RFID could be in all cell phones by 2010

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Right! Cell Phones are a serious social addiction and a threat to freedom.: Yes, I have to admit to actually owning a cell phone but I have had BOTH SMS/texting and all Internet access, including email, removed from it.

(At the slightest provocation (such as pressing a wrong key), my cell phone still tries to default to on-line mode (a ruse with no other advantage other than to charge us users additional fees) but now there's nothing for it to connect to. Nevertheless, I object strongly that I alone cannot completely cut off or kill the on-line 'features' in my in my cell phone and that I have to rely on my Telco to do it for me. Why should we cell phone users be so enslaved by the likes of Motorola, Nokia, Qualcomm etc. and our telcos just because we own a cell phone?

My cell phone now functions as a normal old-fashioned telephone that just receives and sends ordinary voice calls. Moreover, I switch it off whenever I'm in restaurants or other public places so as not to annoy others.

Cell phone addiction (similarly PC addiction) is truly an amazing social phenomenon and it ought to be of much more concern than it now is. I've nearly killed pedestrians on more than one occasion when they suddenly, aimlessly and without looking ran out onto the roadway with a cell phone embedded in their ear--totally oblivious to anything else around them let alone moving vehicles on the roadway.

...And who gets the blame when motorists accidentally roll cell phone addicts? For sure, it's we poor beleaguered motorists.

...And it doesn't stop there, I've nearly been killed by a driver who went though a red light whilst SIMULTANEOUSLY texting on his cell phone. Yet, cell phones are legal and heroin and cocaine are not. Clearly something's surely wrong with our system of values when such strange disparities can coexist within society, methinks!!

That so many people can be totally distracted by someone at a considerable distance away yet oblivious to real and imminent local danger, is, in itself, quite frightening.

Similarly, heaven help us when cell phone addicts get carte blanche to use their 'drug' on planes (as is about to happen). Leaving potential interference to the plane's avionics aside does the fact that cell phone users are able to transmit electromagnetic within the confines of a plane (along with the potential for radio frequency interference) give us silence lovers a similar right to possess phone jammers so that we may protect our personal space from these cretins? I doubt it very much (but we'll soon find out when such a case goes before the Law for resolution--as it surely will).

The inclusion of RFIDs in cell phones provides users with yet another the illusion that these devices are providing them with even more control over their lives when in fact just the opposite is true--the more users become dependent on their mobile phone the more in fact that they're enslaved by it.

So ubiquitous and accepted the cell phone has become that soon--and by default--it won't be long before governments 'mandate' them so they know where everybody is, being tracked will become a norm of everyday life. Right, something once reserved for prisoners and criminals will become standard for all of us.

Once, not that long ago, such a concept in [supposedly] free societies would have been absolutely unthinkable. Now, it seems, that through a combination of cell phone addiction, utter damn stupidity and user acquiescence to and indifference of monitoring and being tracked, that governments will get this power by sheer default, and moreover they will do so without so much as even a whisper of dissent from the population.

One only has to look back to the 1930s to see what damage public indifference and unquestioning acquiescence to soporific government propaganda caused the world--try 50 million or more dead for starters. As with the frog in increasingly warming water, our continued and uncritical acceptance of each and every creeping advance in this technology will end up by enslaving us much more than it frees.

Personally, I find it difficult to understand why most users are so blind to the so very obvious. Perhaps, this is the definition of addiction from another perspective--or even its raison d'?tre.

_____

Re SMS:

Oh, BTW, did you know that the average user pays more to send an SMS text message character across town than it does for NASA to send the same character to and from the far reaches of the outer solar system?

Telcos couldn't believe their luck when they 'sold off' the SMS--the Short Messaging Service--and turned it into a remarkable cash cow. Not even the Telcos' most forward thinking marketing gurus predicted people could be so gullible and stupid to pay so much for so little.

SMS was originally designed as a maintenance aid to help Telcos' in-field service techies communicate technical info etc. (that's why there's a severe limitation on the amount of text that can be sent--but for its originally intended purpose this was plenty). Thus, SMS is a lean an mean service with tiny overheads with little if any effect on voice channels and it costs the Telcos almost nothing to run.

Probably no other technology in history has earned so much money for so little expended effort. On principle, even if someone else paid for it, I wouldn't use SMS. Extortion should not be rewarded.

I feel sorry for the gullible and those addicted to SMS for not having collectively forced the Telcos to include SMS/texting as an integral part of the main service (i.e.: that it be both free and have no limitation on the number of messages sent--no overhead for Telcos should translate into no cost for users/consumers).; Posted by: Irritated_User Posted on: 06/29/09 You are currently: a Guest | Members login | Terms of Use