David Pogue Wants to Take Back the Beep

David Pogue has distilled into useful form a long-standing complaint I have (and one reason I have long had a voice mail greeting that asked people not to leave me voicemail): cell phone companies set up the greeting, caller instructions, and playback system prompts in large part to maximize their revenue per user; by his calculations, the "mandatory 15-second voicmail instructions" from AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-Mobile and others is earning those companies something near a billion dollars a year in charges. Pogue suggests that users should "take back the beep," and to that end provides contact information for the largest cell carriers in order to register a complaint — and, more helpful in the short run, suggests ways in which to make better use of paid-for phone minutes by alerting callers how to bypass the annoying instructions.

Comments

Take back the seconds

[alain94040]

Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?

What would save us consumers a lot more money is having cellphone operators bill usage by the second. The European Commission already
forced the European operators to adopt 1-second billing increments.

--
crowdsource your iPhone app ideas

Re:Take back the seconds

[QuoteMstr]

Damn it, every single good technology regulation idea I've seen in the past ten years, from universal cell phone chargers to browser choice in operating systems, has come from the EU. Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?

Re:Take back the seconds

[betterunixthanunix]

Well, if your voicemail was intended to be 1:55, and you have to wait an extra 15 seconds, you will be charged 3 minutes instead of 2. That does not amount to much for most people, but it does add up, and cell carriers do make a decent amount of money by forcing everyone to use extra minutes like that. I have to wonder why no price fixing investigations have ever been taken up in response to that sort of behavior.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Moryath]

Welcome to the U$: government by the corporations, for the corporations.

Track how much slush fund money Obama got under the table from certain groups if you don't believe me. Keep track of why certain Florida/California representatives might as well tag their names with (D-Disney) rather than (D-State).

Look at who paid for - and got - the last three copyright extensions, the DMCA, etc.

This is what happens when your campaigns are privately financed and not on level playing fields (e.g. same budgetary restrictions per candidate).

Re:Take back the seconds

[JCSoRocks]

Regardless of cost it's still incredibly obnoxious having to listen to that crap. Particularly when someone either already has a long message or has gone out of his way to make a short one. Does anyone ever even use those garbage options? Page them? wtf? is this the 90's? If I'd wanted to do that I would have sent him a text.

My second favorite are the menus that start with "Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..." It seems, almost invariably, that those messages just become permanent. Someone changes the system and forgets they added that message or never bothers to update it.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Crazy Man on Fire]

It may not cost you anything, but not everyone has the luxury of being on an unlimited or high limit plan. In fact, there's a good number of people that don't have a traditional cell phone contract and use the rechargeable/calling card/by the minute/pay as you go type phones.

Personally, I have an older contract that doesn't have a ton of minutes each month. I don't regularly use more than half of my minutes each month, but then again I hardly talk on the phone. I know a good sized chunk of people who have gone over their minutes pretty regularly.

Finally, even if you're only billed in 1-minute increments, that 15 seconds can still push an otherwise 1 minute call into the 2 minute range.

Re:Take back the seconds

[QuoteMstr]

Money may be speech according to the Supreme Court, but it's profane speech.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Swizec]

Many Europeans actually get 5 weeks paid vacation ... just sayin'

Re:Take back the seconds

[Captain Splendid]

Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?

Because you're not a bunch of socialists who hate capitalism?

Crap, there's shit dribbling out my ears again...

Re:Take back the seconds

[Jurily]

Actually, second-based billing was in place almost everywhere long before the EU standardized it. It sells more, and we don't have three-way shared monopolies and price fixing around here.

Re:Take back the seconds

[mcmonkey]

Does anyone ever even use those garbage options? Page them? wtf?

And are there any cell phones left out there without caller ID? Don't they already have my number in the missed calls log?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Jurily]

This is what happens when your campaigns are privately financed and not on level playing fields (e.g. same budgetary restrictions per candidate).

This is what you get when you let the peasants vote: the one with the bigger campaign wins.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Actually, I do RTFA]

My second favorite are the menus that start with "Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..." It seems, almost invariably, that those messages just become permanent. Someone changes the system and forgets they added that message or never bothers to update it.

Hey, I programmed that system. That message is prepended to the menu anytime the menu changes. Exactly one week after the message has changed the system automatically changes the menu to remove the prepended message. There's no way that message constantly appears.

*checks logs*

• Menu changed 01/08/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 01/15/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 01/22/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 01/29/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 02/05/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 02/12/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 02/19/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 02/26/09 12:32:01
• Menu changed 03/05/09 12:32:01
• ...

Wait a second...

Re:Take back the seconds

[rock_climbing_guy]

If you leave a long message, put your phone number at the *beginning* of the message so if they need to hear it again, they don't have to play the whole message.

Re:Take back the seconds

[demonlapin]

The really, really funny bit is that the #1 crusader of all time for "campaign finance reform" - John McCain - got buried by it.

Re:Take back the seconds

[electrosoccertux]

We don't need to regulate it. Just do what I do and say at the end of my voicemail, "press * to leave a message". This varies from carrier to carrier so you'll need to find out what yours is. Sprint is 1 IIRC, others might be #, etc.

Re:Take back the seconds

[FudRucker]

This_is_why

Re:Take back the seconds

[LMacG]

That "our menu options have changed" message kills me. Changed when? From what? Sorry, Bank of XYZ, but I didn't memorize your options in the first place. Sorry.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Ihmhi]

If their phone is off/out of range, you won't show up in the missed calls log because the phone never got the call.

I imagine a page is sent via SMS, which means it will eventually get through rather than just the vague "You have X new voicemails" notice. I don't exactly scramble to answer that myself.

Re:Take back the seconds

[clone53421]

If it's off/out of range, it also won't ring. So, as long as it rings, you know you're in their missed calls log.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Lord Ender]

It's a double edged sword. Yes, there are some great EU market regulations (like standardized cellphone chargers), but there are some pretty terrible regulations, too. Many of the EU market regulations are extremely expensive to comply with. You would not be happy, I assure you, if prices at Fry's and Microcenter were as high as prices are at retail stores in France.

Re:Take back the seconds

[QuoteMstr]

The French have a higher standard of living than we do, so of course you can expect some prices to be higher. Can you give me a concrete example of a poor market regulation though?

Re:Take back the seconds

[AshtangiMan]

Billed by the minute means that any fraction of a minute is counted as a full minute. So yes, it is costing you.

Re:Take back the seconds

[AvitarX]

I'm confused as I am pretty sure I can disable them on T-mobile, but perhaps I am wrong.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Jafafa Hots]

huh? Please explain this.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Ifni]

If their phone is off/out of range, you won't show up in the missed calls log because the phone never got the call.

Of course, at least with Sprint, it tells you who called (by name if they are a Sprint customer, by number otherwise) when you retrieve the message, no need to even have your cell phone record the caller ID in your call log. Of course, if your friend isn't a Sprint customer and you don't have their phone number committed to memory, this could be less than convenient, but one would hope that you might possibly recognize their voice.

Re:Take back the seconds

[jrmcferren]

On at&t, and T-Mobile pressing the # key skips the greeting, on Verizon Wireless and Sprint you press the * key. It is usually the key opposite of the key you press to get the login prompts. For example you press * on at&t to get the login prompts, and # to skip the greeting.

A Proud at&t User.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Chris Pimlott]

Are you kidding? What about all the calls that would have been 45-59 seconds long in the last minute? That 15 seconds costs you an extra minute on 25% of your voicemail calls.

Re:Take back the seconds

[mea37]

Probably becuase that's not what "price fixing" means. A consumer fraud investigation of some sort might make sense, though.

From an individual point of view, GP may have a point. I have a fixed cost per month unless my allegedly-peak usage exceeds some limit, and after that my additional allegedly-peak hours come in sizable blocks. The odds of voicemail greetings pushing me over a price increment are slim (especially since I almost never exceed my base amount).

To me the messages are annoying not becuase they cost me money, but because they are annoying.

From a carrier's point of view, the point is that not everyone is on a plan like mine. Some percentage of callers do get charged an extra minute that literally hits their pocket book, and the nickels add up.

On the other hand, and I suppose I'm going to editorialize a bit here: If you're leaving 1:55 voicemail messages, knock it off.

Re:Take back the seconds

[mcmonkey]

When metric is the law, no more pints of beer.

Re:Take back the seconds

[bonch]

Hey, look. Another dorm room political expert who puts dollar signs in proper names, because corruption only occurs in the U.S.! What was all that stuff about the U.N.'s oil for food program? I only criticize the U$!

Re:Take back the seconds

[bonch]

Money is not "profane." Money is just an object. People, however, have the capability of being profane, and that does not require money, capitalism, nationality, or anything else other than simply being a person who decides to be selfish.

Re:Take back the seconds

[nlawalker]

My second favorite are the menus that start with "Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..."

In many cases, I doubt the menu has *ever* changed. Pretty sure it's just a trick to get people to listen to the whole recording, in some cases to keep billing them, and in others to reduce the number of calls that go to a real support person about functionality that exists far down the option tree.

Re:Take back the seconds

[MalikyeMoon]

If your cell carrier does not charge by the second, they round UP to the nearest full minute. If they do, they increment them all, and while you don't think 15 seconds is costing you much, multiply that by the number of times per year you listen to those messages. Then multiply that by the number of cell phone users...

Re:Take back the seconds

[Brian Gordon]

The paranoid ramblings of a deluded old man shouting at hippies from his black sweatpants?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Lord Ender]

Their standard of living has nothing to do with retail prices. What are you smoking? Retail prices are the result of manufacturing or import costs, plus the overhead imparted by regulatory compliance.

And having spent plenty of time in France and in the US, I really doubt they have a higher standard of living by any sane metric.

Re:Take back the seconds

[7 digits]

I doubt that high prices in France come from EU regulation. They come from high taxes, and by the fact that a lot of big retail stores are colluding to force high prices without troubles (due to the fact that they are very close to the govt. For instance, the hadopi law was designed by the head of the biggest music retailer).

Re:Take back the seconds

[Carnivore]

I found that the Sprint voicemail menu has an option to turn off the instructions for your phone. It's pretty easy to do, but not an obvious feature. Perhaps if all of us geeks did it, people would notice and ask how to do it too.

Re:Take back the seconds

[nizo]

You've got a right to bare arms...

Wow, I've got to remember to bring only long sleeved shirts when I travel outside the US from now on. Thanks for saving me!

Re:Take back the seconds

[ElSupreme]

Yes you get 0.5L glasses, which are bigger! What is not to love?

Re:Take back the seconds

[brentonboy]

I will switch to the first carrier that kills the answering machine lady. I really mean it. I don't care if I get fines for not finishing my contract. I hate that voice so much. I wrote to Verizon and let them know of my intent. I'd prefer for Verizon to be the first, since I am happy with them. You know all those people supporting me in the Verizon commercials? What do they do all month? Surely, there is nothing that any of them do that is as important as turning off this message. I say the entire company should grind to a complete standstill and do nothing but work to remove the annoying phone message as soon as possible. I don't care if service goes down. I will live without my phone for a month, if it means no more stupid phone lady.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Gospodin]

The French have a higher standard of living than we do...

Where do you live, Spain?

If you're comparing France to the U.S., then the French standard of living is about 70% of the U.S. That's measured in "purchasing power parity", meaning (roughly) how many hours you have to work to buy a standard basket of goods.

Re:Take back the seconds

[stewbacca]

Bare arms is funny, but "shoot things and talk of shit" is even more funny.

Re:Take back the seconds

[AdamThor]

I understand it's called Expert Mode. I did it. And it's AWESOME.

http://www.sprint.com/cdma/assets/pdfs/services_guides/calling/spcs_voicemail_ug.pdf

Re:Take back the seconds

[Buelldozer]

I'm a consultant. I am frequently called by people who have never called me before OR by people calling from within a large company where every desk doesn't have an assigned D.I.D.

When I miss a call the caller I.D. is frequently of no use. Either it doesn't tell me which one of the 300 users called me, or I don't recognize the Caller ID information.

The other place where caller I.D. falls down is when my phone doesn't ring at all, leaving the handset with no indication that a call was missed.

In all three instances VM is the best telephony solution available.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

And having spent plenty of time in France and in the US, I really doubt they have a higher standard of living by any sane metric.

People not going bankrupt from medical bills?

Re:Take back the seconds

[RemyBR]

Here in Brazil we had the same problem several years ago. Then a regulation was passed and now all the phone companies have to play a short message, like "this call is being forwarded to the voicemail box and will be subject to billing after the beep". Only after this message they can start playing the default greeting or a custom one recorded by the customer.

Re:Take back the seconds

[lamadude]

And yet a large majority of Europeans complain that the EU never does anything for them.

Re:Take back the seconds

[the pickle]

Don't they already have my number in the missed calls log?

Not if the call came in when the phone was turned off or out of service range (for example, when the recipient is on an airplane). At least, I've yet to see a phone on T-Mobile or AT&T that can tell you what calls you missed while it was turned off. (AT&T's Visual Voicemail on the iPhone, at least, allows you to see who left a voicemail and what time it was, but I'm not sure how it handles callers who aren't already in your contact list. That obviously requires that the caller leave a voicemail, however.)

p

Re:Take back the seconds

[snspdaarf]

Right! Any fool should know it's "shoot the shit" and "talk of things."

Re:Take back the seconds

[StellarFury]

"EU Wants Microsoft To Remove IE From Windows 7"

Re:Take back the seconds

[lupine]

We have the best government money can buy.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Dogtanian]

Money may be speech according to the Supreme Court, but it's profane speech.

Is this a reference to the phrase (from Bob Dylan, apparently), "Money doesn't talk, it swears"?

Re:Take back the seconds

[TheRaven64]

The other place where caller I.D. falls down is when my phone doesn't ring at all, leaving the handset with no indication that a call was missed.

