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When the Senate Tried To Ban Dial Telephones
An anonymous reader writes "With the Senate now looking to have the government block access to websites it deems to be bad (which seems to be called 'censorship' in other countries), it's worth pointing out that the Senate doesn't exactly have a good track record when it comes to deciding what technologies to ban. Back in 1930, some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone, because they felt that it was wrong that they had to do the labor themselves, rather than an operator at the other end."
"For a list of all the ways technology has failed to improve the quality of life, please press 3."
-- Alice Kahn
Maybe the Senate was far more forward thinking than any of us give them credit for.
John
They wanted to ban it because the operators were pooling information and providing it to various companies and politicians.
"Gotta save those phone operators jobs!" This is really no different than those backwards member states (i.e. OR and NJ) that don't allow self-pumping of gasoline. They probably would outlaw self-dialing too if they had thought of it.
Every time I drive through NJ I pump my own gas, not because I'm anti-full service, but because they move so damn slow. I have better things to do than sit in my car for ten minutes waiting for an attendant to show up, especially if I still have a 2 hour drive ahead of me.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
news for nerds, stuff that matters. from 1930.
Does this really surprise anybody. They seem like a lazy bunch to me, not trying to troll. They have reduced the filibuster to just having to say you are going to filibuster, and they go about their business. I also believe that people will use the government wanting to ban websites as an example of us moving forward to socialism.
GENERATION 25: The first time you see this, copy it into your sig on any forum and add 1 to the generation. Social exper
Just because they didn't want to lift a finger to do something as simple as dial a telephone, that doesn't mean they need to ban it for the rest of us. The Senate is FAMOUS for passing laws that affect them (or affect everyone except them - you know, we get Social Security, they get a really sweet pension).
If they deem a website to be "bad", I have no problem with them blocking it from their own servers, but leave me alone. I can block things at my router quite easily, thank you. Should I be afraid that the Senate will try to ban toilet paper, because they can't manage to wipe their own asses?
I need trepanation like I need a hole in the head.
There's a massive difference between banning a technology and censoring websites. The reasoning behind each is different, the methodology, and the possible reactions and methods of circumvention. About the only parallel is "government doing thing that it really shouldn't be."
They're not even talking about banning a technology this time. It's not like they're saying "ban the Internet." This is a really weak excuse to bash the government and bring up something ridiculous and idiotic from the past. Do people really need an excuse to bash the government? Aren't there enough legitimate reasons to complain? Do we really need a story going "Look, you think censorship on the web is bad? 80 years ago, they were too lazy to dial their own damn phones! Isn't government so damn wacky?"
Canada: The US's more awesome sibling.
Just think how much faster we might have gotten voice recognition if touchpads had been banned.
"Call my neighbor Jim Pine."
"Calling naughty neighbors sex line"
(Cue laugh track.)
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
They tried to make the telephone company put back the non-dial phones IN THE SENATE ITSELF. This is similar to me demanding that the phone company turn off my call display, and Slashdot running the story as "Slashdot user attempts to ban call display!!" No attempt was made to ban them.
ASCII stupid question, get a stupid ANSI
Dear US friends... Help me out here. I am a male that has seen 2 centuries. I am older than 30 but younger than 50. I have never ever seen someone fill up my car. You drive up to a gas station here, get out of the car, put the nozzle in, go inside and pay. But you guys actually have states were it is illegal to fill up your own car? Why? 'They took our jobs'-argument or is there something more behind it? Last couple of years you see here in the Netherlands more and more gasstations that don't have any personal. You put in your creditcard or banking-card and there you go, you can fill her up. I would feel so uncomfortable to let somebody else fill up my car.
some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone
Maybe they did ban them cuz there are no more dial telephones.
...will be in another 80 years when our children are looking back and thinking "Man, back in 2010 did those savages really try to block parts of the internet?? How ridiculous!"
They tried to ban the dial telephone because the operator's union had a lot of clout in congress and was afraid of losing jobs.
Remember, every piece of legislation that goes through congress has a special interest group behind it.
This is not too ridiculous in America. There are laws that dictate certain services with certain level of compliance. We must protect the consumers!
