Random, but this reminded me of the mid 2000s when you could text google for info. GOOGL was the SMS code I believe. I miss it still. You could send them a query and they would respond with directions, phone numbers, and other kinds of results. You could also call Goog-411 or some variant to get similar info.
Installing a payphone in my house
211–220 of 279 posts
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. That's right -- modern age stuff isn't as _hackable_. Especially not at the hardware level. You get an Alexa or a mobile phone or a camera, it's all just a chip on a PCB in a plastic case, not intended to be fiddled with by anybody (not the owner, not some repair show, literally _no…
> In the past you turned on your C64 and could start write away code, average Joe Teenager needs to install some IDE and pull in hundreds of NPM dependencies from shady places just to show a hello world. Or he could open a console in his web browser.
What about the kids in school districts that issue locked-down Chromebooks? They probably can't even do that!
I, for one, learned how to bcdedit my way into booting from a .vhd on my school-issued laptop. And how to SSH tunnel on port 443 to get past the proxy. How LSPs worked on Windows. Messing around is how kids get their start in computers, and I couldn't agree with the parent comment more.
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
One thing has not improved one iota in the 30 years I've had a cell phone - the voice quality.
I'm not sure this is true universally. I just spoke to a friend for the first time since I got a phone that does "HD" calling, and although I've been speaking to them for 25 years on the phone, I didn't recognize their voice. I feel like POTS and edge->3g calling made me miss out on a lot of detail and intonation. I'm just glad I get to experience this call quality with non-technically inclined friends before I go co…
VoIP systems negotiate codec choice on call initiation, generally using a "best common denominator" rule. Even when only companded PCM is available (PCM-a, PCM-µ), 64kbps will be used since it's the universal norm on the TDM (conventional) telephone newtwork. Unfortunately, as a capacity measure GSM specifies very low bitrates for voice connections, as low as 5kbps in the worst case and 10-20kbps typical. This requires the use of high-efficiency vocoders like CELP variants that are sufficient for intelligible speech but, well, only for that purpose.
"HD voice" is exactly VoIP and with few exceptions is only transported over SIP or a SIP-like protocol using the existing RTP negotiation mechanism, which usually ends up selecting 64kbps companded PCM (same as a landline phone). Increasing use of VoLTE, which is essentially an optimized form of SIP designed to "combine" session control features with LTE for lower overhead, has made this pretty common as HD voice support is standard from VoLTE vendors. There was such a thing as HD Voice over 3G using a similar mechanism that leveraged HSPDA but it was never very common, at least in the US.
VoLTE will quickly become the only way to make cellular phone calls in the US which we can expect to make HD Voice pretty universal. Right now it can be spotty when calling between networks, depending on how their peering is set up.
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#214Just last month I got the opportunity to assist with an art installation that involved a phonebooth, which meant I got to take one home and poke around its insides. It was some of the most delightfully 90s tech I've seen in a while - 2-layer PCBs, all through-hole components, only a few well-known ICs... I ended up carefully removing all the "brains" and hooking up the insides to a raspberry pi, which could join a Di…
Seems weird, to me, that you would need a card. Every phone booth I've used took dimes, then quarters. Some, near the end, could take a credit card or a telco card. I presume you could buy the cards back in the day, anywhere and easily?
At least over here in the EU coins were later substituted by magnetic phone cards; iirc in the late 80s, presumably as a measure against vandalism and theft.
When phone booths were later decommissioned, all those cards became collectibles and still have a market online.
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nice work! Maybe I missed this, but have you considered simulating a dial tone?
I haven't, I think it would be a fair bit of work, given that the modem is what outputs the sound.
I haven't worked with the Arduino. Would it be difficult to incorporate an SPDT relay to switch the sound source between it and the modem?
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#216That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. I think it really highlights the simple joy that technology that literally just works can bring. I'm around the same age as the author, a little younger in fact, but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. Fr…
I have a lot of the same nostalgia, but so much of this story is that necessity is the mother of invention.
The author:
1. Had more time than he knew what to do with.
2. Didn't have money
3. Had authority figures getting in the way of what he wanted to do.
A decade later, kids were 'hacking' their parents' wifi access points by logging in as admin/password to bypass "go to bed and stop using the internet" restrictions, but the author was not, because he likely had more money, less time, and most importantly, no authority to bypass :)
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#217Earlier quoted context omitted.
I haven't, I think it would be a fair bit of work, given that the modem is what outputs the sound.
I haven't worked with the Arduino. Would it be difficult to incorporate an SPDT relay to switch the sound source between it and the modem?
Hmm, probably not, actually, that's a good idea. It was one of my first projects, so I didn't really know what I was doing, which limited how much I could do.
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#218Random, but this reminded me of the mid 2000s when you could text google for info. GOOGL was the SMS code I believe. I miss it still. You could send them a query and they would respond with directions, phone numbers, and other kinds of results. You could also call Goog-411 or some variant to get similar info.
I just removed GOOG-411 from my address book the other day. RIP.
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#219That's a really awesome story with a great opening, middle, and especially the end, if one ignores the adolescent fraud. I think it really highlights the simple joy that technology that literally just works can bring. I'm around the same age as the author, a little younger in fact, but there's just something about today's Internet and a lot of the overwhelming amount of technology that just isn't fun or memorable. Fr…
No post body was provided.
Re: Installing a payphone in my house
#220I'm a Sonic customer and just learned about their Tradewars server! thanks!!