Slashdot Mirror
Polite Cell Phones
yEvb0 writes "Researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University are developing more polite cell phones. Strategies include programming the ringer to turn on and off according to the time of day, monitoring sound light levels to determine if the owner is a movie theater or talking to his boss, and even letting callers decide whether they'd like to interrupt based on this information."
monitoring sound light levels to determine if the owner is a movie theater
Ok, I'm confused enough, now, where can I buy this cellphone from?
Set your phone to vibrate. It's been working for me for years. Non-invasive when doing anything in my daily routine.
Is there really a reason I should have to enter my schedule into my phone? Because it's not going to happen.
My work here is dung.
And this is differnt from telling users to set their phones to vibrate?
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"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
Very similar to this idea... I think (especially with more and more bluetooth phones), it should be possible to turn phones to silent/vibrate (manner mode on my phone) when entering certain places, such as theatres and restaurants. Although, some will cry "invasion of privacy" or "taking away my rights", but I cry "I don't want my movie interrupted by your stupid cell phone".
Starmen.net
a polite human being.
Seriously folks! How hard is it to turn off the ringer? Are we so daft these days that our phones have to be polite for us?
I meta-moderate because I care.
So terrorists will now be able to have a cell-phone bomb detonate based on more specific parameters, like, when the train goes into a tunnel. Or, when there's a lot of people around.
Read any good sonnets lately?
About time someone did this, so all these peoples phones dont go off in class or the theatre after 15 mentions of "please disable all cellular phones"
But can it tell the difference between a movie theater and my pocket?
This guy's the limit!
How about no? Letting callers decide whether to override YOUR preferences? That'll work well.
How about just put the damn thing on silent/vibrate, and leave the rest of us out of your phone call world. I don't need to hear your l33t ringtone.
The problem with this is that you cannot take priority of the call. If I am talking to a Boss and say my Wife calls me to tell me she is having a Baby. I much rather have the phone stop being polite and call me. Also there is an issue of guessing correctly, If you are watching a movie in a theator vs. a home theator, with a good sound system. If you want to make the phone polite keep the vibrator on and make glasses (that are fasionable) that have a screen that can tell you who is calling. Don't bother with the AI Crap which will never work right, just go with a HighTech but simple solution.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Cell Phones monitor you ...
...
... no
wait
Um, you monitor cell ph
I've got it: Cell Phone tells YOU when to ring!
Funny sigs make your Karma go down.
It's dark and there is the sound of rattling change.
Good luck with this one.
A lot of people use their phone as a watch these days, so it would be nice to have the possibiltiy to turn off the phone functionality but keep the clock functionality. Ditto with phones that have cameras, PDA capabilities, etc. That way you could still use them in aircraft, hospitals etc. without having the problems an active phone are supposed to cause.
All the phones I've had are either fuly ON or fully OFF with maybe juts an alarm fucntion being available.
----------------------------------- My Other Sig Is Hilarious -----------------------------------
Every time some newfangled crap tries to anticipate and adapt to my needs, it fails miserably. See also: Microsoft Word, Microsoft Excel.
No thanks. Like a wise man once said -- If you're hungry, eat. If you're tired, sleep. If you have to go... you know... go. Don't expect Hal to catch these sort of things with any degree of accuracy.
It seems to me that most of the "rudeness" of phones stems from peoples strange addictions to ringtones. I just leave my phone on silent/vibrate all the time, and just never worry about disturbing anyone. It's sad that so much energy has to be expended to deal with such an issue. Plus, many of those strategies sound iffy at best since, for instance, many women keep their cell phones in their purse/bag, rendering any attempt to guage light or sound pretty much useless. Plus, as far as sound is concerned, how many people are going to feel a bit disturbed by the fact that their phone is now ALWAYS "listening".
That being said I see two useful features (which may have been mentioned in the article that I admit I haven't read). One, simply have the phone check your calendar to see if you have a meeting scheduled. Two, provide some type of "snooze" button. Right now, if you decline a call because you're in a meeting, you still get an annoying beep when they leave a message, or the same damn "ringing" 10 min later when they call again. Why not have a single button basically put the phone in silent mode for the next half/hour/n minutes?
So your phone is constantly 'listening' and evaluating the sound level.
Listening to what, exactly? I can see the headline in a couple of years:
"Your cellphone is listening in to all your conversations"
And thanks to a new virus, is transmitting them!"
I've had several phones and pagers that allow you to set "quiet time", where the phone/pager will automatically put itself in vibrate mode at the times you choose.
More recently, a Hitachi cellphone I used on the Sprint network had a light sensor that muted the ringer the moment it was removed from a pocket. If left on a desk, the ringer volume would be set lower than if it were in a dark place (i.e. your pocket)
So, while this is certainly interesting, there have already been practical applications of such technology.
