From: Ann Barcomb Date: 08:20 on 25 Feb 2004 Subject: My cellphone's SMS software Lately I started sending SMSs again, and after several messages which failed to send, a distant part of my memory was revived and I remembered similar problems I had a few years ago. Specifically, any message which contains an unclosed right paran will fail to send. So 'hey there :)' gives the unhelpful error 'Message failed in sending'. Not only does the error message suck, the only explanations I can come up with for why it might fail are, frankly, rather scary. - Ann
From: Arthur Bergman Date: 10:15 on 25 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software On 25 Feb 2004, at 08:20, Ann Barcomb wrote: > Lately I started sending SMSs again, and after several messages > which failed to send, a distant part of my memory was revived and > I remembered similar problems I had a few years ago. > > Specifically, any message which contains an unclosed right paran > will fail to send. So 'hey there :)' gives the unhelpful error > 'Message failed in sending'. > > Not only does the error message suck, the only explanations I > can come up with for why it might fail are, frankly, rather > scary. > > - Ann > Cell phone software seems to be extremely flakey and scary, we just had to reorder the order of Cookies and Content-Length in our response header to get the J2ME app to pick up the Content-Length. Here too, the only explanations I can come up with are rather scary and makes my blood boil. Arthur
From: Matt McLeod Date: 02:02 on 26 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software Arthur Bergman wrote: > On 25 Feb 2004, at 08:20, Ann Barcomb wrote: > >Specifically, any message which contains an unclosed right paran > >will fail to send. So 'hey there :)' gives the unhelpful error > >'Message failed in sending'. [...] > Cell phone software seems to be extremely flakey and scary, we just had > to reorder the order of Cookies and Content-Length in our response > header to get the J2ME app to pick up the Content-Length. Here too, the > only explanations I can come up with are rather scary and makes my > blood boil. Work for one of the companies concerned for a while and you'll come to see this sort of thing as being mere endearing quirks. Where you ought to get really scared is when the same people start writing e-commerce applications.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 10:42 on 26 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software I also found out that I can't write 'snow--' as I tried to do today when stuck on a non-moving train. '*sigh*' also fails. This thing needs a bloody programming manual to write syntax-safe text. - Ann
From: Earle Martin Date: 10:54 on 26 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 02:42:22AM -0800, Ann Barcomb wrote: > This thing needs a bloody programming manual to write syntax-safe > text. Funny - my phone lets me write whatever I want. Then again, it's old enough not to even have the prescriptive (oh, I'm sorry, "predictive") text "feature".
From: Paul Mc Auley Date: 11:17 on 26 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 10:54:09AM +0000, Earle Martin wrote: | On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 02:42:22AM -0800, Ann Barcomb wrote: | > This thing needs a bloody programming manual to write syntax-safe | > text. | Funny - my phone lets me write whatever I want. Then again, it's old enough | not to even have the prescriptive (oh, I'm sorry, "predictive") text | "feature". If only you could turn the feature off. . . Oh Wait! You Can! Or at least with the one I have, you can. Paul
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 11:18 on 26 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software On Thu, 26 Feb 2004, Paul Mc Auley wrote: > On Thu, Feb 26, 2004 at 10:54:09AM +0000, Earle Martin wrote: > | Funny - my phone lets me write whatever I want. Then again, it's old enough > | not to even have the prescriptive (oh, I'm sorry, "predictive") text > | "feature". > > If only you could turn the feature off. . . Oh Wait! You Can! > Or at least with the one I have, you can. Mine has that feature, which I have turned off. However, whenever I leave the country, I find it turned on again when I re-enter. The phone also doesn't ring at my end sometimes, although the person calling me hears the full set of rings before being redirected to voicemail. Unfortunately, I like new phones even less. They all seem to be geared at people 15 years younger (flashy, with features I don't want like a camera), or executives (business-like, with features I don't want like a PDA).