In Oregon you cannot pump your own gas, because, pumping gas is such a highly skilled work, it's dangerous, and drivers shouldn't be bothered by it, and Evil Big Gas Stations are not allowed to force their customers to do such labors.
Given the fact that US economy is being destroyed because of the huge monthly trade deficit, caused by the US labor force being uncompetitive, which all came around due to government regulations, taxation, wage laws, subsidies, monopoly creation, setting interest rates, printing of money, waging wars, destruction of competition etc., the US Constitution needs to be fixed. Without a basic fix to it, the economy will continue plummet, until the hyper-inflationary depression hits and then a long restructuring process will start probably following a period of very bad civil unrest possibly with lots of intermediary bloodshed.
Here is the fix (and I am not a lawyer, so this needs to be solidified to fit both the letter and the spirit)
Congress shall pass no law, that changes the status of any entity in a way that allows that entity to get any preferential treatment in economy.
What I am trying to say is that government must not be able to affect economy through any law, this way no matter how much money is spent bribing the government, it's of no use and cannot result in a favorable economic outcome for those, who are doing the bribing.
This concerns anything at all that deals with economy, be it minimum wage, social security, income taxes, corporate welfare, bailouts, stimulus packages, setting interest rates, printing money (all this should be privatized), creating federal institutions that insure any type of lending or borrowing or depositing or any other moral hazard.
Gov't shouldn't be able to change the economic outcome by providing any monopolistic powers, providing exclusive trading rights, creating any discrimination in the market place, setting any laws that fix prices or contracts or whatever.
I hope my point is clear and obviously again, I am not a lawyer.
This is the only way to keep economy Free and going and not having it broken by various violent intervention by a government, which clearly ends up badly.
You can't handle the truth.
My 1955 Western Electric Model 500 black desk set works wonderfully in my living room, and is the only one in the house I let ring, for its wonderful sound.
Where's the -1 Profanity Ruins Perfectly Good Argument moderation?
See, you can say this like it's a bad thing, but the concept of phone numbers is /retarded/. Why should you have to know some arcane, difficult to remember internal routing ID of a phone subscriber just to call them? It's like, instead of having DNS, you have to put in every IP address manually for any server/website you wish to visit. Sure, you can have a phone book, but this is like just putting an entry in /etc/hosts; it's definitely a horrible solution to a now-solved problem.
If the Senate had banned phone numbers, that would have forced the phone companies to create something better. A kind of Telephone Name Service of sorts.
It is not like legislators and bureaucrats magically improve when they switch from regulating consumers to regulating industry. Government regulation of business is equally as idiotic as is its attempts to regulate individual citizens. Yet it is more pervasive because corporations make easier targets for politicians than your grandmother. Also, corporate regulation is less visible since it impinges on specific business and not the population as a whole.
People who advocate for more regulation of corporations should consider that the quality of the regulation which the government supplies is going to be the same quality as banning rotary phones. Even if in advocating for regulation you have some simple goal, such as compelling your ISP to charge you lower rates, what you are actually going to get is ineffective nonsense. Simple, traditional, transparent laws outlawing crimes such as embezzlement, murder, extortion, fraud and theft are necessary and sufficient whereas regulation is almost always a net disimprovement.
Ceci n'est pas une signature.
In the 1920's, AT&T, who was growing like a weed by gobbling up LECs, determined that it would eventually need two million operators to service the hundred million domestic and international customers. Using humans as switches meant that average call setup times were in minutes, not seconds. This prompted them to invent the panel switch, which eventually eliminated thousands of operators. That may have prompted the Senators' response.
When I rented a car in Oregon, learning that I wasn't allowed to fill it, was a totally weird experience. And when the guy told me "You can't, state law," seriously, I thought he was pulling this tourist's leg. It had to be a scam. It just had to.
It wasn't.
I wonder if Oregonians feel that same strangeness when they pull up at a non-OR gas station and nobody comes out to "help" them.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
For me self-checkouts are slower. Simply put: I don't move as fast as the full-time worker does. It takes me about 3 times longer.
Yes, in many fields, even if the average Joes are capable of doing the task, the relevant professionals can do it cheaper, better and/or faster. Thanks to the "or" part, it's a case-by-case judgment call.