This could be the start of bloated cell phones I regret to note. Once these phones are manufactured, cell phone companies will "force" us to upgrade. I won't forget the experience I had last week when I visited a cell phone supply shop to replace a battery for my phone. The man there looked at it and immediately asked, "Where did you get this?" I had no answer for him. Then he told me that my olny solution was to buy a "new" phone yet my phone was bought three years ago and had served me well since.
Having the device switch modes on its own depending on rules that may or may not be obvious to users will be a problem. Technophobes already complain their phones are too complicated: this is step further away from a simple desk phone people have mastered.
org.slashdot.post.SignatureNotFoundException: ewg
Substitute "technology" in for "natural sciences" and "common courtesy" for "morality" here, and you've got a pretty good idea what my view on this is. The name of this miraculous technology is "set to vibrate plus call display". It takes almost zero effort to use. You think people who don't have the brains or manners to do that are going to tell their cellphone when they're going into a movie theater? Or that a light sensor will work when people carry their phones in their pockets, for that matter? Please.
Try not to be a dick. There's a novel idea.
Mike Hoye
Just have the phone light up and vibrate as the default, with the ringer as an option?
Maybe this way it will cut down on the annoying cell music I hear every day?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
"The Verizon wireless customer you are trying to contact is busy. Based on the motion of his phone and the light level of the room, he appears to be shagging his secretary. Would you like to interrupt and ring his phone?"
Old people fall. Young people spring. Rich people summer and winter.
Want the ringer to change based on the time of day? Callfilter.
Change the brightness of the screen depending on the surrounding light? BrightCam.
Not to mention the nice hardware switch right at the top that lets you choose between silent and ringer modes.
You can do a lot more with a Treo than your standard phone, but it is nice to see manufacturers building these features right into off-the-shelf products.
Of those phones which do ring in an inappropriate place, the owners of the great majority have simply forgotten to turn their phone off (they're forgetful, not sociopathic). Movie theatres, concert halls, libraries and other please-keep-quiet places could have short-range radio equipment inside which sent a "this is a quiet zone" signal. You'd program your phone (and it would come programmed by default) that when it was receiving that signal it would go onto the vibrate-only ring preference. When the signal was lost, it would revert to your default. So when you entered, and when you left, there would be no need to remember to set the phone correctly (the nagging ads always remind me to turn my phone off, but very often I forget at the end and leave my phone off for the remainder of the day). Similarly noisy places like train stations and airport concourses could broadcast a "this is a noisy environment", which your phone would typically interpret to mean that it should use a loud, shrill ringtone.
There >are Phones should, incidentally, have an "answer with hold" button. So a doctor in the movies whose phone rang (silently) could take it out, notice that it's the hospital's number, and push "answer with hold". The caller would get a short recorded message saying "this person is aware of your call, and will be with you shortly - please hold" - that way the doctor can take the call, but doesn't have to talk into the phone until they've walked into the theatre lobby, where they can take the phone off hold and talk.
## W.Finlay McWalter ## http://www.mcwalter.org ##
We don't need a machine to be "polite", we need polite people who use them...like people who won't actually answer their cell phones in the middle of a movie in a theater! Who are these bone-heads?
Todd
So what exactly is the silent and vibrate function for...oh wait, I just figured out the vibrate function. Geez, women get everything!
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
Now if they could only get cell phones basic features to work better (like signal quality, buttons you can actually press, not locking up) unlike the junky Motorola flip phones that I have (V60).
How about if the phones just ship set to vibrate only, and people have to learn how to turn the ringer on? Make it simpler to turn the ringer on for a one-time ring on the next call, and just a little less simple to switch from vibrate to ring all the time. The dumber people who can't silence their phones when appropriate will be taken out, rather than me taking them out personally when they ruin a movie again.
A real innovation would be a mode that autoswitches the phone from ring to vibrate on a bluetooth signal. A good phone would authenticate the signal, requiring a senderID authenticated against a third-party DB. Maybe even autoswitch phones from ring to voicemail (or call forward). Then private spaces could control their environment, rather than rely on the politeness of the masses of unsophisticated phone users.
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make install -not war
How about you start charging people who disturb the peace in a movie theatre or another place where silence from the public is the norm? If you get a cell phone call in the middle of a theatre, you have no good excuse to not answer it outside. Sorry, not even having a group of kids under your watch is a good excuse to have a full blown conversation.
I hate noisy cellphones, I think people are rude for thinking they are so important that they can disturb others' peace. Having said that, there is one thing I wish I had when I keep my cell phone on vibrate: a distinctive vibrate "ring." The only thing I think is cool about ringtones is the ability to customize them so you know who is calling without looking at the phone. If I had distinctive vibrate I could definitely say there is no longer any excuse for a noisy phone.
How about one that sputters, coughs, and dies verbally "Oh, I'm goin to meet my maker! I love you, Bill G! Tell the wife and microchips I love them!" when I stomp it into the ground after ripping it out of the cell phone user's hands while I'm watching a movie?
