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Telegram Not Dead STOP Alive, Evolving In Japan STOP
itwbennett writes Japan is one of the last countries in the world where telegrams are still widely used. A combination of traditional manners, market liberalization and innovation has kept alive this age-old form of messaging. Companies affiliated with the country's three mobile carriers, NTT DoCoMo, KDDI and SoftBank, offer telegrams, which are sent via modern server networks instead of the dedicated electrical wires of the past (Morse telegraphy hasn't been used since 1962), and then printed out with modern printers instead of tape glued on paper. But customers are still charged according to the length of the message, which is delivered within three hours. A basic NTT telegram up to 25 characters long can be sent for ¥440 ($4.30) when ordered online.
Also worth mentioning is the way employees are paid, frequently envelopes of cash, direct deposit is not very popular yet there.
http://i.cubeupload.com/T6cyLu.png
They also still use faxes for similar reasons impenetrable and unfathomable.
You've probably never heard of it.
Implying that cash isn't a superior method of getting paid.
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$4.30 for 25 characters? That makes text messaging seem cheap here.
They should have limited it to 17 characters. Since in Japanese each character of the two phonetic alphabets corresponds to a syllable, it would have been perfect for Haikus!
you can't stamp an email or text message
You can't stamp a text, but you can stamp an e-mail. Use any OpenPGP app to create a key pair, which has the property that any message encrypted with one half can be decrypted with the other half. This one half is your private key and the other half you make public. To stamp a digital message, first take its hash value, and then encrypt that with your private key. Then anyone else can verify your stamp by decrypting it with the public key and comparing it to the hash value of the message. Japanese video game console maker Nintendo, for instance, uses this method on Wii, DSi, 3DS, and Wii U software as a digital version of the Official Nintendo Seal.
They also still use faxes for similar reasons impenetrable and unfathomable.
So Back to the Future Part II got one thing right.
Quite aside from tradition, which is great, there are situations where you need to send a message to a physical address. Maybe the occupant doesn't have a phone or email, or you don't know their contact details, or whether they even have a phone or email. If that message has to get there within three hours rather than overnight, then the $4.30 rate is pretty competitive with getting an express courier to carry a post-it note.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
Character set?
We've decoded part of that beta invitation... except it doesn't look like it was an invitation. It looks like it was a warning.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
When I was married, we received a handful of telegrams from friends and colleagues.
All were delivered as exquisite display pieces, with the message in a frame and everything. Very moving. This is what 'Telegrams' are for, special or official things. I will never forget it either.
Black Adder:
To Mr. Charlie Chaplin, Sennet Studios, Hollywood, California. Congrats stop. Have found only person in world less funny than you stop. Name Baldrick stop. Signed E. Blackadder stop. Oh, and put a P.S.: please, please, please stop
Chaplin's answer at end of episode:
Twice nightly filming of my films in trenches: excellent idea stop. But must insist that E. Blackadder be projectionist stop. P.S. Don't let him ever... stop
Sigs suck!
That when he heard his brother and wife had had their fifth child he sent a telegram that went: Congratulations Stop
Hey Slashdot, does anyone knows why telegrams are peppered with the word 'STOP'? Was there no punctuation mark to use a period?
"The hallmark of humanity is the ability to move beyond sensory inputs" - Mary Helen Immordino-Yang
And here am I thinking that India was the last place sending telegrams and that they'd already pulled the plug. http://m.slashdot.org/story/187523
Unfortunately there's no /etc/hosts file for MUTHUR.
No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
It's been a while since we received a telegram in Japan, but the last one we got came with a WInnie the Pooh stuffed animal. The message was in the honey pot.
The non-wireless Morse telegraph using only 19th-century technology (plus modern conveniences like plastic-insulated wires) is a fun educational tool for places like museums that reflect the era when telegraphy was widely used.
It's also a fun educational tool for children's camps which specialize in either the history of that era or which specialize in STEM and which have a historical component.
The same can be said for semaphore signaling, "hand-crank" telephones, and even "tin can and a string" telephones.
Wireless telegraphy is still used by amateur radio operators and other hobbyists, alongside more modern "digital modes" like packet radio. Because of its very low bandwidth, Morse Code, particularly the computer-controlled "slow code" that is used on very-narrow-bandwidth transmissions in the sub-600KHz bands can typically get a message through in high-noise or low-effective-transmitting-power situations where other methods, such as "phone" (i.e. voice communication) or other digital modes can't.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
All bank notes have a unique identifying number, so receiving banknotes without them being linked to you means you can be more sure that you're free to do whatever you like with that money (join a gay dating site, pay for health tests, donate to activist groups, etc.) without someone having a record linking you to your purchases.
It also cuts out the banks, who can be controlled by corrupt governments (i.e. all of them, to varying degrees) who can get your accounts frozen, even when doing so is illegal. Just ask Julian Assange. Sometimes private businesses (e.g. PayPal) can do this too.
Expert in software patents or patent law? Contribute to the ESP wiki!
*sends Morse "telegrams" with ham licence and homebrew radio costing about $25 one-off in junk parts*
If you think Morse sent over a Ham radio connection is equivalent to a telegram, then you're missing the point. It's only equivalent if someone prints it off at the far end and couriers it to the recipient.
