Abstract: Cellular phones suck ass.

I would prefer stamping my balls in a waffle iron to having a "custom" ring tone like a song or whatever... what in the goddamned fuck is wrong with a simple phone ringing sound? I know I am a crotchety old prick and all that, but goddamn...

Have you seen those fucking assholes with the fucking multi-colored LEDs on their cellular phone antennas? It is as if they want to announce their idiocy to to the world... I know that they think it is cool and that people will know that they are talking on a cellular phone and everything, but these fucking antennas do not make the impression that they want... EVERYONE but other complete dorks laugh at them and wonder how long it will be before they get brain cancer...

It is the same with those goddamned belt-clips... What the fuck? Do you fuckers think that this is some sort of Wild West Telecom Showdown? Holy shit, quickdraw... what are you waiting on... a call from the fucking president or something, you self important dickhead? JEEZUZ!

And what is it with the assholes who think that your cellular phone design has to reflect "the real you" instead of being stock? I mean... if you can buy a fucking "custom" case for the goddamned thing it is not that custom, is it? They mass-produce those fucking things... are there thousands of "you" out there? I fucking guess so, you unoriginal prick.

What about those fucking mental giants you see at every sporting event... you know the ones... when the camera accidentally pans over and they look at the jumbotron and see that they are on television they will lunge for their cellular phone in an attempt to look like they are important. "Yes, Jim... I am buying the Lakers... we are just working out the details... hold on... Goddamn it!!! DEFENSE!!!"

EDIT: I originally posted this on Natsume's "ring ring" topic, but decided not to ruin her topic with my ranting and pontification.
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[This message was edited Tue Sep 10 5:52:37 PDT 2002 by IceNine]

ROLMAO......IceNine what would the org be without you...So far you are my FIRST laugh of the day!

TailGate said:

OH,,,and yes I do agree with you %100.

cellphones are the devil...i can no longer eat in a restaurant...watch a movie at the theatre...or even go 2 the damned library without some1's cell phone ringing and the person shouting (bcause of poor reception ) their mundane conversation in2 it...i don't give a f*ck about your grocery list/who's gonna pick up your kids/whatever...i'm just trying 2 have a pleasant night out u rude motherf*cker...sorry i'm ranting:)

IceNine, that was brilliant! Especially the part about the corny ring tones.

I am in total agreement with you.

I am in agreement with you on everything! They do suck ass! I'm always running out of minutes talking with you and then I have to wait for the next billing cycle or pay 35 cents a minute!

Here is my theory of Cellular Phones:

One of the most interesting things about a cell phone is that it is actually a radio -- an extremely sophisticated radio, but a radio nonetheless. The telephone was invented by Alexander Graham Bell in 1876, and wireless communication can trace its roots to the invention of the radio by Nikolai Tesla in the 1880s (formally presented in 1894 by a young Italian named Guglielmo Marconi). It was only natural that these two great technologies would eventually be combined!

In the dark ages before cell phones, people who really needed mobile-communications ability installed radio telephones in their cars. In the radio-telephone system, there was one central antenna tower per city, and perhaps 25 channels available on that tower. This central antenna meant that the phone in your car needed a powerful transmitter -- big enough to transmit 40 or 50 miles (about 70 km). It also meant that not many people could use radio telephones -- there just were not enough channels.

The genius of the cellular system is the division of a city into small cells. This allows extensive frequency reuse across a city, so that millions of people can use cell phones simultaneously. In a typical analog cell-phone system in the United States, the cell-phone carrier receives about 800 frequencies to use across the city. The carrier chops up the city into cells. Each cell is typically sized at about 10 square miles (26 square kilometers). Cells are normally thought of as hexagons on a big hexagonal grid.

Each cell has a base station that consists of a tower and a small building containing the radio equipment (more on base stations later).

A single cell in an analog system uses one-seventh of the available duplex voice channels. That is, each cell (of the seven on a hexagonal grid) is using one-seventh of the available channels so it has a unique set of frequencies and there are no collisions.

A cell-phone carrier typically gets 832 radio frequencies to use in a city.

