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From 1990 to 1995 I was teaching computer communication at a tech. college. When I started on signaling systems, I thought it would be a good idea to begin with something very familiar: The tick-tick-tick breaks when you use a traditional phone with a rotary dial.
Familiar?? I was met with a blank stare. They were two classes, each of 25-30 students. In the first class, one - 1 - of the students told that he had actually used such a phone at some occasion, long ago. In the other class, one student knew that her old aunt owned a rotary dial phone, but she had never used it. Another student had seen one. A share of the remaining 50 or so students could recall having seen that kind of phones in old movies.
Note that this was 30 years ago. Today, I guess kids will give you a similar blank stare if you refer to a telephone cable, handset or plug.
In the early 1990s, cellphones had not yet had any breakthrough, so the 1992-3 college students were familiar with landline phones of the pushbutton DTMF type, but not the rotary dials. I wonder how they would have reacted to the phone of my childhood: Rather than a dial, you had a handle to crank the generator producing power to sound a bell at your local switch, where an operator would answer and you told him/her who you wanted to talk to. That lasted to the early 70s in my home town, the early 80s in more remote parts of the country.
Last Saturday night, on New Year's eve, we terminated the very last landline phone. We were the very first country to make the transition from analog to a 100% digital phone network; I guess we are also the first to close down a cabled phone network. (We were also the first to shut off all national FM broadcasting, replacing it with digital DAB radio; that was almost six years ago.) If you insist on having a cable, you can do IP telephony over your internet connection, but that is just one way of using the internet, it cannot be described as a 'telephone network'.
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Kids today would have never heard of Trunk Calls. Even for calling between cities a 100 km apart, we had to book a trunk call with the operator, and wait for him to get the line, and then speak. (Am speaking from the Indian context).
Just looking at the reach of today's Internet technology is amazing, something like magic, unimaginable compared to a generation ago.
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In Norway, automatic long distance dialing became available in a few central areas from 1954, but in remote parts of the country not until the mid 1980s: While in some parts of the country, the analog (although dialed) system was replaced with a fully digitized ISDN network, other parts were still in the age of operator-assisted setup. I find that somewhat strange to think of!
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I grew up using rotary phones. At the heritage railway where I volunteer, we still use them for internal network calls. As a Lead Porter I am one of the trainers of new porters. Often the "newbies" are in their 60s or 70s so know how to use the phones, but I had occasion last year to have a training session with a 17 year old. He was familiar with the numbering system and knew where to find the phone lists and how to communicate emergency info etc. When I asked him to demonstrate his knowledge by calling the signalbox, he looked around the room (including looking straight at the telephone) and after a while said "I give up - where's the phone?". He caught on pretty quick when I explained it all to him (it's not hard, after all!) I've advised the head trainer that we ought to include a practical session on a rotary phone for all staff under about 60 
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I liked the "I hate verbs in English".
// TODO: Insert something here Top ten reasons why I'm lazy
1.
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Do you like English spelling as well?
If you don't know it already, enjoy English is tough stuff[^] - meant to be read out aloud, preferably without any preparation 
(If this link doesn't work, just google the title - you'll find it hundreds of places on the internet.)
The "poem" (which has the title "The Chaos", but is far more referred to as 'English is tough stuff') was authored by a Dutch writer, Gerard Nolst Trenité, in the 1920s. Various versions were published at various times, so an single, exact publication date cannot be given.
Lots of web sites claim that it was written by non-native-English-speaking NATO personnel in frustration over having to communicate in a language they didn't fully master. That is not correct - the poem was published long before NATO was formed.
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I don't recall seeing this "poem", but it is quite funny and informative.
English is my native tongue, so after taking Spanish and German courses I had to compare.
According to our professors, Spanish was the easiest (very phonetic) followed by Italian (also phonetic). They said these two also had the fewest rule exceptions. Also easy to speak and read. Would be interested in others opinions about languages. They said one of the most difficult was Hungarian.
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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I guess we all grew up learning our mother tongue and it spelling as obvious, direct and natural, with only a small number of quirks and irregularities, which we learned to handle, forgetting that they are irregularities.
One way to discover the irregularities of your own language is to try to teach it to an immigrant. The brighter and more interrogative you pupil is, the more you will discover of quirks in your own language, going from pronunciation rules, through word ordering, through spelling rules, punctuation rules and whathaveyou. It is a mess!
I've had a hobby project for a couple of years: After hearing a couple really bad, misplaced mis-pronunciations by synthetic speech systems, I started collecting words spelled the same way, but may be pronounced two or three different ways, with different meanings. I thought I would find a couple dozens of such words. Today, I have a few hundred of them, and the collection is still growing.
To give an illustration in English: As a young teenager, I was not much into English music terminology. So when I read on an LP cover that this one guy was playing the lead guitar, I laughed, pointing it out to my friends: The heavy bass guitar referred to as a lead guitar, just like a steel guitar ... My friends laughed, thinking that I made a great joke. I didn't discover until later that lead and lead are quite different terms, but I never revealed to my friends that the joke was not what I thought it to be, even though I was the one telling it
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I agree with all you say. You learn a language over time even your own native language.
My Aunt in MN would speak Norwegian on occasion, but it sounded very strange to a teen from TX.
Funny about the guitars. Makes sense. steel, lead guitar Heavy metal sound.
The past tense of lead is led. Ironic.
English can be a "bear", "bare".
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
modified 4-Jan-23 22:11pm.
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Most of them are better than some of the phone number fields I've seen.
CI/CD = Continuous Impediment/Continuous Despair
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A former coworker showed me one application that he uses nowadays: It has a phone number entry field with spin buttons. This was definitely a "serious" application, not meant as a joke or parody.
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I think you should have to solve wordles to put in your phone number.
To err is human. Fortune favors the monsters.
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Ain't even gonna lie... that rotary dial control is pretty awesome. 
Jeremy Falcon
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Wordle 564 5/6
⬛🟨🟨⬛🟨
⬛🟩🟨🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Nearly ran out of lines before running out of options ... again!
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Wordle 564 6/6
🟨⬜⬜🟩⬜
⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
⬜🟩⬜🟩🟩
⬜🟩🟨🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Just managed.
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Wordle 564 5/6
⬛🟨🟨⬛🟨
⬛⬛🟨🟨🟩
🟨⬛⬛🟩🟩
⬛🟩🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 564 4/6
🟨⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜⬜🟨⬜⬜
⬜⬜🟨⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Wordle 564 3/6
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟨🟨⬜⬜
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 564 3/6
🟨🟨⬜⬜🟨
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
🟨🟩🟨🟨🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
Life should not be a journey to the grave with the intention of arriving safely in a pretty and well-preserved body, but rather to skid in broadside in a cloud of smoke, thoroughly used up, totally worn out, and loudly proclaiming “Wow! What a Ride!" - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Wordle 564 5/6
🟨⬜⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟨⬜🟨
🟨🟩⬜⬜⬜
⬜🟩🟩⬜🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 564 X/6
🟨🟨⬛⬛🟨
🟩🟨🟨🟨⬛
🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬛🟩🟩
YUCK! Too many choices!
Get me coffee and no one gets hurt!
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Wordle 564 X/6*
⬜⬜🟨🟨⬜
⬜🟨🟨⬜🟨
⬜🟨⬜🟨🟨
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
🟩🟩⬜🟩🟩
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Wordle 564 4/6
⬜⬜⬜⬜🟨
⬜🟨⬜🟩🟩
⬜⬜🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
"A little time, a little trouble, your better day"
Badfinger
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