The general decline in standards today

[sheeplady]

And those who rationalize such modern slavery on the basis of "but look how much better life is for Those People than what they had before" ought to be beaten senseless with the collected works of William Lloyd Garrison.

Yes, that's what it is: slavery. There's no other word for it. When you have people threatening to kill themselves over working conditions it can't be anything else.


I had a student do a presentation on the suicide strike in my class. I asked how many people would change their buying habits because of something like this. I had two students out of forty raise their hands. Another student said they wouldn't change their own habits because the company was looking into the matter and committed to fixing things and that was good enough for them. It was obvious that they weren't really thinking what this really meant through all the way.

I abhor professors who use their lectern as a political and/or moral soap box and I often have argued the exact opposite of my beliefs to challenge students who seem to only think in one way. It disgusts me to see students shouted down in the classroom by professors who are using their power to bully people of different beliefs. So I made myself a promise when I was a teacher that I would appear neutral and argue both sides of any topic.

That said, not a single student left the room that day without knowing that I thought companies that did this were the blight of the earth, how racism played into our acceptance of this type of thing, etc. I was really careful *not* to personally criticize any of the students who volunteered to speak about the topic, or make anyone feel bad about previous choices where they didn't know about such abuse, but I made it clear that people indicate their morals with how they spend their money and everyone should think very carefully with how they spend it.

 

[Gregg Axley]

The only products I have with "I" in them, are original equipment.
Of course it's not spelled the same.
I don't need to surf anything while in the car, I just need to make a call....

 

[Captain Neon]

I was required to carry an iPhone for my last job. I used it a lot outside of work, and my wife asked me if I could ever go back to not having Facebook in my pocket. I told her that it was convenient when traveling, but I could probably do without. I usually referred to the thing as my leash, and I don't miss it at all. I was glad to turn it back in. We'll see next week, when I am traveling, if I have any withdrawal symptoms.

The only products I have with "I" in them, are original equipment.
Of course it's not spelled the same.
I don't need to surf anything while in the car, I just need to make a call....

 

[HudsonHawk]

"It's been over a quarter of a century,"
That seems to be a key aspect. I interact with a lot of industries, mostly non-union, and they are fanatical (almost) about safety these days. The costs of lawsuits is too high to take any chances. I have no reason to think that they don't care about the health and welfare of their employees, but I am sure that they don't want multi-million dollar settlements, which they would definitely have if they deliberately bypassed safety systems (!) and someone got hurt or killed.

My industry, and my company, are this way. Fanatical about safety and environmental, that is. Not that we don't still have incidents and accidents, but if you deliberately ignore a safety rule, or bypass a safety device, you're fired. Period. No other questions asked. And it's not just about lawsuits, it's simply good business these days.

 

[Zombie_61]

The only products I have with "I" in them, are original equipment.
Of course it's not spelled the same.
I don't need to surf anything while in the car, I just need to make a call....

Every time my wife and I have had to "upgrade" our phones (i.e., exchange old for new) the various clerks we've spoken with began their sales pitches by discussing all of the newer phones' versatilities, but never once mentioned their functionality as a telephone. At some point during their pitches I've taken the opportunity to ask how they function as telephones, and every time they've looked at me with a blank expression like I've suddenly grown a second head; apparently, I'm the only customer who thinks their primary function should be making and receiving calls. lol

By the way, we're most definitely not the types who visit their local "telephone store" every time there's a shiny new gadget available. We use our cell phones until they have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel; in modern technological terms, that makes them antiques.

 

[jamespowers]

Every time my wife and I have had to "upgrade" our phones (i.e., exchange old for new) the various clerks we've spoken with began their sales pitches by discussing all of the newer phones' versatilities, but never once mentioned their functionality as a telephone. At some point during their pitches I've taken the opportunity to ask how they function as telephones, and every time they've looked at me with a blank expression like I've suddenly grown a second head; apparently, I'm the only customer who thinks their primary function should be making and receiving calls. lol

By the way, we're most definitely not the types who visit their local "telephone store" every time there's a shiny new gadget available. We use our cell phones until they have one foot in the grave and the other on a banana peel; in modern technological terms, that makes them antiques.

The last time I replaced my phone was when it fell in a pond and didn't work too well.

