Slashdot Mirror
Ma Bell is Back
brass1 writes Ma Bell is back. It seems that for the purposes of branding, SBC is changing its name to AT&T once the acquisition is complete. Meanwhile, a great force and a high pitched whining sound has been reported from Judge Greene's grave as he spins at nearly 10K RPM."
Could you please explain what's "Ma Bell" for us foreigners? Thanks.
Can we have Western Electric and Bell Labs back too?
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
I think that with the tremendous variety of communications options available today, they simply aren't as dangerous to the consumer as they once were. While companies can certainly get "too big" and I love to hate all the big guys, I think this will all be just fine... I don't need or subscribe to their service and I don't plan to.
And thank $Deity for that. Ma Bell did quite a bit of good, Bell Labs being a prime example, but the modern internet/www/etc wouldn't have been possible without the breakup. At least there's some competition, driving down prices and increasing usability, today.
Best Slashdot Co
We Don't Care, We Don't Have To.
Get Lily Tomlin on the line, she's got work to do.
Last week the police came to my home and demanded immediate entry (they said they didn't need a warrant for "a case like this") to search for anyone in need of help that may have called. Our telephones were completely out of order (no dial tone) at the time the police say the call came in, and I was sitting peacefully having my second cup of coffee for the morning. After I realized that the telephone company had somehow mis-connected my wife's telephone to the 911 emergency number while the telephones were out of order and repairmen were out working on the lines because of the recent thunderstorms, I had my telephone service discontinued and the wires physically removed from my home.
I suggest that if there is anyone who does not want the police to come to your door at their whim claiming to have received an emergency call and demanding to come in and do a warrantless search, that you also have your telephone lines disconnected. My wife and I now have an excellent cellular telephone plan now that's actually cheaper than what we were paying to SBC.
Ron Dotson
Glendale, CA, USA
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
I just recently met with some SBC reps last week who are trying to sell my employer a new phone system, and heard the AT&T name change from them. I asked of them now that SBC owns AT&T if they wished that AT&T had retained ownership of Unix, in light of certain events that have transpired over the years. Their answer was "Absolutely!"
So, the word MILF has been coined after Ma Bell disappeared, i'm kind of curious... what do you call a Ma who wants to screw you?
There are lives at stake here!
I'd hit it.
Ma Bell brought us the transistor. My guess is the fallout from that single invention drives about 30% of our economy. And let's not forget the development of Unix and C, and the discovery of pulsars. Sure, they were a huge slow bureaucracy, but the research arm changed our lives forever. I'll never forget you, Ma Bell. Unfortunately, the landline phone business is a dinosaur, and will never again support anything like Bell Labs. If you have a cable modem and a cell phone, landline phones are completely optional; there's no chance to reassembel the old Bell monopoly.
--- Often in error; never in doubt!
Here's some fantastic diagrams that describe the history of telecom. See pages 9 through 12 on this powerpoint slide from MIT. The AT&T breakup made things kind of complicated, the 1996 Telecom Act made them even more complicated, but has allowed everything to go back to a pre-breakup configuration.
So are all their customers now in for some ill communication?
It's about time somebody whipped it back into shape.
Seriously. There's a reason google's hiring up all the ex-Bell Labs types.
Sadly, though, changing your name to AT&T won't really bring back Ma Bell unless you're willing to dump the hojillions of dollars into R&D that they used to.
-c
The last time AT&T was on TV commercials, QA engineers could afford houses, people could retire at 50, and gas was $0.89. Having the word AT&T back on TV is going to remind a lot of people of better times.
It's about time they did something to improve their situation by going back to a name from the 80's. When you're a front end to an Indian outsourcing business whose only product is your name, changing your name has a big impact. Hopefully they'll still have enough money to buy the rasterline globe trademark back from Infosys.
Trailer parks? Does Eminem qualify as a Southern Bell?
Oh, that was bad.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
Bell Is Back (flash)
sulli
RTFJ.
Like IBM, and maybe soon Microsoft, the conditions which allowed the phone monopoly to exist no longer are present. A single company can't dominate the computer industry the way IBM did, nor the communications industry the way AT&T did.
How long before Microsoft lose its monopoly on desktop computing software?
sigs, as if you care.
"That blast came from the Death Star! That thing's operational!"
"It's a trap!"
Sounds like a great idea! We don't want Big Brother spying on us, so lets run out and get cell phones that will allow Big Brother to track where we are every second of the day since we will always have the phone with us. That will show those Big Brothers!!!
The previous comment is purposely vague and generalized, but all of the facts are completely true.
So...How did the event play out? Quick search for bodies followed by sincere apologies, or invasive search worthy of community outrage?
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
SBC/AT&T announced they were looking to acquire the SCO Group and Lucent Technologies. Judge Greene's rotting corpse is reported to have been purchased by the local electric company, who announced it would be used for electric power generation it was spinning so fast, for an undisclosed sum
My blog
No, our cellular telephone plan is NOT with Cingular! ;-)
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
They may be gone, but their tech lives on!
Just junk food for thought...
Alexander Graham Bell -> American Bell -> American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) + Western Electric -> Bell Laboratories (Bell Labs).
Bell Labs did everything first: telephones, lasers, telecommunications satellites, electronic and packet switching, UNIX, etc.
In 1949 Bell Labs was sued for antitrust. They settled in 1956 with the US DOJ. Part of the settlement is that Bell Laboratories couldn't use one monopoly (telephone) to gain others. In 1974 they got another antitrust suit which was to be split up in 1984.
Prior to 1984, there was one telephone company. The bell. Mother bell. Ma Bell. Whatever you like. It was so huge and spanned so many products and etc, that many people didn't know where one part began and another ended. They kept telephone and data circuit prices real high, so the DOJ's decision to make a bunch of little bells (baby bells) was to make it easier for others to compete and hopefully bring the prices down.
It didn't work.
After I realized that the telephone company had somehow mis-connected my wife's telephone to the 911 emergency number while the telephones were out of order and repairmen were out working on the lines because of the recent thunderstorms
Can you say accident?
Last week the police came to my home and demanded immediate entry (they said they didn't need a warrant for "a case like this") to search for anyone in need of help that may have called.
This would be a good thing. Warrants aren't required when there is reasonable cause. Having a 911 call placed from your line without an answer is reasonable cause.
You had a bad experience, no reason to think that there's some grand conspiracy to have the police check your house.
I had a situation where at college, a friend and I were sitting playing video games with our door open, when two cops came up, and one used the door for cover with his gun drawn and said something along the lines of don't worry, stay back... just plain "stay out of our way." Some other guy had talked to his girlfriend, she was scared he might kill himself, and that he might have a gun, and thus called the local cops where she was at, who called the local cops where we were at, who responded like they did.
I'd say the guy were pissed (he didn't have a gun, and wasn't going to kill himself; his girlfriend was just overreacting). Do I think there was some grand conspiracy for the cops to have come by my room with guns drawn? Hell know, coincidence and accident man. Nothing more, nothing less.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Looks like the stock market gets to modify Judge Greene's Modified Final Judgement again and again and again.
Well, at least the "new" stock ticker symbol should fit the SBC to a "T."
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
Child molester, when it makes the news.
Language students: Don't try to learn English here. This ain't it.
Ma Bell's daughter grew up, and she's no dammyankee. Bye bye New Jersey, hello Texas.
--
"Open source is good." - Steve Jobs
"Open source is evil." - Microsoft
Wow, five feed subscription buttons on that site (times two), none of them the orange XML button. Winer must be spinning in his grave...
It's not just Ma Bell. Consider the mergers in the oil industry and the shared refining / distribution systems, and you could make a good argument that Standard Oil is back too.
Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known. -- Carl Sagan
Who is SBC, for those of us Americans who don't know?
--LWM
No apologies were proffered by the police. The exact same thing happened to me back in January with the local fire department incidentally.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
Any decent SCSI-2 compliant judge corpse should spin at least 15K.
Weaselmancer
rediculous.
Western Electric made telephones you could drive nails with. Most of the phones you get today would break if you dropped them only once, phone cable dialectric craps out after a few months. Stuff that was built to hold up for decades will probably still be around when the cockroaches are all that's left roaming the earth.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Does anyone remember the scene in Terminator 2 when Arnie shoots the frozen T-1000 and it smashes to a million pieces, only to coalesque back into a big glob of liquid metal again?
For some reason that image came to mind when reading this article.....
I got nothin'
Lets hope the cops don't come back, because if they saw something during the search worth arresting you for you won't be able to phone home from jail now. The phones in every jail I've been in (thankfully only two, for minor misdemeanors...) do not call out to cell phones. The only folks you can call are good old landlines. This is the only reason I still have my account with Ma Bell, on the outside chance I need to make that dreaded "one phone call".
If anyone's mileage varies here please correct me and provide location of the detention facility.
FYI...
"I'm just here to regulate funkyness." - James Gandolfini, as Winston in The Mexican
It's sort of a bit like the opposite of the Big Bang really. You take a giant corporation, break it up into lots of little ones, and eventually it gravitationally collapses back into the original giant corporation (and gets broken up, rinse, lather repeat). I bet if they re-broke AT&T again tomorrow, in 20 years it will have re-formed, just like the Bad Terminator from Terminator 2.
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
I don't give a good god damn WHAT their reasons were or that it was an accident. I do NOT want the police entering my home without my permission.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
They're right--they do NOT need a warrant in such a case. What if, say, a wife called 911 after being beaten, locked her away, and the husband refused to allow a search when they got there? Warrants are only there to show that they have a "reasonable suspicion"--if they have it for some other reason, like the 911 call (or it being "in plain sight"--a category that is always problematic), they don't need a warrant. IANAL, but I did read up a bit on this at one time.
I'd attribute this to incompetance instead of malice in this case--after all, you mention them misconnecting the lines. If someone swapped a couple lines and your neighbor called 911, it could hose their system for determining who called.
Oh, and if they really had used this as a mere pretext, and uncovered evidence of you doing something illegal, the 4th Ammendment provides for the supression of the illegaly obtained evidence. So they cannot use it against you in a court of law if you prevail on that point--they don't even get to show it to the jury. It's so contemplated specifically to frustrate such efforts to perform illegal searches. But if you have to argue over that, you do want a good lawyer--4th Ammendment case law is incredibly complex.
Just months after opening, Pacbell Park in San Francisco was completely rebranded SBC Park. This was no small task because of the large number of brass fixtures, signs, etc.
Will we now be treated to AT+T park? Hooray. Maybe they should just change the name every year to give the local metal workers something to do out here.
I love it.
We were spun off from AT&T as AT&T Wireless.
AWS was bought by Cingular (joint-venture of SBC and Bell South).
AT&T gets set to start their own AT&T Wireless branded service again with Sprint.
SBC buys up Ma.
Now both Cingular and AT&T Wireless are owned by SBC...
My head a'splode.
At least there's some competition, driving down prices and increasing usability, today.
Thats humorous. Wish I had some mod points for ya!
Cop: *knock-kock*
Suspected Criminal: "Yes?"
Cop: "Um, yeah, we had a 911 call traced to this address, which allows us to enter without warrant. Move aside."
Sounds like trouble to me.
Does this mean that Captain Crunch is coming out of retirement soon?
Consider the other point of view. Consider what if this was a domestic dispute? What if someone called 911, but was forced to hang up at gun point. Do you want the police to blindly accept the word of anyone who answers the door. To search your house, the police have to have probable cause. And if they reasonably believe that a crime is occuring, they have probable cause to enter. I believe that receiving a 911 call, even if it is cut off, provides the police with reasonable suspicion that a crime is occuring. If this happened to me, I would be upset, but understanding.
SBC merged with two other baby Bells: Pacific Bell in 1997, and Ameritech in 1999.
I guess they'll have to rename SBC Park again. The stadium was finished only 5 years ago, and will be on it's third name if they decide to scrap the SBC Park name.
Exactly my point. They put up satellites with MTBF in the 50 year range, neighborhood switch enclosures that would stand up to a small truck, and a million windowless buildings that would survive The Bomb.
And the switching stuff Bell Labs did: whoa! Remember, Penzias and Wilson were working for Bell Labs, too.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
That is in fact exactly what they accused me of: murdering my wife and stashing her body under the bed after she had managed to dial 911 with her last dying breath or some sort of bullshit.
Do you have any concept of how demoralizing and insulting it is to be accused by the police of murdering my own wife? I was being treated as guilty until proven innocent instead of the way it's supposed to be. In fact, I invited the police to call my wife and talk with her at her job. They declined.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
These mergers in the telco industry are simply adjustmets to survive. With Muni-Wifi becoming more prevalent and VOIP cellphones coming out there is less and less need for land line telephones. Saying Ma Bell is back may be a little too strong with the amount of competition when it comes to telephone service. Its also starting to look like Internet service may be looking more like a 3 way competition with muni wifi coming to San Francisco, Anaheim, and Philly in the near future. We're actually getting more options as consumers and the telco are merging again as a result.