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My understanding, based on living there for a year back in the 80's, is that the service was more like our old TWX or Telex service, with many business having a small dedicated keyboard/printer to send and receive messages. Personal delivery was rarely used.
"Eve of Destruction", it's not just for old hippies anymore...
They also still use faxes for similar reasons impenetrable and unfathomable.
To someone unfamiliar with the language and culture.
Handwritten messages have long been a necessity in Japan, where the written language is so complex, with two sets of symbols and 2,000 characters borrowed from Chinese, that keyboards remained impractical until the advent of word processors in the 1980s.
A decade ago Yuichiro Sugahara learned the hard way about his country's deep attachment to the fax machine, which the nation popularized in the 1980s. He tried to modernize his family-run company, which delivers traditional bento lunchboxes, by taking orders online. Sales quickly plummeted.
Today, his company, Tamagoya, is thriving with the hiss and beep of thousands of orders pouring in every morning, most by fax, many with minutely detailed handwritten requests like ''go light on the batter in the fried chicken'' or ''add an extra hard-boiled egg.''
''There is still something in Japanese culture that demands the warm, personal feelings that you get with a handwritten fax,'' said Mr. Sugahara, 43.
Faxes continue to appeal to older Japanese, who often feel uncomfortable with keyboards. Demographics have left Japan dominated by older generations who are still more likely to have a fax number than an e-mail address.
In Japan, with the exception of the savviest Internet start-ups or internationally minded manufacturers, the fax remains an essential tool for doing business. Many companies say they still rely on faxes to create a paper trail of orders and shipments not left by ephemeral e-mail. Banks rely on faxes because customers are worried about the safety of their personal information on the Internet.
Even Japan's largest yakuza crime syndicate, the Kobe-based Yamaguchi-gumi, has used faxes to send notifications of expulsion to members, police say.
In High-Tech Japan, the Fax Machines Roll On
If you think Morse sent over a Ham radio connection is equivalent to a telegram, then you're missing the point. It's only equivalent if someone prints it off at the far end and couriers it to the recipient.
There is a national traffic system through the ARRL that takes written messages, sends them (sometimes via CW), transcribes them at the far end, and delivers them. Maybe not courier, but at least by phone and usually with a followup delivery.
There are people who think this is the bee's knees and devote a large part of their life to doing it.
Reminds me of the Mad Men episode where they had to do a campaign for the telegraph where it was getting killed by the modern phone.
I believe the line was something about the fact that if you send a telegraph about say getting married VS phoning it in, it is something that is physical, that you can keep, and would have sentimental value.
It may still have a niche market for that sort of thing, where you want notification faster than is possible with a letter, but you have some memorable token of the event afterwards... We had a baby, marriages, promotions, etc...
Also Japan seems to have a lot of things that are either novelty or nostalgia, or both, more so than other places in the world, which might also contribute to the longevity.
Police stations without computers, 30-year-old "on hold" tapes grinding out tinny renditions of Greensleeves, ATMs that close when the bank does, suspect car engineering, and kerosene heaters but no central heating.
[..]
Despite the country's showy internet speeds and some of the cheapest broadband around many Japanese are happier doing things the old way.
[..]
Considering Japan's top heavy society of over 50s, many of whom have not got to grips with the internet, and who make up 30% of the population and that figure begins to make sense. [..] "The easiest way to tell is whether they have an e-mail address on the all-important name card. If they're over 50 and don't have an e-mail address, it's a dead giveaway that you either use the phone or forget about contacting them." [..] Some say this technophobic demographic helps explain why many of Japan's industries do not benefit from IT.
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
Kaatochacha was noting that "Cash-in-hand jobs" can't be read as "cash in hand-jobs done as a teenager", unlike the original comment.
[Which makes your "black economy" comment doubly unintentionally funny.]
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Getting cash is the most simple and sane method of payment. It's incredibly simple to deposit it at a bank. That's not backwards, it's showing that they respect their workers enough to pay them in full.
Reminds me of a story. A construction company which paid its workers in cash got in trouble with the IRS because the teller, behind the window, was counting out the workers gross pay, then counting back the amount of withholding etc. to reach the net pay amount. The problem is that apparently it is illegal for the worker to ever actually see the money which is withheld. The presumption being that it makes the amount of tax being taken seem much more "real" than the "abstract" numbers which show up on a pay-stub.
On a possibly related note, U.S. Gov't employees are now required to use Direct Deposit. (ok, there may be some exceptions to that.)
McFly777
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"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman
If you really want to send a "telegram", but don't need reliable (i.e. guaranteed) delivery. You can still have your message sent by Morse Code, internationally, and it is free!
You just have to find your friendly neighborhood Amateur Radio operator. The main Ham radio organization in the US is called the ARRL, Amateur Radio Relay League, because they do exactly that, relay telegram style messages around the country and world, just for the fun of it.
OK, the ARRL does a bit more than that. They also lobby congress, manage the exams, etc., but that is the basis of their name.
McFly777
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"What do people mean when they say the computer went down on them?" -Marilyn Pittman