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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."
news for nerds, stuff that matters. from 1930.
That sounds awfully like the older people who complain about "self checkouts" at a supermarket. For one thing, they're not mandatory (at least not yet), and for another, I vastly prefer them as they tend to have much shorter waiting times, and I can scan and pay much faster when doing everything myself. It makes no sense that "other people should be doing this for me" when all it involves is pressing a couple of buttons, and in the end the result is far more convenient - and should result in savings for you when the store or whatever has to employ less staff.
which is totally what she said
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.
In principle I agree with you. In practice, self checkouts are buggy as hell and any saved money will go straight to the pockets of the executives.
in practice, I can grab a few things and check out in 30 seconds. The stores are already fucking with me over membership cards and overpriced beef.
"We returned the General to El Salvador, or maybe Guatemala, it's difficult to tell from 10,000 feet"
I'll only use a self checkout if I don't have to wait behind another customer. Most people are way too technologically incompetent to scan their own merchandise.
Watch the slow ones some time. They don't understand the scanner has to see those little stripes. They'll bounce the product up and down on the scanner as if that's the magic action required to get it to cooperate. Or they'll wave it back and forth and back and forth like it's a mystical ritual. They'll never try anything that might actually help, like locating the barcode, or changing the orientation, or smoothing the wrinkles from the wrapper.
A cashier is almost always faster than a random human.
John
FEWER staff, not less.
Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits. You honestly still believe in such fairy tales?
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!
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
it's only hazardous for retarded people. retarded people shouldn't drive, if we have DMV that's working.
Wow, you guys sure are fucked up.
Secondly, any "savings" for this method will NOT be passed on to you, they will go to slightly greater corporate profits. You honestly still believe in such fairy tales?
Have you not noticed the insane price wars always going on between major supermarkets?
I don't really check the prices of stuff any more to be honest, but I assume the reduction in staff will indeed show up as savings, the same way that Amazon can afford to be so cheap.. razor thin margins to attract a large volume of customers.
which is totally what she said
It's actually not. It's a bullshit excuse to pass protectionist policies, of the same kind that New York used to pass a law saying every automobile needed to be preceded by someone carrying flags to warn people it was coming: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_flag_laws
The proof is that there are not mass casualties across the world from gasoline pump accidents as compared to Oregon and New Jersey.
My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
"They tried to make the telephone company put back the non-dial phones IN THE SENATE ITSELF."
You're living in the Brave New World after Nineteen Eighty-Four. Before then, Ma Bell owned all the telephones, period, from the curb, to the wiring in your home, to the receiver itself. If Ma Bell said you're getting a rotary phone, you're getting a rotary phone, and nothing short of an act of Congress is going to stop it.
If Ma Bell says that you now have to start learning seemingly random strings of numbers to call people you know, you'd best start learning. Sure, Ma Bell has just unloaded some of their work on to you, but it's not like they'll be lowering your phone bill because of it or anything.
If Ma Bell says you have to pay for a call per minute per receiver off the hook, all you can do is make sure you only have one receiver in the home to keep costs down.
Trimline phones? Extra. Touch-tone? Extra. It doesn't matter if they're cheaper for Ma Bell to manufacture, support and maintain, you're paying extra.
To put this into perspective, this is like the Senate telling mobile phone companies that they're not going to pay a quarter for text messages that cost the phone companies less than a penny to handle, and getting that sweetheart deal, because they're the fucking Senate.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Everything is "overpriced" and all taxes are Theft.
You probably think that the only price you pay is the one you see at the cash register and would cheerfully live in a radioactive desert if it "saved" you money at the checkout counter.
You've turned yourself into an unpaid cashier. In other words, you are working for the store. For free. You trade quality of life for quality of service. At least you realize that the membership cards are there to benefit the marketing people and not you.
Enjoy your wonderful lifestyle doing things that other people used to do for you while you save the pittance that they got paid to do it. Just remember, when they're laid off, whatever products you may be producing - directly or indirectly - won't be affordable by the unemployed, and the Chinese can get it even cheaper because they cut out the middleman.