SBC in Ventura, California is amazingly unprepared to do business efficiently.
That has got to be the absolutely DUMBEST suggestion I have ever heard! Take a reliable, proven phone service, and replace it with a piece of shit cellphone? Dude, you are on crack . . . .
How often do you really think this happens? And unless you really ARE a criminal, what's the problem anyway?
OK, so the SF Giants no longer play in "Pacific Bell Park"... we JUST changed the name to "SBC Park" after the recent Pac Bell / SBC merger.
So, now it's probably going to be "AT&T Park ?!" This is ridiculous. I miss the days when our stadiums had names that didn't change. The 49ers have played in Candlestick, which was renamed "3COM," which has now been renamed "Monster" Park. And now the Giant's stadium is getting it's 3rd name as well. uhh. Time to change the freeway signs AGAIN.
And on a side note, is it possible for me to change my Slashdot nickname to "Pepsi Presents AquaOSX?"
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
And if there was an actual call to 911 for an emergency that you weren't aware of?
It's "unreasonable" search. Not "any search."
From "Crazy People":
You may think phone service stinks since deregulation, but don't mess with us, because we're all you've got. In fact, if we fold, you'll have no damn phones. AT&T - we're tired of taking your crap!
A great movie, if you haven't seen it.
Remember in Back to the Future II when old Marty got a call from Needles and a voice at the end of the call said "Thank you for using AT&T"? Well it looks like that movie accurately predicted the return of the company back in 1988!
That movie is like Nostradomus on flim!
"Warrants aren't required when there is reasonable cause."
Not so. Probable cause is what's required to get a warrant. See this link for more info on what specific situations void the need for a warrant:
http://www.outlawslegal.com/refer/search.htm
The officer who claimed they didn't need a warrant was either grossly mistaken or lying through his teeth. Either one is indicative of the gradual failure of rights protection in the US.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Now, once again, I will be forced to use them if I want a local phone line, since only SBC serves my location. It is inevitable that AT&T will infect SBC, and they will become the same old nightmare.
It would have just made my day if AT&T had died and gone away after SBC bought them.
I'm amazed you were able to get the phone line physically removed.
I had a house where the previous owners had had phone service ran to a garage apartment. I was remodelling and wanted it removed as its placement on the building was awkward and in my way.
The linemen were working in the alley behind my place and wouldn't remove it without a work order. Fair enough. I called and after almost an hour of being transferred around, I got someone to place a work order to remove the phone line.
Fortunately I was at home when they came as they started to remove my phone service at the house. Stopped them from doing that, but they wouldn't actually remove the service off the garage since the work order didn't specify that.
Tried to get them to come back out and never had any luck. So I pulled the box off of the garage, rolled up the attached cable as well as possible and left it at the base of the telephone pole.
That was three years ago. The phone box and cable are still at the base of the telephone pole.
"A REAL computer has ONE speed and the only powersaving it permits is when you pull the power leads out of the back!"
Bell labs did many great things, but pulsars were discovered by a different Bell. I think you mean Jocelyn Bell, while she was working at Cambridge (the British one), along with Antony Hewish. As always, wikipedia tells all. If you ever get the chance to see her talk, go along. She's very good at making you think about scarily big numbers!
"Meanwhile, a great force and a high pitched whining sound has been reported from Judge Greene's grave as he spins at nearly 10K RPM."
Or maybe Judge Greene realizes that the telecommunications business has changed dramatically in twenty years and that 'Ma Bell' would no longer have a monopoly, so he doesn't actually give a shit. But don't let that keep you from sensationalizing a story, slashdot!
Only on slashdot can a posting be rated "Score -1, Insightful".
It didn't work.
Really? Many people like to claim that the breakup of AT&T meant nothing. But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
I don't see any reason the the telephone monopoly would have ever gladly spawned the cellular telephone network. They might have developed it yes, but they would have had no impetus to provide good coverage and reasonable rates.
Any scenario I could imagine where AT&T was the only phone company providing cell service doesn't look good at all.
So we've got the RBOC's now. Same difference, except today's RBOC's are far wealthier telecomm monopolies than the old AT&T ever was, and we have an obsolete government agency called the FCC that we're trying to figure out what to do with.
I, for one, welcome BACK our OLD carrier overlords.
Ma Bell is back, and she is pissed!
The lesser of two evils is still evil...
Cingular put most of the ATTWS managers in charge of operations, so while most of national operations are based in Bothell, we have a couple people in Atlanta.
Well, last week the "Right Sizing of Wages" was announced. Seems we make more money than the people in Atlanta, so they are asking people to leave, retire, and new hires are coming in at a lower pay scale.
Thats not bad enough, most of our UMTS engineers have left the company, so we are now outsourcing to ericcson and cisco. We already lost about 30 people to T-Mobile and Boeing.
They are turning off wi-fi, turned the MAG/WAP gateway over to Infospace.
Outsourcing like crazy, selling off parts of the network for quick profits and jobs (Caribbean and Bermuda) to Digcel...
My favorite part is "Blue and Orange" networks. Reports for each network on availability where going over each week. The Orange (Cingular) network had so many outages that they told the mangers to combine the reports, so Cingulars older manager didnt look bad.
Now they want to call it the "Gold" network, but orange is a mess, parts of the network are wide open to customers, IP space used they dont even own, servers with default passwords (vendor/vendor)...
The reason ATTWS ran so well, it was ran like an ISP, with many network/systems admins from major ISP's. The RF side was old school and suffered, but the core was ahead of all other carriers. Looking at telephia reports showed ATTWS ranked higher than all other carriers.
Cingular is old school MA'BELL mentality, shit service, but people will be locked in.
Verizon isnt any different, union ran, and not enough people to run it.
Really a sad state for telcos in the US.
Prison phones are an abominable ripoff, any way you look at it. Anyway, you can ditch your landline, because many VoIP providers (including some who offer it for free) will supply a landline inbound number for you, which -is- reachable from the slammer.
I would say prices have gone down. In the 80's the price of long distance was over 10 cents a minute. Now, you can get plans that run about 2 cents a minute. I've even seen calling cards that give long distance for under a penny a minute. I do agree that the Bells owning the lines still impedes competition (I'd rather the local government own the infrastructure, the same way the government owns the roads), but I would say that the breakup of AT&T and the competition from Sprint, MCI, and other competitors has brought lower prices. Of course, if we had government owned lines, maybe we'd have free phone like we have mostly free roads, then again, maybe not.
I had my telephone service discontinued and the wires physically removed from my home.
I can understand cancelling service, but wires removed? You realize when you sell the house the price will reflect the cost to put the wires back.
What name did the company we now know as AT&T have all picked out for use after the divestiture? Judge Greene didn't let them choose it because he wanted to reserve the key word in it for use by the Baby Bells.
As it turns out, that word wasn't very popular and now none of the remaining Baby Bells uses it in their names.
I'll reply with the answer if nobody gets it.
Insert witty sig here.
Doesn't "it's" also infer posession? SBC is changing it's name - The name belongs to SBC, so it would be it's name. No?
Irony? Yea, it's like goldy and bronzy, only it's made of iron!
Bell Labs did everything first: telephones, lasers, telecommunications satellites, electronic and packet switching, UNIX, etc.
Um no, BBN did packet switching first by building the Interface Message Processor. AT&T said it could not be done.
--fatboy
[:)]
EOM
Bell is Back
Objects in the blog are closer then they ap
So much money was spent to declare an anti-trust/monopoly against the telco giant...now we're just letting it all fall right back into place.
Here's another great one for you, the remedy for the anti-trust/monopoly wasn't really a remedy. Each "baby bell" was still a monopoly in it's region. You don't have a choice what phone carrier to use if you're in SBC's region, same with Verizon, SWBell, whatever.
What NEEDED to be done is one company handles all the infrastructure. They wouldn't be allowed to do ANYTHING other than maintain the lines...that's it....nothing more....ever....period. With an oversight commitee or something to keep them from price gouging or taking advantage of that situation. Then they sell access to those lines to anyone who wanted it. You would then have your choice of phone carriers anywhere in the US as well as internet providers over DSL without having to STILL pay SBC/Verizon/whoever for use of their phone line, plus transport of the DSL.
I can't tell you how many people HATE SBC and refuse to do ANY business with them. But because you have to have an SBC line to get DSL if you're in SBC's region, you're just S.O.L. How is that NOT a monopoly? I mean really.
Anything that would have been found outside of someone calling 911, would be inadmissible in court. There isn't a judge in the nation that would let a cop get away with charging someone for narcotics or anything like that that were found during a search for the origin of a 911 call.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
He's still waiting for residential ISDN. Apparently the crypt is too far from the CO.
If you need to get a hold of him though, call Mary Baker Eddy and leave a message for him.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
I did until it stopped working during the Northeast Blackout while my landline (which I was only retaining for DSL) mysteriously still worked. Whatever faith I had in the cellular industry went out the window with the revelation that they can't even be bothered to provide backup power to their infrastructure. I haven't had a cell phone since.
Any scenario I could imagine where AT&T was the only phone company providing cell service doesn't look good at all.
Yeah, because the landline system that they built was so unreliable. But that's beside the point. Explain to me why the breakup of the Bell System would have been required to allow cell phones to flourish? Cell phones weren't even a blip on the screen when Ma Bell was raped by the Feds.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Dude, take off the tinfoil hat and grow up. It was an accident, nothing more than that. Did the cop even say the word "murder"? I doubt it.
I'd say you need to move... or stop having all those doughnuts on the kitchen table :)
-WS
An operating system should be like a light switch... simple, effective, easy to use, and designed for everyone.
In the 80's the price of long distance was over 10 cents a minute.
I remember paying around $0.25 per minute for Local Toll calls in the early 90s. It would have been cheaper for me to just drive to the person's house.
It seems that for the purposes of branding, SBC is changing it's name to AT&T once the acquisition is complete.
"It's" means "it is." You meant write "its." With the exception of "one's," possessive pronouns in English do not have apostrophes. Please return to third grade without passing Go.
"They're right--they do NOT need a warrant in such a case. What if, say, a wife called 911 after being beaten, locked her away, and the husband refused to allow a search when they got there? Warrants are only there to show that they have a "reasonable suspicion"--if they have it for some other reason, like the 911 call (or it being "in plain sight"--a category that is always problematic), they don't need a warrant. IANAL, but I did read up a bit on this at one time."
BS. Unless they are in hot pursuit, with a credible account and/or witnessing of a crime, they need to have a warrant. If they want to search his house on the premise that he may have killed his wife, they need to get a warrant. And warrants are not to show that they have "reasonable suspicion" -- in order to get a warrant, they need to demonstrate "probable cause," which has a higher burden. I think maybe the last time you read up on this was in high school civics class.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
I had a situation where at college, a friend and I were sitting playing video games with our door open, when two cops came up, and one used the door for cover with his gun drawn
Doors make particularly poor cover... (Bad cop, no donut.)
The problem with Big Telecom is that in general they don't seem to have a friggin' clue about customer service. They accept the status quo (crappy support, customers get bounced from dept to dept on the phone, arcane billing) and we all do to, because in many geographic regions there is still simply not enough choice. A market split between two of these lumbering giants isn't a truly competitive environment.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Last week the police came to my home and demanded immediate entry (they said they didn't need a warrant for "a case like this")
The police don't need a warrant to respond to what they believe is a 911 call. The emergency services are obligated to investigate ALL 911 calls. Normally the dispatcher will call you to assess the situation ("Sorry, my baby was playing with the phone"). However, in your case the lines were down-- the dispatcher probably tried to get in touch with you, but could not get through, and sent in the police will investigate.
This isn't big brother. It was the appropriate response. What else are they supposed to do? If this was a true emergency, they can't wait to receive a warrant or wait for the SBC techs to check on the situation. They respond first, ask questions later.
And you do realize that accidental emergency call may still happen with your Mobile Phone? I believe most false-911 calls are made from Mobile Phones.
If there was a true need for you to dial 911, the reponders will not know your exact address-- rather, they will know your general longitude & latitude and will need to search for you, which will slow down their response.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Where are you that you have mostly free roads? Where I live, we have to pay taxes and fees at multiple levels (Federal, State, County, City) based on income, value of home, value of motor vehicles, number of motor vehicles, and amount of fuel purhased in order to pay for the roads that I drive on.
Actually it's with the apostrophe is always the contraction of it and is. The posessive pronoun is always its without the apostrophe.
