If you look at your phone, it'll tell you if you have messages waiting. dial voicemail with phone, and you get your messages. Option to delete and all that.
Text messages too! YAY
We're in 2088 we need our voicemail, and texting too, but voicemail espically.
We have e-mail, cell phones, pagers... why do we need all of them? Corporate way to make cash, thats why. :P
I'm only referring to SMS.
And a cell phone is 700c - honestly, how long does it take someone to make that?
NPCs carry veritable fortunes on them these days - I remember when I started it took me three weeks to make a clean 1k (clean meaning 'spending money' - I.E., not rent or lev fare).
So I reiterate - all you're asking for is a very easily available, redundant function that beats an IC obstacle.
Why not just ask the obstacle(brownouts) be removed instead?
As for the corps wanting to make money - I severely doubt mixers are their target demographic.
plus, I realize few americans auctially realize it because it's rarely used in this country, but text messaging has not only been available for many years on cell phones, which makes it standard on any one you buy these days, it's the backbone of wireless communication in asia and europe, drastically more people use it there. shouldn't we expect standard 1995 technology to also be standard in 2088?
honestly I mainly care about the voicemail, but see no valid reason why text messaging should not be there too.
I see plenty of game-balance reasons why SMS shouldn't be available on the in-game mobiles - the same reason the blackouts were put in.
If we're going to delve into pure IC logic, then mobiles should require you to sign up for a monthly plan, which means submitting to a credit check.
I wonder why people only invoke RL logic when it benefits them :P
EDIT: Furthermore, if on RED, ICly, scags are messing with the SIC transmitters, why wouldn't they also fuck with the mobile phone networks antennae? Hell, why wouldn't they be one and the same? Why waste your money building one set of antennae for one network and another set for another network, when you could build them all in one? Where are the mobile phone brownouts? Why do progias work in the sewers? That makes little sense at all.
(Edited by Murphy at 9:18 pm on Dec. 24, 2003)
as far as the monthly service goes yes, I was auctially suprized when I found out there wasn't one, realistically there would be a monthly charge for tower/antenna upkeep and whatnot. now as far as coverage is concerned that would depend on the area, and the number of customers. for example if you live in buttfuck middle of nowhere montana or something then your going to have problems regardless of your server, if you live in new york then your phone's going to work well regardless of where you are (ok, sewers excepted) but the more people that are using the phones the better the coverage is going to be, let me give another example korea, when I lived there for a year in the army my cell phone worked every single place I went (I mean fucken everywhere, basements, subways, every-fuckin-where. why? because there's millions and millions of people in a space the size of the state of indiana, so they can use far fewer towers to cover the space much more efficently.
point being if withmore was a city of 60 million your phone would work in very square foot of the fuckin city (except maybe the sewers) because with so many people in the city their target audience would be everyone.
one last thing: prepaid cellphones-- once again in the us not as popular as overseas, in fact most people from europe don't even realize that contracts exist for cellphones because everyone has prepaid, in america, because of the way the customer base was raised we live in the world of free phones, and contracts, prepaid phones are just starting to become as cheep as regular ones, but overseas...... prepaid is to contracts as contracts are to prepaid here, if they even have contracts.
So, if you can logically ignore the possibility of cell blackouts, you can also ignore the possibility of SIC blackouts.
in anycase, regardless of what I said about how the phones work, voicemail is much more important in my opinon (as nemisis said) espically because: just because you know someone's progia number doesn't mean you know their NLM address, or the place they live.
(most pc's hide the place they live from all but their closest friends)
I bet you've spent a lot more on your SIC bills than on your Progia, no?
'Nuff said.
but how to link it to random phones you buy from the market, or black market..... you could have an account for the number that is accessable by anyone I guess.... wouldn't want others to access your account, but maybe if you slotted the phone or someting.....
:shrugs
but how would you leave a message for someone unless the account was tied to a phone. Unless you could change the redirect number on the voice mail server account. So your phone is tied to the server so any calls coming to you that you do not answer, redirect to voicemail server.
change/lose phone, get new phone, call the voicemail company server and with your code change the redirect number.
Server is hackable. phone brown outs seem feasable to me cuz how many systems and electronics not to mention how many feet of steel and structure would interfere? And voice mail server could go down some.
Just some thoughts.
It's entirely too easy to be joe-anonymous over a progia right now.
And SMS actually started as a joke between two Nokia technicians.
gsm does kick fuckin ass...
(Edited by Jotun at 9:50 am on Dec. 29, 2003)
I propose that all progia's be given voicemail boxes but require an e-memory module to be inserted into the progia for it to function, and eventually you'll run out of space depending on the size.
These voicemails would automatically save in the current audio format, and be able to be played back.
Bonus feature: Holophones can be linked to a grid account where voicemails are transacribed via grid mail.