 

[Stanley Doble]

They probably take the phone function for granted, which you can do if you live in a city. If you live in a rural area especially in the west or in Canada you can very easily find yourself in a dead or blank area. Not good if your car breaks down 50 miles from the nearest town.

 

[Zombie_61]

They probably take the phone function for granted, which you can do if you live in a city. If you live in a rural area especially in the west or in Canada you can very easily find yourself in a dead or blank area. Not good if your car breaks down 50 miles from the nearest town.

True. However, they really shouldn't take service for granted regardless of where their customers live. We live about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, an area that I wouldn't describe as "rural", and I can think of two areas within a few miles of our house that are dead/blank areas for both cell phone and satellite radio signals. Of course, these are extremely localized areas and the circumstances would have to be extreme for anyone's life to be threatened within them because of a loss of signal, but (as has been stated here before) I think it's appalling that phone companies have gone from "You can hear a pin drop!" to "Can you hear me now?" and they have the nerve to call it progress; that's definitely a decline in standards.

On that note, telephones in general have become an example of "planned obsolescence". I can't recall ever having to replace the telephone in our house while I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, but over the years since that time the phone companies have conditioned us to believe we're fortunate if a phone operates as expected for five years. :suspicious:

 

[sheeplady]

They probably take the phone function for granted, which you can do if you live in a city. If you live in a rural area especially in the west or in Canada you can very easily find yourself in a dead or blank area. Not good if your car breaks down 50 miles from the nearest town.

When we were traveling out west in Montana we saw a car flip on an icy road. We couldn't even get 911 service. Luckily people out there take care of each other.

I think it's appalling that phone companies have gone from "You can hear a pin drop!" to "Can you hear me now?" and they have the nerve to call it progress; that's definitely a decline in standards.

see my sig

 

[GHT]

Is the decline in standards a chicken and egg scenario? We seem to have lost our moral compass but how and when? The banking scandal, newspapers hacking into peoples phones, scandalous pay-offs that are no more than a bribe to shut people up. And then we have the whistleblower treated like the perpetrator of the wrongdoing. And worst of all, nobody is brought to book. For goodness sakes, 50 years ago, we had a gang of train robbers go down for 25 years. Nowadays, if you have a job in one of the Merchant Banks, you can conive, swindle and be the most avaricious ba***rd abroad, and what will get? Off, Scott free.

Is there a correlation between this modern adulation of babies and the lack of parental discipline. We have spoken about 'The Look' before, but in all honesty, if I was out of order, that 'Look' from my mother, made my balls freeze. I don't ever recall being smacked, but there was the threat. If my father lifted his backside out of the squab of his armchair, you shut up. This was not open to negotiation. Nowadays, it seems, that if a child has a suspicious mark on them, the school, doctor or social worker will report the parents for child abuse.

So is it a chicken and egg scenario? As today's children grow up, without the stricter discipline of previous generations, will we see even more corruption as those same children become the bankers, lawyers and politicians of tomorrow?

 

[Captain Neon]

Yep. My parents still have the rotary dial phone in use that was in the house when they bought it in 1979. On the flip side, when our current house was renovated 10 years ago, they took out ALL of the landline phone jacks and wiring out. I insist on having a landline because even when the electric power is out at least the landline phone still works. I've got a desk phone in the parlour, and then Easy Jacks in all of the other rooms. While not vintage, I have always liked having a phone at easy reach now that every one assumes cell phone service with caller ID. No one leaves messages any more, and I hate cordless phones almost as much as I hate cell phones. A good phone with a receiver is so much easier for me to hear the other party on the line.

True. However, they really shouldn't take service for granted regardless of where their customers live. We live about 15 miles east of downtown Los Angeles, an area that I wouldn't describe as "rural", and I can think of two areas within a few miles of our house that are dead/blank areas for both cell phone and satellite radio signals. Of course, these are extremely localized areas and the circumstances would have to be extreme for anyone's life to be threatened within them because of a loss of signal, but (as has been stated here before) I think it's appalling that phone companies have gone from "You can hear a pin drop!" to "Can you hear me now?" and they have the nerve to call it progress; that's definitely a decline in standards.

