We don't all live on Elysium.

But it is NOT a phone. It's a pocket computer. It happens to have a chip that connects to the mobile phone network, and an app that happens to be able to interface that in such a way to make "phone calls".

But it is just stupid to actually call it a "phone". We just do it out of habit/convenience. It most certainly actually *isn't* one.

My last phone ran Linux. No not just a tiny linux *kernel* like both iPhonies and Androids do, actual linux. To the point of being able to download any Linux app sourcecode, and compile and run it on the phone.

/Z

Last edited by MasterZap (2013-08-13 03:57:11)

Um, no I don't.  I can't afford a smartphone.  Maybe someday.

I may or may not be under the age of 21 and I only use my phone for texting, the odd phone call, and as an alarm clock. I have other devices to satisfy most other technological needs.

Doesn't help that almost every smartphone I've used has awful call-quality and is shitty as a cell-phone.
Those $20 Go-phones you can buy at any convenience store beat the shit out of an i-phone when it comes to actually, you know, calling up and talking to human beings, instead of updating your twitter feed.

That being said, I do use my phone a lot to check email and the like, but not super often, and I certainly wouldn't look down on people for not trying to be connected every waking fucking moment

Last edited by bullet3 (2013-08-13 04:10:04)

Yeah, I've had my phone for a while too.

Bought mine in 2010, so not sure about now.

Regardless, I don't have a data plan and have no need for it either.

I don't need a "pocket computer." I have a full size one, with a keyboard, and video card and speakers and such.

Also, it's great to have a "pocket computer" but what about all the people who do not? My parents do not, my grandfather does not, my aunt does not, and my wife does not. Not sure what the need is there if my family and I function perfectly fine without it 

Also, I pretty much agree with Trey in the podcast. Movies are different but the experience of going to the theater, of just watching the movie, without worrying about anything else, is really the last appeal of a movie. Its a place where my wife and I can have two hours without the kids, without worrying about them and just destress. Last movie I saw was "Into Darkness" and was totally engaged in the movie experience, from 3D elements, to the sound and everything.

I didn't use my phone to "check in" or update any feed. I just watched a movie. Even after, I didn't do those things. I talked to my wife.

Some people just have no concept of phone etiquette. I also don't believe it has anything to do with having a "right to be connected", it's selfishness, either knowing or oblivious.

The best solution is embarassment. Switch off the film, turn up the lights, and have an usher walk up to the perpetrator and ask them to stop, then resume the film only when they've stopped. I bet that person wouldn't ever do it again. Because clearly, others have let them carry on with being a selfish arsehole for much of their life already.

In Britain, they have "Quiet" carriages on National Rail, and the big shitstorm is that everyone ignores that and carries on talking, telling their frigg'n life stories on the phone and to everyone on the carriage.

So, likewise, you can have cinema screenings designated 'QUIET' but until an enforcement policy is decided on that doesn't infringe civil liberties, it's going to be ignored by the 5% of assholes that spoil it for everyone else.

Cinemas need to decide which side their bread is buttered on.

I think Brian mentioned something like this during the episode, but, as a hard-liner against phones in theatres, there's a whole range of excuses/reasons someone could give for causing a disturbance that I would accept without complaint. Once, at a screening of Avatar, this person in front of me had her phone go off, and much to my annoyance, she proceeded to whip out her phone and respond via text message right there in her seat. When she hit "Send" her brightly lit phone made the sent-message sound—Laaaa-liiing!—and she swiftly put it back in her bag. All that probably took around 15 seconds. But then she turned around to us and whispered exactly these words: "I'm so sorry about that. I'm a doctor, and that was my hospital alerting me about a patient."

To which I said, "I understand. It's cool." Now maybe it was bullshit and she was really a temp at Dunder Mifflin who was texting her idiot friend about something trivial and she was too lazy to exit the theater to use her phone... But, you know, I'm just sayin' that I happily give a big fat pass to anyone who has a non-trivial excuse, provided the disturbance is brief and isolated. If someone's a pediatric surgeon who is being alerted about the condition of an 8 year-old who is seriously ill (for example), well then okay. I'd prefer you left the theater, but, you know, it's cool. So, yeah. You moviegoers whose occupations literally involve life-and-death situations for which you must always be on-call, y'all can leave your ringers on. (Conversely, if you're merely a commodities broker who just wants to keep tabs on NASDAQ while you watch Pain & Gain with your trophy wife, fuck you. Put the phone away.) I'd prefer vibrate, but if you actually are that hypothetical 8 year-old's surgeon, or something along those lines, I'm not mad at ya. I recognize that there truly are people who have jobs where the stakes so high that there's significant liabilities to turning off their phone even for a couple of hours. It made a huge difference, of course, that the (lady who claimed to be a) doctor immediately turned around, explained, and apologized.

Last edited by Rob (2013-08-13 19:07:55)

Well, at the time I had the conversation it was just the aisle thing - Amazon wasn't the seller-of-all-things yet.  But I don't doubt the "showroom" problem is a thing now.

People do far worse things in movie theaters than texting.