But it you don't like it, well, all of our representatives are currently busy helping other customers. Your call is very important to us, though, so please stay on the line.
Efficiency is good, especially if it makes worthless jobs like cashiering obsolete. Maybe self-checkout hasn't delivered yet on its potential to streamline shopping, which benefits consumers as well as corporate profits, but hopefully RFID will perfect the process after picking up funding through ridiculous applications like passports.
I like the self-checkouts and find them quicker, but there are a few rules
1) Nothing age limited or in a security case that requires staff interaction anyway, just queue for the human when buying booze.
2) Unpackaged fruit or anything you have to weigh is a bit hit and miss.
3) Please please please understand the simple concept of showing the scanner the barcode, reverently placing the item in the dead centre of the scanner/scales platform thing and saying a prayer will not make it scan. I have seen far too may people fail to understand this, despite presumably having spent their entire lives watching the human operators do it. Ditto when its moaning at you to put the item in the bagging area, leaving it in your buggy/handbag/in another bag on the floor won't work.
Come as you are, do what you must, be who you will.
What do I care if an executive makes more money? My ONLY concerns when grocery shopping is that I can find and afford what I want, and get out of there as quickly as possible. If I have 2 items and there's an open self-checkout station, why WOULDN'T I want to use that instead of waiting 5+ minutes in even the express line?
Of course, it only makes sense to do it if you have a small number of items. The checkers who don't have to wait for the voice prompt to scan the next item can blow through 100+ items a lot faster than I could. But I like having the choice.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Same argument around the proliferation of ATM's at banks. It was originally a vehicle to reduce staff expenditure (salary, benefits etc.), and save money. The irony is that you are often charged more for using an ATM transaction than to walk into a live branch and talk to a teller for the same transaction.
You only get charged an ATM fee at an ATM that isn't your bank's. You wouldn't be able to perform an ATM transaction at a bank that isn't your bank either. Complain about ATM fees if you want, but this is a dumb reason to complain.
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.
According to latest Census figures, there are only 17.5 million (5% of Americans) that are not insured either by a private company or the government (SCHIP, medicare, etc).
Also 2 states out of 50 is equivalent to if 1 out of 25 EU states chose to require full service stations. i.e. It's not a big deal.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
I've had absolutely no problems that have held up people when I do something like buy a twelver of corona and a few loose limes. It takes no time to show your id, if they even care. Then you punch in the code on the produce sticker or look it up. I take less time than someone trying to figure out how the hell to swipe their debit card. Your rules could be condensed to "if you're a retard or have a cart, use the regular line."
All roads and all infrastructure can and should be built privately. I definitely am not interested in a gov't doing any of this.
Space travel, highways, schools, fire and emergency response, utilities and financial, wilderness, it is all best suited for private hands to handle.
For example, if the ocean was owned by a number of private entities, BP wouldn't behave the way they did because:
1. Nobody would set any liability caps for them.
2. They would have to buy adequate insurance to cover any event.
3. They would follow all necessary procedures to prevent spills.
4. If a spill occurred they would have enough equipment somewhere on standby to deal with this.
5. Private owner would sue their ass off if there was a spill.
6. Private owners surrounding the areas where the spill occurred would sue their ass off.
7. It would be possible to file a class action lawsuit against them, and that's what Justice system should be doing.
Gov't causes a recession (plenty of which happened before gov't started messing with them) to turn into a depression.
Recession is a bust of a boom/bust cycle, it's a necessary part of the cycle, just like any engine there are a number of cycles, each must be followed to keep the economy going, because any inefficiency in allocation of resources must be addressed, and they are addressed with bust.
Keynesians decided to stop the bust from happening, and gov't loved it because it could then avoid shrinking of its size and spending.
==
Space travel and all other endeavors are best handled by private interests and will be handled by private interests anyway. Gov't can only show us all how wasteful they are at doing this.
You can't handle the truth.
You are another misguided well intentioned person on the wrong track. Another victim of these think tanks from the 70s to sell any ideas that fuel corporate power which ultimately ends up undermining yours.