Don't you get an SMS containing the missed call notification? I have for a while now (and I'm on a pre-pay phone, and don't get charged for the privilege; the provider does it free on the assumption that, if I know who called, I'm more likely to call them back). My phone lets me quickly jump from a phone number in an SMS to an entry in the address book, so I can tell who called in a couple of button presses.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Mornedhel]

The French have a higher standard of living than we do...

Where do you live, Spain?

If you're comparing France to the U.S., then the French standard of living is about 70% of the U.S. That's measured in "purchasing power parity", meaning (roughly) how many hours you have to work to buy a standard basket of goods.

I don't know if we have a higher standard of living (whatever that means), but if it's defined with the number of hours worked, then surely 70% is not correct. We work 35h per week and I'm pretty sure Americans work more.

Both standard baskets of goods looked pretty similar to me.

Re:Take back the seconds

[nCnt]

Regardless of cost it's still incredibly obnoxious having to listen to that crap. Particularly when someone either already has a long message or has gone out of his way to make a short one...

Then you would have hated my message around the time "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" was in its prime.

"Hi, this is Brian. Leave your name and number after the beep. If you would like me to return you call answer this question: What body of water has the longest shore line in the continental US?"

I rotated the question weekly and received many 8 second voice mails consisting of someone thinking out loud, hanging up in frustration and never leaving their intended message.

Re:Take back the seconds

[QuoteMstr]

Purchasing power parity? Are you kidding me? That's just per-capita GDP with a paint job. Here are RFK's immortal words on that subject:

Too much and for too long, we seemed to have surrendered personal excellence and community values in the mere accumulation of material things. Our Gross National Product, now, is over $800 billion dollars a year, but that Gross National Product - if we judge the United States of America by that - that Gross National Product counts air pollution and cigarette advertising, and ambulances to clear our highways of carnage. It counts special locks for our doors and the jails for the people who break them. It counts the destruction of the redwood and the loss of our natural wonder in chaotic sprawl. It counts napalm and counts nuclear warheads and armored cars for the police to fight the riots in our cities. It counts Whitman's rifle and Speck's knife, and the television programs which glorify violence in order to sell toys to our children. Yet the gross national product does not allow for the health of our children, the quality of their education or the joy of their play. It does not include the beauty of our poetry or the strength of our marriages, the intelligence of our public debate or the integrity of our public officials. It measures neither our wit nor our courage, neither our wisdom nor our learning, neither our compassion nor our devotion to our country, it measures everything in short, except that which makes life worthwhile. And it can tell us everything about America except why we are proud that we are Americans.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Dogtanian]

Bare arms is funny

Yeah, but so's the right to bear arms, if you ask me. I mean, why the f*** would I want bear arms? To maul someone with?

And doesn't the bear have more right to them than me?

Re:Take back the seconds

[zwede]

I keep hearing that every now and then and can't figure out where it comes from. As an engineer my standard of living is immensely higher after I moved to the US from Europe. My gross salary doubled and my income taxes went from 30% to 19%.

Re:Take back the seconds

[ScrewMaster]

I will switch to the first carrier that kills the answering machine lady.

Nah, just replace her with a voice with a nice, sexy Slavic accent, "Please to press 'one' for the English."

Re:Take back the seconds

[Spudsman]

Doesn't it help that the EU is comprised of a number of member states with different laws and competing interests so that one country's darling is another country's nemesis? According to this article, there are lobbyists in the EU, so it is not clear to me how MEPs could not be "bought". Anyone from the EU know how lobbying in the EU differs from lobbying in the U.S.?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Nikker]

When you leave a 46 second message it will definately affect you:)

Re:Take back the seconds

[Pollardito]

he also played finance games as well

Re:Take back the seconds

[ScrewMaster]

Well, if your voicemail was intended to be 1:55

Let me put it this way: you leave me a voice mail that's over ten seconds long and I"ll be pressing that skip button. Personally, I don't have time to waste listening to long-winded voicemails that almost invariably could be condensed to about five seconds of actual useful content. But hey, if someone wants to blow their precious airtime with an oral dissertation that's fine by me, but I'll be damned if I'm going to listen to it. Say what you have to say, and then hang up and get on with your life.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll bite. Medical Device regulations, for one. To sell in Europe you need to be ISO-certified, which means you have to buy the standard (in this case, ISO 13485), for a couple thousand - then you have to contract with a certifying organization, which you will pay several thousand dollars to have someone come and audit your paperwork for a few days before making some findings and leaving (they don't want to revoke your certification, though - if they do that, you'll get a different certifying body next time, and they won't get your money. You are the customer of the person auditing you - there's a pretty clear conflict of interest).

ISO 13485 mandates that you "establish, document, implement, and maintain a quality management system and maintain its effectiveness." Basically, they mandate... paperwork.

By contrast, in the US, you need to abide by FDA's cGMP part 820, which is freely available on their website and which they will periodically audit you on and put you out of business if you're not compliant.

The FDA, meanwhile, says "[t]he requirements in this part govern the methods used in, and the facilities and controls used for, the design, manufacture, packaging, labeling, storage, installation, and servicing of all finished devices intended for human use. The requirements in this part are intended to ensure that finished devices will be safe and effective and otherwise in compliance with the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (the act)." They mandate good manufacturing practices that insure you don't kill people with your product, and on the offchance that you DO, that you keep records that would enable you to do an immediate recall while notifying the FDA.

ISO mandates process diagrams and a quality policy. Useful.

In fact, the whole reason that ISO 13485 came about is because the FDA determined that ISO 9001 was stupid and dangerous, and that any medical device manufacturer who became 9001 certified would not get cleared for sale in the US.

(http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=1&url=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.fda.gov%2Fdownloads%2FMedicalDevices%2FDeviceRegulationandGuidance%2FPostmarketRequirements%2FQualitySystemsRegulations%2FUCM134625.pdf&ei=TCFySuzPNYGHtgemn52NBA&rct=j&q=fda+iso+9001&usg=AFQjCNEDKFkwfQgd-cptfspZx13gF-idgg)

(Posting as an Anonymous Coward since I've never been to slashdot before. 'Sup guys?)

Re:Take back the seconds

[xaxa]

Metric already is the law, and pints are defined to be 568mL (to the nearest mL).

You are welcome to call your 568mL serving of beer a "pint", and it's likely most people will continue to do so.

Re:Take back the seconds

[BikeHelmet]

You would not be happy, I assure you, if prices at Fry's and Microcenter were as high as prices are at retail stores in France.

But prices were already high before the EU came into existance?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Hurricane78]

Well, there is the €U. And there is ¥apan too. ^^
Even £ondon joins the club.

P.S.: The Euro sign is the only one not accepted by Slashdot's system. (I used "€".)

Re:Take back the seconds

[Hurricane78]

As they say: If you're up to your nose in shit, keep your mouth shut.

But you had to take a deep breath before starting to talk, didn't you? ;)

Re:Take back the seconds

[tftp]

you will be charged 3 minutes instead of 2

What kind of plan you must be on to worry about one minute? I have the minimal AT&T plan - 120 minutes any time + some hundreds of minutes in evenings/weekends, and I seldom use more than 1/4 of those minutes; rollover alone will allow me to talk for days, I think :-) I lose more rollover minutes every month than I could have possibly wasted on voicemail. My situation is not universal, but I think it's fairly common. Maybe you use not 25% of your airtime as I do but 90% - it still doesn't matter. And if you usually get closer to 100% then you are on a wrong plan.

My point is that you should never be charged per minute - unless you don't have a prepaid plan at all (such as if you buy a SIM card with minutes on it, or something.) I guess there are people who go over the limit (or pay for all their airtime) but not that many... and if phone companies intentionally keep verbose voicemail instructions all they get in return is that instead of 20% of my prepaid airtime I use 22%, loading the network more for the same money, with overall loss to AT&T. Only the heaviest users would be inclined to upgrade the plan or pay for overtime; the majority will just waste network resources for free. Even the heavy users who upgrade their plans may end up paying less overall. So where is the benefit to the phone company?

Re:Take back the seconds

[lastchance_000]

Just order a liter.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Hurricane78]

Unfortunately he's right. But their method works. Because of people like you, that are unable to accept that reality, because then their whole life would have made no sense (which it didn't), and they would have to shoot themselves. Nobody can accept that.

Read a bit about how really good con jobs work. They work by the same method: You think that either, you can't be that dumb, or it can't be that big. If you link someone's whole system of values and self-confidence to something, and then destroy that something, they will outright ignore that it ever happened. They will lie even to themselves. Which protects you as a con artist better than any alibi you could ever think of.

I know that it works, because I have tested it. (On some real assholes. I'm not a jerk.)

Re:Take back the seconds

[GigsVT]

It also counts worthless government spending, "stimulus" and "bailouts". It counts the malinvestment bubbles created by the federal reserve pumping out easy credit. It counts the money printed outright by the federal reserve and handed to preferred government contractors. It counts trillion dollar health care pork programs, paid for not through taxes, but through the government printing press.

The hope now is that the mere illusion of economic success will lead to success. It's not going to work. The Keynesian myth is about to collapse.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Hurricane78]

What you forget in your calculations, is that not only are those regulations usually only extremely expensive for those companies, who acted without a conscience in the first place, and now have to give *us* a big part of that money, instead of acting as if there were no consequences for their actions.
But also that *we* often profit from it. Or the society as a whole. (Also in the long term.)

Also, when I read about how extremely expensive those completely unregulated markets is the US are (disease care, cellphone providers, cable tv and phone providers, etc), I wonder if that is any better.

I think: Why always freakin' go extremist?? Because it makes the media some money?? Really? Why not go somewhere sensible in between. Like a function with a parameter called "what do we all have from it?". Regulation where it does us good. No regulation where *that* does us good. It this so hard, or is it just that some people do not *want* us to have something?

What do you think? ^^

Re:Take back the seconds

[GigsVT]

You know what pisses me off?

"Please enter your 5 digit account number.... FOLLOWED BY THE POUND SIGN"

If you know it's a 5 digit number, why the fuck do I need to hit the pound sign?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Brian Gordon]

Premise: Con jobs work because people think they can't be that dumb or it can't be that big.

Conclusion: A system with a large number of participants must be a con job.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Hurricane78]

You're laughing. But in some Arabic countries I'd recommend it to women.

But hey. Here in Germany, you're legal, as long as you got a sock over your dick and balls. (And you would only get people laughing a bit, or finding it interesting.)
Try that in Alabama!

Re:Take back the seconds

[sammyF70]

hmm .. let's take Carlin's speech point by point, by slightly paraphrasing what he says :

• "politicians are puppets controlled by corporations and rich lobbies" . I'd say that is true for the most part, even if it doesn't happen in a direct way. Corporations can threaten to cut jobs, close down factories or offices, relocate in another state or country or even just disproportionally increase the price of their product if the CEOs think that new legislations might decrease the profit for their shareholders. That would result in, at least, jobs being lost in the area and might (and probably would) prove a big enough incentive to stop certain laws or regulations to be passed. Everybody is just doing their job : politicians have to evaluate whether the law or regulation is worth the corporation's reaction, and corporation's need to maximise the profit for the shareholders. (I'll pass the cases where hands have to be greased or forced, or when a politician only thinks of his career)"
• "Corporations, etc ... don't want the common folks to be capable of critical thinking", Although it would make sense (read "1984"), there is no direct evidence of it ... only circumstantial : the rise of Fox Network for example, or the way newspapers will rather tell you that Lindsay Lohan broke her toe nail, or that the giants won the superball rather than that, again, X american soldiers were killed in Iraq or Afghanistan one day earlier. Incidentally repeatedly pounding on how great your nation is and making kids repeat that over and over is a great way to hammer obedience in the mind of the people you want to govern
• "Society has a class system, and most people are not in the ruling/rich class". well ... that there is a widening gap between rich and poor (yes, I know ... 2 years old. But I don't believe this has changed much. Prove me wrong). So ... nothing to see. He is right. And before you reply "The poor deserved it. Everybody can be rich", check this very nice and interesting TED talk about (along other things) Meritocracies
• "Politicians don't care about the people who elect them". I'm not completely as nihilistic as Carlin. I honestly think many politicians start their career because they actually genuinely care. Sadly, as should be obvious to anybody who switched from his productive job to Management and was full of hope to be able to make a change, the higher you are the thinner the air is and the more you just struggle to survive. Even if some politicians do still care about the people after they've been elected to a position of power, helping people is probably more of an afterthought while juggling with more important issues (what those can be is probably not even something the politicians can decide themselves)

so ... 'the paranoid ramblings of a deluded old man shouting at hippies' ? perhaps, but at least he actually knows what he is talking about.

Re:Take back the seconds

[kramerd]

Assuming your phone bill rounds 1 second as 1 minute, and you only care about being charged a minute when you otherwise would not,

14/60 phone calls will have an extra minute.

Assume 1/2 your calls go to voicemail and you pay 40 cents per minute above a threshold, and you go over by 30 minutes on your 600 minute plan,

(14/60 * 1/2 * 630) = 84 minutes per month due to voicemail .4 * 30 extra minutes all due to voicemail = $12 per month = $144 annually.

Assuming you use the same number of minutes,

but only 1/4 of your calls go to voicemail, you pay the same amount due to voicemail.

but only 10% of your calls go to voicemail, you still pay the same amount due to voicemail.

Personally, I just get the unlimited everything plan, which costs the same as the 2000 minute plan, but includes unlimited text, email, picture, video, IM, android market, you name it I get it, so the only thing I lose is actual time sitting through voicemail. Thats why I hang and send a text if I get voicemail.

Re:Take back the seconds

[pod]

The French have a higher standard of living than we do, so of course you can expect some prices to be higher.

Wow.... how do you come up with that? The definition of a high standard of living is LOW prices. Relative to wages earned.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Hadlock]

Clearly you've never been to Dallas. It is flat and brown for a 5 hour drive in any direction (except Austin, which is 3 hours away). 5-6 hours to the coast, 10 hours to the mountains (unless you head to Mexico, in which case it's 7-12 hours. Hill Country is pretty, but not jaw droppingly beautiful.

