morse code)
You misspelled your racist & stereotypical reference. It's spelled "gyped," or sometimes "gypped."
/pedantic
//but at least i'm not a racist
Ignorant racism is the funniest kind.
--- We are not in the 8th dimension. We are over New Jersey.
Determining the relative speed of chordic Baudot and Stenotype methods, in particular Baudot code was intended as a acceleration of Morse
A lot of it can be made a lot easier (and faster) by using a mechanical (or electronic) automatic morse code key sender. By pressing the right side of the key, you get dashes until you release. Left side, dots.
When reading this thread it hit me that I should make more people aware of a discovery that kind of surprised me even though I probably should have expected it to be so: SMS messages are stored six months here locally. The local police can at any point request a complete log of sent text-messages from half a year ago from the phone companies. There is no good reason to think this is any different in your country, whether or not a court order is required may differ (one is in theory required here, but the police generally just say they are investigating terrorism or narcotics to bypass that). So just so you all know: All your SMS is logged and can be used against you. What you say on the phone is not stored, so that is somewhat safer (but authorities can tap GSM phones easily, but not retrieve what you previously said, only who you said it to). Morse may have a huge advantage here, it is so rarely used I doubt anyone will try to tap that.
9/11: Never forget it was a false-flag operation
Grandma can send her morse code faster than I can type it in my phone, but the problem is...
==>> Who can read her????
So let me get this straight: A 93 year old, who was a telegraph operator, as in a guy who did professional telegraphy, beat some random girl? Gee, I wonder why?
Ya, Morse can be quite fast if you train it up and use it regularly, but it's not easy. You aren't going to have some amature that can send a message at any reasonable speed because they'll ahve to keep checking the code sheet to see what to send.
I mean hell, why not take a professional typist and put them against those two? Good typists can push 200wpm, you aren't getting that on Morse code no matter how good you are. Of course that too takes lots of training and practise.
The artice is comparing apples and oranges.
The article seems to assume that the "girlfriend" would be able to somehow receive and (more importantly) understand morse code. Which I guess narrows it down a bit. But, this being Slashdot, the very concept of "girlfriend" is enough to make the whole thing highly unlikely.
RMN
~~~
as they did in Independance Day, morse code was the only means of communication working and that's what saved the planet. *big cheesy grin because no one else made the connection)
Have you hugged your penguin today?
It's also good for flirting with the opposite sex, but then again, this is /.
a .-
b -...
c -.-.
d -..
e .
f ..-.
g --.
h ....
i ..
j .---
k -.-
l .-..
m --
n -.
o ---
p .--.
q --.-
r .-.
s ...
t -
u ..-
v ...-
w .--
x -..-
y -.--
z --..
0 -----
1 .----
2 ..---
3 ...--
4 ....-
5 .....
6 -....
7 --...
8 ---..
9 ----.
Fullstop .-.-.-
Comma --..--
Query ..--..
What are these "cell phones" you speak of?
I would speculate that rather than a one to one mapping like Qwerty or Dvorak a faster system could be devised that used a combination of time domain mapping (Morse) and spatial mapping. Perhaps the ultimate system would have 5 or 6 keys and be usable with one hand only. Combinations of the keys representing the most used ASCII characters, with some multi tap shift to get the less frequent characters. The shift could be spatially encoded to give more up shift representations quickly than just clicking N times to get to the Nth shift-alt-ctrl. Think of the productivity of an IT worker with this device in one hand and the other always of the mouse. Or better yet 2 mice, one with conventional paste and cut usage, the other a combination of the keyboard I have just described, but and additional two degrees of freedom for cursor control (Z and Rotation?).
Despite Dvorak's 5 time advantage in average finger travel distance it still only gives a two time advantage in typing speed, and then only for the most advanced. Average Dvorak users get like a 20 to 30 percent speed boast. Significant for taking dictation, but not enough to get everyone else to switch. However, a completely new system that frees the hands to use the mouse and gives extra cursor control might have enough of and advantage to catch on if properly implemented. I would be surprised if there aren't already several experimental systems already developed. In a way my Cell Phone has time domain mapping, requiring you to hit the number keys between 1 and 3 times to register an alphabet character. It is not a sophisticated spatial mapping however, strictly a count to N and a timeout.
