6 ms·
Only slightly more insane than keeping the handy 4x4 format, but extending it from base 10 numbers to base 16, which I would really love to see :D
by Slartie 6y ago
Only slightly more insane than keeping the handy 4x4 format, but extending it from base 10 numbers to base 16, which I would really love to see :D
- Swenrekcah 6y agoThis is genius. Make this happen fintech.
- dqv 6y agoThey would need to EOL over-the-phone payments to do this. People have horrible diction and it's hard to tell the difference between b, c, d, and e when a particularly lazy lipped person says these letters (in addition to non-hex letters like g, p, t, and v). Then they use their own ambiguous phonetic system (b as in ball, c as in call, d as in doll will confuse anyone trying to distinguish between the three). Oh and this compounds on ambiguous sounding digits like 13 and 30; 14 and 40; 15, 16, 50 and 60; 17 and 70; 18 and 80; 19 and 90). It can't be done with DTMF digits anymore either. All in all not a bad direction to go in. I wouldn't really miss phone payments.
- labster 6y agoWhy don’t we teach schoolchildren the NATO phonetic alphabet? Seems like it wouldn’t take that long, and it would be a useful skill for their whole life.
- dqv 6y agoWe should. There are so many adults who think it's cute to make up their own phonetics not realizing the whole purpose is to reduce ambiguity, not make it fun to spell things aloud.
- jessriedel 6y agoAs an adult who tries to remember the NATO phonetic alphabet but can't because I only use it once per month, I don't make up words "for fun" or "to be cute". I do it because I can't remember the NATO word. Compared to just saying the letters, the words I choose certainly do reduce ambiguity, even if using the NATO alphabet would go even further.
- dqv 6y agoThis is mostly fine if only done for ambiguous letters and if the understanding is that it is done to reduce ambiguity. There is a contingent of people who painstakingly spell out every letter with a phonetic from their own system and it requires the listener to do a lot more decoding to the point of actually increasing ambiguity. "My name is Michelle that's M/N as in Nail/Mail! I as in Icecream! ..." Nichelle is confused about why we use words to spell out certain letters.
- Trav5 6y agoSame, but once every 2 years. Just email me for goodness sake!
- Narishma 6y agoThen you'll have to spell your email address using NATO phonetic alphabet.
- PowerBar 6y agoSome good advice I got from a HAM was to read license plates in your head using the NATO alphabet. Their letters are mostly random so you tend to see each letter at roughly the same frequency and it can be done daily without taking away time from your schedule. Being random also prevents you from just remembering the order of the words and actually associating them with their respective letters. After doing that for a week or two (I was bike commuting at the time), I had it pretty much memorized.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- jerzyt 6y agoDennis Praeger likes to spell his name as: P as pneumatic...
- xlii 6y agoIn English speaking countries, sure - why not. But it'd take at least 3 generation to use in non-english speaking country since in different languages same letters might be pronounced vastly different. Then you have immigrants and foreigners who might now know this alphabet so clerks would still be able to recognize ad-hoc and NATO alphabet. In the end, it would extend requirements while not providing universal benefit.
- emiliobumachar 6y agoBrazilian here. There is an equivalent alphabet in Portuguese, with different words for each letter, better adapted to the Portuguese language. It's ubiquitous in the Brazilian armed services. Phone service is always in a specific language, I don't see why the use of such alphabets would be harder in non-English-speaking countries than in English-speaking ones.
- xlii 6y agoNot every country even uses Latin alphabet. That’s for one. And you wrote “such alphabets” whereas OP specifically named NATO one. If each country would have their own implementation it would be even more effort consuming and wouldn’t solve anything beyond what we already have.
- emiliobumachar 6y ago"each country would have their own implementation" would not mean anyone has to serve all countries. Services only available in English today would only need to learn the NATO alphabet to remain fully available in English.
- anonymfus 6y agoDTMF is actually 16 digits: 1 2 3 A 4 5 6 B 7 8 9 C * 0 # D. While most keypads don't have A B C D buttons, * and # are pretty much everywhere, and easy to distinguish, so adopting base-12 would be relatively easy.
- dqv 6y agoShhhhhh no more credit cards by phone :)
- dkersten 6y agoI would be in favour of EOL that insecure mess known as phone payments.
- GoblinSlayer 6y agoMany systems here have over-the-phone robots that understand button presses, but yeah, I think they support only decimal digits.