Re:Take back the seconds

[baKanale]

But how am I supposed to criticize the UN? They don't have any S's I can turn to dollar signs!

Re:Take back the seconds

[AmiMoJo]

35 hour working week. Higher minimum wage. Minimum 5 weeks holiday a year (UK, France has even more). Lower crime rates. Better public transport. Free and universal public healthcare. I could go on.

Which of those metrics is not sane?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Brian Gordon]

• "Education will never get better because the people who own the country don't want smart citizens." Patent nonsense. Administrators' and teachers' jobs are to better their schools. I suppose you could construe the Secretary of Education or something being corrupt and interfering with funding, but there's no way men in black suits are slipping cash under principals' office doors to keep the kids dumb. In fact, pressure from NCLB and state tests push education to improve.
• "People are duped into working worse and worse jobs for less pay so the rich can get richer." Most skilled workers have some upward mobility. Also, he should talk to some 12 year old spending 50 hours a week dipping matches in the '30s, or the women working without weekends in Malaysia. Yes we're worse than, say, France, but things aren't getting dramatically worse, except recently (the economy). Yes there's economic incentive to pay your workers less, but technology gets better and organizations get more efficient.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Dishevel]

The real problem is of course the people. Those voting citizens that vote for their "party". If the people stood up and threw the politicians out en masse we could take back our great country. Until we do though we get what we deserve.

Re:Take back the seconds

[SeaFox]

What would save us consumers a lot more money is having cellphone operators bill usage by the second. The European Commission already forced the European operators to adopt 1-second billing increments.

O ye of little memory. There already were upstart U.S. cellphone companies that billed by the second - Aerial Communications being one notable one. Thanks to the free market system, they were bought out by the larger carriers and their per second billing plans ended. I wasn't with one of those companies, but the one I had (VoiceStream) did offer something you can't get today -- first incoming minute free and first 50 incoming text messages free. I have maintained the same cell phone plan since then and to this day I still get my first incoming minute and 50 SMS messages free with T-Mobile. If I even change my plan I will lose it, though.

The old Arial customers were not able to do this. Their plans really were ended, they lost the billing structure whether they did anything or not.

Re:Take back the seconds

[barzok]

Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?

Have a look at who contributes the most dollars to your Congresscritter's (re)election campaigns

Re:Take back the seconds

[complacence]

There is no need whatsoever for cash to be slipped under doors. If you set the "right" motivation, the system is self-regulating. Tell people it's a dog-eat-dog world, that only the fittest will survive, show them the pictures to go with it, then apply the right kind of pressure from the top, take away money from X, set quota Y, and eventually you'll get-- today. Let this go on for forty years and finally you'll get-- [exercise, fill this in].

The system that grew steadily and stealthily around us was rubber-stamped by us, and it is the perfect Petri dish for their germs. That's what systemic corruption is. You will not be able to get rid of it without changing the system.

It seems the real problem is that it is too complex for you to see through. You prefer fast and hard explanations, and easy rules to go by, which is part of the environment that developed around and was set up for us. Let me guess, you're a big fan of Hanlon's Razor?

Re:Take back the seconds

[Gizzmonic]

And people with more money get to shout louder in our current system? Is that fair?

Nope, but they're allowed to run a propaganda machine that feeds macho rhetoric to the lower classes in order to get them to vote against their financial interests.

Re:Take back the seconds

[sjames]

I don't know about you, but I'm fine with higher retail prices IF my standard of living is better as well. A higher standard of living means that the retail prices are lower relative to income there.

Re:Take back the seconds

[jonadab]

> how am I supposed to criticize the UN? They
> don't have any S's I can turn to dollar signs

Try spelling it out. HTH.HAND.

Re:Take back the seconds

[jonaskoelker]

(Posting as an Anonymous Coward since I've never been to slashdot before. 'Sup guys?)

Welcome aboard!

We talk about OpenVMS, ex, roff and other software no one uses anymore.

Then we talk about law as if we knew anything about it, getting swedish server admins and american file system developers sued.

The cherry on the top is all the same old tried-and-true jokes that "no one has ever heard before" </sarcasm>.

Hope you'll like it! Here, have a spare passenger seat ;-)

(Just kidding. We here on slashdot behave tastefully, like you would expect from world-renowned experts.)

Re:Take back the seconds

[The Redster!]

United Nation$.

So long as they remain plural, you're good to go!

Re:Take back the seconds

[MorePower]

Personally, I'm still pissed that they call it "The Pound Sign"

It's a "Number Sign" dammit! and its nickname is "Hatch" (same as the asterisk's nickname is "Star").

A "Pound Sign" is the scripty L that brittish people use to denote money

I know, I'm over two decades late to fix this attrocity, but I've been complaining since they introduced voice menu things back in the mid-eighties.

Re:Take back the seconds

[toddestan]

Since there is no way to backspace, if you screw up a digit (which is all too easy to do on many phones) you can just hit the pound sign early and re-enter it. If you instead just hit more random numbers until you hit 5 digits, then there is a risk that the number you entered might be valid and it will let you incorrectly proceed.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Brian Gordon]

There is no need whatsoever for cash to be slipped under doors. If you set the "right" motivation

No need for concrete evidence, how convenient. In other words, the only thing a lack of evidence means is that it must be a really good conspiracy.

Come on, you can construct a conspiracy by means of various tricks like that one, and it'll even be consistent, but the entire argument floats around in hypotheticals without a single solid root to reality. In face such a root is impossible because the conspiracy is consistent by virtue of its little tricks like above that turn away evidence as impossible or unnecessary.

It seems the real problem is that it is too complex for you to see through. You prefer fast and hard explanations

Yes, because that's how arguments work, atomic logical steps. You can do hypotheticals, but it's messy. Science is associated with clean incremental progress. Conspiracy theory is where it gets complex because you have to deal with endless levels of induction and detachment as you grapple with building an argument that stands on its own without a firm foundation on facts.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Minstrel Boy]

It's an "octothorp", dammit! Why is that so hard to remember? :)

KeS

Re:Take back the seconds

[Gospodin]

RFK just wants to do an end run around reality. If you live in a utopia in which everyone's values are perfectly aligned, there are no negative externalities, and economic decisions are never necessary because there are no shortages and opportunity costs are always zero, then what he has to say is perfectly valid and interesting. We don't, though. Every one of those things he lists as a "bad thing" that GDP measures is just the result of an unavoidable economic decision. Take ambulances to "clear our roads of carnage". We drive cars. Sometimes they crash, and people are hurt or killed. This is avoidable, but only by eliminating cars. Eliminating cars would cause much more damage, though. So having cars and ambulances is more valuable than having no cars at all. (Having safer cars is also valuable. But safer cars cost more, and figuring out whether the safety is worth the cost is not obvious. RFK can't just decide for everyone.)

So I say to RFK: blah, blah, blah, sing a round of Kum-ba-ya.

Re:Take back the seconds

[forkazoo]

If you leave a long message, put your phone number at the *beginning* of the message so if they need to hear it again, they don't have to play the whole message.

I'm glad I've finally found that there is a second person who understands this. For so long, I've been convinced that I was completely alone!

Re:Take back the seconds

[Ihmhi]

All voicemail does this AFAIK (Verizon calls it something like "Envelope Information"), but not all of them have it on by default.

And besides, it's way easier to read it than hear:

"Message from... eight... six... seven... five... three... oh... nine... on... july... tenth... at... two... thirty... one... pm..."

Re:Take back the seconds

[jmorkel]

But how am I supposed to criticize the UN? They don't have any S's I can turn to dollar signs!

United Nation$$$

Re:Take back the seconds

[Loibisch]

Because your might decide NOT to confirm your number after you typed the last digit, for example if you mistyped the number or changed your mind.

Re:Take back the seconds

[remmelt]

Funny cause it's true.

Re:Take back the seconds

[hab136]

What annoys me worse is the new voice-recognition ones when they're asking for a numeric value. No, I don't want to say my zip code or date of birth; I might be in a public place. Most systems will let you punch it in anyways with touchtones, but some won't.

Re:Take back the seconds

[remmelt]

Legally not allowed? Ah, a connoisseur! (That's French, by the way.)

If you want to work longer, no-one is stopping you.

Also, you see those high taxes as a bad thing. Lots of Americans do. You know, you actually get something back for those taxes, you know? Hint: it has to do with that social contract thing.

Re:Take back the seconds

[jandersen]

Hey, look. Another dorm room political expert who puts dollar signs in proper names, because corruption only occurs in the U.S.! What was all that stuff about the U.N.'s oil for food program? I only criticize the U$!

It is right to criticise the things that are wrong, even if it annoys you. The fact that others are bad too doesn't really mean that the US is good through and through. Criticism, after all, means that people care - adn that they regard you highly enough to expect better of you.

The way big business more or less owns the political scene in America is something that objectively hurts us all, and Americans more than anybody else; the fact that so many Americans either don't see it or actively want it that way is a cause for great concern, in my view; it is certainly hard to explain to a non-American.

Re:Take back the seconds

[remmelt]

Hahahaha, I just checked your link to nationmaster! Perfect. Here, let me make a screenshot, so you can see what I'm laughing about.

http://bayimg.com/image/iacggaacp.jpg

(no, it's not goatse, it really is a screenshot of the page in question)

"Factoid #13". Really strengthens your point, guy.

Re:Take back the seconds

[kmac06]

That must be why we have some of the lowest crime across the board =]

Re:Take back the seconds

[kmac06]

Hm perhaps you should do a little research. Start with this. Notice the line "The 35 hours was the legal standard limit" in the summary!

And yes, I see those taxes as a bad thing. That is because I crave freedom, and despise any collectivist attempt to take the wealth that I produce away from me at gunpoint. Just as I despise any attempt from any other thief taking my wealth from me at gunpoint.

Re:Take back the seconds

[DarKnyht]

In some places that is difficult to do since the entrenched congressman/politician runs with no opposition. Unfortunately, there is no option for "None of the Above" on the ballet.

Re:Take back the seconds

[astacom]

You En?

Re:Take back the seconds

[kmac06]

Haha I love how this is a troll and the parent isn't. Is it because I backed up my claims with facts? That must be it...

Re:Take back the seconds

[mcgrew]

It's D-California because the D itself stands for "Disney". I think the R stands for "Rich", since they're the party of the rich and only the rich, and all corporations are rich.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Lord Ender]

Ha! My ex is a lawyer in France, and I can assure you she works far far more than 35 hours per week. The standard work week is a fantasy. The French, in almost every case make significantly less money than their American counterparts.

They have a better social safety net. True. But overall, they are significantly poorer.

Re:Take back the seconds

[remmelt]

From that page: any time after the 35 hours is overtime. You think there could be a contract that says overtime is paid the same amount as regular time?

Also, there is no "at gunpoint" involved. That's just the point with the social contract. It cuts both ways, see? You get something (social security way above anything like it in the US, health care, low crime, stuff like that) and you give something up (taxes, mainly). If you don't like it, there is no-one holding you back from immigrating to Monaco, the US or South America. It's a take it or leave it deal, a deal that lots and lots of Europeans are willing to take. France, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, the UK all have high taxes and high VAT. Yet, there are still people willing to live there! Who would've thought!

Re:Take back the seconds

[adolf]

But, these days: After you've enter 5 digits and pound, it will then READ THE NUMBER BACK TO YOU, and ask you for confirmation, along with an option to re-enter it if it's wrong.

# really is beyond useless in this application.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Jeff DeMaagd]

Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?

I think the time listening to the ringing also counts towards the minute. I have a hard time leaving a message short enough for it to be a less than one minute call.

Sometimes pressing "2" skips that BS and skips to just a beep and let you record a message. I think one carrier uses a different number, I don't know what that is.

I'm not worried about the minutes, I never use enough to cost me more than my basic plan. I'd rather spend my time on other things than listen to a cookie cutter greeting and instructions.

Re:Take back the seconds

[paulsnx2]

Yeah? So you miss type, and then what? Wait for them to time out, say they didn't get it, and give you another shot?

Why not just take the 5 you have, figure out they are wrong, and give you another shot at providing the number? Okay, if they CAN'T validate the number, then the # has a purpose.

This is why I like using the web rather than a phone. I get a backspace key for when I fat-finger something.

Re:Take back the seconds

[LunaticTippy]

The phone companies have you 100% bamboozled. Of course 15 seconds doesn't matter. Until you do the math!

Let's say that the average user leaves 10 voicemail messages per day. That is 150 seconds wasted. They waste another 150 seconds listening to the 10 they get. that is 300 seconds per day, 150 minutes per month. That's often the difference between plans, bumping you from the 300 minute plan to the 500 minute plan at an extra $10/month cost. All to listen to a robot say the same shit you've already heard a billion times.

Think about it. 400 million people wasting 150 minutes per month. That's nearly 2000 man-years wasted every month, just to edge everyone closer to a higher plan. I'm pretty angry about this. What a ridiculous waste of time, money, sanity. For what?

Re:Take back the seconds

[clone53421]

Mine doesn't. I've never found an option in the menus to turn it on, either.

I suppose if I got the bill I could see who called me, but I don't even see the bill because it's my work phone.

Re:Take back the seconds

[StormyWeather]

Chronic long term high unemployment, and inability to fire crappy employees, or afford to hire them at all since the government mandates that the person not be able to work a large percentage of the year. Yes I know we have spiked up to similar levels as France in the last year, but to us it's a fucking catastrophe, to them it's standard fare.

Shittier (free) healthcare. The main reason U.S. life expectancy is lower is because we tend to run into shit at 75 miles an hour more often since France is only 80 percent of the size 1 state (texas). Our highway system is a bloodbath, and kills us in swaths. Also we are fatter, and that leads to problems, but newflash, health care can't cure you from being a fat ass. Our healthcare is more expensive, and is also the BEST FUCKING HEALTH CARE SYSTEM IN THE WORLD. There is a reason all other countries use our drugs, and often at cheaper prices that the US citizens pay.