As long as we have some efficient spatially encoded shift, those upper shift combinations could encode say the most thousand or so common words and prefixes to additionally speed typing.
Oh what the hell, lets go with voice recognition, we're just about there in accuracy anyway.
Letter To Iran
The real article is here:- 1571664,00.html
:)
:-)
:) Remember, kids, with Morse Code there is no "credit"!
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2
Haha, so the real answer was: the SMS was typed in quicker, but the network latency of sending an SMS message made it arrive 12 seconds too late
Anyways, here's the breakdown:
Morse message: 948 units of time / 50 elements per word (PARIS) = ~19 words / 1.5 minutes: 12.67 wpm.
SMS message: ~23 words / 1.8 minutes: 12.78 wpm.
(Special thanks to KEdit find/replace and wc)
The SMS slang version is only saves 15% from the original message, which is also interesting.
Therefore, the whole test is bogus - they take the same amount of time. (actually, I bet the ops sent the code at ~40wpm, but it took a while to write it down onto paper. A better test would have been to have the sms receiver convert back into proper english
But, yeah, morse code is awesome anyways. Another LOL from TFA: "I send about three messages a day," she said. "I used to send lots more but I ran out of credit."
Feel free to comment!
What are the odds that some idiot will name his mutex ether-rot-mutex!
If the 13-year-old had used a T-Mobile Sidekick / Danger Hiptop, there would be no contest.
I can regularly do 30WPM on the thumbkeyboard.
People laugh when they see the size of my phone. They stop laughing when they realize that I can actually type on it.
I would l;ike to think I can sms faster than most can morse. But, I have a balckberry, so I use a QWERTY keyboard.
Pretty Pictures!
> Texting is better when I'm in a situation where I
> don't want others to know what I'm talking about.
Real men speak Klingon for this purpose.
> Texting is better when I need to tell someone
> something but I don't want to have to have a full
> conversation with them.
So call them, say it, and hang up. If it's important, they'll call back and use up their minutes.
> I love using Google text (46645) when I'm
> looking for something like a restaraunt
Real men aren't afraid of asking for directions.
> Texting saves minutes.
Sounds like you need to work on your words per minute. Some people speak very slowly at as little as 15 wpm. With a little practice you can work up to 175 wpm. Not only will that save you valuable minutes (although real men buy unlimited calling plans), but it works as an excellent device for winning arguments. Just imagine, being able to say ten words for each one your opponent utters! He'll never be able to come up with a counter argument before you completely devastate him with an astounding verbal barrage and move through seven topics before he gathers enough wits to reply to the first one. If he tries, just sneer and invoke the three-second rule.
Did I mention that women are really impressed by verbal prowess? Typing up these voluminous Slashdot comments is gonna pay off today!
PROBLEM SOLVED.
"...despite Devlin's 'liberal use of texting slang..."
There you have it. With the current level of text prediction on phones, she could have entered the text in a fraction of the time if she'd stuck with plain English.
These kids cry that they can't be bothered, or use the slang to save time, when it's honestly harder and more time consuming to compose such a message.
"Well Duhh!", she replies
"No Duhh Duhh Dit Dit Duhh Duhhh"
<thump>
Looking for an Information Security student project suggestion?
Try http://dotcrimeManifesto.com/
From the article at 160characters, if you follow the links in TFA:
"Just 90 seconds after Mr Hill began transmitting, Mr Gibson announced that he had the message received and written down correctly. It took another 18 seconds for Miss Devlin's message to reach the mobile phone belonging to her friend. Mr Hill said that he was impressed by modern technology, even though his clunky telegraph machine emerged on top in three further contests."
Okay, so it's impressive that Hill transmitted in Morse code and Gibson had to transscribe it on the other side -- but that's essentially done simultaneously with perhaps only a 1 second delay from the transmission to the decoding (ie: you don't have to wait for the full message to be sent in order to begin decoding it). On the other hand, what's with the phrase "It took another 18 seconds for Miss Devlin's message to reach the mobile phone..."? Does this mean there was a lag involved in the SMS network and it took perhaps 30 seconds after pressing "SEND" for the message to get from the phone sending to the receiving phone, meaning that the girl beat him by 30 - 18 = 12 seconds?
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
Wtsn, plz cm here, I wnt u.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Hellschreiber or a Morse can be done on a keyboard.
