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Man Calls 911 To Fix Broken iPhone
tekgoblin writes "For some reason Michael Skopec of Illinois thought that calling 911 would get his broken iPhone fixed. It got him arrested instead. From the article: 'After the five calls were made police traced the calls to his home in Illinois where they found him drunk and belligerent. He was arrested because he would not follow the police officers orders. It has yet to be made clear what he was actually trying to accomplish by calling 911 to get help with his iPhone. Although he was arrested he only faces misdemeanor charges and has to be in court next week.'"
A broken iPhone really is an emergency! That means I can't play Angry Birds!
Let's play what's more sad!
Which of the following is more sad?
1) A man calls 911 to fix a broken iPhone.
2) Slashdot decides to report on a man calling 911 to fix a broken iPhone.
Stay tuned for the answer after this commercial break.
The article was short on details.
I could see it not being that he was truly calling 911 to fix his phone, but rather the screen was locked. While I don't have an iPhone, my phone does allow 911 calls if the screen is locked, so I'm guessing the i-thing is similar. If he was too drunk to remember his unlock code he may have drunkenly hit the emergency call button multiple times.
Of course that's still pretty stupid sounding, but not as bad a confusing the police with a Genius Bar.
Worthy of Slashdot, this is not.
... InB4 : no, not all iPhone user are that stupid.
(anticipating cunning remarks from self-declared "superior" android users)
No thank you on connectorless. If I want to transfer data, I want USB speed not bluetooth. And if I want to charge it, I want it to charge in minutes, not hours.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
WiFi is fast enough for transferring data.
-- Cheers!
"obscruction" of justice? News sites should spell-check..
Seriously, why does this man's face have to be all over the internet for something as little as what he did? I hope for him he isn't looking for a job or something like that.
-- Cheers!
I don't understand what's so important about a drunk man dialing 911.
You assume it's available. I don't have a wifi router (my computer is wired). Neither does every hotel I go to (many are wired). Nor do my parents (their single PC is wired). Plus I then have to send my data via the internet, which I may not wish to do. And I'd need a program on the target PC to connect to it.
Nope. Still want a USB connector.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Break resistance does cost more than the very lowest of the "Does it boot? Most of the time? Ship that fucker!" school of engineering; but the reasons for the vulnerability of contemporary iDevices and their ilk pretty much come down to what people want, however dubious their priorities.
They want very slim, they want shiny, they don't want bezels, they want max battery life without increasing thickness. Boom: You have a phone whose case and chassis are a mixture of glass and metal practically calculated to crack and/or transmit shock to circuit boards(at least the Android units tend to only be entirely glass on one side...). Absolutely nothing to give you an elastic collision, no replaceable exterior sacrificial components(remember those now-traumatically-retro Nokia units, whose entire outer casing was a slightly loosely fitting ABS+Polycarbonate replaceable shell with a bit of crumple space between it and anything important? That design probably added more mm to the phone than certain modern devices have; but it meant you could drop the thing, crack the fuck out of it, pick it up, and get a new shell for $5 at the nearest seedy kiosk.)
The people who care primarily about durability are, unfortunately for them, not quite large enough a market to get the really good stuff. They do pull Real Serious Cases for iPhones, and reasonably ruggedized variants of some of the more widely model-numbered Android designs; but the ones done from the ground up to be rugged tend to be a bit retro.
There are many other things to post on science, hardware, tech, linux other than people calling 911 to fix broken iphone. really of all things iphone is so important. WTF has happened to /. . You're just posting stuff related to apple stuff for clicks n traffic. I'm so disappointed.
I disagree with the GP for many reasons, but connectorless phones would be awesome. And my inductive charging unit goes nearly as fast as my cable - full charge in an hour or two.
However, he does forget that phones need holes for audio and mic. And if you have any holes, what's the point?
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
WiFi is fast enough for transferring data.
Not for the initial multi gigabyte sync.
If all else fails, immortality can always be assured by spectacular error.
waterproof mics and speakers are -easy-.
What about a flexible 'phone that you wrap around your wrist and wear as a watch, but it can fold out into a keypad and a flexible screen or just a large touchscreen. Sort of like this idea: http://www.gizmowatch.com/entry/nokia-4g-designer-phone/ maybe you could find a way to charge the 'phone using the swinging motion of walking around to charge the mobile phone.
liberare massarum ex ignorantia, clausa descendit molestie.
However, he does forget that phones need holes for audio and mic. And if you have any holes, what's the point?
Isn't that what bluetooth is for?
"First they came for the slanderers and i said nothing."
Obviously the problem has NOTHING to do with the iPhone or its owner. The issue is why the 911 system is badly designed that this happens.
An emergency system like 911 really needs a solid and intuitive user interface that will prevent errors like this.
I look forward to the introduction of i911 on the upcoming iPhone 5.