Swaths of their own country that they can't go because immigrants are setting up their own mini countries, and creating no go zones for the FR Govt.

Here are Interpol 2001 crime statistics (rate per 100,000):

        * 4161 - US
        * 7736 - Germany
        * 6941 - France
        * 9927 - England and Wales

France has lower rates of home ownership, higher crime rates, chronically higher unemployment, and almost no ability to move up the income ladder because socialist governments are better at flattening the peaks of success downwards instead of raising the median upwards. Yay they get a lot of time off a year, big fucking wooo. What great achievements in history happened on peoples month and a half off. Nobody invented the light bulb, invented the plane, designed a space shuttle, cured a disease, mapped a genome, or made a fuckin dent in advancing the human race on their mandatory month and a half off.

CAN YOU FUCKING LOOK SHIT UP? It's not like wikipedia is a conservative hate monger tool.

Re:Take back the seconds

[WaltFrench]

"Please listen carefully as our options have changed blah blah blah..."

Our in-house tech support is plagued by this... the latest issue du jour of some tiny division gets the front of the menu, with apparently no regard for ideas such as blasting an email to the affected 2% with a link to a special FAQ or custom number. So it takes about a minute to get to the menu item for the most frequent issue everybody in my division has, "problem with desktop software or hardware" (and then you get into the hold queue; oh goody).

Curiously, however, we do NOT outsource this support, so the dollars for each individual's lost productivity and the penny for 800-number traffic is borne by the very corporation that mindlessly causes it. Likely, nobody in IT support has ever heard of Claude Shannon, or thought to apply probabilistic analysis (a là Huffman encoding) to the menus to minimize the cost of support.

(Also possible in the centralized control mentality of our Big Brother organization, the wasted time is to remind us how we are lowly toads. But these fears must not be given voice.)

In any case, it weakens Pogue's case: this imbecility is clearly economically disadvantageous AND aggravating, and yet it's rife within Corporate America.

Re:Take back the seconds

[Blakey Rat]

If you can get them away from the bear, I think you more than deserve them.

Re:Take back the seconds

[tftp]

For the record, when I *listen* to my AT&T voice mail it says this (when it has messages:) "You have one message, July 30, 11:16am, [plays the message]" - there is nothing else. So I don't waste any air minutes regardless of how many instructions were played to the caller. Now, if I leave 10 voice mails for someone else, from my cell phone, every single day - that would only mean that I'm doing business calls from my cell phone, which is stupid. If you use land line then you pay nothing.

This means that the whole "mountain out of the molehill" even exists when:

1. You are leaving voice mail using your cell phone
2. You are leaving *lots* of voice mail every day

I would more gladly support this cause if it were explained as a fight against wasting people's time - regardless of what phone line they are using or whether there is any impact on their phone costs. Waste of time is real. However voice mail adds very little cost, if any. I presume that aside from leaving voice mail the same person also talks to live people, and that eats far more air time than some voice mail. Besides, as other posters indicated, you can often skip the announcements by pressing '*' or '#'.

Re:Take back the seconds

[tftp]

Sorry to reply to myself, but there is another interesting fact. Say I have AT&T cell phone.

• If I call another AT&T cell phone user and leave a voice mail then the call is completely free. AT&T gains nothing here, and only loses money on longer announcements.
• If I call an AT&T land line user then the he is very likely to have his own answering machine or a PBX. AT&T is not in control of that, and if I'm forced to wade through a complex voice mail system AT&T has nothing to do with it. It gains money from me, but it's just a stroke of luck.
• If I call a cell phone that is not AT&T then AT&T earns money on me wasting time. This is the only case that matters. However chances of calling a cell phone and being sent to voice mail are far lower than calling someone's desk or home. People tend to have cell phones with them all the time.

So the space of possible scenarios where AT&T profits is now even narrower than I thought.

Re:Take back the seconds

[StormyWeather]

It also counts money spent building colleges, making better drugs and cures for diseases, music, film, and artwork that has sold. It counts vegetables from a farmers market, and charcoal bought to grill up those fine zuchini's. It counts the wine a couple buys to celebrate their 50th wedding anniversary, and the same brand of wine the newlyweds purchased for after their wedding ceremony a thousand miles away. It counts the thousand wind turbines I see driving around our high plains in Texas, and it counts the caterpillar machinery it took to install them. It counts the new application some developer in his garage just made that will change the internet, and it counts the caskets that bury the old time civil rights activists, and WW2 veterans.

Inherently the GDP is not evil, it's just a number. Whether you are christian or not there is a wise passage from Paul in the New Testament. The love of money is the root of all evil. Read that again, because it's not misquoted as it is often. The L O V E of money is the root of all evil. Money is neither good nor evil, and can be used for either.

I am reminded of a story about my grandfather who passed when my father was a baby. He and my uncle were getting ready for a hot summer day painting, and had stopped into a small cafe for breakfast. My grandfather got up in the middle of breakfast, walked across the diner and put a 5 dollar bill on a table, then returned to his table, sat down, and started eating again. My uncle asked him why he gave 5 dollars to that man across the room. They were very poor as painters, and there were 8 children (my father being the 8th). My grandfather looked up and said that the man across the room was hungry, and was drinking half sugar half coffee because that's all he could afford, and needed the energy. My grandfather at one point had been that hungry, and had done the same thing with the only nickel he could spare.

That story has stuck with me, and I'll pass it to my children. That 5 dollars was not evil, and it wasn't used in an evil way. However, if my grandfather was not frugal, and did not have the 5 dollars to spare, then he couldn't have helped the man across the room. That's one reason I work so hard to make sure my kids are well fed, and that I can take care of my family. Because once your family, and your future is taken care of then it frees you up to help others, which brings more personal joy than just about any activity I can think of. To that same end Bill Gates could not give retarded amounts of money to charity had he not built up the tons of money in which to distribute. He also wouldn't have been able to employ the thousands at Microsoft, who also built up tons of money and have given tons of money away without becoming rich first.

Re:Take back the seconds

[StormyWeather]

It comes from people that haven't lived in Europe, and are too lazy to spend 5 minutes looking up the facts. Many of those same people bash FOX news because their viewers take what is said on that channel as gospel. Ideologues are ideologues, they won't change till something irrefutable hits them upside the head. It's like all the Che supporters that didn't understand why all of a sudden THEY were being rounded up and sent to gulags, while the 'evil' rich people got to leave with a lot of their wealth to other countries.

Re:Take back the seconds

[NateTech]

We got our taste of moronic EU regulations with RoHS, and the BS paperwork that went with it.

Not to mention the chip manufacturers promising that every chip that was converted to RoHS manufacturing methods would OF COURSE work exactly the same to the same specifications, and then watching boards not work correctly when all that was done was switch out the chips to RoHS compliant ones and solder them on with lead-free solder.

What a crock of shit. U.S. should have phased in our own similar rules with sane deadlines instead of cow-towing to RoHS so quickly.

Re:Take back the seconds

[NateTech]

Loved your post, but the idiots who dream of "Hope and Change" clearly aren't interested in facts.

Sorry bro... we're doomed to repeat the mistakes of the idiots across the Pond, methinks, because we're too STUPID to ask what works over there and what doesn't and MEASURE it for a while.

It's all about BS fear-mongering when you try to have real conversations about healthcare these days. No facts, no real numbers from anywhere the things they want to accomplish have already been done -- and failed miserably.

We can only HOPE the average American pulls their head out of their asses long enough to vote back in some kind of checks-and-balances in Congress at mid-terms... before it's gone too far. Not a "partisan" thing... just a "normal checks and balances" thing... as designed.

Probably won't happen though. Prepare to pay for nothing.

Re:Take back the seconds

[NateTech]

Bravo. Well put, sir. Well put.

Re:Take back the seconds

[NateTech]

Keep explaining it to them. They're the uneducated who've NEVER been to Europe or tried to live there on a standard European salary, but THINK they're smart enough to figure it out.

They also want to be in with the "cool" fake academics and others who have things like TENURE to protect their jobs, and don't realize the danger they play with their own employment by asking for more government intervention and costs to employers and so-called "rich" people.

There are plenty of evil bastards running companies who are "rich" but handing money to government bureaucrats who have no motive to serve at ALL, is even more evil, long-term.

What we need is a resurgence of people willing to become rich by working their asses off, and creating new and better things, who aren't greedy dickheads and have some morals.

But that's unlikely with the society turning away from institutions that teach morals, like churches, in droves.

We called the 80's the "me" society, but it's FAR worse today.

Re:Take back the seconds

[complacence]

I understand where you're coming from, and if I were you, I'd probably dismiss it for lack of evidence, too. Also, I've seen so damn many stark raving mad "theories", that it's difficult to take any one serious. Still, I'm asking you, and everyone who reads this, to keep your eyes open and watch what's happening all over the globe from a slightly different angle once in a while. Maybe see it as similar to Pascal's Wager.

This isn't about science. This is about the "big picture", which isn't science's strong point as it is more concerned with details. I know, how very convenient. I honestly wish it weren't.

I do not even really care if they are global, intra-national or regional conspiracies. Or if there is one at all, even if I'm fairly sure (look up the definition of conspiracy/cabal and tell me there are none). It's secondary to me whether the model to explain it is localized corruption that just happens to form a global network or whether it really is a monolithic, hierarchical, global conspiracy that influences economy, civil rights and whatnot. All I know is I see the pattern that connects these bad effects we're seeing, like a huge stencil on society, and I want it shut down, as soon as possible. And I ask you, too, to not close your eyes to the deterioration we're witnessing on a global scale.

On second thought, don't bother. The voice in my head just told me it'll all be over soon. Just kidding.

Earth to David!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called the # key. It works on T-Mobile and with many other vendor's voicemail systems. It was not a grand conspiracy to rack up minutes when answering machines allowed you to customize your greeting (even though long distance charges were 28 cents a minutes back in that day). It's not a conspiracy now.

Try the crumbly windmills next time.

Re:Earth to David!

[Anubis IV]

He mentions the # in the article. That's not the point. The point is that millions upon millions of customers are not as smart as you are, so they listen through that voicemail message every single time they want to leave a message. That adds up to hundreds of thousands or millions of wasted man-hours each year, as well as additional charges to some customers.

And if you had read TFA, you'd have noticed that he mentioned the fact that he's talked to high-up execs at these companies and that they admitted to him that they do it for the purpose of collecting additional charges. So, while "conspiracy" may be a rather strong word, it's not altogether inaccurate.

Re:Earth to David!

[Sophacles]

Dude, the answering machine ALLOWED you to make long recordings. The voicemails FORCE you to listen, unless you know the secret cheat code. Now that I know it I'll use it, but why don't the companies tell me what the code is easily? Why must I read about it on slashdot instead? That is the point.

Re:Earth to David!

[Ihmhi]

If we're going to talk about how cell companies nickle and dime their customers, there are way bigger fish to fry than voicemail - SMS, MMS, ringtones, etc.

Re:Earth to David!

[Anonymous Coward]

If he got execs high up in companies to admit to it more power to him. Given the complete lack of foresight of most executives I'd wager dollars to donuts they are just taking credit for something that happened of it's own accord. Perhaps that makes me closer to the conspiracy theorists than I'd like....

Executive egotism aside, what we're talking about is a system that caters to noobs and costs more (e.g. Apple). So his particular whiny rant is for people who:

Aren't such beginners that they need the message.
But aren't so advanced as to learn how to press the "#."
And don't want their message to waste the five seconds it takes to make their greeting, "Press '#' to leave a message.

Sorry that's just stupid. We don't live in a world where everyone understands technology without directions, or knows that they can hit a key to send an SMS page, or that they can leave a message and restart it if the dog starts barking in the middle. Beginners aren't going to guess at "that these abilities must exist" and start hitting keys to find them. Systems are designed for the least common denominator without any oppressive influence of "The Man" to add a few seconds to your phone bill.

The world is not stocked entirely with /. geeks.

Re:Earth to David!

[Jafafa Hots]

It would be nice if they nickel and dimed us. Instead they dollar and five-dollar us.

I just got a new phone with a new contract. It has mobile web, and they charge $2.50 per mb. According to their site they estimate that 2mb will be somewhere between 20-50 mobile web pages.

So I go to test this feature. I log onto the mobile web, go to hotmail but don't load any messages. One screen. (Maybe 2-3 if you give them the benefit of the doubt.)

Then I go to the gmail mobile web site, load ONE email, then disconnect.

Checked my bill online last night, that cost me $6.50. Load hotmail but dont read messages, load gmail and read one message - $6.50.

Re:Earth to David!

[Itninja]

So just start your voicemail greeting with "You can press # to bypass this message...". Problem solved!

Re:Earth to David!

[ACMENEWSLLC]

Maybe instead of having all these different buttons mappings, we can come up with a standard that everyone can use.

Perhaps "The caller you are trying to reach is not answering, leave a message at the beep. Hit # for options. "

then if I need to know the options, which are the same on every damned system, I hit # to hear them.

For paging, press 1, to leave a callback number, press 2, to switch to a different voice mailbox press 3.

(I don't care what the options are, just make them all the same. Alltel is different than Net10 is different than .....

Re:Earth to David!

[Brian Gordon]

I was really, really bored on a road trip so I bought the cell phone version of Guitar Hero III from the v-cast store for $10 or $15. It was awful and drove the other people in the car crazy. The best part is that the app had to download the songs separately on demand, and would only cache 3 songs at once although I had plenty of space available. I played through most of the very limited selection of songs in less than half an hour.

Turns out, I didn't have a data plan, and the data charges totaled about $65.

Re:Earth to David!

[BikeHelmet]

Questionable morality fits better than conspiracy.

Re:Earth to David!