Agreed. It sort of helped things along the non-working path when essentially the baby bells were unable to compete with each other in each other's zones.
Sorta defeats the possiblity of real competition.
"Love is like pi - natural, irrational, and very important." (Lisa Hoffman)
That'd be the key point I think the police would raise if he were to attempt to sue the police for an illegal search.
The police would argue that they had sufficient reason to search the premises for a person who may be in distress; that by calling 911, that person has automatically consented to a search in order to find him; that the facility of the police to protect the public would be endangered by now being allowed to search a home that by all accounts had made an unresponsive 911 call; that any evidence for any crime other than that which was pertinant to the reason that a person called 911 and did not respond would not have been admissible anyways, so no warrant were necessary.
There's a million and one reasons that the police would have on their side for the argument, chief amoung them "public good" and unreasonable restriction on their duty to protect the public.
People don't call 911 just for the heck of it. More so, people don't call 911 and not say anything without extreme reasons. The police need to treat every unresponsive 911 call as if someone were GRAVELY and SERIOUSLY injured, ill or otherwise in serious jeopardy of death. Response to this immediately and without search warrants are absolutely vital to the protection of the public.
They didn't need a warrant because there was sufficient cause to believe that a crime was in direct commission, or that someone otherwise needed immediate medical attention.
I direct you to hypothetical situations: a) a person called 911, but is unable to talk, because they're being held hostage, and threatened with death. Police response should be immediate, and not require a warrant (there's a real crime going on in there, do they really need to wait for a warrant to make sure that this situation isn't occuring?) b) a person is accidentally poisoned, got to the phone, dialed 911, but is unable to speak, or other indicate what's wrong. again, police should respond immediately, and without a search warrant to make sure that everyone is all right at the premises.
You can argue that the person answering the door should have indicated otherwise, now make situation b, where a child got into something, couldn't scream or shout, but somehow managed to call the police. Police arrive, parents insist there was no 911 call, and send the cops off until they have a warrant.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
That's a negative on that, old bean.
...
its is the possessive pronoun.
it's is *always* it is (no exceptions).
Just like we don't say her's or his' (unless we are intentionally using wrong grammar)
Easy enough mistake to make... it's just one of the weird ways that English has developed... cheerio!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
BELL?
dom
Prior to 1984, there was one telephone company. The bell. Mother bell. Ma Bell. Whatever you like. It was so huge and spanned so many products and etc, that many people didn't know where one part began and another ended. They kept telephone and data circuit prices real high, so the DOJ's decision to make a bunch of little bells (baby bells) was to make it easier for others to compete and hopefully bring the prices down.
There were other telephone companies, my family happened to be customers of a "wonderful" company called Continental Telephone. The service provided by AT&T was so far ahead of Continental that it wasn't even funny. We had to change our phone number to get touch tone service because the switch we were on could only do dial phones (this was in 1977). We even had a party line when we first moved there in 1975.
James
The only reason the prices were so high was due to stupid regulation.
The local politicians in every county/city/state regulated what the price of local phone server was. As such, the price was always set at below the actualy cost. AT&T in order to stay solvent had to charge massively on the longdistance calls.
Fly me to the moon Let me sing among those stars Let me see what spring is like On jupiter and mars
The officer who claimed they didn't need a warrant was either grossly mistaken or lying through his teeth. Either one is indicative of the gradual failure of rights protection in the US.
Google "exigent circumstances".
HAND.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
Now Exxon/Esso has merged with Mobil.
Amoco was acquired by British Petroleum (bp)... that's outrageous! Didn't we fight the War of 1812 to prevent such a thing?!
Inaccurately phrased. He didn't use the door as cover, but the doorway, with was parallel to the direction of travel, thus the cover were not just a door (which I believe opened on the other side of where he was standing anyways) but the doorway, and walls.
Anyways, I likely should have said rather than cover, concealment. Doors make good concealment.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Everyone forgets several things about the bells in the struggle for survival. First, they were barred from providing a tremendous number of services. They couldn't do cross-lata long distance. They couldn't provide cable TV or other information services. After millions in legal fees they have slowly appealed (state-by-state and at the federal level) to allow them to compete in other markets and types of services. But while they fought those battles, their competitors were given rights to provide phone service at will and essentially invade their turf. Yet if Joe Redneck decides to stick his trailer 50 miles from nowhere who HAS to provide phone service for him? The baby bell does! When the government demands that a payphone be placed at some odd location who has to provide it? The baby bell does! So while their ad-hoc competitors only provided service in the most desirable locations, they were forced to provide service in locations that only lost them tons of money.
I'm all for competition but the playing field was so slanted the other way, the mergers and changes have been a matter of survival in the changing landscape. Let's face it, it's a different world. A world of wireless and cablemodems and things. I say let everyone in everywhere but just make it a fair playing field. If the bells want to merge, fine... but it's a different world. If it means competition for the cable companies... good! Bigger doesn't always mean worse.
The officer who claimed they didn't need a warrant was either grossly mistaken or lying through his teeth.
That's right, because when a burglar shoots you in your own house and you're bleeding to death, the police need to go talk to a judge and obtain a warrant before entering your house.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
Future business plans are to acquire BellSouth and Qwest and change the name to "The Phone Company®."
The comment about cell phone competition being a result of the Bell breakup is speculation, but it is somewhat logical.
What really bugs me, however, is your continued rambling across this thread about cellphone vs landline reliability. You want to know why POTS is backed up and cellphones aren't? It isn't because once there was a ubermonolith Bell. It is because of regulation and 911 service.
911 service and strong regulation forced Bell (and now the baby Bells) to provide service that works when the power goes out. These same regulations are *not* in place on cellphones. Why do you expect your phone companies to waste money putting in battery backups when they have no legal obligation? News flash: Companies like to save money. If it wasn't for the POTS government regulations, your phone would go out when the power does.
I suggest that if there is anyone who does not want the police to come to your door at their whim
But it wasn't a "whim", you told us why they came.
claiming to have received an emergency call
Are you asserting that they did not receive such a call? You even gave us a technical explanation of how it may have happened.
and demanding to come in and do a warrantless search
So, when someone calls 911, you expect the police to stop on the way and get a warrant?
that you also have your telephone lines disconnected.
If they are really out to get you, so you think it will matter that you don't have a working phone?
My wife and I now have an excellent cellular telephone plan now that's actually cheaper than what we were paying to SBC.
You could have left out the whole first part of you post, and just posted this.
Si vis pacem, para bellum
The only thing more annoying than a Libertarian is an (un|mis)informed Libertarian
At this risk of being utterly humorless, I've seen the term cougar used for that, but I can't cite a good definitive source. And the verb tadpole, after a move with that name.
Imagine a child has been kidnapped and held against her will. She manages to diall 911. The cops show up and the guy says. "No I didn't call. You can't come in."
How would that situation play out?
This reminds me of a quote from the movie Crazy People (The movie is about Truth in Advertising)
"You may think phone service stinks since deregulation, but don't mess with us, because we're all you've got. In fact, if we fold, you'll have no damn phones. AT&T - we're tired of taking your crap!"
They are opaque, however.
The name "Bell Labs" is still owned and used by Lucent. AT&T has "AT&T Labs".
I remember those "You will" commercials promising that AT&T was going to bring us all sorts of innovations that never happened. I'm going to hold this new SBC based AT&T to that.
A few years ago, I had my high-speed internet (and e-mail) through AT&T cable (when they bought TCI Cablevision), so I had an @attbi.com e-mail address.
Then they got swallowed up by comcast, and I got a @comcast.net e-mail address.
Then DSL was available cheaper (and faster) for me, so I switched to that - winding up with a @sbcglobal.net address.
At this rate, I wonder if I'll get my @attbi e-mail address back. ;)
I still use a StarTac they can only triangulate me when i make a call.. i keep having to fix the phone (replace the screen the wireing harnes) but it works.. funny thing is that if i disconnect it or switch services it is aginst the law for them to reactivate the phone because it doens't support "E911" which is where the phone can transmit it's location when you place a 911 call.. yea.. orginaly i was keeping the startac becuse i like it and i had all the damn stuff for it already.. but i think i will keep it for ever or atleast until the government makes it agisnt the law for them to take my money if i use it.
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Let's see what happens when "AT&T" merges with AOL and Time Warner and Sprint/Nextel and Comcast and Verizon...
I sure hope my cable bill wouldn't go up!
doesnt verizon have some of the baby bells too. I live in ny and i remember ny telephone becoming bell atlantic then becoming verizon .
So i dont think ma bell can comeback because of verizon. Feel free to corect me if i am wrong.
I would suggest some of Strong Bad's Rhythm 'n' Grammar. Highly educational.
Who needs to burn fossil fuels when our deceased counterparts revolve at these speeds.
Little Jimmy, Grandma is slowing down again. Tell me how Richard Nixon is your hero so we can get home.
I still giggle when I talk to an SBC service rep, and the discussion finally finishes with them saying:
"Thank you for choosing SBC!"
> The officer who claimed they didn't need a warrant was either grossly mistaken or lying
> through his teeth.
Not necessarily true. The rules as defined on the referenced website are those required for legal search and seizure. If they don't plan on seizing any evidence, they don't need to meet those requirements. Exigent circumstances do exist and are considered acceptable reasons for search, but not seizure.
As such, they can come in and look for a person in need of help, who may be in risk of life and limb. They cannot, while they are there, search for and seize evidence against you. (They may be able to do so if it is in plain sight, and related to the reaon they were called to the site, that is debatable.)
Therefore, they cannot claim a false 911 call and use it as an excuse to enter and search your home for proof of another crime, or even to gather probable cause to get a warrant for such a suspected crime. They can use it to look for a person in need of help, but anything else they see may wind up being excluded as evidence in a case against you. They cannot use it for a so-called "fishing expedition" either, any thusly collected evidence will be excluded at trial.
No reason to panic, none of your fourth amendment rights were broken. (They couldn't be unless you were tried for a crime.)
Delay is preferable to error. (Thomas Jefferson)
It is understandable that you would not want the police entering your home.
But step back a moment. Can the police tell by looking at you that all
you have said is true? For all they know, you are holding someone prisoner
inside your home, this prisoner called the police, and the reason for no answer was
that you found this and took the phone from them and prevented them from
speaking. So, how can the police determine this without entering and
verifying?
Lets posit the above as the situation, not you of course, but some homeowner
somewhere truely is holding a prisoner, that prisoner made it to a phone, started
a call to 911, but were prevented from finishing. Your choice, how should the
police proceed? "Ah, it's probably nothing, just an accident"? Or lets go
investigate? I presume investigate, so now the police are knocking on your
front door, and the homeowner answers with your line "I dont know, nothing
is going on here, go away". Should they go away if you refuse permission?
And when it makes the headlines sometime in the future that someone was killed
in that house, and the police did not go in because the homeowner refused them
permission, are you not reading about that grumbling about how the police did
not do there job? Maybe you arent. Many would, and I think they would have a
good point.
emt 377 emt 4
Nice analogy. Are we to understand, then that your friend recognized his loving girlfriend's call to the police as an appropriate display of empathy and has stayed with her ever since instead of dumping her like she was some crazy bitch or something?
How does a 7-person democracy cut a pie? Into 4 pieces.
So what about sports stadiums? The San Francisco Giants changed their stadium's name from Pac Bell Park to SBC Park (announcer Jon Miller refuses to call it either). But now what? AT&T Park?
Don't ping my cheese with your bandwidth!
I had almost the exact same thing happen to me last week also. Our phone lines worked but wouldn't call out for a while, and the supposed 911 call happened at that time. I didn't freak out; stuff like that happens and the cop was nice.
It also happened at the business I work at last week. Twice. We replaced the phone system after that, but I don't think that whatever problem was occuring was internal.
I think that somebody out there may be screwing with the 911 service. I live in Florida, so this could be a nationwide problem. Or perhaps it has to do with all the bad weather that has been occuring recently.
I realize these are only a few anecdotes, but if this is actually occuring more often than usual, it could be an important tech story - whatever the cause.
If it is the case that 911 starts receiving a lot of "no voice" calls whenever the phone company is out fixing stuff, it would be helpful to both the 911 centers and the phone company to know that.
And why would they apologize? As far as they are concerned, there was a 911 call from your house yet no emergency. If anyone should apologize, it should be the phone company... And good luck with that...
I think you're overreacting if you cancelled local service because of this. A 911 call HAS to be taken seriously. They can't just go on the word of whoever answers the door that the call was a mistake, what if there was an abducted child locked in the back room? Or a battered wife? Or an elderly person who fell and couldn't call for help, but was able to dial 911? Those are long shots, but they happen... And the person who greets the cops after a 911 call may be unaware of any problem-- or may even be the CAUSE of the problem...