For example, the bike-shop guys fix flat tires faster than I can, but I spend a few more minutes changing it myself so as to avoid labor charges. (More complicated stuff I do often have the shop take care of, BTW)
For a converse example, we hired professional painters rather than try to handle the undertaking ourselves.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
"Grrr." (pulls item out of shopping cart and dumps into bag)
"Thank you sir. Please scan next item or press done to continue." ----- Yes that's right. I stole an item. Not my fault the machine doesn't work right. It's the store's fault.
Reminds me of the common /. pro-piracy arguments wherein "they make it hard to be a legitimate customer" is offered as a part of the justification
(Not referring to the stealing shit on the high seas definition of piracy of course, and I don't wish to further enter into that discussion.)
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Accountants would call this materiality, i.e. in this case a lack thereof.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
He probably used one of those loyalty/discount card things, where you get a "sale" in return for letting their advertisers track your purchases in a database. I'm pretty sure they ask your gender on those.
Non-grocery items the store sells? Tobacco, alcohol and Lotto are bigger moneymakers for Joe Blow's Convenience Store; the same principle also works for the big guys.
Around here, although they all do it, Wegmans in particular seems big on throwing in some general merchandise as well [BTW, they don't sell cigs any more AFAIK, and also seem to go for some $ with premium products]
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
"French Wheat" says the bottle if I remember correctly. And hey to paraphrase Chappelle's Show, "it's motherfucking vodka, it'll get ya drunk"
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Aldi's, a budget grocery store chain that has a presence around here as well as elsewhere, does this but phrases it as a charge (nickel? dime?) to buy their bags. As for PriceRite, another store chain in that niche, not sure if they do.
These stores do a lot of other money-saving things (fewer name brands, cart control, less-glitzy store layout, et cetera) as well
Unsurprisingly, these chains are rather popular, whether you're poor or not.
"I can tell this wedding was covered by Parents Of A Newlywed Catering by the large amount of visible Aldi's packaging". :P
Even at the stores that don't charge for bags, I like Dad's idea of bringing plastic bins and small coolers to the store - sturdier, fewer objects to carry and prevents an unnecessarily large accumulation of those plastic bags.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
NY is one of the states with a container-deposit law (here, it's on soda, bottled water and beer); the machines the supermarkets installed to scan and count containers are similarly frustrating.
Rejecting legit containers (sometimes because they're a new not-yet-recognized variety), taking too long to scan, jamming up, filling, waiting for the human attendant in general, et cetera.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
If you know the touch-tone menu for a particular phone number, you can hit a make-a-choice-number without waiting for the robo-voice to read out all the options. Sounds kinda like that.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
FEWER staff, not less.
Seen this grammatical rant before...
http://www.kflay.com/site/blog/hey-starbucks-get-your-shit-together
http://www.kflay.com/site/blog/this-is-getting-out-of-hand
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
Yeah, this stuff makes the filibuster even more of a mess than just the anti-tyranny-of-majority/tyranny-of-minority concept it inherently is.
Those supporting the DREAM Act and those not supporting Don't Ask, Don't Tell are amongst a long line of constituents to be pissed off about the matter.
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
I mean I've heard of lag, but 7-8 decades???
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
This sounds in part somewhat like a special case of out-of-touch rich people going on about their luxuries
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
As bad as people make out congress to be, just imagine if our government was run by slashdot editors, and the only people who voted were moderators?
In other words, material replicators a la Star Trek?
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
In the US, you have to have standing to sue, i.e. already have been hurt by the allegedly-unconstitutional provision. This plus the time it takes to make its way through the court system.
"_The courts take even longer to decide things than the senate._ Our people are dying, Senator. We must do something quickly to stop the Federation." - Queen Amidala, Episode I :P
I listen to both RIAA and non-RIAA stuff if I like the music, tangential business/politics nonwithstanding.
ATT did not invent the dial phone. a Missouri undertaker did. this was good ol' fashioned corporate hardball at work.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
The stores are already fucking with me over membership cards and overpriced beef.