[dbcad7]

I think the real problem isn't the cost of these wasted seconds.. It's that many people have plans that are too limiting to themselves in number of minutes per month.. So the 27th of the month comes around and they got 15 minutes left on their plan.. they stress out and every text message, voice mail, and call from mom is torture.. until the 1st when they get a fill up..

The different minute tiers are priced so strange .. sometimes $10 will almost double your minutes of say from 450 to 750 .. when maybe you know that usually your cutting it close at 450, and perhaps 550 or 600 would be more comfortable, and 750 is too much..

Re:Earth to David!

[baffled]

The big fish is why isn't there competition in the cell provider market. How are they getting away with the oligopoly, and why is the federal government not doing its job? If other companies could compete, they could easily outsell the existing ones with lower rates, less charges, more beeps, etc.

Re:Earth to David!

[Blakey Rat]

That just reminded me of the MST3K episode where the bots are listening to a movie character slooowly dialing a rotary phone. The riff goes something like:

Crow: "Not only is it a phone dialing scene, but the person dialing it isn't even on-screen!"
Servo: "How many collective hours do you think rotary phones have added to movies over the years?"

(From memory; sorry pedantic geeks.)

Only one way to respond to David Pogue.

[Seumas]

BEEP you, David Pogue!

Not making much money from me...

[omgarthas]

I have a fixed cost in-voice that doesn't vary unless I talk an absurd amount of time each month (say... 100 hours...)

T-Mobile

[yoyhed]

T-Mobile doesn't charge me to call my own voicemail, so that doesn't matter. As far as leaving a message for others, does anyone really leave longer than a 45-second message anyway (keeping the total under a minute)? Name, number, quick reason you're calling, that's all you need usually.

Re:T-Mobile

[Xtravar]

As far as leaving a message for others, does anyone really leave longer than a 45-second message anyway (keeping the total under a minute)?

Mothers.

Re:T-Mobile

[Anonymous Coward]

Back when I had an old two cassete answering machine, there was a switch to limit an incoming message to 30 seconds. Only one blowhard ever exceeded the thirty second limit, and she was the reason I turned the switch on in the first place.

Re:T-Mobile

[Anubis IV]

If someone made a 120 calls that were each 30 seconds long, I seriously doubt that their bill for the month would show 0 minutes. More likely, it would show 60 minutes of calls. Just because a specific call is under 60 seconds does not mean that the cell phone companies are ignoring it. They all get rolled together in the end.

Re:T-Mobile

[clone53421]

No, you'd get billed for 120 minutes. It rounds up, not down.

Re:T-Mobile

[demonlapin]

No, it will show 120 minutes of usage. US carriers bill in 1-minute increments. The point is that while 120 calls of 0:59 duration bill as 120 minutes of usage, 120 calls of 1:01 duration (that's four minutes' more total airtime) will bill as 240 minutes of usage.

Re:T-Mobile

[Anubis IV]

Thanks for the correction. Even more reason why those messages are annoying...

Re:T-Mobile

[clong83]

I've timed it on one particularly bad system. For one friend's voicemail (not sure what service), it takes me 47 seconds of listening to that garbage before I get to the beep. If I have anything at all important to say other than, "Hey call me back", I'm probably on the hook for 2 minutes to leave a fifteen second message. So yes, it's annoying and costly. Not much, but multiply out by a few million customers and it's a nice hidden fee of sorts...

Re:T-Mobile

[Pollardito]

I had someone leave a long, detailed, and extremely personal message on my machine that started with "I'm not even sure this is the number of the right [my name], but ". I couldn't listen to all of it because I wasn't the right person by that name, and I didn't want that much detail of a strangers life. But I can tell you that it was only picking up steam well after the minute mark, so I imagine it went until whatever time limit my answering machine allows

Re:T-Mobile

[Hurricane78]

And drunk people on a philosophical streak. ^^

Re:T-Mobile

[yoyhed]

Well yes, it would be 120 minutes, but it would be 120 minutes even if there was just a beep and you left a message - the point I was making was that if your message isn't over 45 seconds (thus rounding it up to 2 minutes rather than 1) then it won't be any different. I will admit that the message is annoying as hell to listen to, though.

so there are people who pay by the minute?

[Mr. Slippery]

Even on the cheapest plans, there are so many minutes included, plus free nights and weekends, plus free mobile-to-mobile, et cetera. I think I've only gone over my included monthly minutes once.

I suspect that few callers are paying for those 15 seconds of instructions.

Re:so there are people who pay by the minute?

[Anonymous Coward]

Except by probably losing some of their inclusive minutes. Then you have to look at how if you make a call to a billed number on another network, your network is actually paying for call termination to the other one, even if you are using an inclusive minute. Do you think they pay for that out of the kindness of their hearts, or do you think you're paying for at least some fraction of it in your fixed monthly fee?

CAPTCHA: hiding. As in, what the real costs are doing.

Re:so there are people who pay by the minute?

[maxume]

Yeah, it struck me as a 'big scary number' style calculation.

I bet the amount people 'overpay' by using basket style contracts is even huger.

Re:so there are people who pay by the minute?

[lupine]

Not only do the useless voicemail messages make you waste your minutes, but they make leaving voicemail more time consuming and less appealing, the alternative to voicemail messages is SMS which carriers make tons of money on because texting is usually an extra charge on top of your standard service.

Plans come in chunk much greater than 15 seconds

[Flaggday]

Maybe my perception is wrong, but aren't the majority of U.S. cell phone users on a plan that they're paying for in terms of 100s of minutes at least? 15 seconds is annoying, and I agree with his preference for these things going away, but who doesn't just have a monthly plan that dwarfs their actual usage to start with? Pogue's back-of-the-envelope calculations seems to completely ignore this.

Can't remember the last time I used voicemail

[ickleberry]

But there is no doubt it is a huge earner for the networks. Here in Ireland, and even on Skype now you often have to pay something like 5c as soon as the phone is answered, this includes getting someones voicemail. I never leave a message, I have listened to my own messages being played back at someone elses house and just didn't like it. I prefer to call back or send a SMS.

The worst has to be getting someone's voicemail when calling from a satellite phone, 75c down the drain for nothing. Really wish there was a 5 second chance for you to hang up and not get charged, or better still abolish voicemail altogether. Let people run their own answering machines if they desire but ban voicemail

Re:Can't remember the last time I used voicemail

[Chaos Incarnate]

Really wish there was a 5 second chance for you to hang up and not get charged, or better still abolish voicemail altogether. Let people run their own answering machines if they desire but ban voicemail

That works fine for landlines, but for people who only have cell phones, they can't run an answering machine.

Re:Can't remember the last time I used voicemail

[ickleberry]

I'm sure of the hackers here will be able to whip up an App for the popular phones (S60, WM6, iphone), or better yet hard-hack a micro casette recorder into a phone.

Re:Can't remember the last time I used voicemail

[prockcore]

Call my google voice number and you'll get google's voicemail, not AT&Ts.

Re:Can't remember the last time I used voicemail

[abushga]

My voicemail is transcribed to text and arrives as email. Huge timesaver.

I use www.phonetag.com ($10/month) but there are probably still free options as well.

Re:Can't remember the last time I used voicemail

[Inda]

Turn that voice mail off.

I'm on pay-as-you-go, and as a result I have to pay to listen to messages. Solution is to turn it off.

My boss moaned once about me not using an answering service. My reply?

      Record an MP3 on your phone. Send it as a MMS. You know he never does.

Re:Can't remember the last time I used voicemail

[imakemusic]

Yeah, that'll work great when my battery dies or there's no signal.

US Cellular

[boeroboy]

I gets free incoming. No cost to my voice mail until I check it. And if I check it from a land line, no cost at all. Not to plug or anything.

Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Overzeetop]

Get a real phone plan, or one from a decent provider. AT&T just capped my rollover minutes when I hit something like 4000 (in just 2 years on the minimal 700 minute a month plan). Does anyone really have a plan where they regularly go over their monthly allotment, and it's not cheaper to get the next tier?

If the 15 seconds is too painful, read up on the options to skip the message. As for the man up comment - that goes for you, too, Timothy. And while we're at it, why don't you go ahead and turn in your geek card for not knowing you could hit # and skip right to the beep.

Yes, I am in a foul mood this afternoon; thanks for asking.

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[ickleberry]

Go to the next tier? yeah, thats playing right into the hands of AT&T. I'm billed by the second and i still get pissed off that I have to pay to listen to some recording that hasn't changed in 4 years.

You seem to be supporting the Big American Telco's mantra that prepaid = for poor people and kids who can't control their spending. I was in the good ole US of A a while ago and it seemed like the T-mobile staffers job was to laugh at me first when I told them I had a pre-paid sim, tried to sign me up to a contract after telling them I would only be there for two weeks.

Back home I get 60 minutes a month, you might think thats crazy but it isn't really. I got a Nokia E63 (unlocked and debranded, a rarity for phones in the US) and make most of my calls using the phone's built in SIP client (if you buy the E63 through a carrier, that SIP client is likely to be removed)

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Anonymous Coward]

And while we're at it, why don't you go ahead and turn in your geek card for not knowing you could hit # and skip right to the beep.
What's so geeky about knowing a lot about the phone system? Phreaking is close to dead these days.

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Weeksauce]

Except those greedy bastards over at Verizon who were smart enough to realize that since every other provider makes you hit the #, they make # go to accessing your personal voicemail. This forces the caller to go all the way back and RE-CALL if they want to leave a voicemail. That little tactic must tack on countless minuets.

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[TheRaven64]

Back home I get 60 minutes a month , you might think thats crazy but it isn't really

I think it's pretty crazy, but then I don't make even 6 minutes of non-SIP calls per month.

if you buy the E63 through a carrier, that SIP client is likely to be removed

With most Nokia phones, you can fix this by plugging in the bundled USB cable and running the reflashing utility. This typically also provides you with a number of bug fixes and occasionally new features.

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[reidconti]

I actually just reduced from my 900min/month plan to 450min/month when I broke 7000 rollover minutes. So the minimal plan is less than 700, and you can go over 4k rollover minutes easily.

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Hurricane78]

I don't need to ask. I can smell it right over the Atlantic ocean! :P

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Jay L]

While we're turning in geek cards...

Yes, # skips the greeting when calling AT&T subscribers and, apparently, T-Mobile subscribers. If you call a Verizon customer and press #, you get the login prompt, and (AFAICT) no way to actually leave your friend a message without calling back.

So, just as TFA says: You can skip everyone's greeting, but you have to memorize which carrier they use.

C'mon, hand it over.

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[anadem]

Well on some/many systems # doesn't skip the message, it puts you into voicemail, or hell, or somewhere else

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Crazyswedishguy]

Back home I get 60 minutes a month, you might think thats crazy but it isn't really.

Not sure where "back home" is, but I assume it's somewhere where they don't charge your minutes for incoming calls (e.g. Europe).

Back when I lived in Europe, I got by with a very low plan because I could still accept calls without worrying about my bill. Here in the US, my minutes are counted whether I'm placing or receiving a call, and 60 minutes would be very limiting. (the minimum plan with my carrier is 400min/month)

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Crazyswedishguy]

Except if you're a Verizon customer calling another Verizon customer, it's free.
And if you're calling from another carrier, they're the ones getting money from it (assuming no roaming). I don't know what the agreements between carriers are, but I would guess that in such a situation, Verizon gets little if any cash from your carrier.

It seems to me that Verizon doesn't stand to win much from this "tactic".

Re:Man up, you Tracphone bitch

[Overzeetop]

I've got a family plan - two phones sharing 700 minutes. It was the lowest available for a multi-line, national plan at the time. And I'm not going to mess with it willingly; they gave me unlimited data on my phone plus 200 text messages for $20/mo above the voice-only rate.

Billions of dollars?

[JSmooth]

Although I would question the validity of a billion dollar scam (as another user points out most plans get free minutes and if you exceed your quota by 15 seconds or 1 minutes, wow...) Perhaps it is a cross billing issue between providers?

I HATE that stupid message. It will be the second reason I can't wait to dump Verizon Wireless this fall when my contract expires. Yes I have the "You may press * to bypass this message" at the start of my greeting (yes, it is * for Verizon) but nobody else does this so it is always an insulting guessing game. But just like we sheep consumer blithely accept more and more advertising shoved down our throats so goes the message. I can't wait for the day when I get the verbal instructions on how to use the numeric keypad, (You may now leave a numeric message. To leave a 1, press the 1 key, etc.)

Gosh, helpful Verizon... Maybe society is really becoming so mentally limited this type of stuff is needed.

-Joe

Re:Billions of dollars?

[Strange Ranger]

Gosh, helpful Verizon... Maybe society is really becoming so mentally limited this type of stuff is needed.

Society has been this way for a long time.

Re:No problem on Sprint

[semifamous]

Instructions that I posted here:
http://community.sprint.com/baw/thread/20563

      1. Call Your Voicemail
      2. At the menu, press 3 for Personal Options
      3. Press 2 for Greeting
      4. Press 1 to change the greeting.
      5. To enable/disable the instructions, press 3

Re:Plans come in chunk much greater than 15 second

[CrazyJim1]

If your message takes 46 seconds to say, it will rack up as 2 minutes instead of 1 minute. Is this how it works?

One of the only things I liked about Sprint

[damn_registrars]

If you are calling a sprint customer, you can bypass their voicemail greeting by pressing 1, and get the beep you really want.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Verizon, who as best I can tell does not allow you to bypass the greeting and prompt. Indeed if you don't like it when people leave you voicemail, become a Verizon subscriber and use a super-long greeting. People will give up on leaving a voicemail on your phone.

Re:No problem on Sprint

[semifamous]

Oh, and as long as you're in Personal Options, listen for the "Expert Mode" option and enable that. Should shave a few seconds of your voicemail checking.

Adjust your message!

[foodnugget]

All cell phone companies allow the caller to skip straight to the beep.
It is usually # or *.
Figure yours out.
Make your message something to the effect of:
"Hi, this is fred. I can't take your call now. Leave me a message. In the future, to skip straight to the beep, press X"
Most cell phone companies have a "fast prompt" setting for retrieving your messages. It isn't fast enough for a geek who is used to memorizing interactive prompts, but it is at least 50% faster than normal prompts. Turn yours on.

