Another cartoon that makes no sense to anyone who was born after the cell phone.Report
It makes little sense to anyone born after the widespread adoption of land-line phones (and automobiles)Report
There’s a commercial for something on the air these days that’s making some point about saving money. In it, the new dad places a collect call to his parents number and tells the operator the call is for “Bob ItsABoy.” This is something out of my college days, 40-odd years ago: call my folks on Friday, between 7:00 and 8:00 in the evening, let the phone ring once, and it means “Call me so the long distance charge is on your phone.” Also, the call crossed from one phone provider to another and they got billed at a much lower rate than I did.
Does anyone have any kind of phone service these days that doesn’t come with unlimited domestic long distance?”Report
I was comparing cell plans awhile back and it struck me that we’ve experienced some kind of inversion, right about the time 4G came out. Maybe 10-15 years ago I had a plan with so many minutes of voice and so many text msgs per month and unlimited (truly) internet; 3G, flip phone, itty-bitty screen. Now my internet is metered but I have unlimited voice and text. It’s like the old promise that nuclear power would be too cheap to meter.Report
Yeah, 4G LTE is essentially “everything in IP data packets”, so it’s priced and/or limited based on data volume. Consider: a megabyte is about 500 pages of single-spaced 11-pt text for a language that uses the Latin alphabet; with contemporary coding, a megabyte is about 8 minutes of two-way phone conversation; depending on resolution and quality, a megabyte is about 8 seconds of compressed video; on a good day, a megabyte might get you the front page of the NYTimes after all 100-150 parts are downloaded.Report
also, “to meet him if you love him”
a lot to unpack there.
(eta – to be fair, a story where a woman ‘chases’ a man, traveling on her own into the city, was probably rather feminist for its time)Report
Another cartoon that makes no sense to anyone who was born after the cell phone.Report
It makes little sense to anyone born after the widespread adoption of land-line phones (and automobiles)Report
There’s a commercial for something on the air these days that’s making some point about saving money. In it, the new dad places a collect call to his parents number and tells the operator the call is for “Bob ItsABoy.” This is something out of my college days, 40-odd years ago: call my folks on Friday, between 7:00 and 8:00 in the evening, let the phone ring once, and it means “Call me so the long distance charge is on your phone.” Also, the call crossed from one phone provider to another and they got billed at a much lower rate than I did.
Does anyone have any kind of phone service these days that doesn’t come with unlimited domestic long distance?”Report
I was comparing cell plans awhile back and it struck me that we’ve experienced some kind of inversion, right about the time 4G came out. Maybe 10-15 years ago I had a plan with so many minutes of voice and so many text msgs per month and unlimited (truly) internet; 3G, flip phone, itty-bitty screen. Now my internet is metered but I have unlimited voice and text. It’s like the old promise that nuclear power would be too cheap to meter.Report
Yeah, 4G LTE is essentially “everything in IP data packets”, so it’s priced and/or limited based on data volume. Consider: a megabyte is about 500 pages of single-spaced 11-pt text for a language that uses the Latin alphabet; with contemporary coding, a megabyte is about 8 minutes of two-way phone conversation; depending on resolution and quality, a megabyte is about 8 seconds of compressed video; on a good day, a megabyte might get you the front page of the NYTimes after all 100-150 parts are downloaded.Report
also, “to meet him if you love him”
a lot to unpack there.
(eta – to be fair, a story where a woman ‘chases’ a man, traveling on her own into the city, was probably rather feminist for its time)Report
Panel 3 has “shouldn’t afford it”.
A phrase we don’t use anymore.Report