A computer can decode Morse but a human has to decode Hellschreiber with there eyes. Due to Hellschreiber being built to deal with interferance.
http://morseall.org/ Nice little extention for disabled that lets a linux box be ran by morse code. Yes if you can type on one key you can use a computer. And sms can be used to control a linux box as well.
http://www.freshports.org/converters/p5-Convert-Mo rse/
Perl module to convert to and from morse. Now for that 'open' phone that could run perl...
Don't pick up the pho*(@)$*@&@!@ NO CARRIER
i'm not sure why the story links to engadget, since it's just summarizing another site's summary of the real story, found at:
- 1571664,00.html
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-2
it's got the "optimized" text that went over sms ("hey gf u can txt ur best pals 2 tel them wot u r doing, where ur going and wot u r wearing.") and the times (90 seconds to 108).
http://www.pckeyboard.com/images/SMTREXLARGE.gif
http://scphillips.com/cgi-bin/morse.cgi
-Palal
Yeah!! 640 KB oughta be enough for everyone!!
Nuff said.
Any technology distinguishable from magic, is insufficiently advanced.
hahaha damn! You, sir. Are a complete loser.
My BlackBerry has an AutoText completed feature on it. I wonder if I could set it up to use a morse code setup. I would select two letters, one to represent dots and one to represent dashes. Hmmm... interesting.
Why did I lurk so long before registering for a Slashdot account? I could have had a Slashdot ID of less than 100000.
The girl didn't typed even more then she needed to as well! It read: "Hey, girlfriend, you can text all your best pals to tell them where you are going and what you are wearing." While the telegraphist tapped out the line in full, to be deciphered by Mr Gibson, Miss Devlin employed text slang to save time. She keyed: "hey gf u can txt ur best pals 2 tel them wot u r doing, where ur going and wot u r wearing."
older, simpler system that requires brains, beats newer more complicated system that requires idiots?
gee what a shocker.
Be sure to drink your Ovaltine?
dump all these full/partial keyboards on phones and replace them with TWO buttons:
:)
(dot) (dash)
Not only could we SMS faster (while it would still translate to normal text on the screen), but we would get a whole bunch of phone surface back, and it would propagate and teach Morse to a new generation. And you wouldn't randomly hit keys when it's in your pocket.
Where's the new Treo app to implement this?
I miss being able to just keyboard-graffiti a message on my PalmPDA and then IR it to the phone. The Siemens S40 phone supports it, but not the Sony-Ericsson t637.
Translation...
I bitch all day about not having enough money, because I spend $79 a month for phones, but its okay, because, like, um, my apartment is crap and I barely have a job, and life sucks. But at least I can stay in touch with my loser friends. And anyway, my dad pays for it.
Life sucks. Poor me...
"My wife is deaf "
She probably poked her ears out after she heard you go on and on and on to justify doing stupid stuff.
But hey, $400 isn't too much just for a crappy cellphone that will be obsolete in 12 months. It's an investment!
You must use those fancy new wireless rigs. Wired telegraph used a different standard. (0 was -, but it was a - but it was a longer dash than normal for example. Other letters have no resemblance at all.)
I'd post the alphabit, but I'm too lazy to go find my book on it. I'm also too lazy to learn either. I enjoy knowing useless trivia like that though.
I would love to have (pay for) a phone that plays back incoming sms messages in morse code. The closest thing I saw was a phone that played ... -- ... (SMS) when a new message arrived. Does anybody know of such phone?
Just because an experienced Morse code operator transmitted a morse message faster than this girl did using text messaging, does NOT mean the article should claim that "Morse Code [is] Faster Than SMS."
I clocked myself typing the fulltext version of the phrase using my standard 12 digit phone keypad in 35 seconds, and I'm sure there are many, many other people, especially on Slashdot, that than achieve much faster speeds than I can.
The article's claim is unsubstantiated.
those japanese high school kids have crazy speeds at text messaging. ooopz, i forgot, you cant do japanese or any other non alphabetical language w/ morse code.
HD Trailers
After a read of This Wikipedia article, it makes you wonder how some old school geeks are all "high and mighty" about teenagers that use abbreviations in their SMS chat, and how they have no grasp of the english language..
If only morse code transmitters had predictive text...
- Chuq
Morse codifier here.