Re:Adjust your message!

[prockcore]

Hi, this is fred. I can't take your call now. Leave me a message.

Since we're talking about shaving seconds... "I can't take your call now" is redundant.

"Leave Fred a message" is what I have for mine. I don't pretend to explain why I didn't answer the phone, I don't talk about a beep or anything, and I don't introduce myself because they're not actually talking to me. :)

Re:Adjust your message!

[amplt1337]

Congrats. You have effectively summarized the article.

try hitting the star

[jollyreaper]

or maybe it's the pound. Most carriers let you skip the message with that.

Re:try hitting the star

[clone53421]

On mine, * logs me into the voicemail (well, I have to enter the password) and # skips the greeting.

Also, TFA noted that some carriers allow you to press 1 to skip the greeting.

Re:try hitting the star

[T Murphy]

Just mash all the buttons to be sure. The worst that can happen is you beep back at the person for beeping at you. It'd serve them right anyways.

Re:Plans come in chunk much greater than 15 second

[demonlapin]

Yes.

Re:Self-made "leave a message"

[clone53421]

Um, there's a key you can press to skip the message. It's either 1, *, or #.

I'm creating a thread on t-mobile

[d3l33t]

Get to it people!!

Mod Parent Up

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, millions upon millions of people are bloody morons. Big corporations are screwing them over only as long as they remain moronic. Can you explain why I should care?

We shouldn't. Those people are making the service CHEAPER for the rest of us.

Re:Mod Parent Up

[Brian Gordon]

...spending their money on cell service when it could be making local eateries CHEAPER for the rest of us, or cars CHEAPER for the rest of us, or making us be PAID MORE.

Who is this still a problem for?

[CaptainPatent]

I understand the concern of unnecessary use of a few seconds per phone call 5 or 10 years ago, but lately with the advent of VOIP I'd contend this concern has slowly been fading out.

Flashback to 1995 when cellphone bills and long distance calls were by the minute and rather expensive. Only landline local calls were exempt from by-minute charges, and phone companies had a lot of opportunities to increase revenue by lengthening phone calls just a little bit.

Compare that to today when most cellphone users have free night and weekend minutes plus anytime minutes, most landlines have free long distance and some users with unlimited cell plans are immune from these charges. The only people affected are those making international calls or using cellphones during the day while over their minutes. This is an increasingly small demographic.

Compound that with the fact that data is where most of the cellphone money is and you quickly see that keeping people connected via cell tower may prevent more business / data users from connecting who really have the high paying plans. It's actually in cellphone companies' best interest now to keep those lines as clear as possible to support good service to as many new / existing customers as possible instead of keeping the airwaves as busy as possible.

If you have one of the plans which makes you fit into the demographic affected by a 15 second delay, then I can understand your desire to shorten the time to when you can leave a message or leave none at all, but I personally am a fan of voice mail intros as it lets me know I didn't accidentally dial a wrong number. My advice for you is to learn the quick-keys on various carriers that bring you to the voice mailbox immediately (like # on T-mobile and Sprint.) I wouldn't disagree to going to a per-second billing like the EU did, but I promise you can take off your tinfoil hats - there is no conspiracy to make you use more minutes anymore and removing voice mailbox introductions would actually be removing something valuable for some people.

Re:Who is this still a problem for?

[soniCron88]

What is more clear about, "To page this person, press five now. At the tone, please record your message. When you are finished, you may hang up, or press one for more options. 'Hi, I'm unable to answer the phone right now, but if you leave a message after the beep, I'll call you as soon as I can.'" than "Hi, I'm unable to answer the phone..."?

Are there millions of people paging other people? (On their cellphones that have caller ID and TELL YOU THAT YOU HAVE MISSED CALLS.) And how many people press 1 for more options? Would you say there are more, or less, that press '1', than press the secret key (usually '#') to skip the operator messages?

The messages, while not swindling, are an annoyance to anybody that has operated a phone in the last 20 years.

I say get rid of them. For my sanity, at least.

F*ck voicemail

[Vinegar Joe]

I refuse to use it...either to leave it or receive it.

Annoying

[tb2007]

All I want to do is leave a message....that's it. The lady that gives me that 15 sec message doesn't even sound hot, waste of time!

Same goes for when I check my messages, I don't need that many instructions. They need to have an option to turn that off because there are people that need 2 minutes worth of instructions to check a 15 second voice mail, though I just want to get to my voicemail of my roommate yelling racial slurs at me.

"If you don't know what to do here..."

[orkybash]

Reminds me of one of my brother's best answering machine messages on his landline:

Hi, you're reached Bob. If you don't know what to do here, there's really no helping you. (BEEP!)

This, of course, would be ruined with a cell phone voicemail system...

Resistance is futile...

[thisnamestoolong]

"Why can't we stand up to big corporations here in the US?"

The government is not even in the pocket of big business anymore, big business has assimilated the government, Borg-style. It is not that business has undue influence of government, its that they are simply one and the same entity. The Fed is a private bank, the media controls all of our political decisions, election coverage is directed to the lowest common denominator, through the polarized and biased corporate media. Because of the "us vs. them" mentality, the people refuse to see how bad their guy is fscking them, blaming the other side instead. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, '[Guy 1]I think the puppet on the left best represents my views. [Guy 2]Well I find the puppet on the right more to my liking. [Guy 3]Hey there's one guy holding both puppets! [Gov't] Go back to sleep America... your government is in control.' The people just get fat and stupid, caring more about the how the local sports team is performing (most are even stupid enough to think that this team represents them, failing to notice that the sports team in question is simply another monolithic corporate entity that happens to bear the name of the nearest metropolis) than what is really happening to them. They fail to question the fact that our federal income tax is unconstitutional (and not even on the books!) and enforced by an illegal terrorist organization. They fail to question it when the government decides to tell them that they can be locked in a cell for YEARS for possession a PLANT THAT GROWS IN THE GROUND. They continue listening to what is told to them by the TV, to be good little consumers and to keep buying shit they don't need. A long, rambling post that will probably be modded down, but is that a good enough answer as to why Americans don't stand up to big corporations?

Re:Resistance is futile...

[MadUndergrad]

What the hell are you talking about? Unconstitutional? Illegal terrorist organization?

Have you ever heard of the 16th amendment to the CONSTITUTION?

not universal

[damn_registrars]

It's called the # key. It works on T-Mobile and with many other vendor's voicemail systems

On Sprint you press 1.
On Verizon there is no key. You can mash keys until you run out of buttons and the closest you'll get is a prompt asking for the customer's PIN.
I don't know anyone currently on AT&T so I don't know what the option is for their voicemail (if there is one).

It's not a conspiracy now.

Its not a universal standard, either. Maybe we don't need to go all the way to beep-only, but it would be nice if there was a consistent way to bypass other people's voicemail greetings, especially if you don't know beforehand what network they use.

Re:not universal

[clone53421]

TFA had several people posting that * skips the greeting on Verizon... or is this just to log in to check the voicemail?

Re:not universal

[damn_registrars]

TFA had several people posting that * skips the greeting on Verizon... or is this just to log in to check the voicemail?

It has been a while since I last called a Verizon phone, but I seem to recall that * just asks you for your PIN to check your voicemail.

Re:not universal

[Crimsonjade]

On Verizon, the # key is to check voicemail and the * key is to skip the message. I use these shortcuts on a daily basis.

Sort of competitive US cell market needs more reg

[swb]

I don't know what regulator would do it (DOJ Anti-Trust or Commerce), but if the cell phone market is supposed to be competitive, regulators should jump all over the cell carriers when they all engage in the same practice billed at the same rate.

The carriers should be required to provide documentation supporting their pricing and if they all have a similar high margin for a given service (eg, over 20% or something) the regulator should find them "non-competitive" and order them all to cut their price to whatever is considered the minimum baseline margin.

Since a price cut to a specific margin from presumably 4 different cost structures would result 4 different and competitive prices, the market would once more be competitive, and those carriers with higher prices would be forced to cut their actual price to match the carrier whose price was lowest; raising prices would not be allowed for six months or something to prevent raising prices back their old rates right away.

For example, if all the carriers charged $0.20 a minute for SMS, and they submitted documentation showing 100-200% margins on them they would then be forced to cut their prices back to a 5% margin. But since each would have a different cost structure, the price they would be required to charge would be different (since one carrier's 5% margin price might be 2 cents versus anothers 4 cents). NOW you have competition again, as the higher priced carriers would scramble to match the lowest price.

There's no way you can call competitive a market that ends up pricing a good or service at the same price with a massive markup for all of them.

You guys pay for that?

[Leafheart]

Here in Brazil we have a ~7sec message about voicemail, but you only start PAYing after the message is over and you get the actually voicemail.

Re:You guys pay for that?

[DaveV1.0]

Most of the people on here don't know what they are paying for. They are concerned about 15 seconds when they are charged in 1 min increments.

Re:Sort of competitive US cell market needs more r

[QuoteMstr]

Huh? That's incoherent. If four companies each charge the same for a message and they have identical margins, then their cost is the same. A lower uniforn margin applied to the same cost will result in a uniform price. Also, if you were to try that, companies would just doctor their margin figures to support a higher price.

The Sherman Antitrust Act already has a remedy for price fixing: the act made it a felony. All we need to do is enforce this 1898 piece of legislation.

Sprint lets you turn this off

[pdragon04]

I hadn't even realized it until I was bored one time when I was checking my voicemail. I went through the other options to see what was available and one of them was to turn off these pre-recorded caller instructions that he's complaining about.

Maybe people just need to check what options their voicemail provides them instead of jumping to drastic measures like this? Wait... I forgot who I'm talking to here...

Re:Sprint lets you turn this off

[paleshadows]

TFA indeed says this, but notes that Sprint is an exception. The point, however, is that no pre-recorded caller instructions should be the default behavior.

Re:Sprint lets you turn this off

[ljw1004]

When I used Cingular a few years ago, I could turn it off.

Now that I use T-Mobile, I can turn it off. (I just did it this morning).

Re:Sprint lets you turn this off

[Espressor]

Most people don't care or don't know about this possibility, and effectively, very few will disable the initial instructions. Those instructions are not annoying the recipients but their callers. So, they should be removed by default by the phone company. They do not help anybody.

Long long, bilingual voicemail messages...

[myowntrueself]

I once worked with a guy whose incredibly verbose "please leave a detailed message" message ran to about 45 seconds. In English. It was then followed by about a MINUTE of Spanish.

THEN, only AFTER you had listened to all this, could you actually leave him a message...

Needless to say, I never bothered leaving him any message at all.

My voicemail message just says "please leave a BRIEF message".

nickels and dimes

[damn_registrars]

there are way bigger fish to fry than voicemail

Agreed

SMS

The markup on this is insane, and the main reason why I use it as seldom as possible. I send barely a dozen text messages a year and will keep it that way until the prices come down to earth. And don't try to sell me on an "unlimited text" plan because I have never in my life sent $5 worth of text messages in a month.

MMS

I honestly haven't found a good reason to care about this one yet, one way or the other. Voicemail is adequately cheap and effective for me.

ringtones

On this one I don't care how much they charge. Frankly I think the higher a musical riff is on the billboard charts, the higher the price should be for it as a ringtone. I for one don't want to hear the background to Britney's latest hit while I am waiting in line at the bank. Nor do I want to hear the latest from the newest boy band, anywhere, ever. Why people insist their phones not ring like phones is beyond me.

Now get off my lawn.

Re:nickels and dimes

[xaxa]

MMS is usually used for sending photographs.

I probably use it every couple of months. "Hey, I saw this and thought of you."

Re:nickels and dimes

[damn_registrars]

I have never in my life sent $5 worth of text messages in a month.

So you are complaining about the price of something that costs less (in an entire year) less than a reasonable tip for good service at a reasonable restaurant

$5/month * 12 months/year = $60 dollars. Where are you eating that you are tipping $60, and can I have some of your extra money? You clearly make a lot more money than I do if you consider $60 to be a reasonable tip. Even if you are tipping 20%, a $60 tip would mean the bill total should have been $60 * 5 = $300. I would not consider $300 to be a reasonable restaurant bill unless I was feeding 10 people or more. I can't think of a time when my wife and I ever had a $300 dinner bill.

McDonalds workers can afford the $5, most Starbucks patrons do it daily.

So you're saying that because some people are gullible enough to do it, that makes it right? I can think of much more worthwhile things I can do with $5 every month. And being as other carriers charge text messaging at their cost relative to voice (nothing), I would say we are getting screwed monumentally.

Simple solution

[eht]

Turn off voice mail.

I have no land line, no answering machine, just a cellphone and the voice mail on it has never been enabled.

I don't think I am missing much.

Re:Simple solution

[zippthorne]

How do you know?

Switched buttons

[Pincus]

I hit 1 when I get voice mail to get to the beep. Rarely works. One friend is kind enough to say press star at the beginning of her message. On another's I need to press 3, and 1 disconnects me. I'd write more, but the point is brevity. Or at least standardization.

already fixed in my country

[robmv]

In my country, telcos where forced by new legislation to put a message and a beep before being redirected to the real voicemail system, the message must tell the caller that he/she will not be charged before they are redirected. This was the solution to their trick to send a lot of calls to the voicemail recorder in order to always collect payment from the caller, now if for some reason the system is not able to reach the person you are calling, you will not be charged unless you really want to leave a message

AT&T disables this on iPhones

[crevistontj]

Not sure what their motivation was, but AT&T turned off the annoying and insulting 30 seconds of instructions for people who call their iPhone customers. All it does is play the message, then beep.

Re:AT&T disables this on iPhones

[db32]

The article says that Apple demanded it. However, this is slashdot, and we all know that can't be true. Apple never does anything that would help the customer...

