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."

Comments

Forward thinkers

[plover]

"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.

Re:Forward thinkers

[somersault]

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.

Re:Forward thinkers

[MoonBuggy]

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.

Re:Forward thinkers

[commodore64_love]

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. Also the "scale" often doesn't register when I move my item into the shopping bag.

"Please put your item in your bag."

"I did."

"Please put your item in your bag."

(removes item. Puts back into bag)

"Please put your item in your bag."

"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.

Re:Forward thinkers

[cj_nologic]

"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.

How does the machine know you're a man? That's scary.

Unless of course you're not - in which case, you're right, the damn machine doesn't work right.

Re:Forward thinkers

[plover]

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.

Re:Forward thinkers

[MayonakaHa]

I hardly qualify as "older" and I honestly think self checkouts are a waste of time and resources. When they're properly maintained and every item is entered correctly in the system and has a bar code I'm sure they'd work perfectly. As a former retail checker for several years and a customer I know that's hardly ever the case. SKUs change too fast to keep up with sometimes and maintenance from the equipment vendors doesn't come often enough and they react too slow to emergencies. The number of times I've gotten stuck on "Please put your item in the bag" are too many because it can't detect the weight properly and not to mention it feels like the laser in the scanner is much weaker than the one on a proper checkout terminal. If there's an issue you have to wait for the single employee who manages at least four of those self checkouts to come over and fix it. Usually that means waiting for them to finish with the other one or two customers with issues.

Re:Forward thinkers

[DNS-and-BIND]

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!

Re:Forward thinkers

[fuzzyfuzzyfungus]

I realize that grocery stores actually operate on pretty thin margins; but I have a very hard time believing that the fairly elaborate(and deeply buggy and annoying) "theft prevention" mechanisms in the self checkouts actually work well enough to justify their existence.

Pretty much every item in the store is marked with the weight of its contents, and the packaging weights within classes of objects don't vary too much(ie pound of shitty store-brand coffee vs. pound of the good stuff). Even an amateur should be able to break the weight-based verification system without breaking a sweat; but it is inevitably either failing to register my small items or freaking out because I've accidentally left the corner of my bag of earlier purchases just slightly on the scale. I'd assume that, if you are one of the pros(stealing mass quantities of baby formula to cut your drugs with or whatever) it isn't rocket surgery to haul out a scale and work out precise weights for your UPC swap scheme. Never mind, of course, that the checkout system doesn't know that it exists if you don't scan it.

I have to imagine that it would be more efficient to have one loss prevention/old lady helper dude watching over 4 or 5 checkouts that focus on efficiency, rather than paranoia, instead of having zero humans watching a bank of paranoid but ineffectual self-checkout units...

Re:Forward thinkers

[somersault]

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.

Re:Forward thinkers

[similar_name]

My experience has been completely different, though my roommates is similar to yours. When we buy groceries I check us out.

I don't deny there are some bugs but I think the majority of problems come from being an immature technology.

The following are my thoughts on the casual observations of the way my roommate and I check out.

The machine has a very limited margin of error for the timing between scanning and weighing and scanning the next item.

The scale for instance can lag because the initial force of dropping the item in the bag registers more than rest weight. If you scan the next item before the scale stabilizes it throws the thing out of whack and it won't recover until the cashier comes over. In the meantime the software starts to lag and the instructions don't keep up with the customer's actions. This spirals into a very unpleasant experience for the customer.

One solution could be to wait until the end when everything has stabilized to report an error. And then to have an idea of which item it could be that it doesn't understand. It would also help if the stores realized relying on such exacting weights problem cause more shrinkage than people who go in with the intention of shoplifting.

That's my 2 dollars worth anyway.

Re:Forward thinkers

[CynicTheHedgehog]

I was using a self-checkout at a grocery store and was somewhat bemused when I was asked to put a helium-filled mylar ballon in the bag. Thankfully there was an employee nearby to override the machine's demands. I wonder what weight was associated with that UPC? Was it negative? :)

Re:Forward thinkers

[Restil]

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

Re:Forward thinkers

[jmac_the_man]

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.

Re:Forward thinkers

[bill_mcgonigle]

FEWER staff, not less

Fewer staffers, less staff. (the former being countable)

Re:Forward thinkers

[Xveers]

This I can top. My local store has us pay for bags (voluntarily, mind you) by ringing in a PLU code. Only five cents per plastic bag. Pretty common fare around here. Anyhow, so I tell it I grabbed one plastic bag, and then it asks me if I wanted a bag for it. Which would then mean I'd have to plug in another PLU code, and then it would ask me for ANOTHER bag... and so on and so on....

Re:Forward thinkers

[AlecC]

In the UK, ATMs in the walls of banks are generally free to all users, including customers of other banks. ATMs in other places - groceries, pubs, hotels etc - generally charge £1.50 or £1.75 - about $2.00.

Luddites

[commodore64_love]

"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.

Re:Luddites

[Anonymous Coward]

Wow, you guys sure are fucked up.

Re:Luddites

[commodore64_love]

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.

Remember, we're talking about the U.S. Senate

[Just_Say_Duhhh]

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?

Re:Remember, we're talking about the U.S. Senate

[FunkyMarcus]

This was a resolution. They were only banning their own dial telephones.

Re:Remember, we're talking about the U.S. Senate

[Holi]

You have that backwards, lobbyists don't work for the senators, the senators work for the lobbyists.

I don't get it.

[twidarkling]

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?"

False

[canajin56]

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.

Re:Butlers at your gasstation?

[PitaBred]

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.

Re:Fix the Constitution

[roman_mir]

There shouldn't be any bills that 'create or destroy jobs'.

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.

The taxes must be only on things like sales and people who can't afford taxes should be able to file their income statement and get their taxes back.

It's not anarchy, it's minarchy - libertarian system with minimum gov't.

Yes, children and other types of education, etc., are all subject to market forces and should be left out of gov't and done privately.