I can think of a few things I could spend $7.7 million on that would be less annoying and potentially misanthropic as Push Ringers. The idea isn’t new — some folks call them Ring Backs. When I call you, it plays the song I’ve picked. This is the worst thing ever.
Sure, people like me would use it for good. I hope you like “Don’t Stop Believin’” by Journey. But I know that someone I know would pick that “My Humps” song, forcing me to keep my ringer on mute. There is no excuse for this type of behavior, friends.
Emotive Communications has gotten a large investment to perfect the service, if that’s what you want to call it. It should work on all 3G, 4G, and VoiP phones, if the applicable providers choose to use the service, which we hope they do not. That means everyone, not just early adopting teens, can get in on the action.
To the American cellphone and VoIP carriers: Listen to me. I am an expert. Do not allow this to fall into the wrong hands, for the love of all that is American and Holy and Sacred. That is all.
Emotive announces “Push Ringer” [Mobile Tech News]
I have to agree. I can’t imagine some of the songs that could possibly be picked. Maybe one could have the option of accepting each ring tone before it began playing?
It’s not just music that could ring on your phone. But any recorded message:
- Hello Phil, that’s Anna, don’t hang up, I’m 10 minutes late.
- Hello buddy, buy some viagra at my website spammer.com
- Driing, drink coca-cola !
- , vote for good ole John Doe, not this f*** bastard X
- Associated with some geo-positioning : “please enter in our shop just near you…”
And there’s nothing, but switching off the ring on your phone, to prevent you from hearing those annoying messages.
When I first started engineering as an undergrad, around 1993, when internet distractions were scarce and we still had to Gopher for porn, our greatest delight in late night computer lab (Unix clusters) practical jokes was to rlogin to someone else’s machine and start playing the ever-popular “meg-ryan-orgasm.wav” from When Harry Met Sally on the victim’s workstation. They couldn’t kill the process since they didn’t own it, even though it was a bad idea to give remote interlopers like us the ability to control their hardware (something that disappeared a year or so later on the next upgrade). The really creative types would mix in a little “goats.wav” to make it extra kinky.
Yeah, it’s starting all over again, isn’t it? “Oh man, let me outta these pants, it stinks in here!”
@ Shelbinator: Yah, that’s great! I used to do IT in a retail environment that was run on AIX. We figured out that the receipt printers weren’t owned by the workstations they were attached to, but rad under the admin. Once we got the admin password (which was not well-gaurded), we simply TTY-ed to a printer as it was printing, and whatever we’d type would end up as a message at the bottom of the receipt.
“You REALLY should have considered the extended warranty with that Dave’s Computers brand hard drive, dude.”
“Nice flip-flops, lady. The beach is 20 miles away.”
“Does your wife know you’re buying a 3rd DVD player?”