I know it's Slashdot and we're supposed to hate Big Brother, but your case has nothing to do with the Patriot Act. Local cops aren't Nazi Stormtroopers or the KGB (or the CIA.) Believe it or not, they're often people who want to make the community a better place.
I'm still paying SBC extra each month for touch tone.
Does this mean that their communication will become ill?
> You forget, IBM and microsoft is not forced upon you. (ok some might argue that point)
Oh, I think more would argue that point. Try buying a preconfigured x86/x86-64 machine of any kind without Linux in places like Best Buy or Fry's and the statement is largely correct (There's ONE, and I do mean that, PC that has Linspire at Fry's- elsewhere is all Windows XP... And the PC in question that has Linspire's not very inspiring- it's a $250 bargain basement wonder...). For the average person not attempting to assemble their machine from parts or from most outlets that aren't online, its pretty much accurate to state for the record that Microsoft IS forced on you- the edge cases are so small that they almost don't count for anything.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
In the end, there can be only one....I predicted this a short while ago.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
Anything that would have been found outside of someone calling 911, would be inadmissible in court. There isn't a judge in the nation that would let a cop get away with charging someone for narcotics or anything like that that were found during a search for the origin of a 911 call.
So let me get this straight - if the police enter because of a supposed 911 call and find obvious evidence of illegal activity, they'll just forget what they saw? Of course not. That evidence won't be admissible in court, but there's plenty of evidence that could be gathered if they have a reason to investigate.
This is the problem with granting law enforcement too much power; with the way our laws are structured, everyone is guilty of something. Fortunately for most of us, the offenses aren't worth dealing with and the evidence is too difficult to gather. What protects us from abusive enforcement of ridiculous laws isn't our innocence or the lack of evidence, but the burden the investigation would place on the police.
Now let's go back to the case of the police demanding entry to a house because of a supposed 911 call. For the sake of argument, here's a sample of what could happen (worst case, admittedly, but certainly not impossible).
The person at the door is surprised to see the police and gets somewhat nervous when the police demand entry. The occupant of the house is a geek or nerd of some sort and has some hobbies that, while perfectly legal, aren't exactly mainstream. Maybe there's a lot of wiring and diagrams strewn about, or maybe some high-tech gardening supplies. Again, nothing obviously illegal, but unusual enough to attract the attention of someone who is looking for evidence of a crime.
Now mix in a motivated police officer. Maybe he's looking for a promotion, maybe he wants to be a hero, or maybe he is acting purely out of a sense of civic duty. Something seemed out of place at that house, and the resident was awfully nervous. Perhaps the items seen in the house could be connected with some open case, or maybe it looked like something the officer saw on a TV crime drama. With enough motivation, someone could be coaxed into looking into the matter further.
This is the point at which everything should break down. If no significant crime has been committed, there should be no evidence that would prompt a formal investigation. Maybe there is some evidence, or maybe the suspect in this case fits a profile or has past offenses. Maybe there's pressure from above to make progress in a high profile case. Or maybe someone is just having a bad day. It's easy to say that this probably won't happen, but is that enough?
If something does prompt an investigation, the target of the investigation is probably screwed. In addition to being examined under a microscope, property could be confiscated, friends might be questioned in a way that makes them suspicious of someone they thought they knew, etc. Even if the person is completely innocent of any wrongdoing, something that gets this far will be a significant inconvenience at best.
If the investigation is called off without any prosecution, the police sure aren't going to help the guy pick up the pieces of what used to be his life. Confiscated property may or may not be returned, and if it was needed to generate income, any returns won't be fast enough. Friends, employers, clients might never trust this person again.
OK, this has crappy made for TV movie written all over it, but it's worth thinking about instead of dismissing outright. What's the solution? There probably isn't one, but it does illustrate that there are reasons (maybe valid, maybe not) why people would be concerned about the police demanding entry to their home without a warrant.
I am not merely a "consumer" or a "taxpayer". I am a Citizen of the State of Texas
This really takes the cake. You got rid of your cell phone because it didn't work one day? Give me a break. I'm not really sure what your agenda is, but please find another forum to astroturf on.
They kept telephone and data circuit prices real high...
For those that are from other countries or too young to remember disco and big hair, phones used to be rented from the phone company. They had no features besides an earpiece, a microphone, a rotary dialer, a bell, and a button to hang up the phone. I guess the "hang" part came as slang for putting it in its cradle when phones were predominately wall mounted. If you were lucky, you had a 25 foot cord so you could escape to have a private conversation somewhere within 25 feet of the phone.
I didn't pay the bills then, so I cannot vouch for the relative cost at the time, but I imagine that it was relatively expensive. Especially for "long distance". I don't believe that call waiting or any other kinds of extra features came until the early 80's, maybe late 70's.
Phones have always been relatively expensive. I miss the days when they were reliable and whatnot, but I guess its a tradeoff to be theoretically able to make a phonecall anywhere vs to reliably make a call from a land line.
You do have Western Electric, it's just called Lucent. They inherited The Labs when they were spun out in the 90's. You've gone from AT&T & the Seven Baby Bells to four regionals (Nynex & Bell Atlantic -> Verizon, Southwest Bell + Pacific Telesis + Ameritech -> SBC), three of which own/are acquiring a long-distance company (SBC - AT&T, Quest, Verizon - MCI).
Bell Laboratories (Bell Labs) -> Lucient Technologies
I do NOT want the police entering my home without my permission.
Tough. Emergency Services have an obligation to respond to what they believe is an emergency. They don't always need your permission.
You are directing alot of anger towards the police, but shouldn't some of the blame lay at the engineer who accidently connected your phoneline to 911?
If you don't like it, move somewhere remote where they can't find you.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
That's what we always used to call it atleast.
what do you call a Ma who wants to screw you?
In Soviet Russia MLFY!
Having a 911 call placed from your line without an answer is reasonable cause.
I don't call the police when I have a fire or am dying, I call the fire department and the ambulance. (Yeah, they are usually the same department).
I would love to know more details, because this seems very weird. There are many houses where policemen coming in without a warrant will not leave alive.
Working contract at AT&T Computer Systems in NJ '87-'90, they re-used the American Bell badge blanks they'd pre-ordered for the name change. The Name That Must Not Be Spoken was whited over with the authorized building codes.
I've got a $2,000 a month DS3 between Chicago and Atlanta that says it did!
Classic quote that hung in many bell facilities during and after the AT&T breakup:
""There are two giant entities at work in our country, and they both have an amazing influence on our daily lives . . . one has given us radar, sonar, stereo, teletype, the transistor, hearing aids, artificial larynxes, talking movies, and the telephone. The other has given us the Civil War, the Spanish American War, the First World War, the Second World War, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, double-digit inflation, double digit unemployment, the Great Depression, the gasoline crisis, and the Watergate fiasco. Guess which one is now trying to tell the other one how to run its business?" -- a sign that hung in many Bell facilities in 1983."
Can we add George W to that list?
So what would it take to spin him at nearly 15K RPM ?
From another reader, the reason for entry in this situation was "exigent circumstances".
After having googled it and read some stuff, it's apparent that abuse of this is very bad, and would likely end up in suspension, all charges being dropped, etc, etc, etc.
If it can be shown that everything that was collected as evidence against the geek were dependent upon what they had found in the exigent circumstances looking for someone who may have made a 911 call, and it can be shown that they intentionally setup a situation to cause what we legally consider "exigent circumstances", then the very first search would have been invalidated, and then all such evidence that came about as a direct result of that initially illegal search would be thrown out.
Even if they had a search warrant for those later searches. Because the resonable cause for that search warrant hinged upon illegally obtained information.
If in another case the exigent circumstances were the result of an accident, then you're screwed. The police had every reason to search your house in the first place, find the evidence that they then sought a search warrant for. Or, if they can establish that there's a great risk that the evidence would disappear, or be destroyed, then they can use exigent circumstances to collect the evidence.
For instance, someone calls 911, the police arrive go looking for someone who might have called 911, and find a pile of heroin on the coffee table. The likelihood of that evidence disappearing is damn likely, so they could reasonable take it under exigent circumstances.
Most of the crimes that we're all guilty of just aren't worth the time of prosecution, not because of lack of ability to collect evidence. Honestly, when the cops were using my doorway as cover, my friend and I were playing video games that we did not legally own. The cops didn't do anything about it, because they weren't there for that, it wouldn't have met exigent circumstances anyways, and it just wasn't worth their time to deal with it.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
"We don't care, we don't have to." is a pretty good descriptor of SBC.
We have one customer who loses connectivity every couple of weeks. We call SBC, they do something, tell us to power cycle the equipment, and the problem is solved. When we ask what they did, they say they didn't do anything.... (Except of course when the customer calls us, they have already power cycled the equipment - no connectivity.) We've taken all new equipment to them (known good gear, twice) - no dice. Only after SBC does their magic, does it work - and SBC continues to claim the problem is our gear.
And this problem has been going on for months. And that is just one circuit, this year.
"We don't care, we don't have to."
How about fraudulent billing? Since SBC knows we are a large organization, they know that they can get away with stuff. IT would tell Telcom to have a leased line discontinued. Telcom would phone in the order and SBC would say they would disconnect the circuit. But SBC never stopped billing us for the circuit. Because the billing people weren't in the loop, they kept paying for dead circuits. SBC knows they have plausible deniability - so they keep charging.
Did I mention eight years of "wire maintenance" when we have our own Telcom department that runs and repairs the wires?
"We don't care, we don't have to."
I've had to drive 45 miles to a site to bring out a new router because SBC claimed "we've replaced the entire line, it must be your equipment." And when I get there, the new router doesn't make any difference. Then, the on site technician says 'well, we never did replace the line between the pole and the building. Maybe we should do that' - which magically fixes the problem.
If you had as much interaction with SBC as my co-workers and I have, you'd hate them too.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
For all the talk about the evil monopoly, the fact is that the confortable non-competative enviroment of the monopoly allowed AT&T to subsidize all the cool research at Bell Labs. Now-a-days, the ultra-competitve, cost-cutting, outsourcing-to-save-a-dime way of business would never tolerate a "dead-weight" research division that wasn't turning a quick direct profit. The modern business model of pursuit of a quick profit and "enhancing shareholder value" means that the kind of long term research done by Bell Labs is a thing of the distant past.
When was the last time that Lucent (the sucessor to Bell Labs) invented anything that was totally groundbreaking like the transitor or UNIX? Never. They are too busy trying to stay afloat (by selling switches and equipment) to fund any significant research.
I wouldn't expect SBC/AT&T to be any different. Either they will only think about quick profits -OR- they will claim (perhaps trufully) that they don't have the cashflow to fund extra research. From SBC Labs' website that you linked to, it looks like their proudest accomplishment was developing a DSL self-install kit. Whoopie.
My long distance calling seems pretty cheap. Before the breakup, the best you could hope for was $0.25 a minute-- in 1984 dollars.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
I think you mean 2600 Hz.
I suggest that if there is anyone who does not want the police to come to your door at their whim claiming to have received an emergency call and demanding to come in and do a warrantless search, that you also have your telephone lines disconnected.
I suggest that you move to another country.
Your "solution" won't work. What if someone calls 911 and gives your house address? Or, better yet, if someone calls 911 on a cell phone and the cell E911 services locate the call at your house (correctly or not)?
Want this to not happen? Move. To another country. Or at least somewhere with better telephone service.
If this means we can have Bell Labs back as it was in its heyday, then I'm all for it.
And the brethren went away edified.
Not just pulars. Remember, they also (trying to identify a source annoying noise) discovered cosmic background radiation. They helped find the *really* big map with the "you are here" marker :-)
Bell Labs' Cosmology page.
-t
I'm thinking that their first new product ought to be code-named "Othello."
For those of you who doubt how all pervasive and powerful Ma bell back in the day.
Has a few decent laughs as well.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0062153/
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Totally not on topic... I don't care what happened to them, the guy who the cops were there for wasn't my friend that I was playing video games with.
The guy was some arbitrary guy a few rooms down from us, and our room just happened to provide reasonable, and available concealment. The cops never entered our room more than just into the doorway, and never looked for anything that were illegal.
The point is, sometimes the cops use private property for reasonable purposes, without a search warrant, despite the fact that they may uncover evidence of a crime while they were there.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
OMG, why cell doesn't work for two days once in a blue moon. Amazing, I'm forced to use my landline...just like I'd be forced to do if I only had a land line. Cell phones let you talk anywhere, not just when you're at home next to your phone. It's like saying you won't buy a computer because it doesn't work during a blackout while a typewriter does.
Personally, I'd take that one day of outage over the higher prices I'd have to pay if they had perfect redundancy.