On that note, telephones in general have become an example of "planned obsolescence". I can't recall ever having to replace the telephone in our house while I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, but over the years since that time the phone companies have conditioned us to believe we're fortunate if a phone operates as expected for five years. :suspicious:

 

[LizzieMaine]

On that note, telephones in general have become an example of "planned obsolescence". I can't recall ever having to replace the telephone in our house while I was growing up in the 60s and 70s, but over the years since that time the phone companies have conditioned us to believe we're fortunate if a phone operates as expected for five years. :suspicious:

The only time we ever "upgraded" our phone was when they went from a manual exchange to dial service.

The Bell System was, however, quite good at refurbishing phones to keep them operating indefinitely. The phone on my desk was originally manufactured in 1929, but in 1943 it had new transmitter and receiver works installed, and an updated induction coil installed in the subset. You couldn't get a "new" phone during the war -- the only phone you could get installed at all was a refurb, and some of the basic units used to build these dated back to the turn of the century. Ma Bell never threw anything away if she could help it.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Yep. My parents still have the rotary dial phone in use that was in the house when they bought it in 1979. On the flip side, when our current house was renovated 10 years ago, they took out ALL of the landline phone jacks and wiring out. I insist on having a landline because even when the electric power is out at least the landline phone still works. I've got a desk phone in the parlour, and then Easy Jacks in all of the other rooms. While not vintage, I have always liked having a phone at easy reach now that every one assumes cell phone service with caller ID. No one leaves messages any more, and I hate cordless phones almost as much as I hate cell phones. A good phone with a receiver is so much easier for me to hear the other party on the line.

When you say landline, you mean "PSTN" (Public Switched Telephone Network), I assume? I also assume you had those lines re-installed in your house? Was that problematic in any way? I've switched to Uverse, which is VOIP, which means my rotary phones cannot dial out. They ring, and you can receive calls, but you cannot dial. They have pulse to tone converters, but I've read they are spotty with some VOIPs, including Uverse. At any rate, I'm considering having a PSTN line re-installed just for my rotary phones, but as all the existing lines are now using the VOIP, I'd have to have new lines installed. I think anyway. Just wondering if that's as big a pain as I think it will be.

 

[Dragon Soldier]

I find it remarkable that you guys in the States can still use rotary phones. Exchanges here went tone-dial only round about the turn of the century.

You could connect a rotary (pulse dial)'phone okay and receive calls, but you could not make calls with it unless you had a separate device for creating DTMF tones.

 

[Edward]

I find it remarkable that you guys in the States can still use rotary phones. Exchanges here went tone-dial only round about the turn of the century.

You could connect a rotary (pulse dial)'phone okay and receive calls, but you could not make calls with it unless you had a separate device for creating DTMF tones.

I'd assumed it was down to the sheer size of the place. By comparison, taking the entire UK landline network digital would be a breeze. POssibly it's got to do with different business models.... I know the old nationalised telco went the way of the Dodo in '84, but ultimately don't they all still use the same fixed line network, just with different end-service providers competing with each other now? Maybe a simpler arrangement than is in the US? I'm just speculating, mind. Could be the US telcos don't see any point in changing it much now, expecting landlines to die out sooner or later. Over here, BT have been predicting the eventual death of the landline since the 80s. I tend to the view that it woul already be history had not home internet arrived as a concept. From what I see, though, mobile-network linked wifi hubs are improving all the time. Should it get to the point where one of those gives the same service as, or better service than, my landline-based box, I'll wave bye bye to my landline with a big smile on my face. It does look like the mobile-connected boxes will eventually be cheaper than box + BT landline.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I find it remarkable that you guys in the States can still use rotary phones. Exchanges here went tone-dial only round about the turn of the century.

You could connect a rotary (pulse dial)'phone okay and receive calls, but you could not make calls with it unless you had a separate device for creating DTMF tones.

DTMF was introduced in the US in the early 1960's, and has been the standard for nearly 40 years. However, public telephone exchanges are required to be backward compatible, so pulse dialing still works on those networks too. But that's not the case for digital and VOIP providers, who have no such requirement.