Each cell phone uses two frequencies per call -- a duplex channel -- so there are typically 395 voice channels per carrier. (The other 42 frequencies are used for control channels -- more on this on the next page.)
Therefore, each cell has about 56 voice channels available.
In other words, in any cell, 56 people can be talking on their cell phone at one time. With digital transmission methods, the number of available channels increases. For example, a TDMA-based digital system can carry three times as many calls as an analog system, so each cell has about 168 channels available (see this page for lots more information on TDMA, CDMA, GSM and other digital cell-phone techniques).

Cell phones have low-power transmitters in them. Many cell phones have two signal strengths: 0.6 watts and 3 watts (for comparison, most CB radios transmit at 4 watts). The base station is also transmitting at low power. Low-power transmitters have two advantages:

The transmissions of a base station and the phones within its cell do not make it very far outside that cell. Therefore, in the figure above, both of the purple cells can reuse the same 56 frequencies. The same frequencies can be reused extensively across the city.

The power consumption of the cell phone, which is normally battery-operated, is relatively low. Low power means small batteries, and this is what has made handheld cellular phones possible.

The cellular approach requires a large number of base stations in a city of any size. A typical large city can have hundreds of towers. But because so many people are using cell phones, costs remain low per user. Each carrier in each city also runs one central office called the Mobile Telephone Switching Office (MTSO). This office handles all of the phone connections to the normal land-based phone system, and controls all of the base stations in the region.

But I don't even own one, so I could be wrong.

IceNine said:

Can I just add a bit about people who fucking try to DRIVE with a phone sticking out of their head...you know, they're the ones at the 4-way stop that don't go when it's their turn because they're lost in whatever conversation is so important that it outranks paying attention to the road! GEEZ!

That said, I look forward to the day that I can point my cell phone at a coke machine and have a coke pop up with the .50 charged to my PayPal account.

Your first problem is calling it a "cellular phone". Bloody Americans! It's a mobile phone and don't you forget it And just because your shitey American network operators don't have a clue, and you don't use GSM or GPRS and you can't use international roaming and you're phones are all huge ugly muthas, don't malign all mobile phones everywhere because of it

Personally I think mobile phones are very cool. My phone has Bluetooth and GPRS so I can read email or lock Prince.org threads when I'm sitting on the toilet all day long. Which is very useful, I'm sure you'll agree.

Anyway mobile phones are here to stay. These days schoolkids get a new handset for Christmas instead of a bike or a Playstation or something. Kids eh!

ian said:

They call them "handys" in Austria, (and maybe elsewhere in Europe?)

That's funny.

2the9s said:

they also call them "handy's" in Germany
In holland they call them "mobiel"
In Spain they call them "moby"...lol..

AzureStar said:

You get to talk to him on the phone? I want to say "hi" Jeez IceNine, why, why? A simple "HAY" wont hurt. Plus I do have a nice voice... ... AzureStar...no harm intended just being a friendly orger...I have called many orgers just to say hay and hear their voice. So, what is it IceNine? Not your either YOUR HOME #! Hand it over now now!

TailGate said:

lol... you don't need to explain yourself to me...

you know... I do have the numbers... you may be able to persuade me to accidentally pass one along, you know... I like sand dollars, too. I would suggest the work number... calling him at work and breathing heavy or moaning into the phone screws him up every time.

ian said:

uhhh...please never *ever* tell us what you do on the toilet again!!

but at anyrate: you bitter foreigners...America has had GSM since 1996. PacBell Mobile was the first company to offer GSM...It later changed names to PacBell Wireless and then to Cingular...They offer GPRS too...AT&T is currently changing its CDMA technology to GSM and Sprint and Verizon are considering it...

so there!!!

Great, you've had GSM, but it only covered like 1% of the country or something Seriously, your GSM coverage is very poor. My phone is tri-band but it's always a struggle trying to find decent coverage in the US anywhere that isn't smack in a major city centre.