Or how about one that apologizes for ten minutes when it's user talks on it while sitting (not standing, sitting) on the toilet in a public restroom? Especially one that comments on the personal hygiene habits of someone even using a phone in a public lavatory?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
I leave my phone on vibrate, but I work in a building with radio shielding (we are right next to a major radio broadcast tower). So my phone will often go into searching mode and kill its battery. So I leave it plugged in durring the day. Unfortunately, as soon as you plug the phone into the charger, vibrate mode gets disabled. A royal annoyance.
-Rick
"Most people in the U.S. wouldn't know they live in a tyrannical state if it walked up and grabbed their junk." - MyFirs
My motorola flip-phone thingy has this delightful habit of starting to bleep (bleat) about the battery charge level and somehow it manages to work out the most annoying possible time at which to start. Say, 2am or so. It very rarely seems to bleat during tpical wake times.
Please, Mr Cellphone software developer, give me an option for a timerange when the phone will be silent. Yes, I'm sure I could turn it off but really, what are the odds of remembering? I know the odds of my wife remembering to turns hers back on are about 0 - from long experience.
Its a much better direction than those stupid two way radio cellphonamajigs.
*Beep-Berreep!*Yo, were you at?*Beep-Berreep!*
I hate those things!
Demented But Determined.
I've come to rely on random cell phones to keep me awake during boring lectures.
already is a polite phone. It can be automatically turned on and off, e.g., during a meeting, and change the ringer volume based on the lighting condition... Just use brightcam http://treoware.com/
I've been wondering for years why cell phones don't allow you to program ring schedules. TFA mentions this feature in passing as something that's already out there, but I've never seen a phone with it. Is it only in top-end phones, or has it trickled down in the 18 months since I bought my last phone? I should say that I've always purchased mid-range cell phones, I only upgrade when my contract is up or the phone breaks, so I never have the latest and greatest.
/rant.
With that one exception, the features described in TFA seem virtually worthless. Is it really worth feeding my cell phone speed and breaking information from my car so that it doesn't ring for the 15 seconds out of the day that I'm breaking hard? Yes maybe some day when my phone already connects to my car and it's trivial to pass this information along, but such a small percentage of cars and phones interact with eachother now that it seems ridiculous.
Certainly there are some features that could prevent phones from ringing at impolite times, for example, Wired article from like 1998 talked about how this emerging standard called 'bluetooth' would allow theaters and other areas to set up "quiet zones" which you could set your phone to automatically respect and switch to silent or vibrate. There's no need for my phone to have a set of expensive sensors to help it guess what I'm doing at the moment. KISS.
The real problem with cell phone politness is the user. If people could just remember that answering a cell phone implies that the conversation is more important than what they're doing at the moment, and then stop and decide if it actually is, 90% of cell phone annoyance would disappear. Also, learn to love vibrate mode.
I work in a high-security building and can't take my cell phone in. Vibrating cell phone on my car seat does not make enough noise to alert me if I have a voicemail left by my wife, kids, etc during the day. Otherwise I am very considerate with my cell phone, but I am also very forgetful ... stuff like this is very useful for the forgetful among us.
Silent or something like that. A device could be installed in locations that would try and pair with any bluetooth devices. You could allow the device the first time, and then everytime you visit that location again, it would automatically shift your phone into silent mode. Would be great for meeting rooms & movie theaters.
From a crowded movie theater?
Would you like me to Dial 9-1-1 or Check on your insurance?
Notify your next of kin?
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Your suggestion makes massive sense although of course there are issues. To the extent that a technological solution can be helpful, there are many benefits to letting the owner of a location specify that it is a "quiet place". It can be turned ON or OFF as the situation demands, e.g. after the movie lets out, the theater's CellPhone property could be re-set to "Normal". It could be integrated with the property owner's provision of cellphone signal, to attact customers who want to talk during Normal Time and to have quiet during Quiet Time. I would have concerns that the facility would need some sort of GPS location of the cellphone, to determine for example whether the phone is in the theatre (Quiet) or the adjacent lobby (Normal). There's all sorts of privacy issues there. In the alternative ... I'd love to have a personal cellphone disrupter. I suppose it'd be illegal, but other that little drawback, it sure would be handy to be able to enforce peace & quiet around me.
--- Attorneys Assisting Citizen-Soldiers & Families -
the greatest thing about email is it is asynchronous. i can communicate with someone else on my schedule, without my thoughts being interrupted by random claptrap. that's why my first cell phone ever was a blackberry, and before that the idea of a cellphone in my life horrified me. it didn't represent freedom to me, it represented being chained whereever i went. even now, my blackberry is silent, no ring or vibrate whatsoever, i just look at the screen every 5 minutes or so. i can't imagine a life interrupted and ruled by the random claptrap of a cellphone ringing
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I've always had a problem with vibrating ring in that
o gle+Search )but obviously not enough to stimulate the muscles in the area & therefore cause involuntary movement of the limb :0) Having used TENS for back pain, it's not an unpleasant tingling, and can be scaled down to the point where it just feels like someone's pressing your skin lightly with their thumb.