 

[Captain Neon]

The phone company installed a box on the exterior of the house. I ran a length of line from the box and then punched a hole through the side of the house. I set up a jack and connected one phone there. The rest of the phones in my house are connected through Easy Jacks. Not always reliable if there is any sort of power fluctuation, and need to be reset when that happens, but the phone connected directly to the box always works.

When you say landline, you mean "PSTN" (Public Switched Telephone Network), I assume? I also assume you had those lines re-installed in your house? Was that problematic in any way? I've switched to Uverse, which is VOIP, which means my rotary phones cannot dial out. They ring, and you can receive calls, but you cannot dial. They have pulse to tone converters, but I've read they are spotty with some VOIPs, including Uverse. At any rate, I'm considering having a PSTN line re-installed just for my rotary phones, but as all the existing lines are now using the VOIP, I'd have to have new lines installed. I think anyway. Just wondering if that's as big a pain as I think it will be.

 

[sheeplady]

I'd assumed it was down to the sheer size of the place. By comparison, taking the entire UK landline network digital would be a breeze. POssibly it's got to do with different business models.... I know the old nationalised telco went the way of the Dodo in '84, but ultimately don't they all still use the same fixed line network, just with different end-service providers competing with each other now? Maybe a simpler arrangement than is in the US? I'm just speculating, mind. Could be the US telcos don't see any point in changing it much now, expecting landlines to die out sooner or later. Over here, BT have been predicting the eventual death of the landline since the 80s. I tend to the view that it woul already be history had not home internet arrived as a concept. From what I see, though, mobile-network linked wifi hubs are improving all the time. Should it get to the point where one of those gives the same service as, or better service than, my landline-based box, I'll wave bye bye to my landline with a big smile on my face. It does look like the mobile-connected boxes will eventually be cheaper than box + BT landline.

Yes, basically. We have a bunch of companies that have inherited the decaying system of copper wire called POTS (mainly AT&T and Verizon) from Ma Bell- and those companies have tended to be poor performers due to many people switching to cell phone only service. We still have some areas in the U.S. that do not have "touch tone" service and many areas that don't have IP service- mainly rural areas that are quite poor. I can remember the first time we were able to use touch tone service in the late 1990s where I grew up, when we also got 911 service (integrated emergency service). This is because updating such service now is done by private companies, and some areas simply are not profitable to update. Where I live now (a middle class suburb outside of a medium sized city) was one of the original testbeds for Verizon to upgrade to fiber optic cable and later for them to offer packaged TV, telephone, and internet service.

I think it's far more likely that we'll see POTS pulled from certain areas before we'll see the infrastructure updated in those areas- mainly rural, poor, hard-to-reach areas. Now, technically, there is a federal law that prohibits phone companies from cutting service to these areas unless they can prove it does not adversely affect service or access. I think, however, given the current political situation in the U.S. it would be very very possible to overturn that law.

I disagree with doing away with the federal laws that guarantee access. AT&T has a proposal to provide broadband connectivity via IP to 99% of it's customers IF it is allowed to discontinue its POTS legacy network. Places that only have POTS tend to rural poor areas- the type of places that desperately need connectivity.

 

[Edward]

Certainly service will not be universal if it is left only up to the profit motive. When privatisation was kicked off here, the former state telco, renamed British Telecom, was saddled with a number of restrictions to avoid this. In particular, BT is obligated to provide service anywhere in the UK - the "highlands and islands" service, whereas others can cherry-pick and run only in profitable areas. When I first gave in and got a landline in the flat, BT was the only option.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Certainly service will not be universal if it is left only up to the profit motive. When privatisation was kicked off here, the former state telco, renamed British Telecom, was saddled with a number of restrictions to avoid this. In particular, BT is obligated to provide service anywhere in the UK - the "highlands and islands" service, whereas others can cherry-pick and run only in profitable areas. When I first gave in and got a landline in the flat, BT was the only option.

The Bell System, for nearly a century, was a "regulated monopoly" in the United States with the goal of "universal service." It lived up to that goal -- developing the most efficient, reliable communications service the world has ever known. And it remained so until 1984, when Ma Bell was guillotined, and replaced by "the law of the marketplace." The result across the board is a lot of shiny trinkets and flashy advertising, backed by incompetent, indifferent customer service. Ma Bell would not have tolerated that for a moment.