From: Jazzy Koala Date: 15:13 on 26 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software > Funny - my phone lets me write whatever I want. Then again, it's old enough > not to even have the prescriptive (oh, I'm sorry, "predictive") text Mine is OK too, it's 4 years old and I don't wish to renew it yet, as those new shining models don't live on one charge for 10 days and mine does... Admittedly most consumer electronics is worse nowadays than in 80s or 90s (a good reason for hate! :) in terms of quality, apparently to make us buy new stuff more often. There's an old sci-fi story (probably written by a prophet) telling about clothes which self-annihilate after 1 day of use, so on every street there're booths where a person seeing he's becoming naked can buy new clothes ;)
From: Jazzy Koala Date: 15:02 on 26 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software > This thing needs a bloody programming manual to write syntax-safe > text. Recalling recent discussions of Perl, I venture to assume cellphones' software is written in ugly Perl ;)
From: Ann Barcomb
Date: 15:14 on 26 Feb 2004
Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software
> > This thing needs a bloody programming manual to write syntax-safe
> > text.
> Recalling recent discussions of Perl, I venture to assume cellphones'
> software is written in ugly Perl ;)
If it were written in Perl, I could do something with it (I like Perl).
But there aren't even any {} characters. I'm having a really hard time
saying things with these limitations.
From: Yoz Grahame
Date: 15:13 on 26 Feb 2004
Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software
Ann Barcomb wrote:
>>>This thing needs a bloody programming manual to write syntax-safe
>>>text.
>>
>>Recalling recent discussions of Perl, I venture to assume cellphones'
>>software is written in ugly Perl ;)
>
>
> If it were written in Perl, I could do something with it (I like Perl).
> But there aren't even any {} characters. I'm having a really hard time
> saying things with these limitations.
Thus, the perfect response to those who deny Perl's modelling on natural
language - it appears that the evolution of natural language is
attempting to meet Perl halfway.
-- Yoz
From: peter (Peter da Silva) Date: 13:33 on 25 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software > Not only does the error message suck, the only explanations I > can come up with for why it might fail are, frankly, rather > scary. This could bring phreaking back into fashion! I 0wnz0r yuor n0k1a!
From: David Champion Date: 16:59 on 25 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software * On 2004.02.25, in <20040225001619.W26048@xxxxx.xxxxxxx.xxx>, * "Ann Barcomb" <ann@xxxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > > Specifically, any message which contains an unclosed right paran > will fail to send. So 'hey there :)' gives the unhelpful error > 'Message failed in sending'. > > Not only does the error message suck, the only explanations I > can come up with for why it might fail are, frankly, rather > scary. My Nokia does direct SMS and regular mail via a gateway. Trouble is, it has no real sense of what mail should look like. I haven't prodded all its angles, so I'm not confident of details, but it appears at first glance that the first matching parenthetical pair in your SMS message to the SMTP gateway encloses the message's subject. The rest is body. An unmatched parenthesis, in the absence of another matching pair, might confuse the poor handler software into dropping it as a malformed mail message. Cell phone software is truly abominable. It's worse than elevator software, and that's pretty harsh criticism. I'll save that bottle of bile for another day, but feel free to leap upon the opening. I know you hate elevators.
From: Ann Barcomb Date: 17:09 on 25 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software On Wed, 25 Feb 2004, David Champion wrote: > Cell phone software is truly abominable. It's worse than elevator > software, and that's pretty harsh criticism. I'll save that bottle of > bile for another day, but feel free to leap upon the opening. I know you > hate elevators. Generally, when I think of elevators and hate, the word 'music' is in there, not 'software'. - Ann
From: Gavin Estey Date: 17:19 on 25 Feb 2004 Subject: Re: My cellphone's SMS software On Wednesday, February 25, 2004 11:59 AM, David Champion <dgc@xxxxxxxx.xxx> wrote: > Cell phone software is truly abominable. It's worse than elevator > software, and that's pretty harsh criticism. I'll save that bottle of > bile for another day, but feel free to leap upon the opening. I know > you hate elevators. I quite like elevators, though I'm sure my opinion would be different if one crashed with me in it :) Gavin.
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