1- you have to be in contact with the phone to feel the vibrations, and I'm a teeny paranoid about microwave radiation & illnesses, so I keep my phone in my bag if I have one, leaving it a few more inches away. Other people don't always have pockets, and people in general miss vibrating rings because they don't feel them.
2- they aren't that quiet if you've got your phone on a table and it starts vibrating like mad, causing a rattle that's as annoying as some ringtones.
In trying to come up with a solution, my own idea is to have a discreet wireless (bluetooth) wristband that passes a tiny electrical pulse across your skin to alert you of an incoming call. The tingle would be something similar to the effect of TENS ( http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=tens&btnG=Go
It would be a completely noisless alarm that alerts only the mobile phone user without creating any light. The only problem might be powering the device (normal TENS machines for medicine use 9v batteries) & making sure the wearer doesn't look like a complete twit, as is the case with a lot of bluetooth headsets.
When the posters fear their moderators, there is tyranny; when the moderators fears the posters, there is liberty.
If (as TFA suggests), monitoring the ambient light is an indication of cinema-ness, then my phone, which spends many hours in my coat pocket or in a flap-covered holster, must think I'm the most entertained guy in the world.
BTW, if they're going to allow scheduled ring times, I think that's great. But (especially relative to the movie scenario) a very short keystroke sequence that says "don't ring for the next 1/2/4 hours" would be used 100 times more often than TOD programmability, IMHO.
Don't disappoint your bird dog. Go to the range.
The major drawback I've found with the Motorola Razr V3 is the volume control also changes your ring volume, so after each call I have to remember to turn it all the way back down to vibrate. Who thought of that?
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
That would be excellent if the theater people just simply kicked the person out with the loud phone. with no refund, and it doesnt matter if it is 10 seconds after that "please turn phones off" screen.
Kick them out, without a refund (they can do that). And who gives a shit about that person not coming back, the rest of the audience will more than make up for it.
The phrase "more better" is acceptable English. suck it grammar Nazis
http://www.dailytelegraph.news.com.au/story/0,2028 1,18104683-5001022,00.html
Seriously, the problem isn't the gadgetry, it's the people who use the gadgetry. In the link above, a woman's cell phone rings in a movie theater, then she whips it out and starts talking on it during the movie. Polite ringers won't do a damn thing when it's people that are the problem.
Let's invent polite people. Problem solved.
Do what is right and let the consequence follow
While I would love to believe that we can get the whole world to work together, be polite to eachother, and sing songs and hold hands together, it's... umm... not going to happen. Why should I expect that the masses will buy and learn to use these phones correctly?
Cell phone jammers are the correct solution for when people don't know how to be polite.
Funny thing... All these people complaining about cell phones saying, "just don't answer it." Yet, I not seen a single person ever just let their home land line phone just ring without answering it. So, what is it about the little piece of wire that makes the land line polite, and the cell an abomination?
Monitoring the environment isn't the way to go. We should be signalling phones to do things, where how much occurs within the phone is dictated by the owner.
Signal fields which switch phones to a silent setting could still be configurable by the owner, assuming that the range of choices still results in a "silent" phone.
As for another matter, why the heck do I need to set the time on my phone? Why isn't there a mobile equivalent of NTP on every phone today? How your phone reacts to change in time due to travel, could also be configurable.
>monitoring sound light levels to determine if the owner is a movie theater or talking to his boss,
But what if my boss *isn't* a being of pure darkness?
I know where I my phone should be off, slilent, or if ringing is okay. My problem is usually forgetting to take the phone out of silent which is okay. On my phone (Samsung SCH-A650) I just hold down the # key to go to silent. I'm not one to spend a lot of time on the phone (unless I would normally on a landline and even less) because it is not a brick. Back before I got the case and I was having an eval out at a school, I sometimes needed to turn the phone off and sometimes forgot if I did. I simply (and discreetly) took the phone out of the holster, removed the battery, and reinstalled the battery which reset the phone to off. If my phone were to ring in an inapproriate place I know how to silence the ringer (either the up or down buttons on the side). If people would have common sense, and more importantly know how to use their cell phones, It would be a better world.
sudo mod me up
The question for me isn't if these "polite phones" are polite to the owner or caller - but to the bystander.
There's nothing more irritating than riding in a full train where every minute or so some cell phone goes off - ringer on loudest possible setting, of course - and the owner proceeds to hold a conversation at a volume level he'd never even consider for a face-to-face talk.
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
2) *bleep* after every sentence
3) volume control
My phone has a button that I use to kill the ringer after the first ring as I pick up the phone. It remains silent while I look at the screen and think about if I want to answer or not.
My phone also doesn't *bleep* after every sentence. I don't seem to have much trouble figuring out when I am finished talking or when the person on the other end starts or finishes.