Overpriced beef? Seriously? Ignoring the fact that beef is as miraculously cheap as it is thanks to our industrial food production (not hard to find a hamburger for less that $1) yes there has been a recent increase in beef prices. Beef consumption in the US has increased by 25% since 1998 while the number of cattle peaked in 1996 at about 103 million head and is about 98 million now. So yeah, beef prices have gone up because demand has gone up (along with our waistlines) while supply has remained roughly constant.
Eat a vegetable or chicken or pork instead. I like a good steak too but I can live without it most of the time and so can you.
I agree about the membership cards. I don't actually bother getting one because my local megamart is so eager to give me one they scan a new one every time I visit so I get all the benefits with no privacy issues.
I also don't think it bothers them much that one asshole can go out of his way to steal 5 bucks from them. I'm sure it doesn't affect their profits much.
You might think that and you'd be wrong. I'm an accountant. Sure one guy stealing $5 doesn't matter much but it is NEVER just one guy. There are lots of thieves out there. I guarantee people you know steal from retail stores. Typically shrinkage (the industry euphemism for shoplifting style theft is between 1-3% of revenue. Grocery stores operate on margins of about 1-5% so theft is a very big deal to them. Even a half a percent drop in shrinkage is a huge deal.
All it is is about dumping the people working the registers so management can get a bigger bonus.
Think so? You think the bonuses are huge in an industry with 1-3% profit margins (on a good day) and insane price competition? Or maybe technology like self checkout is simply what is necessary to keep pace with the industry.
Thanks but no thanks. I like that those people have a job. No reason to take it away from them and all it could cost is a few minutes of my time a week.
No that isn't all it costs. Supermarkets are hyper competitive and margins are razor thin. It costs the supermarket more to hire a person to bag your groceries than it does to have a self checkout system (presuming enough volume to justify the capital investment) and I promise you the supermarkets have done the financial math. At some level you are going to pay for that extra cost of a person bagging your groceries. You'll never be able to separate out the cost but rest assured the cost of the checkout clerk and person bagging your groceries is in the bill. Sounds like you are fine with that but just be aware that it definitely costs you more than just your time.
Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits.
You greatly overestimate the ability of food retailers to retain extra margin. This is an insanely competitive industry that competes heavily on price. You definitely see some of the savings because if the supermarket doesn't pass it on, the one down the street will. Walmart has built their whole business model on this premise. Only way they can retain the margin is if they have no local competition since groceries are mostly a local business.
Thirdly if such savings, in a fantasy world, WERE passed on to you, then you would see fresh produce for $0.98 per pound instead of $0.99 per pound. Face it, the company has passed on the cost of labor onto you, the consumer. And you think self-checkout is an advance and it makes no sense to do it otherwise!
Self checkout is simply automation. With enough volume (and supermarkets have huge volume) automation allows companies to reduce labor costs. This sort of self checkout automation is not unique to any single company so it is unlikely any supermarket will be able to retain all of the savings due to the thin margins and intense price competition.
Gov't that makes sense is this:
1. Justice system to take care of contract conflicts as well as anything that deals with harming individuals, running Class Action Lawsuits etc.
2. Minimum Military to protect against invasion.
3. Cops/Prisons.
Fascinating. You really think things are so simple don't you? Must be nice to live in a world where details don't matter. So you don't want any roads or other infrastructure? No private company or individual is going to pay for most of those (no profit in it) so how do you propose to deal with our soon to be crumbling infrastructure? Also your definition of "sense" seems to be thin on details. "Anything that deals with harming individuals" is an incredibly broad statement.
I think it's cute that some people think the only job of the government is to enforce contracts. Naive beyond belief but cute in the "what a moron" sense. It would nice if the world were that simple but it isn't. For better or worse there are a lot of jobs that government is in a better position to do than any other institution. Space travel, highways and other infrastructure, schools, military, policing, fire and emergency response, regulating utilities and financial institutions, wilderness preservation, and anything else where market failure is an issue. A government that just enforces contracts would fail because society is more complicated than that. It leaves FAR too much room for serious problems to occur. You can reasonably argue for more or less government but the sort of minimalism you suggest simply leaves too much out that we actually depend on.
Back in 1930, some Senators came close to banning the dial telephone...
Seriously? An eighty-year-old resolution -- that didn't even pass -- is the best and most current example of laughable Senate conduct you can come up with? Are any of the Senators who voted for this measure even still alive, let alone still sitting in the Senate? This is sort of like judging the quality of the U.S. Army based on the leadership qualities of General Pershing, or the calibre of New York newspapers on the conduct of Randolph Hearst.
In 1987, Bill Gates declared that "I believe OS/2 is destined to be the most important operating system, and possibly program, of all time."
In 1996, Steve Jobs announced that "If I were running Apple, I would milk the Macintosh for all it's worth — and get busy on the next great thing. The PC wars are over. Done. Microsoft won a long time ago."
Warren Buffett bought US Air and Dexter Shoe in the early 1990s.
Even people widely-recognized as brilliant screw up from time to time. If you want to argue against a policy proposal, do it on the merits, not on the basis of a cheap shot at an eighty-year-old boner.
~Idarubicin
I Stay clear of these things, even if I have to wait an extra 5 minutes in line at a manned checkout.
I do this simply out of principle. I prefer my shopping contribute to a person's pay not just super company's profits.
I do this even when I have only one or two items. It's worth the effort to help one extra teenager keep or get a job.
Why in this day and age do they still have ads and tv shows with dial up noise whenever a computer is supposed to be going online? I know, some people still have it in there homes, but why must it be on the TV?
If you must moderate, please moderate as irrelevent, not something bad, because I'm sure someone will find this interest
It was common and kinda neat. It was called "full service". I started driving way back when cars weighed like tanks and gas cost under 20 cents a gallon. Anyway, station attendants would pump the gas, clean the windshield, check the oil if you wanted that, check air pressure on the tires, all of that. Plus, they gave away a lot of free stuff, maps, goofy stuff like coffee mugs or steak knives, and had coupons and other inducements to get you to come in. It was really a consumer oriented business then, they *wanted* your business and competed on both price and service.
As gas prices went up, service went down, now it is rare to see any place that pumps gas for you. I mean, I don't care, I pump my own today, but way back in the day it was cool.
Worthless jobs? Not to the people who do them.
Just like `Telephone operator' is a worthless job except for the people doing it. The market for horse carriages, whips and horse shoes has drastically diminished since cars became mass-produced. Electricity diminished the market for candles. I suspect email decreased the demand for mail (both domestic and international).
Are you against electricity, cars, telephones and the internet? Your argument sounds like you are; or at least, it doesn't distinguish technological progress from technological progress.
The thing is, most people manage to do well; in fact, most people are better off from technological progress. The few it touches upon, well, they will have to learn to do something else. They don't deserve the power to hold the rest of us back, in my opinion.
Good idea, the senate's I mean. Had the ban been in effect, the number of telephone operators would have been in millions and it would have gone some way in solving the employment problem.
...but I'm imagining the People Of Walmart trying to use them. And being in line behind them.
Oh dear.
Being behind one of them trying to use a cash machine is bad enough.
No sig today...
I agree executives' pockets, the less people that have a middle class job and free education the better. The politicians and preachers for the last forty years have worked and prayed for more affluent and self-interested people.
Eventually, they will need to call in the exterminators. If people are poor, and don't have a job, what do expect should/would we do?
They don't need to be feed and housed. You can setup houses that care for lost
and abandoned people, enforces vagrant-related laws, and acts to prevent further
cruelty to irrelevant people in our society by humane extermination.
Godddds will bless US.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
voice-activated dialing is way better;-) i remember how impressed i was when my family moved from an area that had dial phones to 1 that didn't: wow! what a great invention...of course i was 7, long b4 7y.o. had cell phone already;-)
boy u must have lazy checkout clerk in jolly 'ol;-} here in the good 'ol, they do the bagging 4 u:-)
It is not very useful to compare current bullshit with different bullshit from the time of the dinosaurs. If you went to press your opinion forward that banning websites is censorship, you should call on the amendments and the bill of rights.
BTW banning in the anarchic internet isn't that easy (we are currently chewing the same topic in Europe as well - for the miilionth time). On the other hand you should remind your lawmakers that they like no banning in case of China and other more or less oppressing regimes. What is good on one hand should be accepted on the other hand too.