Re:AT&T disables this on iPhones

[CopaceticOpus]

Apple never does anything that would help the customer save money...

Fixed that for you.

Re:AT&T disables this on iPhones

[db32]

Oh my god I am so confused now. Your correction of my sarcasm is confusing me. They normally do help the customer quite a bit, but you corrected my sarcasm regarding that with a statement that is actually true. They really don't help the customer save money. But, in the case of this story...that is exactly what they did... Oh my brain hurts...

You have to use your minutes to check voicemail?

[fotbr]

I'm in the US - land of the fees. When I had a phone through Sprint, calling my own number to check voicemail didn't count against the minutes in my plan. After I fired them and switched to AT&T and an iphone, I don't even have to call (although "visual" voicemail isn't really all that great) to get my voicemail, and the time listening to the messages still doesn't count as minutes used.

Owner instructions

[gregmac]

The owner instructions are just as bad.. I just recently got a Bell Canada phone (through work), and even though I switched it to "fast" prompts, it's still very terrible. Literally it says this:

* You have 1 unheard new messages. To listen to new messages, press one one.
(I *really* don't get why I have to press 1 twice. My voicemail system at work does the same, it's stupid. There's no other option if you press 1 once, it just says to press 1 again).

Press 1..

* You have one unheard message. First unheard message..

It just says the phrase "unheard messages" WAAAY too much.

At home I have an asterisk-based PBX (I used to be a FreePBX developer).. even though its voicemail IVR isn't the best, it beats the pants of both Bell Canada's, and our Panasonic key system at work. However, at home, I almost never listen to voicemail that way. All my messages get emailed to me as a .wav file, much simpler. I actually set up a cron job to delete the actual messages from the PBX after a day so the 'new message' light goes out automatically.

I really wish I could have the email thing for my cell and work phones..

On voicemail

[dread]

1: The major reason for voicemail and related services (slamdown notifications where you get a text message stating that someone called you but didn't leave a message) are NOT the minutes you spend but rather call completion. You see, calls that don't terminate when your terminal is not online (a not uncommon occurance in crap networks like the US ones, you would not believe how much time a normal handset in a metropolitan area is offline) are a loss since you don't get missed call information. There is a very, VERY well understod business case for voicemail services and how they affect the average revenue per user.

2: What customers SHOULD do is require that all operators allow them to connect to Google Voice type services, i.e. a service provider that will let them govern the way they receive information and control the modus in which they respond themselves.

3: The charging model of US operators is completely insane compared to the rest of the world. How the hell can you put up with it? Seriously?

Re:Sort of competitive US cell market needs more r

[swb]

Sherman is better but the enforcement standard is too high.

In this proposed remedy it seems impossible that 4 companies would have identical margins for anything. They may all have HIGH margins, but they couldn't have identical ones, and they would be required to submit detailed costs for explaining their margins, preventing or limiting the ability to somehow have identcal margins.

With the actual margin values non-identical, forcing all the carriers into a single same margin would result in a different end price, thus exposing the consumer to varying price levels.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[LVSlushdat]

Stupid me for replying to an AC... Those of us who have Pay as you go cellphones (that's the ONLY flippin' way I'd have one..) care a whole damn lot about that 15 seconds of b.s... As we pay .18/min (VirginMobileUSA PAYG).. That wastes 15 seconds that I *could* be leaving my message, instead I have to listen to that crap......

Yes.

[pubwvj]

Good. I hate voice mail and tag. Email is so much more efficient.

What's the big deal again?

[rickb928]

My cell phone voicemail (T-Mobile) take just shy of 5 seconds to start playing back a message, if I have any.

I'm pretty sure most systems let you use short form prompts or longer. You need to be able to configure it.

If you are living on the defaults, you are being screwed everywhere, not just on your cell phone bill.

Re:What's the big deal again?

[rpmonkey]

Same with my Verizon phone. When I dial my voicemail I get "Please enter your password followed by the pound sign" which I don't have to listen to because I can just key in my password before the prompt completes. Then I get: "You have x new messages and x saved messages. First new message" and then the message starts playing. I'm not sure what the big deal is. I don't even have to listen to the whole message before deleting it if I don't want, just press 7 while its playing and *poof* message deleted.

Come to think of it, I'm not even sure that calls to my voicemail are billed to begin with. I never come anywhere near my monthly allotment of minutes on the minimum "Family Share" plan because over 90% of my calls are to my wife's Verizon phone which I don't pay for anyway, so I don't particularly care.

Pogue wrong

[stewbacca]

If you call for one second or 59 seconds, it still costs you 1 minute. So it really doesn't matter if the "leave a message after the beep" message is 15 seconds or 45 seconds. More importantly, many of us have ridiculously more minutes than we will ever use, so this really is a giant macht nichts.

My Message

[Nom du Keyboard]

Hi, this is {name}. Please leave a message.

The caller doesn't need to be explicitly be informed that I may be on another call or away from my desk, nor what information they need to provide if they want to hear back from me. If they're smart enough to have dialed my number they can infer the rest.

Sprint Lets You Disable It

[Slashdot Parent]

When you're setting up your Sprint voicemail, it gives you the option to disable the reading of all those instructions and just play your outgoing message. Mine is set up that way.

I don't know about the other carriers.

Carriers get paid for incoming calls

[bruckie]

An interesting, relatively unknown fact that I picked up while working on telephony systems a while back: carriers get paid (by other carriers) for incoming calls.

Not only do you pay more to your carrier to listen to the inane voicemail prompt (since you might use more minutes), but your carrier also pays more to your friend's carrier. For example, if I'm an AT&T customer and I call a Verizon customer to leave a voicemail, AT&T has to pay Verizon for every second that I'm on the phone. This (perverse) incentive makes more sense than charging people for more minutes, since often the company charging for minutes (AT&T in this case) is not the company that controls the recorded message (Verizon).

--Bruce

Re:Plans come in chunk much greater than 15 second

[JumperCables233]

Bought, unused time is the way that the phone companies make their profit, whether it be with dozens of unused minutes you have leftover at the end of the month, or the 59 seconds you bought but didn't use because you phone call lasted 61. It's an arbitrage opportunity. The point is that if they free up 59 seconds of airtime even though you've paid for it, they can do the same with the next guy, and they next. Ultimately, if you have 60 people make 61 second phone calls, that second minute of airtime made them 60x the amount of profit as if people had actually been using it. The 15 second message is a way of pushing you closer to that magic 61 second mark, and I would imagine the length of that message (and thus the reason it still has that stupid "page this person" option) is calculated to set the average call length to leave a message right at the point where it's most profitable to them.

Ditch all the instructions.

[DavidTC]

We're at the point in society where people should know how to leave a message on a damn answering machine. Hell, we stopped having the 'http://' on URLs in ads and business cards five years ago, but somehow people have forgotten how to operate an answering machine/voice mail after them being common for 25 years!

Also, we don't need to be informed someone can't answer the phone, but to leave a message and he'll get back to you. First of all, the voice mail message does not magically know that that is true...maybe he can answer it, and just didn't. Maybe he's dead, and won't return your call ever. Maybe he just doesn't fucking like you. Stop telling me nonsensical shit you don't actually know, you machine. Just record the damn message.

When an answering machines picks up, I should hear, in most cases, be something like "This is John Smith's phone. *beeeep*".

And the only reason there should be any message at all is to confirm we have the right phone number.

Re:Self-made "leave a message"

[StellarFury]

My friend wrote a 90-second parody of "Bohemian Rhapsody" about his cell phone, and made it his voicemail greeting. It was incredibly awesome. People would call simply to listen to his voicemail message.

So I say, fuck you, you have uncreative friends.

Been there. Done that.

[ammorais]

Where I live in Portugal(Europe), this issue was discussed several years ago. At the time phone calls were collected by the minute, and not by the second. When you called someone and if the person was out of network or disconnected, it will charged 1 minute even if you didn't want to leave a message.

A bill was passed with the solution. Now the call just starts to count after the beep, so if you don't want to leave a message you just hangup before the beep.

It seems a good solution to me.

You people are screwed

[Cigarra]

You USAmericans, for all the great society you've managed to build in the last couple of centuries, are UNBELIEVABLE docile to what corporations do to you. I mean, here I am, living in a third world country, making fun of you because government regulation made cell companies :

* Don't charge me for receiving calls
* Don't charge for the first 5 seconds of a call, meaning you can decide to hang up before billing starts if voice mail answers
* Bill by the second

Why oh why can't you manage yourself, as a society, to stand up and resiste to corporate abuse?

Re:Plans come in chunk much greater than 15 second

[CAPSLOCK2000]

Don't forget that the owner of the phone usually also gets to say a few words, leaving less time before you hit the 1 minute barrier.

American Pints are for Wusses (^_^)

[Dogtanian]

When metric is the law, no more pints of beer.

Yes you get 0.5L glasses, which are bigger! What is not to love?

Only if you're talking about those teensy little American pints (473ml); the imperial pint, as used in the UK, is 568ml- quite a bit more than half a litre.

Yeah, that's right. We've got the big man-sized real pints, whereas the size-obsessed Americans can't even beat the European half-litre. Ner ner ner-ner ner! ;-P

Re:American Pints are for Wusses (^_^)

[blueg3]

Of course, many places in Europe sell you a 0,6 L beer.

Re:American Pints are for Wusses (^_^)

[badkarmadayaccount]

In Bulgaria the teenagers usually buy beer in 2L bottles, so there!
</drunkard type="teen">

Re:Meaningless numbers

[xaxa]

I'm charged by the second for both my mobile phone and the landline phone. The included "minutes" are actually included seconds on the mobile phone. Here's last month's landline bill:

Date Time Cost Duration Number called Description
05/06/2009 14:49:01 0.3251 00:05:00 0844xxxxxxx 08 traffic (BT charge band g6)
08/06/2009 12:00:52 0.0000 00:01:40 0208xxxxxxx Local
13/06/2009 01:17:01 0.0000 00:00:20 0208xxxxxxx Local
13/06/2009 01:22:07 0.0000 00:02:49 0208xxxxxxx Local
16/06/2009 00:34:39 0.1036 00:01:16 0845xxxxxxx 08 traffic (BT charge band local)
16/06/2009 18:33:00 0.2736 00:11:06 0845xxxxxxx 08 traffic (BT charge band local)
16/06/2009 21:11:33 0.1888 00:01:42 0796xxxxxxx UK Mobile - Orange
30/06/2009 22:03:54 0.0000 00:17:37 0124xxxxxxx National

Cost is in £, to ten-thousandths of a penny. It's only rounded on the last line of the bill. That 1m16s call cost 10p, with US billing it would have cost 20p, as it went into the second minute.

My voicemail is switched off, if people need to contact me they can email or text. But I believe it's free for me to check it.

Why use their voicemail at all?

[Hurricane78]

Install an answering machine on your phone. Then it will even be cheaper when roaming is active.

Also, I have programmed my own answering machine / voicemail system in python. Including a blacklist, graylist, optional blocking of all anonymous call, optional blocking of everything except the selected phonebooks. And as the cherry on the cake, it works like a butler taking a call for me. It's very simple, and that is why it works so well. It even greets people with their own name, if I have them in my phonebook (I record the names).

A typical call would look like this:
"Hello $name. Mr. $myName is not in the house right now. Can I take a message for him?"
*waits for caller speaking*
"Ok, I will relay that to him. Have a nice day."
*click*

If they hang up earlier, that's ok too.

Re:YouMail anybody?

[reboot246]

I've been using YouMail for several months now and it's great!

Re:Ridiculous

[Chibi Merrow]

Dick Cheney and no-bid contracts for Halliburton

Halliburton was a no-bid supplier for the US Military since the early Clinton Administration, if not before then. Dick Cheney had nothing to do with it. Thanks for putting that tidbit of idiocy at the beginning and saving me the trouble of reading the rest of your dribble.

Re:Ridiculous

[P0ltergeist333]

I know of exactly one, it was not no-bid, in fact their competitor (Dyncorp)won the bid, but it was awarded to KBR because changing contractors would be too expensive. To say this equates with trumping up an aggressive war and awarding the VAST MAJORITY of all contracts (even performing tasks that they never performed before, which they subsequently sub-contracted to great detriment of the soldiers and civilians of Iraq) to Haliburton / KBR et al is disengenuous and a perfect example of right wing empty rhetoric. You may not have known it was a right wing LIE, but SOMEONE down the line knew it was, and yet spread it to all the right wingers who never bother to fact check their so-called 'sources' like Lush Bimbo and Michael the savage Weiner.

Re:Ridiculous

[P0ltergeist333]

...awarding the VAST MAJORITY of all contracts (even performing tasks that they never performed before, which they subsequently sub-contracted to great detriment of the soldiers and civilians of Iraq) to Haliburton / KBR et al is disengenuous and a perfect example of right wing empty rhetoric.

Apologies, that should have read: ...awarding the VAST MAJORITY of all contracts (even performing tasks that they never performed before, which they subsequently sub-contracted to great detriment of the AMERICAN soldiers and the civilians of Iraq) to Haliburton / KBR et al is disengenuous and a perfect example of right wing empty rhetoric.

Key to taking back seconds

[cyberfunkr]

When you leave a voicemail, say your name and phone number FIRST, and say it slow and clear. Don't make me wait through your boring and rambling message again and again because you recite your phone number in under 1 second.

"Heyyyyyy.... It's Bob. How ya doing? Guess you couldn't get my call. Must be off having fun without me. *heh* Yeah, well. You know. So. I thought maybe, you know. *pause* We could go grab a beer and *pause* Maybe check out that new club that opened up... When was it?... Gawd... I think it was like... three months ago? Yeah. That place. Heard the DJ rocks. Soooo... If you wanna hang out or something. *pause* Yeah, give me a call either way. That way I know you got this message. *pause* So call me at *subsonic screech that you think contains the numbers 7, 2, and the letter F*"

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Sparr0]

Yeah, a "certain percentage" being about 25%. If you tack an extra 15 seconds onto 100 calls of otherwise random length, you will use 25 extra minutes of airtime.