It is possible to crank the volume of my phone up to where I can hear it when holding it about 10 inches away. I can't think of any reason I'd want to do that though. It certainly can't go so loud that I can hear it, and often even understand what is being said, from 5-10 feet away. No phone should be able to go so loud, but experience shows that plenty do. If someone is that deaf, they should get a hearing aid; after all what to they do about hearing things when they aren't on the phone?
Edward Burr
Having a smoking section in a restaurant is like having a peeing section in a swimming pool.
I've been waiting for programmable ring times for a long while. To me, as a student, it just makes sense. I would rather have my cell phone switch between loud and vibrate according to the times I'm in school (so I don't have to try and remember to turn it on loud when I'm walking home, a time when I would never feel a phone vibrating). A day based schedule would work best, with an option in the contact list for an alternative schedule or override.
x86, oh yes, I'm pro.
My simple idea: Allow me to set it to meeting/movie/restaurant/polite/quiet mode for a set period; thus I don't need to (remember to) change it back because it will be automatic. I've missed a lot of calls from friends because the phone is on vibrate and sitting on a sofa cushion, ten hours after a meeting for which I silenced it. (And then left it on the meeting room table during the meeting, so that any vibrationss were amplified. D'oh!)
Polite people don't need it. Rude people won't buy it or learn how to use it. Seems a wasted effort.
I've always thought a good solution would be to have a small vibrating device fixed to your watch (say), which would be triggered by your phone (bluetooth or similar). You wouldn't miss any call when the phone's away from you, and perhaps you could configure the phone to ring audibly if it isn't able to contact your (*ahem*) vibrating device. Best of all worlds?
Andy
Given the current crop of Hollywood movies, your pocket (and its associated lint) is more entertaining.
I have yet to hear a musical ring that wasn't intensly annoying. May latest phone, a Moto e815, does not include any "normal" ringtone, just stupid songs and electronic irritations. Thus far I have been unsuccessful in trying to download something better.
And why can't I just copy a sound file over from my computer and have it work? Is that too much to ask?
Beyond that, any time someone leaves a voicemail it triggers a beep every five minutes or so, apparently until the end of time, and apparently which cannot be turned off.
Then again, my previous cel provider (Primus Canada, and boy don't even THINK about using them) used to send a text message every time that a voicemail was left on the phone.
So the routine became: look at phone, see voicemail indicator, check voicemail, delete voicemail message, see text message indicator, check text messages, see reminder of voicemail that you just deleted, delete text message.
Again, there was no way to turn this thing off. The Primus drones claimed that the Ericcson phone was sending itself text messages to tell me that there was a voicemail.
Yah, right....
Three Squirrels
We don't need qa polite cellphone, we need one that's outright rude. "What're you doing taling now, you're driving? ***zzzzap**** ". (High voltage external contacts would be a must)
This is the best idea I've seen yet. I'd keep my phone on vibrate all the time, but I don't (usually) have a handy pocket to put it in. It's also annoying when I miss calls because I left my phone in my purse or coat pocket after putting them down (like at a party).
The wristband idea would prevent all 3 problems I currently have with my phone:
* I miss calls because the phone isn't within easy hearing range, often muffled by a coat or buried in my purse
* I miss calls because I turn off my phone or set it on "silent" in church or in a movie theater, and then forget to turn it back on later in the day
* OR I forget to turn off the phone, and get a call when I'm in a quiet environment, much to my embarrasment.
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
The problem isn't the phones, it's the morons who use them. I can't get on a bus round here without some group of braindead teenagers watching music videos or oh-so-amusing 'comedy' video clips using the phone's external speaker turned up full. The kind of person who thinks that is acceptable behaviour is not going to bother with a polite phone.
Researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University are developing more polite cell phones. Strategies include programming the ringer to turn on and off according to the time of day,
Maybe "researchers at Motorola and Carnegie Mellon University" should make the effort and head down to their local electronics store to see which of the features they are so busily researching are already available in shipping phones.
As for the rest of the scenarios, leaving your phone on "buzz" works just fine. In particular, if it's in your pocket, it's silent, when it's on a hard surface, it makes a lot of noise--just what you want.
Why not have a feature that if the phone (via GPS, cell towers, what not) knows that you are in a theater or in a *place* then it would automatically change to vibrate or some other defined setting? Just an idea.
They're basically coming up with algorithms to determine when the phone "should" be set to vibrate. What I want to know is, why are they involving a University for this? Anyone who's used or been around users of cell phones is capable of coming up with ideas on how to make phones go into silent mode. It's probably expensive to hire *professors* to work on this problem, when an engineering firm, or heck, asking high schoolers for ideas, could get you all the ideas you'd need on this. No new technology is needed for this -- just programming software.
Rank my idea: http://www.sinceslicedbread.com/node/531
It's called pervasive computing and this subject has been brought up on slashdot about a month ago.
1) Detect user is in movie theater with ringer activated.
2) Explode.
3) Profit!
Give a man a fish and you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish, and he'll say "WHERE'S MY FISH, YOU IDIOT?"