Oh, and you got raped in the other thread/post about why they don't have generators. You may wish to reply to that or simply run away.
That is in fact exactly what they accused me of: murdering my wife and stashing her body under the bed after she had managed to dial 911 with her last dying breath or some sort of bullshit.
It sick, but police often ask this sort of question when responding to an emergency. These questions are designed to catch you offguard and provoke a response-- you probably reacted with disbelief and anger ("Uh, what are you doing here. No I didn't kill my wife what the fuck are you talking about.", which are the normal reactions. Someone who just committed a crime would probably be more paranoid and would respond differently.
And yes, I'm sure it was humiliating, and you have every right to be angry. I vaugely remember something similar happening to me many years ago.
94% of Repubs and 21% of Dems voted to renew the Patriot Act
In addition--
The only reason why there are multiple Long Distance companies now, is because of Divestiture. Also--from my understanding, they divested on their own, albeit due to a pending forced split.
~Dave
San Antonio already has all of its skyscrapers with the SBC logo hanging off them, you can even see faint shadows of the 70's-era Bell logos still on them. Wonder if they'll go back to the junkyards to see if they can find all their old insignia and put them back on all their skyscrapers.
People overlook San Antonio a lot, but it's a big call-center HQ industry there, and with the AT&T purchase it makes it the biggest telecom city along with Clear Channel which is also HQ'd there, the biggest radio op. SAT had fiber and broadband connections long before many other cities had them.
Anyone familiar with Rackspace? Also a SAT company.
This is a ridiculous troll. You all should be ashamed of yourselves for replying.
> Does this mean that Captain Crunch is coming out of retirement soon? Well, it's appropriate to whistle a captain on board, right?
You know you have been around to long when you witness the breakup of a large monopoly like Ma Bell only to see it come back together. So what ever happened to the breakup of Microsoft anyway?
I would say prices have gone down. In the 80's the price of long distance was over 10 cents a minute. Now, you can get plans that run about 2 cents a minute.
And thanks to the magic of Inflation, the cost is about the same, despite the price change.
Of course, if we had government owned lines, maybe we'd have free phone like we have mostly free roads, then again, maybe not.
Compare the amount of tax on your POTS Bill today and one from 20 years ago and then maybe redraw that conclusion.
Exigent circumstances. As has been pointed out to me, that covers the situation you describe.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
Not only all that, but cops are not allowed to cause the existence of an exigent cirumstance in order to perform a search.
If a police officer had setup with a phone guy to call 911 from that house in order to gain access through exigent circumstances; he would have *so* gotten into some deep shit.
Exigent Circumstances can actually be used to collect evidence. This is generally the reason used to collect evidence from a motor vehicle. Since the likelihood of loss of evidence is very great (the car can just take off) they can use exigent circumstances to collect any evidence that was in plain view. (Note, without sufficent reason they can't search the car) Meh, plain view is kind of a bad example anyways, if there's heroin visible in your car, the police don't really need to obtain a search warrant to find it. They just need justification to seize it. (Thus the exigent circumstance here.)
But there's a catch. In that exigent cirucmstance doesn't give a catch all to collecting evidence in a motor vehicle. I imagine, if the vehicle was closed and locked, and no one was around who might enter the car and take off, they would likely need a search warrant in order to sieze the evidence, since getting a search warrant wouldn't be inhibitive to collecting the evidence. Plus, entering the vehicle might require damaging the property, and that would be inexcusable without a warrant, or exigent circumstances that the evidence would disappear.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
In Britain, BT was given an effective monopoly on landline telephone service in 1984. At around the same time, the UK government set up two cellular franchises, and while it allowed BT to be involved with owning one of the operators, it actually insisted that BT own a minority share (Cellnet, for it is them, was majority owned by a company largely known for delivering parcels and money.)
In the early nineties, as this wasn't creating enough competition, they opened up three more franchises (though two franchisees merged early on), and the EU itself forced the UK to open up more (albeit resulting in only one more competitor) a few years ago for 3G services.
I can't imagine it being any different in the US. The AMPS network supported B and A carriers from the start. Would the FCC not have opened up the 1900MHz band in the mid-nineties?
Not that I think the break-up of AT&T did nothing. But the notion that AT&T having a regulated monopoly would have meant it would have controlled cellular too strikes me as unlikely. The only change I can possibly think of is that it's possible that the calling-party-pays scheme would have been more feasable in an environment in which one landline operator exists who sets the charges for every type of call. And, having lived under both regimes, I can't honestly tell you if that'd have been better or worse.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Wasn't me... so no panicking here :)
Thanks for clearing that up.
"Trolls they were, but filled with the evil will of their master: a fell race..." -- J.R.R. Tolkien on Olog-hai
*cough* cingular *cough* was pacific bell mobile. which is now part of SBC. :P
Emporer: Good! Your hate has made you powerful. Now, fulfill your destiny and take your fath...uh, er, um, mother's place at my side!
SBC:Never! I'll never turn to the dark side. You've failed, Your highness. I am a Jedi, like my fath...uh, er, um mother before me.
The Emperor's glee turns to rage.
Emporer: So be it...Jedi.
Pity they'll be creating a new logo...
That last comment was intended for the grandparent.
I knew you weren't the one panicking.
Cheers!
Delay is preferable to error. (Thomas Jefferson)
same thing happened to me about 3 years ago. everyone in the house was in one room, there's no way 911 was called by any of us. unless someone patched into the network interface box outside the house to call the cops, their whole story was bs. and of course i have no recourse for having my privacy violated. i'm with the parent, if you really don't want the cops to be able to come in for warrantless searches, ditch the landlines. way too much potential for misuse.
Chuuch. Preach. Tabernacle.
And thanks to the magic of Inflation, the cost is about the same, despite the price change.
:-)
You're saying that thanks to inflation 2 cents today is worth the same as 10 cents in the 80s? I think you'd better go brush up on your economics.
Laugh at stupidity: mod idiots +1 Funny.
And don't forget how you weren't even allowed to physically connect a modem to telephone lines. You had to use and acoustic coupler.
The breakup was one big reason modem speeds increased.
There were all sorts of other rules, too. If anything, AT&T is the reason the internet came so late. The Internet was technologically possible for a long time, but the biggest electronic communications network in the country was mostly off-limits.
> This is generally the reason used to collect evidence from a motor vehicle. Since the
... if the vehicle was closed and locked, and no one was around who might enter the car ...
> likelihood of loss of evidence is very great (the car can just take off) they can use
> exigent circumstances to collect any evidence that was in plain view.
Actually, if memory (and the above referenced web page) serves, gathering evidence from a car after an arrest is specifically covered in the law, as is "plain sight". Neither of those need proof of exigent circumstances to apply. (Though I suspect these rules were added because the applicable situation often did represent an exigent circumstance.)
>
> and take off, they would likely need a search warrant
Not only that, but if the show "Law & Order" is any reference (and I realize it often isn't, but in this case I think it is), the police aren't allowed to wait for you to enter your car to arrest you in order to search your car. Creating situations in order to utilise the allowances of the written law as loopholes is not permissible and results in exclusion of what would otherwise be perfectly admissible evidence if police had bothered with obtaining a warrant.
Delay is preferable to error. (Thomas Jefferson)
Of course, if we had government owned lines, maybe we'd have free phone like we have mostly free roads, then again, maybe not.
You may get free phone service, but government will more than make it up by taxing you more. Please stop advocating giving more power to governments, local or federal. No commercial entities can ever come close to the true monopoly of governments.
Everyone's problems with DSL woes and whatnot will subside with municipal wi-fi. What about the phone lines underpinning that, you might ask? There is an answer there, too -- private fiber-optic like the lines that Google is buying.
Go ahead and mock the Bell System. They did step over the line quite a few times.
I think that the conspiracy between J.P. Morgan and Theodore Vail was more than a bit over the line. Note that Ma Bell didn't become a monopoly without a lot of "help" from the good friend of Vail's. Basically Morgan would withhold credit, the competitor would go belly up, and AT&T would buy it for pennies on the dollar. This is how they went from about 60% market share in 1900 to a near total monopoly 50 years later. Tragically Congress intervened on AT&T's behalf, effectively exempting telephony from the Sherman Act.
It was only though the hard work of the folks at the FCC and NASA that we have any competition in the telphone market today. (FCC because of their tireless work to ensure that customers could purchase their own telephone equipment, and NASA for jumpstarting Comsat Corp. The FCC also made it a policy of subjecting AT&T to much more regulatory scrutiny than their competitors, such as Microwave Communication Inc, later named MCI.)
The early AT&T made Microsoft look like a good corporate citizen. And they only got away with what they did because first Congress rolled over and exempted them from an important antitrust act, and secondly, that two major wars (WWII, Korea) disrupted investigation and enforcement on remaining grounds. But the break up was the result of seventy-four years of repeated predatory activity on the part of AT&T, investigations by the ICC (later FCC), and government policy aimed at curtailing AT&T's power. Note that the ICC's first investigation into antitrust violations started in 1910 and that it took two antitrust cases (both settled out of court) to break the company up.
At its height, the Bell system included AT&T, Western Union, Western Electric, Bell Labs, and all the regional bell operating companies. They had their own radio network and were even attempting to get in on producing motion pictures prior to the consent decree of 1956.
For many years, you could be heavily penalized for putting a piece of cellophane tape on your telephone. No consumer purchased equipment. No acustic fibers that would effectively mute the device, nothing. In essence your telephone was the equivalent of closed source software today. It was licensed to you. You could not dissassemble it. You could not extend it. You could not purchase another one and swap parts. You could not even purchase another one and connect it to the Bell network. And if you did, they would sense the impedance differences and disconnect your service.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
Let's not forget Bell Labs also invented C++ and the solar panel.
You've never seen the U.S. Legal System in action, directly or through a relative/close friend is one conclusion even a ten year old will draw from your fantasy that this nation implements "guilty until proven innocent."
Your entire premise is littered with one simple, yet crucial premise, "IF."
IF is the problem. Show me enough competent individuals becoming attorneys and then later judges and I'll show you those WMDs we can't find.
- Libertarian
It seems to me that 10kHz would sound less like whining and more like the electronic 12k tone that many hear from the back side of television sets. I would say that 2-5 kHz would be a more reasonable frequency range for a high pitch mechanical whirring sound. In fact, if the Honorable Judge Green were emitting a whirring sound at 10kHz, the whirring would probably be from some sort of mechanical rubbing. Considering that most automobiles with excellent lubrication run about 2.3 thousand RPM at 70mph, and they emit a good deal of heat, the heat of Judge Green with a mechanical error would probably be about equal to that of the 7th circle of hell, about where ATT & SBC will soon be going. Neat, huh...
-Alan
They can also "triangulate" you when they call your cell phone as well, assuming that you leave the cell phone on. :)
Karnal
Really? Many people like to claim that the breakup of AT&T meant nothing. But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
People miss the point. The AT&T divestiture was offered in exchange for allowing divisions of AT&T to monetize products they were not otherwise allowed to sell. Independant wireless phone providers (ala the Carterphone) were encouraged by the FCC, as were alternate long distance circuits (Microwave Communications, Inc-- guess what company they are today
The idea was that if AT&T stopped coordinating between the local bell operating companies and the long distance service, that it would allow for more competition on long distance lines. That part worked. But it was not the only part of the plan. In reality it was a part of a long and concerted effort on the part of the federal gov't to weaken AT&T. Portions of this included the FCC registering protective circuits on telephone equipment so that AT&T had no legal grounds for excluding them, NASA refusing to give AT&T exclusive rights to microwave communication via satellites and instead forming Comsat Corp (1/2 owned by telecom industry, 1/2 owned by private investors, with AT&T barred from owning more than about 25%), and more.
Don't forget that the breakup was mutually agreed upon. And that it formed the final piece of the puzzle regarding competition for long-distance networks.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
it's is *always* it is (no exceptions).
Negatory on that too, old chum.
A. What's wrong with your cat?
B. What do you mean?
A. It's got a bump on its tongue.
There's your exception.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
"Southwestern United States" is perhaps a bit misleading, like the name "Southwestern Bell". The original territory included Texas, Missouri, Oklahoma, Kansas, and Arkansas -- of which only Texas would be considered clearly "Southwestern" by most people, rather than Midwestern or Southern.
Much of what would normally be considered "Southwestern," such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, in fact fell to US West, which later became Qwest.
The old Pac Bell territory covered California and parts of Nevada. The old Ameritech territory covered Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana.
SBC also acquired Southern New England Telephone, an independent telco mostly confined to Connecticut. SNET had never been part of the original Bell system.
But just think, when they bundle DSL, we really save.....