And don't get me started on Verizon's new "please enjoy the music while your party is contacted", so that you get charged while their phone is *RINGING*..

What mandatory instructions?

[zippthorne]

I have a sprint phone. If I want to skip the instructions, I just hit 1. (actually, I hit 1,1, because I also don't care what the caller's number was unless I don't recognize the voice)

That's not "mandatory." That's just "sensible default." You don't know the rules? just listen. You do know them? just barge through.

Even worse in Canada...

[Barbarian]

I'm on Bell Mobility in Canada (until July 2009 when I can change without penalty) and not only do we have the listed voice mail annoyances, we also pay $6 each a month for caller id and voicemail. Also there is no trick that a caller can use to skip the greeting. If you record your own, it appends "At the tone, leave your message" anyways.

Did I mention we have to pay about $20 more a month on average (even after currency conversion)?

that is not what the doc says, and not insighful

[aepervius]

"In fact, the whole reason that ISO 13485 came about is because the FDA determined that ISO 9001 was stupid and dangerous" hm. No. The doc just says they don't see it as necessary to force firm to change to a standardized process. And neither do the EU rely on ISO 13485 for safety too. It is jsut for traceability to have a standardized way of getting documentation and process audit done. The satuff still has to go through a safety test anyway.

After he's done fixing the menu system...

[Minstrel Boy]

Can he take on the setting for the number of rings before my cell phone rolls to voice mail? It is cunningly set by the carrier to give me just enough time to dig the phone out of my pocket, orient it, and position my finger to accept the call, before it rolls to voicemail while I shout "Hello, Hello!?" into the depths of the restaurant or movie theater I'm currently at.

It used to be, in the days of Yore, that you could choose the number of rings, but I haven't seen that option in a decade.

KeS

Well?

[P0ltergeist333]

This is what I don't like about the modding system. Someone can spout a complete lie and people will mod them up for it, and they never have to support their lie with FACTS. I had thought the /. community was smarter than that, but I stand corrected.

Re:Well?

[Plunky]

This is what I don't like about the modding system. Someone can spout a complete lie and people will mod them up for it, and they never have to support their lie with FACTS. I had thought the /. community was smarter than that, but I stand corrected.

Except that it takes less time to moderate a post than to construct a response. Often a successfull troll can get modded informative before somebody else takes the time to respond with a well constructed refutation but I've seen many cases where the reply is informative and the original post is modded to oblivion.

Re:Well?

[mcgrew]

I've found that when I've posted something that was inaccurate (nobody knows everything, and some things you're sure of can be false) that was modded up, comments that refuted the argument and posted links to reliable sources would get modded even higher.

I've learned a lot by this; but you has to realise that you just might be wrong to learn.

Re:Well?

[P0ltergeist333]

I have no problem with discourse or even being PROVEN wrong. It is lack of discourse that bothers me.

Come on

[remmelt]

It's not that other countries don't have corruption, but other countries don't see themselves as "leaders of the free world".

The hypocrisy is almost worse than the corruption.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[repapetilto]

Do you have a source for that? I tried looking up whether or not the caller gets charged for hearing the ringback tone but couldnt find anything agreeing with you.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[AlexBirch]

Do you have a source for that? I tried looking up whether or not the caller gets charged for hearing the ringback tone but couldnt find anything agreeing with you.

It is if you're calling from a cell phone. You are using your minutes to literally hear them say "please enjoy the music while your party is contacted"

Re:Meaningless numbers

[alc6379]

Here on my prepaid phone (Net10), it costs $0.05 to even READ a text message, and minutes are used on incoming calls. That sucks for wrong numbers, telemarketers, and SMS spam...

Tag

[fulldecent]

Please tag this article: justpressone

My voicemail instructions include the note "press one to leave a message" and then plays music, which requires the caller to learn their way out of this trap.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[mcgrew]

Those of us who have Pay as you go cellphones (that's the ONLY flippin' way I'd have one..)

Pay as you go is great, if you seldom call anyone, or others seldom call you. Doesn't work too well for me, which is why I switched to Boost Mobile.

I live alone and have no use for a landline; why would I need two phones?

Re:Meaningless numbers

[dhartshorn]

Sorry, but if this case is restricted to voicemail (RTFA?), it uses the first 15 seconds of calls that are usually very short, typically under a minute. Mostly no harm, no foul. A slightly different case can be made for retrieving multiple emails, since that may run several minutes, but I doubt it accounts for more than a minute, even then.

I agree with the parent's parent, the article was not very interesting. I agree as well with another comment: Better to have billing by the second and _then_ bitch.

Forward cellphone voicemail to Google Voice!

[vaporland]

When you have Google Voice, T-Mobile & a Blackberry, you can forward all of your voicemails to your Google Voice account. From there, you can screen, block, etc all of your calls. In the Blackberry setup menus for T-Mobile subscribers there is a setting to change the voicemail service's default phone number.

I changed my T-Mobile default voicemail number to my Google Voice number, and now cellular life is great! I get an email every time I receive a voicemail, and I can play back voicemail on a computer or landline without incurring any airtime.

I administer all of my blocked caller lists, etc, in Google Voice and have customized greetings for all of my friends and family. It totally unnerves them when my recording greets them personally by name!

I can send unknown callers to voicemail on the fly, and then listen in while they leave a message.

I don't know if the same settings exist for other cellphone platforms or service providers, but I want to experiment and see if plugging my Blackberry's T-Mobile SIM card into an unlocked iPhone would retain this functionality - it should.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Sparr0]

"Usually very short, typically under a minute."

right... and now every message I leave that is between 45 and 59 seconds long is charged for a second minute.

specifically how to do it:

[vaporland]

Go into your Blackberry call log, then hit the Blackberry menu key (one with 7 dots on it), goto options, then call forwarding.

Set FORWARD ALL CALLS to DO NOT FORWARD.

Set FORWARD UNANSWERED CALLS for BUSY / NO REPLY / NOT REACHABLE to your Google Voice number!

Re:Meaningless numbers

[repapetilto]

so if I'm calling someone from a cell phone am I normally being charged while I sit there and let the phone ring, or is that specific to these musical ringback tones? Like I said I did a search for this and couldn't find anything on it, it seems ridiculous though.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[AlexBirch]

I'm sure there's a misunderstanding. Basically Sparr0 isn't complaining about the music, he's complaining about the message you receive before recipient's phone is even ringing. During that delay Verizon send the message "please enjoy the music while your party is contacted."

The point of this article is that cell phone companies are intentionally making people wait to leave a message, which is an invisible cell phone only tax, or just a nuisance for the Vonage people.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[repapetilto]

so youre saying I get billed for that couple of seconds it takes them to say "please enjoy the music...."? But then not for the time spent listening to the ringback music.

And i get the leave a message thing, but that all occurs after the voicemail picks up, while the "please enjoy..." message is unavoidable.

Turn off the instructions

[OnTheEdge]

Sprint allows this, and I think AT&T does as well. Don't know about the others. Elapsed time of my message? < 3 secs
"you know what to do" <beep>

Re:Ridiculous

[demonlapin]

Damn, man, project much? All Republicans are shills for the corporations, while all Democrats are honest folk who just listen to the guys that put them in office? A 2-to-1 moneyraising advantage makes no difference at all? In response to a guy who expresses amusement that the Republican candidate for president LOST?

Re:Meaningless numbers

[dhartshorn]

Well, you got the math right.

You are apparently the special case. "Typically" and "usually" includes all of us. I'll stand by "Usually very short, typically under a minute."

Re:Meaningless numbers

[NateTech]

You are incorrect about the billing for those messages. The bill doesn't begin until far-end party connect and the delivery of Answer Supervision from the far-end carrier. Ask 'em instead of making things up.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[NateTech]

p.s. It doesn't matter whether you hear standardized "ring tone" or a message during the call signaling phase of the call. You are NOT billed for that. The carrier could play you Monkeys Farting, and still wouldn't make a dime until the person or device picked up at the far-end.

Billing starts when the far-end connects and the telco network acknowledges that the far-end answered. Think about it.

The point of the Article is that far-end connect *is* registered when a voice mail system answers, however.

There are a number of reasons, including that older telco networks do not cut through audio, including any DTMF tones you might want to send to control the voice mail system at the far-end, until Answer Supervision is active.

From many years of working on "value added" systems inside the telco networks, AT&T's network is the best/worst about this "no audio cut-through" depending on how you look at it. They follow the original Bellcore specifications to a "T" (pun intended).

However, it causes havok today whenever a "service" system is deployed directly in a Central Office where it plugs into a #4 or Tandem long-haul backbone switch... the long-haul switches NEVER provide Answer Supervision.

That can only be done at a local switch, per the specifications.

Meanwhile, you're calling something SITTING IN THE CO that answers, but AS is blocked, therefore you can't punch any DTMF into it.

There's all SORTS of hacks in AT&T's network to get around this, including looping calls through #5ESS switches that really don't technically NEED to go there, just to get AS to go active before the device in the CO answers the call. It's a mess.

The non-Bell System carriers that came along later devised better, but not perfect, ways to deal with it and ignored a few silly laws and tariffs to accomplish it saying, "We don't know how to implement than in our new whiz-bang networks", and got away with it.

So... you definitely need to talk to folks inside telco to get the WHOLE story on billing and Answer Supervision before assuming things -- and it's a hell of a lot more complex than it looks from the outside, just like most networks and things humans build.

Messy is a huge understatement, but MOST of the time, Answer Supervision and billing work properly across all networks, thanks to the original specifications done four or five decades ago that still cover more than the 80% rule.

Bottom Line

[NateTech]

If you can't afford an additional 15 seconds, perhaps you simply can't afford a cell phone, idiots. No one NEEDS a cell phone. We got along JUST FINE without them for almost 100 years. No one NEEDS voice mail either. I have family members who have neither, and we get ahold of them when we truly need to, just fine...

Re:Meaningless numbers

[ChameleonDave]

Well, you got the math right.

You are apparently the special case. "Typically" and "usually" includes all of us. I'll stand by "Usually very short, typically under a minute."

You fool. Sparr0 accepted your premise and made a separate point.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[dhartshorn]

Leave the name calling to those who can think. He didn't make a separate point, he merely pointed out what many had before him, that some calls may run over a minute. So yes, he got the math right. And no, he still doesn't get it. A quick google finds reference to the average vmail running 18 to 22 seconds. Add 15, ...

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Sparr0]

The average tells us little about the distribution. The average could be 20 seconds and the maximum 30 seconds (obviously not the case), or the average could be 20 seconds and 40% of calls be over 45 seconds (also unlikely).

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Sparr0]

Find any friend with a prepaid phone and have them call someone with that type of musical "ring" service. On a normal phone call, I can hang up after 2-N (varies by provider) rings and not be charged. When calling a Verizon customer, if I hang up after "Pleas" I get charged for 1 minute of airtime.

I expect, and need to verify, that the same is the case if you call a Google Voice number and hang up after it transfers you to another line. As far as your provider is concerned, as soon as GV "answers" to play the next (forwarded line(s))ringback tone to you, you are on the call.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Sparr0]

It's not a ringback tone. Verizon's system "answers" the call after 0 rings, and basically places you on hold for 2-20 seconds.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Sparr0]

Then, if you are correct, I can only assume that Verizon's service accepts Answer Supervision responsibility before playing the music. My only concrete data is that when making a call on my prepaid phone, I am not billed if I hang up after 2-N rings when calling most carriers, and I AM billed for 1 minute if I hang up any time during Verizon's music, including 1 second in, in the middle of "Please".

Re:Meaningless numbers

[NateTech]

Either Verizon's doing it wrong and you CAN complain to your carrier about that... or your carrier is billing it wrong.

Best way to test if it's your carrier or not. Call a real old-fashioned land-line phone with NO voice mail or answering machine on it.

Let it ring long enough to see if you get billed for 2 minutes.

If your carrier bills you for THAT call... Verizon's not at fault. Your carrier is.

If they don't... Verizon's screwing up Answer Supervision and needs to fix it.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[Sparr0]

Yes, my carrier (and at least 3 other carriers that I have encountered) bills for after the Nth ring. N=3 for AT&T, N=5 for Boost, forgot the others. That applies for both prepaid and non accounts. If your carrier does not, I would appreciate knowing who they are and the specifics of your location and plan.

That, being a call-initiating discrepancy, I "blame" on my carrier. The Verizon thing, being a call-accepting discrepancy, I blame on Verizon. Maybe Verizon is doing it "right" and every carrier I have used mishandles the way Verizon is doing it, but Occam's Razor says otherwise.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[NateTech]

Nah, if the billing starts SOONER on Verizon, you're right... they're probably doing it wrong.

Too bad the real engineers that worked at Bell Labs actually built real standards and such for these things so we can all ignore them and not follow them years later, eh?

Sad.

Re:Ridiculous

[P0ltergeist333]

No, not ALL Republicans, and no, not ALL Democrats. In fact I specified 'the honest Democrats' as opposed to the dishonest and the 'blue dog' Democrats (aka DINO's- Democrat in name only). And just like the fact that not all Republicans are racists, but the vast majority of racists are Republicans; not all Republicans are corporate apologist shills, but the vast majority of corporate apologist shills are Republican.

And YES, in light of the obvious swing of the US political pendulum to the left, the supposed 2 to 1 money difference was negligible, especially considering all the Republican AstroTurf organizations.

Re:Meaningless numbers

[dhartshorn]

True enough. But with such a small average, I doubt that enough calls are over a minute due to the intro to make much fuss. As I said earlier, better to have by-the-second billing (or as with many landlines, 6-second billing), and then complain about the intro.

Recall as well that there are so many free minutes out there (nights, weekends, circles, same services, etc.) that this becomes an even smaller issue. Frankly, I think it was Pogue's pique of the moment that got slashdotted.