SMS Co-Inventor Matti Makkonen Dead At 63 31
An anonymous reader writes: The BBC News reports that Matti Makkonen, a 'grand old man of mobile industry' who helped launch the worldwide sensation of texting, has died at the age of 63 after an illness. Although planning to retire later in 2015 from the board of Finnet Telecoms, Makkonen constantly remained fascinated with communications technologies, from the Nokia 2010 mobile phone to 3G connections. He lived just enough to witness the last remnants of former Finnish mobile industry giant Nokia disappear, as Redmond announced its intent last month to convert all Nokia stores into Microsoft-branded Authorized Reseller and Service Centers, offering Xbox game consoles alongside the Nokia-derived Lumia range of smartphones.
His obituary (Score:4, Funny)
Was 160 characters.
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See http://bbc.in/1LA1Zn2 [bbc.in] for details.
Probably texted for a doctor... (Score:2, Offtopic)
... but it didn't get there for 24 hours.
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Or never got through. I have lost many SMSes through the Internet with AIM and e-mails. :(
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Isn't SMS 160 characters? Where did you get 140?
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140? What is this 140 characters of which you speak?
SMS is 140 octets, either 160 characters (7 bit gsm.03.38 code) or 80 characters (utf-16).
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Many services (like Twitter) reserve 20 characters for user address
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Get off my lawn.
Twitter -- ack pfft.
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indeed, twitter is twats tweeting to twits
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I seem to remember in the late 90's or very early 2000's you could use SMS for free (I forget the carrier I used... one of those that eventually became part of Verizon). Nobody seemed to care about it...then the teenagers found it and suddenly it was $0.20 a message.
OMG - matti makkonen .fi sms pioneer dead (Score:1)
A more appopriate version of the BBC's article:
--------------- .fi sms pioneer dead!!!
OMG - matti makkonen
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WTF - mm just died @63! #txtpioneerdeath was father of sms & dvlped idea of txt msg with phones. @2012 msged BBC that txt would be here "4EVR".
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shoutout 2 Nokia for spreading sms w/Nokia 2010. thought txt good 4 language. was btw mng. director of Finnet ltd and "grand old man" & rly obsessed with tech.
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OMFG people!
And now his watch has ended. (Score:1)
The last remnants of Nokia? (Score:1)
"He lived just enough to witness the last remnants of former Finnish mobile industry giant Nokia disappear"
WTF, now this trolling takes place in the summary itself. Earlier we had to wait for comments for this piece of misinformation.
Nokia still has a strong network business (not to mention HERE maps and extensive patent portfolio) and some 57,000 employees, thank you.
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Moment of silence (Score:1)
We should all observe a period of 160 seconds of no texting at noon today.
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I was thinking of everyone should send each other 160 characters of spaces, texting silence
Nokia is not dead, their handset business is (Score:1)
Nokia hasn't disappeared. Nokia has gone to where it was before it came to mobile handset business: in telecom network business. Nokia - yes, company by that name - is doing quite well now where it has been strong all along. It is not consumer-sexy business, but every handset needs the network to be useful.
Reasonably large portion of Finnish ex-Nokians actually think part of the strategy Nokia executed ending in the sale of handset business to Microsoft was that they had recognized direction of things bette
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"It's sad that popular image makes Nokia only a failed handset company, and paints companies like Apple as great inventors of the market."
Actually Motorola built the first cellular phone but lets not let facts get in the way. And lets not pretend that Nokia made the decision to quit the handset business out of choice. They fucked up. Badly.
And for all the cries of "Well, Nokias doing nicely now thanks", which company out of Nokia and Apple currently has $178 BILLION of cash reserves in the bank? If Nokia ma
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It is called 'being an employee'. You trade in the ability to get rich for the relative safety of a steady paycheck.
Britain had 999 30 years before the US had 911. Your grandfather may have had something to do with 911, but he did not 'invent' it.