- you have already done the wrong thing and assumed you know me. In the 70s I was still living in the former USSR.
We have government involvement now but its as close to anarchy as we've had
- right, that's why you have gov't holding people in prisons indefinitely, torturing prisoners, forcing banks to take bailouts even those banks that didn't have any toxic mortgages on their books, buying out car companies, 'stimulating' economy by spending borrowed and printed money, telling you what you can and cannot buy as health insurance, having near 10% of your population work for the gov't through public and private organizations, starting wars all over the place to take your SS money, telling you what part of your income you can keep after you have to disclose all of your information to a gov't agency, they'll let you keep some, militarizing your police force, wiretapping citizens illegally without even a court order, creating secret treaties like ACTA, Fed setting artificial interest rates and printing bonds and cash to buy bonds and then bonds to buy cash back in a circle that creates an appearance of a GDP because it doesn't let the prices to fall where they should be because it would bankrupt the banks who are still holding toxic assets, having your Fed chairman come out 2 days ago and say: our mandate is to keep prices RISING, not even stable, but rising, etc.etc.etc.
Total anarchy, it's just, there hasn't been an anarchy bigger than that.
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What the fuck do you know about anarchy, pussy boy? Ever heard of Mahno from Ukraine in the twenties? THAT was anarchy, this is fascism.
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Your solution is too specific to address the real problems. Its all about POWER, not markets. Money is a part of it but it does not need to be the main tool. Violence also works, but here money is god so violence is an unnecessary (except for bit players) means to gain power.
- garble garble garble.
My solution is 'too specific' in the same way that the first amendment is 'too specific'.
The amassing of unsafe levels of power is the problem.
- by the government. You can't escape gov't unless you leave the country. Wait, they'll make that illegal too.
The powerful get addicted and never have enough
- yes. The powerful addicted politicians never have enough.
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I'm probably wasting my time if you've bought into the anarchy advocated by the power elites to sucker you.
- no, I am wasting time on idiots here. First you said that you already have it as close to anarchy as it ever got (moron) then you are saying that my proposal to limit gov't power that allows it for the corporations to take over the gov't is anarchy as well.
Yes, I am wasting my time.
You can't handle the truth.
the only reason that companies are able to force their monopolies and avoid any competition and set what the prices are is because they have the gov't in their back pocket.
So get the gov't out of their back pocket but to do this, you have to get the gov't out of EVERYBODY'S back pocket, you can't pick and choose which back pocket you like and which you do not.
Thus gov't must not be a force that decides what any economic outcomes are for any entity.
Thus my proposal is no more crazy than the already proposed ideas in the Constitution that dictate that gov't can't stop competing speech, competing religions etc. That was recognized as a bad thing for gov't to get into, I am proposing that for the sake of a working economy gov't should not be stopping 'competing anything'.
You can't handle the truth.
ATM transactions save them money. The ONLY reason they charge a surcharge is because they lobbied Congress to allow them to do so. They were already making money by spending less. Which do you think costs more? A bank building with tellers inside or a dumb box and phone line? There is zero legitimate reason to ever charge an ATM fee. They simply make money over and above their massive savings.
What part of 3rd party don't you understand?
These organizations didn't even have tellers before ATMs, or they weren't providing services to people who did not have an account with them.
For example: you could not go to a convenience store and withdraw money from your bank account and get cash right there, before the convenience stores started buying and operating ATMs, to get surcharge $$$ for the service.
As for banks: You can't go to $RANDOM_BANK_OTHER_THAN_YOURS and see a teller to withdraw money from your account at $YOUR_BANK, unless you have an account there.
Some banks might offer check cashing services to non-account holders, for an extra free, most do not, they require ID of an account holder to cash a check at an in-person teller.
With ATMs, they are providing services to people (who are not their customers), whom they never provided servies to before; purely for the convenience of other people.
There is no profit in cashing a non-customer's check or allowing your facilities to be used by a non-customer, unless you charge a fee for the service.