Three Squirrels
Maybe we can turn this thread into a thread about something more interesting. For instance, I always wonder how humans managed to make very straight lines when in the beginning all they had was sticks and stones.
-- Cheers!
Man must have followed my advice here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showpost.php?p=13319755&postcount=483
Well, did the first-responders fix the phone or not? TFA doesn't say.
It would certainly carry a premium over standard boring USB(and essentially zero power); but I'd be interested to see how fast an optical link you could (economically) achieve under 'near optoisolator' conditions: emitter/receiver pair in the phone, behind the little window, matching emitter/receiver pair in the dock/dongle/whatever.
Given that the RONJA-link guys manage to get 10Mb/s out of an LED over multiple KM of free air, I suspect that you could get a decent slice of USB throughput through a liquid-impermeable chassis with a fairly cheap optical mechanism...
The true absurdity of this story is that in the US non-violent drunk people are being arrested for petty stuff like that. Fine the guy and be done with it.
Any surface that vibrates can, if you can measure the vibration, serve as a mic(take a look at the hilariously sneaky story of the Soviets using radar to observe the vibrations of some metal plaque they had "politely" donated to the American embassy on some occasion, or the contemporary bouncing-IR-lasers-off-windows devices that achieve the same ends). Similarly, any surface that can be vibrated can be coaxed into being a (on average terrible) speaker.
It would be unlikely to do as well as a conventional mic and speakers, and would cost more; but you could implement a 100% sealed chassis and still get audio in and out.
He's some dirtbag who thinks that freedom should be for everybody - except for pregnant women. Those, he believes the state should force into involuntary servitude.
He's an OBGYN. He won one of his early elections because he had delivered just about every baby in a county:
DATABASE WOW WOW
How exactly is this news for nerds?
In what possible way is this serious news of a technical nature, or anything that would interest the sort of people this website is supposed to be aimed at?
This should at the very least be in the Idle section.
Come on Slashdot Editors, do your job properly!
upside-down phone + AT&T support = 911 So it's AT&T's fault!
wrong.
It is possible to have connectors as well as a user changeable battery and still be water tight.
And if you measure the frequency response of that vibrating thingy beforehand you can in the software compensate for the lack of quality of the analogue part of the device.
-- Cheers!
I like being able to use Bluetooth. I wouldn't much like being forced to.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
I suppose you could, but how well would it work? Presumably you'd connect the voice coil right to some sort of waterproof diaphragm, in which case it's just a super-durable speaker, but wouldn't that severely dull the frequency response - regardless of compensation?
More troubling, there's a lot less force pushing on that microphone than there is (potentially) on the speaker. And you can't really compensate for what you lack to begin with.
My usage of "need" was imprecise. You can wrap a phone in cellophane and it'll still work just fine, so it's not a necessity... but that's not really what I meant.
I have developed a truly marvelous proof of this comment, which this signature is too narrow to contain.
But that would scare people away from calling 911. People often need to call the police about things that aren't immediate emergencies, but still need to reach them quickly and don't have the police phone number on hand. Sometimes those situations can turn into emergencies. So, generally what actually happens is that people calling 911 for non-emergencies don't get in trouble unless they keep calling and ignore warnings to stop.
What happened here is unclear. It's possible that this person really did call 911 for help with his phone. That seems unlikely though. It's more likely to be hyperbole on the part of those reporting it. Probably what happened is that he was trying to dial 611, or some other assistance number as others suggested and kept getting it wrong. Or, there might have been some sort of automatic emergency call feature that he kept accidentally activating and, when the 911 operator asked him why he was calling, he drunkenly explained that he was having trouble with his phone.
Personally, I'm always uncomfortable when I hear that someone was arrested for not following a police officers orders. The authority of the police to give orders to people is supposed to be very limited. If they had simply arrested him for making false emergency calls, I could see that. The fact that they didn't use that reason to arrest him suggests that they probably couldn't due to the circumstances. More likely, they were ordering him to come out of his house to talk to them or ordering him to let them into his house to search it, etc. Probably they have a policy to treat 911 hangups, etc. as emergencies by default (for example, kidnap victim managed to call 911 and the kidnapper snatched the phone away and hung up), giving them probable cause to search his house, etc. Still whenever I hear that someone has been arrested for the sole crime of not obeying police orders or resisting arrest it rankles me.
It is likely that he tried to call 911 to carrier-unlock his iPhone 4. This is apparently necessary with the Gevey Sim Unlock technique.
The apologist is strong in this one. The police of course don't know the difference between but dialing and someone harrassing 911. They can't just show the difference because these messages are recorded.
Really, to often slashdot posters just try to find an excuse for everything no matter how silly.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Here is the pertinent quote;
"He was arrested because he would not follow the police officers orders."