The only reason why there are multiple Long Distance companies now, is because of Divestiture. Also--from my understanding, they divested on their own, albeit due to a pending forced split.
The Federal Gov't spent a lot of time prior to the breakup fostering competition in long distance telephone communications. This included in using creative interpretations of the consent decree to allow MCI to operate, and the founding of Comsat Corp (not publically owned, but pubically formed largely to exclude AT&T from controlling it). By the time the divestiture was agreed upon, the infrastructure was in place, and all that was left to do was to break the lines of conspiracy to control the industry between the local operating carriers and the long distance units.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If I remember correctly, land-line phone service was much, much cheaper when AT&T controlled it all. The de-regulation didn't create competition with the result of driving prices down. It created lots of mini-Bells with no competition in their respective regions who really put the screws to the end user.
While interesting, the story was orignially posted on October 7, 2005. See http://news.yahoo.com/s/usatoday/atampttoliveonaft ermerger;_ylt=Avf4IFty2dopj_e3AxOV_GEjtBAF;_ylu=X3 oDMTBiMW04NW9mBHNlYwMlJVRPUCUl
Um no, BBN did packet switching first by building the Interface Message Processor. AT&T said it could not be done.
That quote is taken out of context so many times it's not even funny. What AT&T said couldn't be done was replacing the analog infrastructure with the digital one required for packet switching.
There are no digital circuits in my town, so I'd say that packet switching still hasn't replaced the analog infrastructure.
I'd never say that it won't happen, some day, but this quote occurred back in 1965 over 15 years after AT&T started experimenting with packet switched networks.
My long distance calling seems pretty cheap. Before the breakup, the best you could hope for was $0.25 a minute-- in 1984 dollars.
And in 1985, it was $0.35 a minute.
Doesn't it occur to you that the reason it's so cheap now is because of other reasons?
Some thoughts and observations, my good man...
...
...
:)
Wouldn't that just be "it has"
You'd be using a possessive pronoun, but it'd be possessing 'got'...
===
While this might be acceptable in spoken English, this sort of writing would not be acceptable in formal writing.
Not to mention the poor word choice in got.
(It's got --> it has got) [got is extraneous]
===
If it is an actual exception, it is one that formally shouldn't occur
Cheers!
MoM++ - A Classic Expanded - [Master of Magic 1.5]
http://mompp.sourceforge.net/
Do you honestly think that someone who HAD murdered their wife would just say "Yea, it was me, my bad..."?
That's why they look at you like you're nuts when you're telling them to get the f out of your house. Until they can see that no one is in danger in the house, you ARE 2 inches away from being a suspect, in their eyes. They need to do that, and if you don't understand why, then 20 slashdotters trying to tell you why is not going to sway your mind. Including me.
Karnal
The phones, however, were rock solid - and weighted 10 pounds. And they were replaced by Bell if they ever broke.
What the Police, Phone Co., etc. don't want to talk about is the high rate of 911 false alarms. It is so high that if push came to shove, i.e., court battle, a no-response 911 may not be enough of a justification of a violation of search warrant rules.
The same argument may be valid against those anti-shoplifter alarms in stores. The false positive rate (forgot to erase the magnet) is so high compared to true positive (shoplifting) that "resonable cause" for a search may not be legally supportable.
Never trust a man wearing a coat and tie!
Actually, if memory (and the above referenced web page) serves, gathering evidence from a car after an arrest is specifically covered in the law, as is "plain sight". Neither of those need proof of exigent circumstances to apply. (Though I suspect these rules were added because the applicable situation often did represent an exigent circumstance.)
Yes, search and seizure at point of arrest according to one of the above links definitely does fall under this. I'm thinking more of a situation where the police don't have a reason to arrest you, but still need to either search, or seize something in your possession.... Say, you're in your car at a stop light with your windows down, and some drug dealer runs by and throws something into your car, you don't notice, but the police do. They know you're not involved (most likely) but they still need to search your car, and seize the evidence that the criminal threw into your car. They don't need a search warrant, because waiting for a warrant to obtain the evidence would result in the evidence being long gone. Meanwhile, they have no real reason to detain you while waiting for the warrant in order to search your car, and any evidence found in this manner would definitely be legally seizeable. But only when pertenant to the criminal who ditched the stuff in your car. Anything the cops come across that they wouldn't have otherwise known about, and wasn't in plain sight, and could be used to implicate you in a crime would be a hassle in court.
Not only that, but if the show "Law & Order" is any reference (and I realize it often isn't, but in this case I think it is), the police aren't allowed to wait for you to enter your car to arrest you in order to search your car. Creating situations in order to utilise the allowances of the written law as loopholes is not permissible and results in exclusion of what would otherwise be perfectly admissible evidence if police had bothered with obtaining a warrant.
Yes, actually, I was thinking of another Law and Order during lunch. They come up to an apartment and say, "Police, open up." No answer. Lenny really wants in, and looks to the other guy (I think the landlord) and says, "Did you hear that? Someone called for 'help'." That would also classify as creating exigent circumstances in order to provoke a search. And if I recall in the episode, the evidence was thrown out.
Actually, as my understanding is, Law and Order generally uses real-life situations, and real-life results. In those situations, it serves as a reasonable example. (It's just dramatised real-life events in that case.) If you try and extrapolate too much detail from it though, then you're screwed.
I am unamerican, and proud of it!
Word'em up, word word'em up!
You do know what the next phase is, don't you? A large corporate mass that will eventually collapse in on itself.
The question is, will this cause it to become so infinately strong as to devour everything within its influence, or will it simply cease to exist?
The lesbian community has already appropriated cougar, although for fundamentally the same purpose.
If you have a cable modem and a cell phone, landline phones are completely optional
What if I have or want a cell phone, but I can't get cable modem service because I detest the garbage programming on the cable TV service that the local cable monopoly ties to cable modem service? Should I just pay for cable TV and not use it? In that case, isn't it the same as paying for a land line and not using it?
Well, there goes my favorite way to criticize SBC...by referring to them as the *Sucks Ballz Corporation*.
Granted, if they went by that name officially, there would be truth in advertising once again...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
HEH! And then, Bell Labs brought us CommVault Galaxy. How lovely... I get to do enterprise backups with it now. It's not bad, but iTSM it ain't. :*(
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
Nice attitude, Jethro. Most places in the world have many police and few firemen. Often 911 centers are combined to save your redneck tax money. On a 911 hangup, cops are the default - since they can assess a situation and call for help if the building is on fire. If someone is being abused or something, firemen or EMTs aren't going to do shit. The fact that cops can search your property after a 911 hangup is pretty well established law.
"*cough* cingular *cough* was pacific bell mobile. which is now part of SBC. :P"
You forgot to mention that Pac Bell's original cell phone division was renamed "Airtouch Communications" and spun off because Pacific Bell thought its divesture would allow it to gain a large chunk of the PCS phone spectrum and when they failed at that, management lost faith in PacBell remaining independent and then sold their souls and the company out to SBC Communications.
Airtouch merged itself into what became Verizon Wireless, 50% owned by Verizon and 50% owned by Vodafone.
And had SBC had less monopoly cash to sweeten the deal for Cingular to buy AT&T Wirless, Vodafone would have acquired it and sold off their 50% stake in Verizon Wireless. And since Vodafone is so large worldwide, the GSM handsets sold by a Vodafone owned AT&T Wireless would be cheaper (yet still more profitable for them) than what we now are offered by the Cingular+AT&T Wireless entity.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Oh yeah... Microsoft's screwed up Antitrust suit.
:(
All of this truthfully frightens me. I'm a huge believer in free market enterprise and small businesses... not these gigantic behemoths that can't even turn around, let alone on a dime. *FEH*
Small businesses stay small, big businesses get bigger. That's the way it is today.
Sorry man... the Internet pooped on me.
"So, the word MILF has been coined after Ma Bell disappeared, i'm kind of curious... what do you call a Ma who wants to screw you?"
:)
Help me out...I forgot your mom's name again...
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
With the number of obvious market powergrab mergers the DOJ, FCC, and FTC have allowed in almost every industry in the past 4 years, i'm beginning to wander if they've been sending too many recruiters to Bob Jones University for market analysts.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
"There were all sorts of other rules, too. If anything, AT&T is the reason the internet came so late. The Internet was technologically possible for a long time, but the biggest electronic communications network in the country was mostly off-limits."
Hey, even the BabyBells were also as guilty as MaBell in terms of slowing down the adoption rate of new technologies. I think back to the fact that my Atari 1040ST back in 1986 was compatible with ISDN straight out of the box, but did Pacific Bell offer residential ISDN service back then? Nope. When did Pacific Bell get semi-serious about residential ISDN? Oh, try 1998.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
The door in your link is thin metal with a foam core. When I was in college, the dorm room doors were 2" thick solid hardwood. I wouldn't want to have people shooting at one with me on the other side of it, but I wouldn't want people shooting at me without one between us even more. :)
These people looked deep into my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.
Russian?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Calling this company "AT&T" is as funny and sad as calling the present-day Hewlett-Packard corporation, well, Hewlett-Packard.
It didn't work. ...
But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
And what about, Did you ever use a modem to connect to the Internet? I remember my grey beard professor speaking about Ma' Bell being dead against anyone hooking up a modem to their precious telephone lines. It wasn't about the integrity of the system or any such nonsense, but it was about AT&T wanting to make a killing selling data lines to big business and government. Who cares about the economy as a whole when your monopolistic margins are sweet like pie. Who needs to offer new services when you are making great money on your existing ones.
The breakup of AT&T IS what allowed the Internet to become the vaste network it is today.
At one point it was even illegal to connect anything but AT&T owned equipment to the telephone system. That is why you still had and maybe still have many older folks leasing their phones from what was AT&T leasing Co. Imagine leasing a $10 phone for $9 a year. Some people maybe still be doing it out of senility and habit, but thankfully because AT&T was thwarted we don't need to any longer.
Imagine it being a federal crime to connect a non AT&T made cordless phone or an answering machine to a phone line? AT&T didn't have to imagine, because they made it so.
So, for those who believe the break up of AT&T did nothing, maybe you need a little perspective.
Alexander Graham Bell -> American Bell -> American Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) + Western Electric -> Bell Laboratories (Bell Labs).
No, Bell Labs was merely one piece of AT&T, not some sort of sucessor. The company that was broken up in 1984 was AT&T. I think you're confusing Bell Labs with the "Bell System," which was the branding given to the collection of companies, all AT&T affiliated (some majority interest, some minority interest - but all firmly under AT&T's thumb), which provided the totality of phone service. Those other Bell System companies - Western Electric, the regional local phone companies - were effectively part of AT&T and were all part of the breakup.
Bell Labs was the R&D arm of AT&T, which invented all that cool stuff you talk about. After the break-up, it was itself broken up into Bellcore (owned by the Baby Bells, the former local phone companies; now an unrelated company called Telcordia) and Bell Labs proper (owned by AT&T, later spun off as part of Lucent).
It didn't work.
It absolutely worked. Within a few months of the breakup, phones went from something you had to pay hundreds of dollars to have installed or moved in your home to something you could easily wire yourself, except for the jack. Need a new extension? Just buy one. That was impossible before, and required weeks of waiting and a hefty bill. Phones also went from being big heavy (and incredibly sturdy) metal things made by Western Electric that you had to rent for $12 a month, in perpetuity, to things you could buy at the store for a one-time purchase of $20. Long distance went from a monopoly to an incredibly competitive market; long distance costs for the average family were easily cut in half within a year of the breakup, due to competitive pressures that never existed before. Note that telecommunications is one of the more powerful segments of the economy today; all of that was unleashed by taking off the shackles that made telecom the exclusive province of a single company.
Oh, by 'it didn't work' you mean it wasn't a panacea and every problem associated with AT&T didn't magically disappear? Well, that's true. For one, the Baby Bells fought strongly against any serious form of local phone competition, a problem that still effects most markets today. So a Baby Bell like SBC, largely powered by its monopoly or near-monopoly status in many markets, eventually grows large enough to eat its parent, AT&T. The only problem with the AT&T breakup was that it didn't go far enough. But for as far as it went, it worked like gangbusters.
"You can't win, Judge Greene. If you strike me down, I shall become more powerful than you can possibly imagine."
I live in Chelan County, in Washington State. The county runs the hydroelectric dams and when they took these over, they also took over the fiber network running between them. They had the foresight to use this to build a common carrier network over which different companies can offer competing services.
Around here, the only traditional POTS carrier is Verizon. If I want something digital, they want to charge $1700/month for a DS1 circuit. On the other hand, by going with the fiber, I can get a PRI over fiber for about $600/month via Localtel, Northwest Telecom, or the like. These local carriers provide services over the county's network and they compete for you as a customer.
