Once upon a time in the late 1980s, I was 72623,1675 on CompuServe [1]. You could only email other CompuServe members. Then, years later, for an additional charge per message, you could send Internet email, but AOL subscribers were still stuck in a separate universe as were Prodigy members,MCIMail subscribers, and so on. It was only later that Internet compatible email became an expected standard.

[1] DEC geeks will recognize these large octal numbers as a PPN for the original underlying H&R Block PDP10 system showing through.

It is astonishing that anyone with a clue about technology ever bought one of those telescreens, isn't it? Some of us have lived our entire lives without a spy in our pocket.

Those are not "telephones" -- those are computers. It is our responsibility as computer- and tech-savvy folks to avoid using computers we do not control, and to help everyone avoid using computers they do not control. Your money and your time are powerful. Do not give Microsoft, Apple, Google, or Amazon (MAGA) your brain-space or your hard-earned dollars. Stop hurting yourself, the tech community, and the world, by giving those clowns your money. Help other folks to do to the same.

How many informations can you provide? And how many musics? I will require at least two softwares and three hardwares as well.

One with real buttons, just enough screen to display a telephone number, and a real mouthpiece and earpiece.

You know, to work as a telephone. That is all I want or need. I am perfectly happy with my (I think) "2-G" flip-phone right now but I guess that goes pfft in a month or two.

No camera. No web browser. No stupid touch-screen. (I worked on touch screens from 1984 to 1990 and they were a horrible idea for most purposes then and still are.) Instead a battery life in months, since it's almost always turned off anyway.

Looks like I'll just go back to not having one, like for the first thirty years of my life. =shrug=

I thought Tcl was about as obsolete as a language as MUMPS or FOCAL.

Commercialism wins: childrens' parents now have to pay to watch the Peanuts specials. No Christmas for Charlie Brown. What would Charles Schulz say?

Mechanical typewriters do not contain a processor; how could they possibly get a computer virus? Or does this affect word processors...

Is there one with a real keyboard, and no idiotic fragile touch-screen? Western Electric made telephones that you worried about breaking what you dropped it *onto* and this candy-bar phone is nearly equally durable.

I'm on my second mobile phone since 1996. The first Nokia I quit only after analog service went away. The second candy-bar phone still works great, although since apparently it is "2G" that will turn into a pumpkin when T-Mobile shuts that around December. Guess I will ditch mobile service entirely then, as I do not want a spy-computer that cannot be controlled (the candybar is an embedded system with no Internet or data access at all), have no need of any "apps" or anything but a real keypad and voice calls. Can't say as I blame T-Mobile for not wanting me as a customer, as I have been drawing down my $100 prepaid balance for years now, ten or twenty cents (1 or 2 minutes average) a month since 2004. Fun while it lasted! Back to ham radio. --- kc4kon

RETURN moves to the next line, a purely local function. ENTER submits the page to the mainframe, like a Submit button on an HTML page.

Surely we thought we were rid of VCR Plus+ for good?

I do not own a so-called "smart" so-called "telephone," and have less than zero interest in having one. My 90-year-old mother likewise. Are we now un-persons?

"What do the smudged blobs mean? Please re-send your message using plain text."

Let Amtrak take over all the airlines. Then Dallas will have three airplanes a week, and Phoenix, Las Vegas, and Columbus Ohio won't have any planes at all. Yay socialism!