While, I can't really complain that this sort of thing is being developed, I know it can only help. Still, it's very sad that people need to spend valuable technology r&d time solving a problem of human ignorance/rudeness!
I for one have not been to a movie in YEARS where I did not hear at least one cell phone go off. Usually it's 2 or 3. I'm somewhat desensitized to where I only get ANGRY when they answer and start having a conversation.
I think you're using "forgetful" as a cop-out. What's really the issue here is common courtesy. Manners. Things hardwired into your social (and private) being that almost automatically tell you, "Hey, I'm in a quiet place. I should turn my cell off or on vibrate." As soon as I enter an actual viewing room in said theatre I turn my cell off without even thinking about it. If we can program ourselves to place napkins in our laps, speak quietly in restaurants, and hold doors open for women and the elderly, then making a phone not make noise should be a no-brainer.
The vast majority of these cell phone issues would just go away if we just used a little common courtesy.
"Apparently so, but suppose you throw a coin enough times. Suppose one day, it lands on its edge."
The idea of a smart phone doesn't sound too appealing, there are just too many exceptions to rules, and I am generally better at choosing for myself.
I think before we even get into changing phones so they're smart, why not change them so they're not retarded first? The biggest problem I have with phones is that many of them (the two motorolas I have) beep when you change yourself from "loud" mode to silent. At least when you don't have the phone open. Now what idiot thought up this idea? You're sitting in class, or a theater, and suddenly realize you left your phone on. Now you have to make a decision, do you annoy those around you by having your phone beep at you as you turn the ringer off, or do you run the risk that it might ring.
Also as other people have said, once it rings and you hit the ignore button, don't beep for a voice mail message, or ring again from the same person etc.
While people who use their phones all the time are generally better about remembering to turn off their phones, those of us who get a couple calls a week, and almost never during the day often don't think about the fact that they have their phone with them wherever they are.
Basically, just fix the idiotic notions programmed into cell phones, and then think about smart phones.
Phil
I'd much rather have Motorola make a travel charger that doesn't suck, a WAP browser that doesn't run like shit and crash, and just about half a dozen other ways my phone sucks.
Oh, and stop making trendy super-thin emo phones that are super hard to hold.
One with a dead battery.
I can see the MPAA suing over the fact that to know that you're in a movie theatre the phone has to record and analyse the suroundings wich includes the movie soundtrack.
The case is going to look like this in a few years...
Title: MPAA vs every cellphone owner in the world who wathed a movie once during the last year
Alleged facts: Illegal recording of a movie soundtrack
Offered settlement: 1,000$ per offender or 250,000$ if you go to court.
They wont even need to make crappy movies anymore just like the RIAA doesn't need to spit out records; they just need to sue their customers!
- Have it NOT shut off and drop all calls just after you plug it in when the battery is low.
- The phone could stay on until you turn it off, instead of just turning off randomly throughout the day.
- It could use a low battery warning that does not double the rate of battery drain while the warning is going off.
There were discussions about having people wear various light and sound sensors so the phone could make an "intelligent" choice whether to ring or not, or going through an extensive training period where the user tells the phone whether to ring or not, and the phone "learns." Like with anything online these days, the topic went to how much private data was the user willing to give up in order to allow the callers to decide whether to make the phone ring or not.
Hello??? The problem here is that people are thoughtless. No amount of tech is really going to change that.
This reminds me of that old joke of the difference between the American space program and the old Soviet space program. The Americans spent lots of money to research and develop a pen that would work without gravity, while the Soviets used pencils. Nothing new under the sun.
Hey, Windows users, there is no such thing as "forward" slash, there is only slash and backslash.
Compare traveling on mass transit in Japan to the same thing in the US and you'll see there is an immense difference. The Japanese won't use cellphones for voice on the Tokyo subway, say, and even when in the streets they'll use cellphones discreetly. Travel on the BART near San Francisco (or even the tube in London, outside of the tunnels), say, you'll get to hear the ins and outs of the love lives and business lives of everyone around you as people shout the details loudly enough into their phones to overcome the sound of the train.
"The White House is not an intelligence-gathering agency," -- Scott McClellan, Whitehouse spokesman.
If you have a Symbian series 60/80/UIQ, there is "Psiloc extended profiles (Pro)" which changes your phone profile based on time etc.
;)
http://www.psiloc.com/index.html?id=156
More interestingly, there is (excellent) innovation by them, named "Where I am" which integrates to this product or used stand-alone
http://www.psiloc.com/index.html?id=169
It reads the specific "cell information" and switches to profiles, gives messages, do stuff (can even turn off phone!) based on that.
Motorola and Carnagie has no access to these pages I assume
"...is a movie theater"
If the owner of the cell phone is a movie theater, then we have worse problems!
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
There is a reason this hasn't been done before and that is security. With complete access to the phone ringer control malicious content could run wild. Check out the original argument by Joel Spolsky here.