Anyway I'd like nothing better than for the US to embrace GSM and GPRS properly and ditch those crappy CDMA networks. Sprint PCS is a step in the right direction (and you can play some of my games on Sprint PCS soon too so they must be cool).

ian said:

Mutha's? I guess that is one of the words 00769BAD is trying to teach me ...ian, you can read and lock Prince.org threads while you are sitting on the all day with your ... Now I know, not to email you anymore...Just a simple orgnote...dont want you thinking of me while you are

AzureStar said:

Great, now all I need to do is learn to breath hard. like huh,huh,huh,huh,...Like that? you like sand dollars? They are rather interesting and very pretty when you crack them open and see the pretty shell doves.

ian said:

noo...when was the last time you came to the states? GSM is all over the place...Maybe four years ago it only covered the major cities..but, its all over the place now... Funny you comment on Sprint which year after year gets rated "worst" mobile service by JD Powers...

Theres a lot going on with the American Mobile industry...but, its growth is not similiar to the other big markets Euro and Japan...For some reason, American's dont care about games or GPRS...Cingular has offered GPRS for two years (btw: Cingular is the second largest Mobile company here in the states) and nobody cared or cares...They market the stuff to death and all us Americans care about are the ugly covers and annoying ring tones...

go figure...

Aw dude, those custom ring tones do serve a purpose. Here's the scenario: Your ex-girlfriend calls your cell, your personalized/customized ringtone of "Irresistable Bitch" starts playing, you don't even bother (or maybe you do 8)).

IceNine said:

Gotta disagree with you on this point, Iceman. The belt clip is good if you have your phone set to vibrate when you get a call. Personally, I don't like it when the entire city knows when I get a call, so I never have it on a ring tone out in public. But when I'm at my workstation there is really no need for the belt clip when the phone is set to vibrate; as with pagers the vibration is powerful enough that it makes the phone move when sitting on an inanimate object - and you can hear it. Unless your workplace is noisy, of course.

Supernova said:

Okay, I will give you a "dork exemption" for this... this only applies to those people who wear their cellular phone like a wild west six-shooter!

Supernova said:

now Nova, dont be lying..you know you like the vibrate option because it makes you feel pleasured..

I've never had a cell phone. I don't want one. I don't want to be reached on someone else's whim. It usually isn't good. It's someone asking for a favor. It means you have to do something. Talk to someone. Grr. Caller ID is bad enough, when people knew you had it. They know you know they call. Answering machines are a step above this. You know what they want. And everyone that calls knows that you got the message. Why didn't you call them back? Grrr. I don't want to be found. I don't want to be contacted. I just want to be left the fuck alone.

That said, I'm going to get a cell phone this week. Great Verizon deal out there right now, and the regular phone bills are getting out of hand.

Grr.

ian said:

I hate to split hairs here, but FWIW, CDMA now blows GPRS away in terms of sheer bandwidth. And GPRS' successor on the GSM networks, UMTS, is actually a derivate of CDMA (they call it WCDMA internally).

Sprint is a pure CDMA-2000 network now, rolling out video phones and such! Now we can have some real car accidents!

IceNine said:

~*bkw goes and hides his mobile phone with the Hawai Five-0 theme ringtone*~

ian said:

theC
OK mob here's the plan.Take out the "mobile" phone and we can take over the org.Who's wit me now

bkw said:

:LOL:

IceNine said:

Thanks, I appreciate it. I'm happy that my thread got a somewhat interesting rant out of somebody.

My opinion on cell phones - if you're courteous, then I don't mind. But 99.9% of the people who own them are extremely rude. They don't turn them off when they should... their ring tones are obnoxiously loud... and when they DO ring at inappropriate times (like Ice said, the library or at the movies) they have the nerve to answer it and hold a conversation!

I find them to be very useful... maybe Ice is just jealous because he doesn't have one

Oh, and if you think AMERICA is bad with their phones, try traveling to Japan...

Natsume said:

I actually do have a cellular phone... I hate them, but I have one...

I have this thing:

http://www.pcsvision.com/...p4900.html

I keep it hidden from the public though and nobody would ever know that I have it... if I hadn't just told you

I still say... cellular phones suck ass.

IceNine said:

:::wipes forehead::: whewww!

I do agree though, most times it looks dorky. I still have a pager so I really don't need to carry my phone that way. Even if I did I'm the type that tries to be less conspicuous with it.