/
dot- dot-dotdot dot-dotdot / -dot-- --- dotdot- dot-dot / -dotdotdot dot- dotdotdot dot / dot- dot-dot dot / -dotdotdot dot dot-dotdot --- -dot --dot / - --- / dotdot- dotdotdot / dotdot--dotdot
Damn Slashdot lameness filters kept me from using real dots and dashes.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
AWESOME
this sig deleted by another sig
dotdot dashdot dotdotdot dashdashdash dotdotdotdash dotdot dot dash dotdashdot dotdotdash dotdotdot dotdotdot dotdot dotdash dashdashdotdotdashdash dashdash dashdashdash dotdashdot dotdotdot dot dashdotdashdot dashdashdash dashdotdot dot dashdashdash dotdotdotdash dot dotdashdot dotdashdotdot dashdashdash dotdashdot dashdotdot dotdotdot dotdashdash dot dotdashdotdot dashdotdashdot dashdashdash dashdash dot dashdash dot
it doesn't have a relay server, just a one to one connection. that and every beeps are heard on the other side as they come. quite an unfair comparison IMHO.
Some examples? `de' for `from', `cq' for `anybody out there?', `73' for `warm regards', etc. Here's some more examples for you.
Just thought I'd be fair ...
AD5RH (yes, I passed the morse code 5 wpm test. But only barely :)
Let's see...someone who's been using Morse Code for a large part of his long life vs. a teenager.
Of course the old man would win--he's got sheer experience on his side. Assuming SMS will still be around in the future, by the time the teenager is that old, she'll probably be just as fast.
I support the Center for Consumer Freedom
it turns a perfectly good telephone into something slower that a telegraph machine...why not just hit the talk button and speak to the other person???
I'd pay good money to see these two in a cage match!
While I know you're being funny, I bet you've never seen a real competitive debate at full "spread". This is exactly the tactic every decent debater uses. I was pretty crappy and I could easily sustain close to 300wpm for ten minutes. The really good ones can do 400. It is truly hypnotic.
You get used to it though. I could even take notes on a speaker at 300 wpm, keeping ten or so arguments tracked across 5 different speeches while pulling note cards to refute points, and again I never was better than ok at that. It's amazingly mentally taxing to do this- I'd walk out of a close debate barely able to speak.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
What they didn't mention is that 93 was the youngest guy they could find who still knew morse code :)
In the UK, the plan I was on (which admittedly had free line rental) would charge me 45p (about 70c) a minute if i wanted to call rival cellphone networks, vs 10p (about 17c) per text message.
Given the fact that a lot of communication etiher took place in classes or in bars, it's far easier to not be either whispering or screaming into your phone.
Admittedly the US favors voice calls and they dont penalize you for calling other networks - which probably explains why text msging isn't so big here.
founder of No Code International
The requirement to show Morse code proficiency to get an Amateur Radio Operators license is a hot topic right now for hams and hams-to-be. One of the reasons commonly given for the elimination of testing is that it has superceded by other, more efficient, modes of communicating.
I'll offer my personal guarantee that if the 13 year-old were to send via the IMC, and the 83-year-old were to send via text-message, neither message would be transmitted!!! What kind of one-sided story is THIS???
I've seen a few people who can text as fast as i can think. Even seen someone sending mesages 'blind' with the phone under the table in a resturant while carrying on a conversation (in her second language).
I'm guessing you can't do t9 if you aren't looking at the screen.. but either way is pretty quick when you get used to it.
Just remember how long it used to take you to write a troll comment on slashdot, now you can do it in seconds.
I just tried the exact same thing and did it in less than 30 seconds, all spelled correctly too.
I'm using predictive text, which is used by most these days, anyone tapping out old style SMS needs to get with the 21st century.
Just wondering if a straight key as was pictured ITFA or a "bug" type of dual-paddle key was used?
:) )
This http://www.morsex.com/ghd/gn107.jpg is the sort of key I'm refering to. (Yes, I have sweet memories of nights tuning the S.W. bands, listening with my trusty old Hallicrafters receiver and the hulking Johnson Viking II transmitter and Johnson Thunderbolt final P.A. tubes taking the chill out of the shed, my fingers tapping away at the old military Vibroplex "Lightning Bug" key I'd gotten at the hamfest
A capable operator equipped with a key like that can send ( and with a practiced receiving ear, "hear" the words and phrases just as quickly) an amazing amount of data in a given time. Of course, that also applies to some extent even in the case of the straight key. For a very long time, hand-keyed Morse code was THE high tech transmission mode both for wire telegraph and radio starting with spark-gap.
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
i.. n-. C-.-. W.--
(S... o--- r.-. r.-. y-.-- a.- b-... o--- u..- t- t- h.... e. l.-.. a.- m-- e. j.--- o--- k-.- e. I.. c-.-. o--- u..- l.-.. d-.. n-. '.----. t- r.-. e. s... i.. s... t-)
I wrote a reply to this in Morse.
And the lameness filter threw it out.
Rats.
Shouldn't that be:
It's also good for flirting with the opposite sex, but then again, SO is /.?
Professor Karmadillo Songs of Science
I'm in New Zealand and I don't use my phone much, so it suits me to be on a prepay plan. From what I understand, NZ has one of the most expensive mobile phone industries in the world. (Perhaps it's lack of competition, since there's only Vodafone and Telecom competing.)
Text is nearly always cheaper here than voice, especially on prepay plans. At least on my plan, though, there's something similar to a prisoner's dilemma going on with it.
On off-peak rates, for instance, I have an option of calling someone for a minute (49 cents minimum), or sending a text message (20 cents). In the latter case, it's more likely that I'll send a couple, but it's still only 40 cents so I save money. Meanwhile, the person with whom I'm corresponding will reply with at least one, possibly two.
Therefore in nearly any thumb-killing text conversation that's worth perhaps a 30 second phone call at best, Vodafone is likely to make between 60 and 80 cents, yet neither person pays for the cost of an entire 1 minute call.
Maybe one day I'll have more money to squander and get a better plan, but I'd just as soon throw away my phone. It's helpful to have around sometimes so that people can get hold of me however.
FYI, you don't need the pause. Just press a different key and immediately delete the letter that is inserted. Those two keypresses are quicker than waiting 1 second for the cursor.
(That said, I use T9 too. But sometimes T9 needs to be turned off, if it doesn't know the words or when entering a URL or such).
-- Jamie
o-- oooo o -o -oo --- o-- o --o o - -- --- o-o ooo o -o-o o- o--o o- -ooo oo o-oo oo - -o-- --- -o o--o oooo --- -o o ooo oo--oo (Stupid Lameness filter, it's faster than text!)
Life is just nature's way of keeping meat fresh.
Morse code is all capital letters. It also doesn't have hyphens, brackets or other useful punctuation.
I'm not surprised that it's slightly faster than sending an SMS, but it also requires even more memorisation of key presses.
My Journal
I carried that lesson through many subsequent battles.
-cp-
Alaska bear-mauling victim survives rare second attack
This is another reason I would like to someday see "open" phones. Almoste all Symbian OS phones are "open" . You can download SDK and code in C++ to you pleasure. There are even few open source Symbian projects on Sourceforge (most notable OpenGL ES implementaion). In fact I myself enetertain idea to write morse input for my phone, I just too busy with other projects (games of cause
Morse Code Faster Than RMS
Sorry
ergh, "lameness filter." very well...h -dah-dah-dahd it-dah-dit
dah-dit-dit
dah-dah-dah-dah-dah
dah-da
dah-dit-dit
dit-dah-dah
dah
dit-
dit-dit-dah-dah-dit-dit
I make liberal use the T9 text acceleration, and while it's not always right, I've learned its patterns and I have increased my texting speed to an estimated 20wpm for common words. If I have to spell a non-english name or a word not commonly found in a dictionary, I have to manually deactivate T9 and key it in manually. When T9 incorrectly guesses the word I typed, I press * to choose the next possible word.
For example, let's say I type "I am going home." This would be 4, 0, 26*, 0, 46464, 0, 4663*. If I didn't use *, I would get "I an going good." Thus I have to correct two of the words in order to say what I intended.
I have all but memorized the patterns of common words that T9 will predict, and so I know when and how to make the substitutions even without watching my keys or the LCD screen.
I really like my Nokia 3560 - its fat body allows me to text with two hands (one if I'm driving).
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
"I'm arriving on train #230386 at 16:00." Damn useful in Europe. (Now can I convince my European friends to SMS /me/? They don't seem to know what an international one would cost to send...)
I was a radio ham when I was younger and knew a guy in Aylesbury, UK, who used to have a morse key strapped to the gear-stick in his car. He'd work morse at about 25 words per minute. Assuming an average of 5 letter words (the standard for morse tests in the UK), that's 125 characters per minute, or 2.08 characters per second. I could do about the same speed, and had an old army morse key that strapped to my leg. It made a pretty fair tourniquet too! I wonder if using a morse key while driving is illegal now, as is the case for mobile phones. I'd expect the degree of concentration required when listening to morse to have a detrimental affect on ones driving!
In theory, theory and practice are the same. In practice, they're not.
If I speak for four hours each day, I pay 50 a month.
.08/minute,
If I speak for 4 hours each month, I pay 50 a month.
The only caps:
If I use it more than three hours on one day in office hours (10-18, I think it was), I pay
Any conversation lasting more than one hour gets the same treatment. Hang up. Redial.
Oddly, for an extra 16 I could get free SMS, but why bother?
32 would get me fre SMS and MMS, but I really don't see the point.
Oh, and the subscriber has stopped offering this to new customers because they were losing money as you would not believe... >_
Good thing I didn't miss the bus...
Morse is great and it gets a revival because it can be used in situations where other forms of communication can't; like banging on radiators, space or underwater.
It could and probably should be revised for the digital age? I say revised because the advantage is that it's not too technical and doesn't involve a computer!
The other thing with morse is that although it's very impressive watching my grandad tap at unbeliveable speeds, you need the person recieving to understand what it means as well and there's little motivation for this now.
Note that pilots still use Morse to identify NDB navigational aids, so you can be sure that most pilots will understand you.
A blog I run for the wealth
I wrote all those figures with an Euro mark after them, but it just got up and disappeared...
It's actually harder (and takes longer) for me to type "u" to mean "you" than it does to type "you" because I have to throw my brain into idiot mode and override my normal typing skills to get idiot-speak onto the screen.
I used to have trouble typing 'u' too, but I have found a simple solution. Just set up an auto-replace rule which changes "y-o-u" into "u" automatically. It works for me.
I hope this helps u.
I'll probably be modded down for this...
So does this mean that now cell phones will be equipped with code keys/paddles for faster entry of SMS messages? dididit dadah dididit. (I don't know morse other than SOS, so I had to look up the M.)
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Same price to send/receive.
the time it takes to *receive* the message?
unless, of course, the phone is translating morse code to text for you, it'll take as long to receive as to send.
-- Moderation in all things, exceptions to all rules --
The default SMS received alert on Nokia phones has actually been S M S in Morse code for at least 10 years.
Karma: Good! Napster: Baad!
The illustration in th article (yes, I did read it), is a plain mores key, known as the hand pump amongst those in the know. And yes, that includes me, I was an military telegraphy operator.
The true experts can easily pump out a fair bandwidth over these keys. Experts, however, demand proper tools, and the semi- and fully-automatic electronic keyers (known as "bugs") is truly opens the bandwidth floodgates. It would be interesting to know what was used.
Also an automatic keyer on a cell phone would seriously simplify input hardware, also enabling many with various disabilities though it would require 6 months training.
so it is possible to "type" a message faster with morse than with a 9-button keypad. but this doesn't say anything about the comfort when doing thas. what would be interesting regarding this comparison are:
- error rates
- time needed to recover from errors (i.e. corrections)
- learning times
- memory load while typing
It was probably cheaper to pay a telegraph operator to send your 160 character message (which would arrive in real-time) than it is now to pay the fucking lazy phone company to route it at untra-low priority and let it arrive on someone's phone 3 hours later.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
It is just conceivable that the 90+-year-old dude has more years of experience sending out morse code than the 13-year-old girl has sending out text messages. I assume the speed of either method would improve significantly after 20+ years of experience doing it, versus if you were just handed the thing for your thirteenth birthday a couple of months ago.
Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
...you can't beat a morse paddle
It would still be a killer feature. For people who knew morse.
It was no contest. Morse code is optimized for the English language letter frequency tables. 'E' is the most frequent letter in English. It is also the shortest code in Morse (dit or '.'). 'T' is the next most frequent letter and it the next shortest (dah or '-'). Those with some data compression background will immediately be reminded of the lossless Huffman Coding.
