On Jun 25, 5:32 pm, [EMAIL PROTECTED] <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > To me it's similar to "memorizing" a phone number by dialing > it enough times that it makes its way into memory without > conscious effort. I suspect that not everyone's brain works > this way, and some people have to look it up every time. > For those people, I can understand why something without a > GUI could be a painful experience. "YMMV", maybe.
You'll be happy to know then that my opinion is that the phone system is archaic too. Exposing the numerical network addresses like that is so 1970s; where's the phone version of DNS, given that the technology to develop it is clearly there now, and (from my experiences with the phone menus at some 800 numbers) even the technology for you to just pick up the handset, say someone's name, and have it look them up and ring them, possibly after being prompted to accept long distance charges, reverse them, or cancel if it's LD. :) We'll actually probably see a generation of friendlier phones RSN -- either regular phones, or because VoIP providers leapfrog them and advance rapidly leaving the old telcos eating dust when these don't advance their technology and interfaces. Setting up and using voice mail or speed-dial keys still tends to be *painful*. There's still an excuse for that with cell phones since you can't put a more sophisticated interface onto something the size of a credit card, but a phone that takes up a substantial chunk of desk space really should have more than a tiny LCD screen and twelve tone keys. The only reason nobody complains much is because they're so bog standard everyone is used to them and knows how to operate them. If we had modern internet and other services and someone tried to introduce the touch-tone telephone system now, the market would reject it in a heartbeat and pursue VoIP, and Techdirt would run a "Failures" category article blaming the terrible UI and excessive fee structure. The same sort of inertia that let the phone system survive mostly unchanged over the last 20 years without improving its UI much keeps some old unix tools beloved by those who mastered them, and of course propels Windows, which has done some dumb things with its UI (and much worse under the hood). -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