I think that the Chelan, Douglass, Franklin, and Adams (I think) county PUD's should be the model on how to further introduce competition in the realm of telephone service. Basically build a common carrier network and then open it up to competitive services for third party companies. While I think that it is a problem when a county gives one company exclusive access to their network, I think it is better for the consumer (and has fewer legitimate problems from the entrenched monopolies) if the networks are not solely for the benefit fo a single corporation but rather a carrier for services of others.
LedgerSMB: Open source Accounting/ERP
If your phone is on they can still triangulate you, even if you are not making a call. Your phone occasionally pings the cellular network to let it know the phone is on and so incoming calls would get routed to the proper cell. The cellular providers can also probably ping your phone, too. Anyway, whenever your phone transmits, then can observe the signal strength from three cells and triangulate your position.
Have him hold the line and call it. Stings.
Actually, that's interesting, glad to know that there are terms that have been coined for this.
There are lives at stake here!
Every time I see a +5 funny with a +5 informative right under it I die a little inside.
C'mon kids! Avoid moderating off-topic unless your breadth on the topic is so great you actually no what isn't in it.
Glad to see the Bboys reference further upthread didn't get modded off topic. Sheesh.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
Man what a shit job.
OK so, att spins off att wireless makes $$$ which then is aquired by cingular who is 60% owned by SBC who is now merging with att... What the freak is going on?
Stifler's mom?
And it's back. That is all.
SBC is indeed horrible to deal with. Their advertising simply lies: I signed up for their "unlimited calling anywhere, anytime" plan.
Turns out "anywhere" doesn't include their infamous "Zone 3" calling area, which always costs extra. My mother-in-law falls into Zone 3. (Some would see this as a benefit, I suppose, but try telling your wife "we can call anywhere for free, just don't call your mother!")
Yeah, but legal barriers prevent competitors from coming in and running their own wires.
Try starting up your own cable provider/ISP company, for example. Chances are you won't find a city willing to let you in. They've already sold a monopoly franchise to TimeWarner/BrightHouse etc.
If the thought of one phone company has you concerned, consider sticking it to the guys at the phone company. I know, phreaking (telephone hacking) sounds unplesant, but it beats the heck out of hanging around SlashDot bitching.
The Rapture is NOT an exit strategy.
...list of requirements can be entirely automated after install, and remotely administered. Running the gennys periodically is called "exercising" them, check, can do it remotely from a console. Monitoring status, check. Automatic startup and shutdown via sensors,or manually administered, check. Battery maintenance is trivial if you install hydrocaps and sensors. I live on a big farm and we already have that sort of setup, in three locations. They keep (this is the theory anyway) 16 buildings (LARGE buildings, 600 feet long poultry houses that take serious juice) running 24/7/365 with the grid supplied as primary, but the backups can do it for days at a time, until the fuel runs out, something like two weeks worth of onsite fuel. In 15 years (what I have been told, I've only been here going on 3 years) it's failed *once*, in one building, and that was due to a design glitch with an expensive circuit breaker that wasn't redundant which in turn failed to notify the wireless alarm system. That is being fixed now.. This is all just off the shelf stuff, nothing exotic. The only thing non automated is the fuel delivery, that comes by a human driving a tanker truck once in awhile, and I bet within a decade that might be automated as well.
Cell towers *could* be redundantly powered for emergencies, that they aren't is entirely political and economic in nature, it is not an engineering problem. And I am guessing with the new e911 requirements for cell phones that there will be some court cases challenging local munis who say "no" to generators. I bet eventually it's required that they have backup at the towers. A little public pressure after major disasters will do wonders for this purpose. A few articles in the local paper outlining why cell coverage went down could possibly light some fires under some "ooooo, evil loud generators!" luddite politicians butt. And if it costs the cell guys more loot, who cares. This is 2005, the human race needs redundant reliable communications, at all times, end of story. It's *especially* necessary during disasters.
If I was a local cell company trying to get business in a competitive market, I would put in the gennys *somehow* and turn around and use it for advertising as in "our service has backup power in emergencies for your important phone calls, while x,y,z local service here has bupkis". See who gets the consumer traffic then.
Mrs. Robinson?
And if you don't remember the phone number for the fire department, or don't have time? You call 911. If 911 can't tell what kind of emergency you're having, they have no way of knowing whether your house is on fire, or you've just had a heart attack, or there's a home invasion robbery in progress.
I remember my grandparents having a party line until the early/mid 80's. Also, we were on rotary dial only until the late 80's. This is how AT&T, and later the baby bells (Michigan Bell in my case) handled rural America
Currently, local service sucks because their motto is "You signed a contract. We own you for 3 years. Bend over and try to enjoy the ride."
Seriously, the attitude of current providers seem no better. I'm a Canadian though, but from those in the US I know the attitude is the same. Service coverage sucks in various areas: we don't have many customers there, touch sh*t for you, you signed a contract. Billing screws up monthly (and for a co-worker of mine, it did, every month like clockwork, and never in his favour)... too bad, you signed a contract... either call at every billing period to (hopefully) get it fixed, or eat the extra charges.
Your cellphone broke. Here, we'll charge you $10 to copy your phonebook to another, inferior loaner-phone, then take your for three months only to tell you warrantee doesn't cover it because it is broken due to user abuse.
Seriously, service sucked in the past, but with the current trend of contracts or just lack of proper competition, you're still pretty much as f*cked as you were before - perhaps more.
Fortunately, triangulation isn't terribly accurate in any urban environment, with signals reflecting off of all the surfaces in the concrete jungle. Unfortunately, if you ever call 911 and can't tell them your address, you might get to spend your last few moments watching paramedics rush into the building across the street.
https://www.eff.org/https-everywhere
landlines are completely optional if and when cell phones will work reliably in a blackout or a hurricane (been there, done both). so you're okay 99% of the time, but how incrementally does the value of an intact communications link rise during such crises? more to the point, what incentive does the cell service provider community have to provision such reliability? apparently very little, thus far.
and i'll confess i haven't the foggiest idea of the tech impediments to their doing so, and therefore i'm just randomly whining with no offer of solution.
suggestions?
The big flaw in that strategy was that they didn't know how to be a commercial company. Every venture of theirs collapse because of bureaucratic nonsense and bad planning. I worked for the company that built Unix PC for them (basically, one of our 68010 time-sharing boxes clumsily mated with some of their telecom hardware plus an ineptly designed keyboard and display). AT&T spent something like a billion dollars developing this product and paying for initial production — and never even tried to sell it. By the time it reached the market, they decided that they were going to to IBM-compatibles instead. Which made a certain amount of sense — except that product line didn't sell either.
How many different ways did they screw up? Let's see, "phone stores", the TCI buyout...
Actually, the earliest documented long distance telephone call (two little towns in Kansas about 13 miles apart) was setup up by some employees of the Southern Pacific Railroad (as opposed to using a telegraph). If you got a call, a runner (young boy) would sprint to your house & tell you to come down to the office & take the call. Soon, it just became known as the "sprint" office. You can figure out where this it going.
The parent comment shouldn't have been modded down, and especially not with off-topic.
... maybe if It was a proper noun or an acronym... ;) like, "I don't care what IT's problem is -- I'm about to fire them all!" In cases like that though, we use capitalization for clarity. Oh wait, now all the capitalization-haters are going to complain.)
At the time of the comment, the article contained a typo and this comment points it out. The fact that the story no longer contains that typo is a testament to the parent's informative nature.
I know that all the descriptivists will start jumping up and down now saying that the difference between its and it's doesn't matter because the meaning was expressed through context. Whatever, I don't want to debate it. I'll just say that we have rules for a reason. Its is a possessive pronoun unless one is, for example, asking how many its were in the prior sentences (words mentioned as words should be italicized). I can't think of a time when it's isn't a contraction and therefore requiring its apostrophe.
(Oh, I know
Sight. Language is so hard. If only English had a particle for the genitive.
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
s/Sight/Sigh/
I guess that's what I get for not previewing before I 'stumbit'. Requisite, damn you Slashcode for not letting us edit posts before we have replies!
Also, I know that English sort of has a genitive particle in the preposition of (when it's used more like de in Romance languages or no in Japanese).
Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.
I'm a phone repairman, and have came across that problem before. At the bad section of cable that causes your phone to be out the noise on the line is acting like the old pulse dial. If you have a corded phone you can take the phone off hook
and tap the hang up button on the base 4 times real fast, pause tap it once, pause tap it again, and there you just dialed 411
When your phone was out all it had to do was emulate the 9 and the 1s were pretty easy. It is something that has happened before. I have only heard about it 2 or 3 times in the 5 1/2 years working at pac bell -> pac bel/sbc -> sbc ->(soon to be at&t.
Much of what would normally be considered "Southwestern," such as Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado, in fact fell to US West, which later became Qwest.
Prior to the breakup, service in Arizona and much of the southwest (all of the four corners states and then some, I believe) was provided by Mountain Bell. US West also kept that brand around for a while before branding things with their own name.
Sadly, as bad as US West's service was at times, they've got nothing on modern-day Qwest. That was an awful merger so far as I'm concerned as a customer. Where US West had been working to roll out all sorts of new services (DSL among them), they just got sat on after Qwest staged their hostile takeover. USWest had intended to have our neighborhood qualified for ADSL late in '99. Only in May of this year did we finally qualify for anything but IDSL.
Until Cox finally got in the game with reasonable cable internet, one out of every three or four houses in my area had a Sprint satellite broadband dish on the roof -- most of them, like my house, had been waiting for Qwest to make good on USWest's promises.
"That's our spirit of service inaction," indeed.
Kind of like when the VDSL goes down and the answer from Denver is "we're aware of the outage and will have someone diagnosing it within 8 hours." Thanks. That's helpful. At least they finally fixed the "it's raining, no internet for any of you" problem...
I understand what you are saying about the baby bells all being involved in Cellular. The neat thing about it though was that they were selling Cellular service in each others territory, they didn't have their natrual teritorial monopoly and actually had to compete against each other.
Now as for all the mergers in the cellular world.... I don't believe that's a good thing, but its in the baby bells nature to try to recombine.
The level of ignorance about basic communications technology ... heck, just basic PHYSICS, here on /. is shockingly unbelievable.
/. readers. Have the schools gone THAT much downhill since I was a student?
I'm almost 45, probably among the oldest of
Try starting up your own cable provider/ISP company, for example. Chances are you won't find a city willing to let you in.
The cable companies haven't done their end of the deal with the educational TV requirements of most of those exclusive contracts. There are ways to get a new cable company into most small towns you are willing to push.
Michigan Bell was one of many AT&T operating companies. The "breakup" had nothing to do with it. Michigan Bell didn't "join" anything.
... and they cash it.
... aww, never mind. You can look all this up on line.
At divestiture (1/1/84), Michigan Bell, Wisconsin Bell, Illinois Bell (etc.) became operating companies of Ameritech.
Ameritech was one of the seven regional Bell operating companies formed by the divestiture, (NYNEX, Bell Atlantic, Bell South, Southwestern Bell, Pacific Telesys, Ameritech, and US West).
Similar situations happened all over, for example, Southern Bell and South Central Bell became operating companies of BellSouth. Eventually, the operating companies were merged and Southern Bell and South Central Bell ceased to exist except as pleasant memories. I still write the check to Southern Bell Telephone Company
New Jersey Bell, New York Telephone, and New England Telephone, became NYNEX.
Delaware Bell, The Chesapeake and Potomac Telephone Company of Virginia, Bell of Pennsylvania
Just is a good idea to learn where things came from, so you'll know where you're going.
Picking a nit about "LATA" definition and trunking
Sorry... but LATA stands for "local access and transport area"; inter-LATA describes an interconnect between transport areas, which is not the same thing as being a different area code.
Many states had one area code, but many LATAs for a long time; for example, Utah had area code 801 for the entire state, but many switching centers, and there were what AT&T (later, Mountain Bell) called "Regional Calling areas", which effectively meant "beyond the locally dense switching center interconnect", or in layman's terms, "not very many trunk lines between these two sets of switches".
State like California, which had multiple area codes early on, did so because they had the poulation density requiring it: more than 10,000,000 people (effectively a lot less than that, since the switching centers were sparsely committed).
The proliferation of area codes since the bell breakup has *not* been a result of having more LATAs, it's been because, until very recently, by FCC mandate, trunking could only be done for 10,000 phone numbers at a time, and the proliferation of small phone companies with only 100 or 200 total customers meant that each of them burned at least one area code + prefix pair, and when you ran out of prefixes, you needed a new area code (sort of like the IPv4 class A,B,C,D network address space problem, when netmasks could only be specified on a tuple boundary). Today in the US, to connect to the public network, switches are required to support trunking on a per-phone number basis (hence "phone number portability", and we could probably undo the area code debacle, but of course, now it's too late).
