Official Peeved Pets Thread

[Prime95]

I'm so tired of the "you must first dial a 1 before calling this number".

Why can't the frickin' phone company do this automatically? How hard can it be? I and most other Americans don't pay for "long distance" calls.

P.S. and when was the last time anyone "dial"ed a phone number?

[NBtarheel_33]

The interesting thing is that ten digits (area code + phone number) seems to suffice when calling from a mobile phone. Why the "1" still hangs on to landline calls is a mystery to me.

Just be thankful that you're not in Maine. A combination of their provincial, parochial attitudes along with the (nowadays) unusual situation of having one area code for the entire state leads to some interesting problems when you start spouting off a ten-digit phone number. My cell phone number - (240) XXX-XXXX - is often misdialed by Mainers as 240-XXXX. Unfortunately this local number belongs to a particular young woman who is not at all interested in hearing about foibles in the local telephone service, nor is she interested in taking my calls. Getting in touch with her was an interesting experience to say the least.

[Nick]

In the past, I have worked on several projects which had to bridge the gap between the old telephony world and the new ICT world. While they are drawing closer now, they used to have totally different technologies, concepts & cultures. Telephone exchanges don't do anything flashy, but they offer 99.999% availability, do not slow down under peak use, and are more secure than corresponding systems in the ICT world.

On the Internet, the problem of scarcity of IPv4 addresses is only just beginning.
When this starts to cause serious problems (because too few companies support IPv6)
we may end up wishing that the switch to IPv6 was as simple as adding a national or international prefix!

[Chuck]

Originally Posted by Prime95

I'm so tired of the "you must first dial a 1 before calling this number".

Why can't the frickin' phone company do this automatically? How hard can it be? I and most other Americans don't pay for "long distance" calls.

P.S. and when was the last time anyone "dial"ed a phone number?

I still have an old dial phone in the garage — though I only use it to answer calls.

[Prime95]

I have more pet peeves:

Signs along Florida roads: "Reduced Speed Ahead"

It should be "Reduced Speed Limit Ahead" or "Reduce Speed Ahead"

[R.D. Silverman]

Originally Posted by Prime95

I have more pet peeves:

Signs along Florida roads: "Reduced Speed Ahead"

It should be "Reduced Speed Limit Ahead" or "Reduce Speed Ahead"

My pet peeve:

The overuse, in the English language, of the hackneyed phrase
"Take it to the next level"

[tha]

Originally Posted by Prime95

I'm so tired of the "you must first dial a 1 before calling this number".

I had to look up why one would have to do that. There is something useful to learn from this. In Europe, where there are 40+ interdependent nations with about that many languages (Have you ever seen a quick start guide in Europe? It is 80 pages, 2 pages for each language.) they often design a coherent system that works across the continent. In the US they end up with a number of independent competing standards that won't interoperate or only at great costs.
I attribute it to the people in Europe having to consider working across cultures, governments and languages up front. In the US the line of thinking seems to be creating competing standards to create competition first and consider interoperability only as an afterthought.

[Nick]

That is precisely what happened with mobile (cell) phones: initially, the US regarded the technical details as an area for competition instead of standardization, while Europe went for GSM, allowing handsets to become commodity items straight away.

On the road signs: it is always funny how everything is spelled out in words in the US,
if you are from Europe and therefore used to pictures.

[BudgieJane]

Originally Posted by R.D. Silverman

My pet peeve:

The overuse, in the English language, of the hackneyed phrase
"Take it to the next level"

In the Australian soap-opera "Neighbours", when two teenagers say they are going to "take it to the next level" it means they are going to find somewhere to engage in sexual relations.

[xilman]

I have many peeves. One of them is the propensity of people to publicise their pet peeves.

[Mini-Geek]

Originally Posted by Nick

On the road signs: it is always funny how everything is spelled out in words in the US,
if you are from Europe and therefore used to pictures.

As an American, I have no idea what that picture means.