He was not arrested for making the calls; he was arrested for being a drunken idiot when the police responded to the multiple 911 calls. They may have even taken him into custody for his own protection if he was that drunk.
That was actually my first thought. It seems like a really obvious mistake for someone drunk and a bit confused who wanted support for his phone.
http://humorfeast.blogspot.com/2011/11/man-arrested-for-calling-cops-police.html
The problem is people feelings.
:)
Whenever the debate over breakable phones happen, I inevitably hear the words "$ANDROID_PHONE _feels_ cheap and plasticy, like it's going to fall apart and Iphone _feels_ solid" I facepalm.
If I drop my phone our of my pocket, 1 metre onto concrete, HARDNESS IS NOT YOUR FRIEND. The more flexible plastic which has more tensile strength so it will adsorb the impact, not to mention the components that are meant to come apart (I.E. battery cover) which serves to dissipate the kinetic energy. Tensile strength is what will save a phone in an impact, the hard casing of the iphone works against it's durability. If only people stopped relying on their "feelings" and used their brains when considering survivability.
I've dropped my HTC Dream and Motorola Milestone. The back came off the Dream but apart from that, it still works fine. The Moto was the same the first time, but the second time the slider for the keyboad broke, the phone itself still works, no cracked screens of cases, but the keyboard will eventually come off. Haven't dropped my HTC Desire Z yet, I guess it's because nothing better with a physical KB has come out
I've got an old Nokia 6500 C, metal and plastic case, survived half a dozen drops. 3 years and still working.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Worthy of Slashdot, this is not.
Are you kidding? First definitive proof that the iPhone is not idiot proof? This is indeed news.
Here we don't have emergency calling when the phone is locked (at least not on iPhone). So it would not happen as easily.
People do get drunk here too, but calling emergency is so well hidden in our phone system that it would be hard to do for a drunk guy.
This proves that people who buy iPhones are too stupid to live.
I dont know who said it , but there is an idiot born every minute?
He's a US Presidential candidates who believes that having unpolluted land and food that is fit for human consumption are privileges, not rights, and that the government has no business interfering with businesses' God-given rights to dump waste wherever they want.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
My iPhone can be submerged for hours and still work, in fact it can work while submerged.That is because I put my iPhone in a case that it appropriate for my level of use and abuse.
The way I look at it Apple makes the insides and I put on the outsides that I need.
don't drink and iphone
Yes Alexander (APK), I must have issues with authority figures. I think I also have issues with creepy, crazy cyber-stalkers.
Idiot proof? The iphone got a drunk moron in jail.
Maybe I should fear siri now...
Non impediti ratione cogitationus.
However, he does forget that phones need holes for audio and mic. And if you have any holes, what's the point?
Kyrocera, Casio, and Motorola have all solved that problem. They have waterproof speakers and mics, and their ruggedized phones can withstand immersion in water.
If his iPhone was broken, how did he call 911? I call shenanigans!
It has yet to be made clear what he was actually trying to accomplish by calling 911 to get help with his iPhone.
Does it matter? He was drunk. He wasn't actually trying to accomplish anything.
Posting with a link to the parent post. Alexander, you really have gone off the deep end.
iPhones don't get drunk morons in jail... drunk morons get drunk morons in jail!
iOccupyJail?
Ummm, why is the guy pictured in that link the same guy pictured in the iPhone story?
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
I ran the IOS 5 beta. Whenever I checked for updates after the official IOS beta came out, I was told that my phone was up-to-date.
A few weeks afterwards, I went to use my phone and it was locked with some kind of "can not connect server" error. I could only make 911 calls. I had to connect my phone to a computer and completely restore it. At the time I needed to make an important phone call. I ended up making the call two hours late due to this problem.
I could easily see a drunk guy accidentally dialing 911 because of this.
Needless to say, I will never buy another another iPhone, and I will strongly discourage anyone from using an iPhone beta. My cell phone is my primary communication device, and I refuse to pay money for any phone that would disable itself without any form of warning whatsoever.
No, I will not work for your startup
...if his iPhone was broken, how did he make the call?
Ok. So you've posted the same copy and pasted reply here, here, here, here, here and here. Both to threads you've been signing in as APK, and those where you were pretending to be some random AC with a grudge against me and a massive admiration for you and sympathy for your goals. Thankfully, this seems to cap off this mess. I'm posting this reply (also copy and pasted) to each of those posts to focus things again. Just in case you feel you need to post again, no need to carry on each of these frayed ends, just reply to this post.
From the manual for the cell phone:
You should never rely solely on any wireless device for essential communications like medical emergencies.
Remember that everyone who doesn't have a landline phone, or worse yet, wants to dismantle the public switched telephone network.
If you have an emergency, you want to have an non-IP landline phone! Or a good life insurance policy!
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!