-- Terry
Ma Bell is back and you're gonna be in trouble.
Hey, la! Hey, la! Ma Bell is back!
yea. true .. but then i have a chance of making it on the foxnews's "Out There" section..
/. post of mine and get me in the darwin awards or atleast an honorable mention
or someone could link me to this
'...if only "Jumping to a Conclusion" was an event in the Olympics.'
Doesn't this seem somewhat of a paradox? An anti-trust suit brings about the split into the baby-bells. SBC, a congolmeration of former bells (Pacific Bell, etc.), buys its antediviso company. That's just irony there. The paradox is that even though the phone system was no longer a "monopoly" per se, the restructuring allowed for many smaller monopolies to exist. Utilities are monopolies, albeit "regulated". In effect, splitting up the Monopoly into smaller monopolies just put the end result off longer. Of course, we no longer are required to buy phones made by AT&T, and we are no longer subject to service by AT&T. But the real issue is that we don't really have a choice as to whom we get local telephone service through. I think that local phone service is actually quite decent, but the problem with the breakup is that now they're just acting like one big happy family like they always were. Nothing forced them to compete, and so the old mindset never changed. In the US it would be better if each phone provider collectively held a share in the physical phone system (i.e. was the "board of directors" per se). Then each individual company could provide telephone service wherever they wanted to, and capitalism would do the rest. The issue would be that this trust could become a cartel, so the government would have to use its power to stop this. It is possible, and it is better than the current iteration.
Why is SBC abandoning their moniker, in favor of AT&T? Their business practives are so horrendous, their market research shows the SBC name makes people think: inept, incompetent, ineffective, and idiotic. The AT&T name harkens back to a time of innovation, intelligence, and invention. The only hope here is that the entire SBC management is fired, and the retired AT&T crew is revived from suspended animation! I have dealt with SBC as a business customer, a residential customer, and a franchise authority. There has been only one constant, the steady decline of a one time guardian of a dependable lifeblood service. These dimwits dont see the writing on the wall, its all about IP, and they have a huge leg up in the race. What have they done with their early lead? Sat down in the road and proceeded to saw their knees off.
Where ever you go, there you are.
Soviet Bell
.... another funny name for the most hated phone company in America.
It used to be SBC = "Satanic Bastard Company"
---- "Logoff! That cookie shit makes me nervous!" - A. Soprano
Back when the telephone system was actually reliable and "just worked" and was reasonably priced and didn't play stupid price gougin games. Unlike the nightmare hell of today's cell phone, VoIP, long distance and rural phone and feed outfits... Once again, "Yea de-regulation". They finished fucking up the phone industry and then they moved into energy and now we have the hell of utilities all playing games with you as well. Well done assholes. Well done...
-"...bad old ideas look confusingly fresh when they are packaged as technology" - Jaron Lanier (Digital Maoism on Edge.o
you know.. i play one of the game, watch movie or something like that... .. ah yes, Final Fantasy anime series... like Ultima has different part that are not complete one together, they are apart and far away all over different dimension..
It is like Bell mother split into several babies in the past and now the main Baby(SBC etc..) asborbs those babies into one and is completed today known as.. (Drum roll)
AT&T
Shocking is it?! There you have it, ladies and gentlemen. That why we didn't suceed in slaying monster because we didn't aim for the heart but rather slices them apart and they only come back together as one mighty
AT&T
duh of course! next time we always could aim for the heart anyway...
I'm sure you can.
see, Ma Bell is like the Mexican Bell company, but without Commandante Marcos
Viva zapata!
----
The new AT&T declared that they own all the rights to the UNIX operating system. According to a newly discovered memo, all that USL actually received was the trademark. SBC^WAT&T said that licenses for the use of UNIX code will start at at $699.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
The only reason the prices were so high was due to stupid regulation.
Yeah, but accepting that "stupid regulation" is what gave AT&T legal monopoly status, and AT&T did everything they could to keep that "stupid regulation" going as long as they could. The bodies that regulated telecom were largely captured, and they pretty much gave AT&T whatever they asked for. It was a sweet situation for AT&T.
What the... I'm not paying to look at ads.
Where do you live? No ISDN or DSL for you huh? Not a 5ESS to be found?
Well, the quote might be taken out of context but I have never heard it was referring to the use of packet switching for PTSN. I can find no evidence that AT&T was experimenting with packet switching in 1950. That's only 3 years after the transistor was invented and 8 years before the integrated circuit was invented. If you have such evidence, please add it to the Wikipedia page on Packet Switching
--fatboy
I worked at a pizza joint on the Purdue campus a few years ago. One night, some drunk came in the front door (counter completely seperated the carryout area from the back) and was being quite mouthy and grabbed another customer's breast. I asked him to leave and he got aggressive and nasty. Me, being a dumb kid, instead of having someone use a phone in the back...I picked up a front counter phone and threatened to call 911 thinking he'd leave...nope. So I dial, hear "911...state your..." The guy reaches over the counter, grabs the phone out of my hand and slams it down. I shit you not, in LESS than 30 SECONDS, two squad cars screeched to a halt at the front door and four highly agitated, guns drawn officers ran in the front door and tackled this guy.
:-)
I have never been so impressed.
Here in my home town, I also shit you not, one is lucky to see a cop before dark if they call in an armed robbery/shooting/whatnot at noon (unless a state boy is in the area...those guys rock.)
And that is exactly why I had my telephone land lines disconnected - so that the phone company can never, ever, make the police think such a thing has happened in my home. As far as I know, I now have a "black mark" on my record for the bogus call that was probably the result of a buggy telephone switching program.
9/11 Eyewitnesses to Explosive WTC Demolition 1 of 2
As I told the CPUC during the pre-merger hearings: the merger is a bad idea, but not for the reason they might expect me to argue. See, AT&T should never have been divided in the first place.
Communications are part of the national (and global) public infrastructure, just as surely as are the roads on which we drive our cars and bicycles, right? Do the construction companies who build and maintain those roads get to own them, control them, charge fees for access to them? No, of course not! The public, each one of us collectively, owns those roads. THose construction companies are mere contractors, hired by US to build the roads FOR US. They get paid well for their efforts, but they don't get to own what they build. Lockheed, Boeing, and McDonnell Douglas have never owned the hardware they built for NASA and the Armed Forces, have they?
Why, oh why, is telecommunications any different? Why have the companies who helped build that infrastructure for us been allowed to own and control their respective pieces of it? Why are they allowed to reap unfair profits from something that effectively belongs - or should belong - to all of us?
So, the merger wasn't a bad idea per se; it was a bad idea because it doesn't go far enough, and merely compounds the stupidity of 30 years ago. What the CPUC and FCC *should* be doing is "nationalizing" all the telecom entities, as a huge nonprofit agency perhaps similar to the USPS. THAT would be a good idea.
But still pertinent.
A blog about stuff.
what it was like before the breakup. It was illegal to connect a PC, or any other non-approved, non-AT&T device, to the phone network. It was illegal to compete. It cost dollars/minute to make long distance calls.
Best Slashdot Co
Also, while the leasing phones thing was clearly generally bad, you exaggerate the cheapness of the equipment. AT&T phones were built to last, they weren't the cheap, plastic, stuff you get for $10 today. The logic, and it was reasonable, was that the more reliable and solid the phones, the less likely they were (a) to go wrong and cause an AT&T engineer to have to visit a customer and fix them and (b) to go wrong and damage the actual network (not that that was terribly likely anyway)
If AT&T's phones ever cost $10, it would have been when $10 really was $10, representing a goodly part of factory worker's weekly income.
AT&T kept its monopoly on a lot of aspects of the network for a long time by using two arguments. The first, which is legitimate and still relevent today, is that a phone network is expensive and doesn't become much cheaper simply by reducing the number of customers. If you wire up a street, it doesn't matter if 100 or 50 households on the street take your service, it'll still cost around the same. As such, phone service (at least the local loop part) is a natural monopoly, because whoever has the largest number of customers will end up charging the lowest prices all other things being equal: and if the market's truly "free from government interference", the company with the 51% marketshare can also forbid interconnection, essentially killing competitors via network effects.
The other reason was that if one network owns the entire network, they can make a commitment to quality and service that benefits society. AT&T, for the most part, was extremely careful to do this: the original universal service commitment wasn't a government imposed thing, it was part of a concerted effort of public/government relations from a monopoly terrified of the risk of nationalization, and also well aware of the value added to its network by the notion that anyone can be reached on it, no matter how poor or how out of the way they are.
The government saw through some of the excesses of the second part of the policy (of which the monopoly on customer equipment was one), and hit AT&T hard, starting in the 1950s. It wasn't this part that caused the break-up, it was the long distance issue that started becoming an issue in the '70s.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
And you are correct - I did play fast and loose with the LATA / area code description. I remember that one line, because we did have a problem with it, and the two carriers involved pointed fingers at each other. As it happens, that one site is in the area code south of us. But you are correct - an inter-LATA link does not necessitate an area code change.
"The most sensible request of government we make is not, "Do something!" But "Quit it!"
"Try starting up your own cable provider/ISP company, for example. Chances are you won't find a city willing to let you in. They've already sold a monopoly franchise to TimeWarner/BrightHouse etc."
Well, here in Sacramento, we now have two cable companies in certain areas. You may have heard of them from the press they've received in the past week due to their IPTV plans over their fiber. That company is SureWest...who bought up the bankrupt WinFirst, which was a casualty of the dot-bomb collapse but had the noble idea of bringing fiber optics to every home in their market. SureWest is in addition to Comcast who has the shrinking monopoly in this town.
"Right now, somewhere in this world, Scott Baio is plowing a woman he doesn't love," - Peter Griffin, *Family Guy*
Many people like to claim that the breakup of AT&T meant nothing. But I have to ask. "Do you have a cell phone?"
9 .htm
You do know that car phones have been around since at least the 1970's, right? It would have been bigger and happened faster but the FCC wouldn't release the frequencies to AT&T. That's right, the big bad phone company was researching cellular phone service in 1947.
Learn more here: http://inventors.about.com/library/weekly/aa07089
Life sucks, but death doesn't put out at all. -- Thomas J. Kopp
I hate this trend of groupthink moderation. Instantly after I was modded OT, I was modded overrated by someone with mod points to burn who didn't have the ability to form personal opinions.
PayPal $$ if you sign up for free offers (eBay, cred cards, e
think again. AT&T still reaps the benefits of monopoly.
http://www.att.com/cls/products/corded.html
Who do you think rents these phones? It is the elderly, those on fixed incomes who can least afford to spend money foolishly. All because AT&T brainwashed these people into believing that they had to rent their phones from AT&T in order to get phone service. Sure some people might be aware that they can buy a decent phone for the cost of a couple months lease, but many probably just pay the bill because they really don't know they have a choice.
My mother had a AT&T leased phone which was built into the wall in the early 70's which we figure she and my grandparents before her had spent thousands of dollars on over the life of the phone. And beyond the life of the phone, since it had broken many years before and could not be replaced or serviced any longer. Finally after threats they would come and rip it out of the wall (leaving a gaping hole) if she did not continue to pay their blood money, she told them fine to come by and rip it out of the wall, but she wasn't paying them any longer. That was the end of the story for a phone that is rather famous in my family and remains built into the kitchen wall and no AT&T representative with a crowbar has come knocking at the door as they had threatened.
To sugar coat the history of "The Phone Company" and to speak as if their dirty practices are all water under the bridge or that somehow that being a monopoly has nothing to do with the way a company treats its "customers" is beyond reasonable. There is no such thing as a "natural" monopoly. You can apply the same false logic to any business and argue about efficient use of resources and the waste of competition. Large monopolies are only possible under government regulation and since the advent of the corporation there is nothing natural about them. And eventually it is inevitable that monopolies treat their customers like any other resource, to be squeezed for every last drop.
Ma Bell didn't bring us the transistor. The transistor was around for years before Bell Labs invented the SILICON transistor.
The original transistor was invented by a guy from Europe; and he had a patent on it from before 1930, IIRC.
The Silicon transistor wasn't developed in a vacume (pardon the pun). It was a natural extension of an existing device, one which was rather useful.
Please, give proper credit where it is due. Doing otherwise is an insult to the people who brought us some rather useful results, that we've built from since. Thank you.
I remember most of the old modem instructions letting you know that you had to contact the telephone company and inform them that you planned to use a computer modem on your line before you could actually use one.
And strangely enough, my mother still pays to lease a phone. I eventually put in a cheapo generic after her leased one kept dieing and yet she still keeps paying for the darn phone even though she's not even using it!?!?
"People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain