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Morse Coders Beat SMSers
dgnicholson writes "Jay Leno did a text off between two text messengers and two Morse coders. The Morse coders handily beat the young whippersnappers with time to spare. It might be a fun phone app to make a Morse code messenger, if you kept your headset in and had an external sender, could be interesting. Perhaps a Morse code Skype device."
Anyone using morse code on an even occasional basis should have guessed that it would cream the text messagers! There are three simple reasons: (1) A single character of Morse can be keyed in less time than a single character can be entered on the cell phone with the "TAP" method. (2) With the bug, there is no delay created by moving the finger from button to button. (3) Most importantly, however, the text message is time-shifted, whereas morse transmission is real-time. When the sender is done, the recipient is done also.
Someone already wrote an application for Nokia phones that lets you write your SMS by using Morse code.
***Quis custodiet ipsos custodes***
Morse code was created for the purpose of sending text over REALLY low bandwidth. Cell phones were created to talk to people. The idea of entering text with a numeric keypad was a wart they hung on the side of the phone when they realized that a full keyboard wouldn't work.
Personally, I just don't understand the appeal of text messaging. Maybe that marks me as an old fogey (27), but I just don't need my tendonitis to get any worse, TYVM.
Why should I keep coming back to /. if the news is repeated, slow and bias?
I come to slashdot not for late breaking, fresh news, but for the discussion that follows. Who really cares if a submission is a dupe? You are not forced to read it, just skip it and go on to the next one. People that feel the need to point out dupes are just as useless as the grammar/spelling nazis. If you really have nothing to add to the discussion and are just going to whine, why post at all?
"Nobody knows the age of the human race, but everybody agrees that it is old enough to know better." - Unknown
Firstly, the morse code they used was the final optimised product. It basically uses huffman-like compression for english only. Thus texting other languages using morse would not be so efficient.
Secondly they used TAP method which is outdated and inefficient. Predictive text input is much faster. Also, the US is not the big SMS country. It hardly has GSM! More people still use outdated devices like pagers.
Thirdly they also tested the transport medium. An SMS may be relayed faster via different networks (sometimes immediate) and can be re-read if something was missed (unless ticker-tape is used). This is not fair, as for very long distance morse messages one can have intermediaries as well which would lengthen the process considerably.
Fourthly, most people cannot send morsecode while receiving it, thus also making asynchronous conversation slower. (And you cannot receive morse from multiple sources sil
I've recently been to Japan and had the rare privelege seeing a teenage school-girl on a Train sitting and texting on two phones at the same time! Beat that!
OMFG, Slashdot's "Lameness filter" just prevented me from posting a comment on this story in morse code. I cry censorship, someone call the ACLU!
Try it, if you don't believe me.
The greatest thing is, this program actually converts what you type to Morse code.
French is a Hindi. It just happens to use different words for most things.
An electric oven is a gas oven. It just happens to use electricity instead of gas.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
This is called "making it up as you go along"
"Predictive text input is much faster."
Actually predictive text input is no faster. See? I can make stuff up too!
"Also, the US is not the big SMS country."
Uh...which matters because...uh... our champion SMS users are not as good as "their" champion SMS users? What? Huh?
"It hardly has GSM!"
Yes, because SMS over CDMA is so much slower. Because it doesn't use the dixie-helmann-thingy compression that ...uh... the morse code thingy uses.
"More people still use outdated devices like pagers."
Yes, which really hurts SMS texting rates!
"Thirdly they also tested the transport medium."
And this is important because our networks are slower than the Japanese networks because uh... the dixie-helman-mayonnaise compression that is umbiqitious...uh...pagers used... ummm... and why, we hardly have GSM!
"and can be re-read if something was missed"
Yes, because I might've missed something in that SMS message that said "CU L8R, LOL!!!!!"
"This is not fair, as for very long distance morse messages one can have intermediaries as well which would lengthen the process considerably."
Well, it might have been fairer but they didn't use the Dixie-Helman...thingy that morse code has for uh...non-English languages.
"thus also making asynchronous conversation slower"
Oh hell, just call the other person on the phone, and if they're not there, leave a message. My way is fastest of all.
"I've recently been to Japan and had the rare privelege seeing a teenage school-girl on a Train sitting and texting on two phones at the same time! Beat that!"
I was recently watching my daughter use AIM talking to 5 people at a time on AIM.
I win.
Oh. She was using that Dixie-Hellman-Mayonaisse thingy you keep whining about.
Why I prefer SMS over Morse code:
I don't have to remember any encoding rules.
Why I prefer phone calls over SMS:
I don't have to remember how to spell.
Why I prefer silence over phone calls:
I don't have to remember to be polite or feign interest.