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AT&T Stops 'Time', Ends An Era
theoeag writes "Starting in September, you will no longer be able to pick up a landline, payphone, etc and find out what time it is at the beep. AT&T, which has had the service since the 20s, cited a lack of demand in the digital age as the reason for "time"'s extinction. Actually, the service had already stopped in most states, but Nevada and California — with their large rural and unmapped areas — were still holding out, should the lost motorist or weary hiker need to know the time of day. But no more! The "Time Machine", which consisted of two large drum-like devices that contained several audio-tracks and a quite advanced system for syncing up with the caller, will probably end up in a museum, anxiously awaiting the arrival of its cousin: The Pay-Phone."
"Flag on the moon. How did it get there?"
From my cell phone, like I imagine most folks do. Heck, I hardly see anyone my age (late 20's) or younger wearing watches anymore for that same reason.
Tags != Comments, and -1 (Troll) != -1 (I Would Respond Angrily To This Poster So They Must Be Trolling)
I think you have an extra 'N' in there somewhere...
NTP
NNTP
Anyone else think the comments just weren't rendering right before they turned off ABP and saw ads?
My weird experience with "time" was one time I called it, and could hear the muffled sounds of everyone else who called it (with the time lady playing in the foreground). So it became like a big chat room, where everyone was asking what other people's real numbers were so they could call them and chat with random people of the opposite sex.
Since this was approximately 1977 and there was no internet, well, it seemed pretty cool for the few days it lasted.
If you really need to hear a talking clock, call 202-762-1401. The service is provided by the US Naval Observatory.
I was just thinking about this the other day for some reason!
One memory I have from youth is taking my oh-so-new-and-cool digital watch and carefully synchronizing it exactly to the beep when I called time. :)
Of course, later I synced my watch one day to the atomic clock, and then for some reason decided to check it against 853-1212. Imagine my geek outrage when freakin' Time was FORTY SECONDS OFF. I felt like an idiot for carefully syncing my watch all that time.
*sigh* another naive belief of youth falls. ("I mean, it's the phone company, of course they'd carefully ensure that 853-1212 has the exact time to the millisecond!")
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
How can they take time away from us?
They usually do that by way of their automated call-queueing system.
I wrote my first program at the age of six, and I still can't work out how this website works.
Actually, for legal reasons that wouldn't work. You see, they need to use the same time marking as the billing system.
I found this out years ago when my GF was getting really persistent obscene phone calls. We called the phone company to ask for their help. They said to write down the time and date of each call. They specifically said to call their number for the time. I asked why. They said that way they could be sure who made the call to within 10 seconds, otherwise an eventual prosecution of the caller was sure to fail because the defense could argue that the GF's clock was off by just a few minutes, and that would be room for reasonable doubt.
BTW, I presume that they have concluded that it is no longer neccesary because everyone's cell phone has relatively accurate time ( and the clocks that are set according to cell time ).