How about polite cell phone users? Turn the ringer off if you are somewhere it would be inappropriate. Don't talk on your phone where it would be disruptive to the others around you. If people have to turn to an engineering solution as a substitute to common sense and courtesy, then we have bigger problems than annoying cell phones.
My SMT5600 has something called "flight mode". This turns off all radio systems, but still allows you to use the phones other features.
except our own.. couldn't figure out how to put it on vibrate for a few days. Really strange that you're the only one ringing in a crowded subway.
http://www.s4biturbo.com/
I am pretty sure that after 8pm, my Blackberry doesnt make a sound, and goes to vibrate only. After midnight, vibrate is disabled, except for my Nagios alerts, which are always allowed to wake me up. Nothing new. Move on.
When the movie theater reminds me to turn off cellphones, I usually ignore it. Not because I'm being rude or lazy, it's just that nobody ever calls me. Did I mention I often go to the movies alone?
It would be nice if they could make the phone turn down the volume of the owner's voice when it gets too high! HELLO!! I'M ON A BUS!!!
Why people wear their cell phones on their belts a mere two inches away from their pocket, I don't know. Is it to advertise to the world that they're important? Is it to scream "look at me, I have a Blackberry"? Is it so that people around them know that they answer their phone just so often that that two inches adds up to miles of extra movement over the course of a given year?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
It would be neat to see signalling in major centres (thinking of a big DoS conspiracy though). A device in a movie theatre that signals all phones to not ring or to be dimmer when they are opened during a movie. Walking away from this device will turn it off. It's like the 'anti-cell phone' blocking devices, but doesn't inhibit service... it just enforces politeness.
Similarly, in a hospital, it should do the same, or near an MRI machine turn off the wireless. These things are all neat, but a schedule is a bit much. Who geoes to the movies that regularly? Who goes to sleep at the same time every day?
-M
when you see the word 'Linux', drink!
The ultimate solution to this involve the application of Bayesian-based... ((ring ring)) Hold on. Yeah, I'm talking to slashdot. No, nothing serious. I'm good, how are you? No, I don't think we more bread. She said WHAT? Wow, ok, I think you'll need to give Steve a call and let him know that our plans for Saturday need to change. No, I said Steve. STEVE. S - T - E - V - E. Yes. No I haven't filed taxes yet, but I did order the Michigan module for TurboTax. Yeah, 4-6 weeks, but it's usually a lot faster. Yeah, I can wait while you let the cat in. I said YEAH, GO AHEAD. I'LL WAIT. So anyway, did you have a chance to wash our dark laundry last night? No, I can get that on the way home. So what about...
The engineer in the article is over-analyzing the issue. Putting smarts into the phone is the wrong step. The smarts are in the heads of the caller and callee, we just need ways of modifying the operation of the device.
I have asked cell phone providers for the following feature for years. All I have gotten from the sales people are blank stares of incomprehension when I did this.
I want a toggle button that switches the phone between two modes. Mode one is normal - the phone rings or vibrates or whatever when someone calls me. Mode two intercepts the call with a message - "I am busy doing something important right now, to leave a message, please press one or just stay on the line, to interrupt me right now during my important task, please press 2." If you want to get fancy about it, you could have multiple buttons or whatever that would play different messages: " I am in a meeting", "I am at church", "I am at a movie", etc. If they don't press two, my phone never rings (or vibrates), and they have the option of leaving a message. If they press two, the phone rings, right now.
That way, when my wife calls to ask me to pick up milk on the way home from work, she'll just leave a message. When she calls from the ambulance on the way to the hospital because my daughter just suffered a life-threatening injury, she'll interrupt. I don't care if I'm giving a presentation to the CEO of the company, I WANT that call, and will interrupt whatever I'm doing to take it.
I read an article and heard on the radio this morning about a woman who answered her cell phone in a movie theater and began to have a conversation. Another woman in the theater reached over and tapped the shoulder of the woman on the phone and asked her to be quiet or go outside. When this happened, the woman on the phone called police and accused the woman who tapped her of assault. Now the woman and the courts have to waste time dealing with this. I believe this happened in Brownsville, Texas.
I honestly cannot believe the number of times I have seen people answer their phone during a movie and attempt to carry on a conversation in a packed theater. The balls/arrogance of these people just amazes me. I personally believe that all movie theaters should automatically block all cell phone reception as soon as the previews begin to roll, or send a self destruct sequence to any phone with an audible ring during the movie. If you can't handle not being able to use your cell phone for 2 hours, then wait till the movie comes out on DVD. With all the selfish assholes on cell phones, irresponsible parents bringing crying infants into rated R movies and allowing toddlers to roam freely throughout the theater it is no wonder why I stopped going to the movies.
On a somewhat related note, I've noticed that restaurants are starting to have designated cell phone areas. This is a relatively new practice, at least in Houston. I hope more businesses start adopting these policies. Now if we could just get designated family/children areas (a la Simpsons) I would be in heaven.
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
The real issue is the jerks who choose to be jerks. Not the people who forget to turn off their ringers, but the people who just don't give a shit. Load up the most obnoxious ringtone possible (it gets so hard to calculate that, since they're all obnoxious), head on down to the movies and take a few calls. Oh, is this bothering you? "Somebody Else's Problem" effect.
Perhaps movie theaters could be retrofitted with Faraday cages...
---GEC
I'm but the humble pupil, seeking to snatch the scratchbuilt pebble from the master's fully articulated hand
Personally I'd like this feature just to save me from those moments when I forget to switch modes. It's rare but it does happen.
Beauty is just a light switch away.
I think phones should take advantage of bluetooth by listening for a 'silencer' signal that is broadcast over bluetooth to phones withing some loosely defined radius. Then you can set your phone to listen to this 'silencer' signal and take some user-programmed actions such as "turn off ringer" or "switch to vibrate" upon leaving the silent zone, your phone would just go back to whatever mode it was in previously. Theaters, classrooms, conference rooms, whatever could be equiped with a simple little device to help people remember to do what they are already are trying to do but sometimes absent mindedly forget.
(I know they are already using a dumber version of this in some Canadian theaters... it just kills the signal, which would be very annoying if you wanted to receiver emergency calls via a vibrate alert)
Only speak when it improves the silence.
Cell phone jammers are a rediculous idea. If someone has an emergency and needs to get a hold of me, I don't want them to be unable to be able to because some insensitive prick is running a jammer near me. I will, however, advocate the jamming of ones fist into a rude cell phone user's face, or even a foot into an ass.
i'm just saying i deal with my cellphone like i deal with my email. which actually is a mismoner, because all i use my blackberry for is texting and email. i probably do 2 calls a month. anyone important to me knows to email or text me instead of calling, including my gf and employers. even my mom has taken to sms and now uses it with my sisters, due to my influence
i just don't deal with calls ever. as for your glorious ringtone management: have fun managing that. i just think it's easier never to have to manage it at all, ever, or think about a ringtone ever. and i think as time goes on, more and more people are going to operate like me. the idea of a phone ringing, and us rushing to the phone is from another century. a cellphone with a ringtone is just an anachronistic holdover form that era
more people will be like me, as more people realize that true freedom is not with a cellphone, but from a cellphone
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
If you've ever accidentally awakened someone, you'd appreciate this feature from the calling end, too.
A cell phone that has the option of shutting the ringer off at night is something useful, and the idea of a cell phone that can determine you're in a dark place and shut itself off is neat. I imagine it will be super expensive though--I mean, my cell phone gripes if I have more than 30 text messages saved, I can't imagine a phone doing all this costing near as much as the cells that don't.
I've always wanted a cell phone that could/would block a specific number somehow. Why not? I have annoying people call me that I sure didn't give my number to them (or I regret doing so...). How about a section of the contacts/address book for phone numbers we want to ignore? Where's the phone that only takes calls from people who are actually saved in your phone? Cell phones are obviously going to be around for a long, long time. We have the technology, it only makes sense to make them better and extremely useful to us in everyday life (if you choose to use these features, of course..)
I sell out to The Man every day.
This is seriously useful! If I have class every day from 2-4 PM, why should I always have to manually turn my damned ringer on and off? Where was this 8 years ago?
Also, it seems to me that the kind of people who would buy a "polite" cellphone (or conversely if they become mainstream, bother programming times in) are the kinds of people who switch their cells to "silent" or "off" during movies. The jerks out there are still going to recieve loud calls in the cinema and hold up traffic for their conversation, even if this does become popular
Commodore64_love: I don't comprehend people who're so frightened of death that they'll bankrupt themselves to stay alive
Why do I need bluetooth to sync my razr when I could scribe a piece of papyrus? LOL
Meetings etc never seem to run to schedule so what's the point of going through all the pain of trying to link your phone's ringer to your calendar?
Engineering is the art of compromise.
How good would this "polite" cellphone be if it belonged to a doctor or someone else who had to be on-call all the time?
www.linuxpenguin.net
Some other /.er mentioned Nextel phone(s) had this capability. I'll have to look that up. Cause I would love that. Currently I have my phone on vibrate as to not disturb my coworkers. When I leave the office I should remember to turn on the ringer, but sometimes do not. Have missed some calls that I should have answered. Contribute it to old age or whatever, but scheduling the ringer type on a daily or weekly basis would be a huge convenience to me.
/off to do research
I also like the idea of putting the cell phone in a 'do not disturb' mode. The caller gets shunted to voice mail immediately without the phone ringing at all. It would be nice if the the caller could hear a pre-recorded message for this mode.
-FlynnMP3
Are you sure? Yes
Are you really sure? Yes
You are a cruel person... interrupting....
Computers originally performed numerical calculations. If you've been following along, we now use them for a little more than just that. Sorry - most can't simply freeze innovation and use cell phones for making phone calls.