Texting on a normal phone keypad has no such optimization. An E takes two keypresses. And if you plugged in a Qwerty keyboard, that is deliberately misoptimized.
Would this be policy debate? There are some forms, such as parley, where people talk to convince their audience, and 300+wpm is not terribly convincing. And having to write the speech as you give it precludes such annoying speed.
This post written under Gentoo-linux with an SCO IP license.
Just wondering -- could there be such a thing as Morse-to-text translator software for Blackberries etc., for sending messages to people who don't know Morse code?
You can't put a Gordon up against a Brittney and expect fair results. Flash Gordon would have totally wooped up on Brittany Spears. Clearly that theory would apply here as well.
I would have thought that a major reason why Morse code is quicker is that it has data compression built in - the more frequently used letters are shorter, while the less frequently used ones are longer.
Compare that with SMS, where "s" requires 4 button presses, and "e" takes 2.
So the SMS sender was effectively competing with someone sending a zipped version of the message.
Unlike SMS, Morse code was carefully designed for sending data as fast as possible, so it's hardly surprising that it does just that.
Aye, that's the rub - do I get a $400 mobile 10M rig, or do I get the $1200 SDR-2000 that I can really play with (since I do SDR for a living)?
Or do I just run QRP on my COM-120B or 2975....
www.eFax.com are spammers
adults can type much faster than 13yo kids.
News at 11.
...for when she gets owned by an older guy in about 5 years.
Some people are like broadband, their "always on" you just want to arrange where to meet them but their still talking half an hour later, better a short text to arrange stuff like that...
I mean you don't always want to talk to people texting is much quicker and impersonal...
mouse, simple User interfaces are faster to use, even if it is perceived to have quicker access to features through arcane interfaces.
Dot, Dash, and Space.
So you can do Huffman Coding (as some other post mentioned), but you can't do a character-for-character translation into binary. Still, it seems if everyone texts with two thumbs, two buttons with no temporal syntax would be optimal.
If the phones came with a mechanically functional code key(read light touch) and the phones automatically decode morse then I could see millions of kiddiez learning morse to tap out messages to one another. It would be MUCH faster and they wouldn't have to do the hard part which is decoding and writing the morse down since the phone would do that for them. Learning the alphabet and sending is the easy part. I suspect at first some of their sending will be shitty but they'll get better.
Because it works in the time domain, it's inherently slower than using separate keys for each symbol. In the time it takes to hold down the key long enough to generate a distinct dash, you could hit a "dash" key at least twice.
Now Grafitti 2, there's a competitor. One stroke generates a symbol, whereas morse takes on average three pulses per symbol. Give me a Grafitti 2 input on my cell phone, and maybe I'd try texting.
...I want to ring someone to tell them, say, the time I'll be meeting them at. Say they're on another network - here in the UK, although I get billed per second, the minimum charge is 1 minute. I'm on PAYG, so calling them to tell them the info costs me around 40p.
Whereas texting the info costs 10p.
Now, I'm sure phone companies push texting because it brings in extra revenue, but in my case I only use it when I want to pass on brief info without spending money on a phone call.
When you do morsecoding typing and sending are done at the same time. With sms it is done at different times.
Also with morse the connection is already done. So to be fair you should include the time of making the collection as well.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Morse Code is carried direct point to point over copper wire, whereas cell phones have delays, having to route thru systems, towers, possibly satellites, creating lag that slows down response/receive/send time.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
You know, if she's using txtspk, then she hasn't discovered the wonders of dictionary yet. Tell an 18 year old to send the same message on a slightly cooler phone. They'll use dictionary, which requires you to press each letter only once. It gets fearful fast.
Though 80 years of experience is pretty hard to beat. And she only sends about 3 messages a day! Hardly experience. In the Philippines, the average person sends 8-10 messages a day.
I tried to add up a series of numbers in excel faster than an old Chinese accountant in Gonzhou who used an abacus.
It was about 100 five digit numbers with 2 decimal places. I thought I would show him what a neat invention the computer was since he had never seen or used one before.
He did it in less than a quarter of the time it took me, and I am fast with the numeric keypad.
After that, I smiled, shook his hand, and never, ever tried to tell him the computer was better for his job.
It was humiliating.