Except for the fact that while one phone line cost might be negligible, 3800 phone lines is not.
And for the companies that *are* big enough to afford this, one would expect that the companies would not need to resort to illegal robocalling to generate revenue.
I'd think if you are using 2,000 lines to simultaneously and continually make calls 24h/day, that's going to raise at least some flags with the telecom provider. Also, while the cost of a single line might be neglible, the cost of 2,000 phone lines is not. In practice, there's going to be a much smaller limit on how many outgoing phone lines you'd get from companies that are not already well enough off that they shouldn't need to resort to illegal robocalling in order to generate revenue.
And finally, each call is going to take some amount of real time that is long enough to complete a call, let the phone ring, and leave a message. There are only so many minutes in a day, so that's going to put yet another cap on the number of calls that can actually be made in a given amount of time.
Sure... but how many of these calls do you seriously think they could make at once without causing a switch to overload and start denying service to additional calls?
Sure... but just how many lines do you think these operations have, and how many phone calls do you think they can actively have going simultaneously without overloading the switchboard and drawing enough attention to their activities they they get shut down right away?
It's ironic that you suggest that billions would make sense in the context of the scale of the problem being discussed when you've failed to account for the fact that there isn't even 35 million seconds in an entire *YEAR*, and that it generally takes 3 to 4 seconds just to complete a connection for a single phone call, let alone stay on the line long enough to leave an automated message tell the recipient that they need to call back to avoid being arrested for tax fraud or what have you.
Say there's 100M phone numbers in the US.. call 'em all 10 times, and there's your first billion.
Sure... but just how long do you think it will take to do that?
Bear in mind that even just connecting a phone call takes between 3 to 4 seconds, let alone leaving an annoying message like "This is the IRS, a warrant has been issued, blah blah blah...", work out just how long it will take to call that many numbers.
See the problem?
It strains credulity to think that these companies have been doing this long enough to have completed even half a billion calls, let alone multiple billions.
Given that it takes between 3 and 4 seconds to simply complete a connection for a phone call, let alone leave a message, and that there are only about 31 million seconds in a year... well.... you do the math.
People still seem entirely welcome to prank their coworkers as they might otherwise do... but honestly, I think that this idea is actually entirely fair.
Which do you believe is more important? Catering to people who want daylight after a morning commute, or catering to an even large number of people who would otherwise not have any exposure to morning daylight at all during the winter months?
If you really believe that evening daylight is more useful, I suggest you do some reading on the impact of daylight on serotonin and melatonin cycles, and why the timing of such exposure is important.
DST needs to go away... but permanent standard time is really the most rational thing to do. Permanent DST just amounts to shifting time zones... and is isomorphic to just starting your work day an hour earlier... which you might as well do, rather than making 1pm the middle of the day instead of noon (which would technically make noon 12am, since it is before midday).
You don't need to convince people to go along with it... you just start doing it.
People who are dissatisfied with it will have to leave to get away from it, but most people will be indifferent, and within a generation it will be accepted as "normal".
this law simply isn't workable, it's complete censorship.
It's obviously censorship... but even complete censorship does not mean it is unworkable. There's no real technological barriers that would prevent a government from limiting and controling general public access to information from outside. It's entirely doable... and any notion of living in a "free" society will likely have to be abandoned in favor of whatever definition of "free" the government convinces its citizens to buy into.
That is completely false. Any negative assertion can always be restated as logically equivalent positive assertion, so if it were not possible to prove a negative assertion, you could not prove a positive one either, effectively meaning that you could not prove anything.
Example, a person at phone number X calls 1-800-help, which forwards to phone number Y. Phone number Y queries X to ask if it is currently calling 1-800-help, the number that was supposedly originally dialled at X. The answer is yes, so the number shows up as valid.
If X spoofs, the callback query from Y doesn't end up going to X, and so X has no control over whether the response is going to succeed or fail.
Er... no, your phone would ask did the other phone call 1-800 help, not the service that provides the number... I just realized that wouldn't work at all., because the 1-800 help exchange is not physically connected to your phone.
That would mean that the caller has to give you the number it is calling in addition to its own CID info, and then you, as a recognized user of the 1-800 help number, would be able to authenticate the call against one that the 1-800 help number really did forward to you by asking them (which they should know since they just fowarded the call to you), and you would only do this since the 1-800 line is not your actual phone number.
Now suppose my phone were to call the person back, asking "did you call Ray's phone?"
They don't ask "did you call Ray's phone", they ask "did you call 1-800-help", and it may be able to do this even before it finished forwarding the incoming call to the -800 number to your phone.
Caller ID didn't require most callers to get a second line, so no, most calls showed the number.
No... most calls did not show the number... the separate call display unit I had at the time either said "unknown" or "no caller info sent", with the the area where the phone number itself would appear on the device being blank. Other times, when the number did show up, in the text area for the display, it only showed the city and province or state that the caller was calling from, and not the caller's actual name. I actually don't remember how long this was the case, but it did it for long enough that even over 20 years later, I still don't pay as much attention to the name that is associated with a number in the caller ID info as I do to the actual number that shows up. Partial info was still moderately useful in the early days of caller ID even without the full name of the caller because the people who made the most use of it still knew the people's phone numbers for their friends and family, and unrecognized phone numbers were just that, unrecognized.
If you're going to introduce a new protocol and get everyone to start using it, a certificate works after the first ring, rather than the third.
Why do you figure it would take until after the third ring? I'd imagine that this only would add one more ring to the delay for the info, at most. Secondly, even if you answer right after the first ring, before you've got the complete story, that shouldn't stop you from receiving the lookup info that you asked for as soon as you received the call, if it was available. Finally, as technology improved, I'd imagine that the delay before getting the lookup info back would get shorter and shorter, eventually becoming as unnoticeable as the fact that when your phone now first starts to ring, full CID info is shown as soon as it starts to ring... you don't have to wait for the first ring to finish like you used to.
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Except for the fact that while one phone line cost might be negligible, 3800 phone lines is not.
And for the companies that *are* big enough to afford this, one would expect that the companies would not need to resort to illegal robocalling to generate revenue.
I'd think if you are using 2,000 lines to simultaneously and continually make calls 24h/day, that's going to raise at least some flags with the telecom provider. Also, while the cost of a single line might be neglible, the cost of 2,000 phone lines is not. In practice, there's going to be a much smaller limit on how many outgoing phone lines you'd get from companies that are not already well enough off that they shouldn't need to resort to illegal robocalling in order to generate revenue.
And finally, each call is going to take some amount of real time that is long enough to complete a call, let the phone ring, and leave a message. There are only so many minutes in a day, so that's going to put yet another cap on the number of calls that can actually be made in a given amount of time.
Sure... but how many of these calls do you seriously think they could make at once without causing a switch to overload and start denying service to additional calls?
Given that they are leaving an audible message that is supposed to be heard by humans, yes... I'm assuming that it operates in real time.
Sure... but just how many lines do you think these operations have, and how many phone calls do you think they can actively have going simultaneously without overloading the switchboard and drawing enough attention to their activities they they get shut down right away?
It's ironic that you suggest that billions would make sense in the context of the scale of the problem being discussed when you've failed to account for the fact that there isn't even 35 million seconds in an entire *YEAR*, and that it generally takes 3 to 4 seconds just to complete a connection for a single phone call, let alone stay on the line long enough to leave an automated message tell the recipient that they need to call back to avoid being arrested for tax fraud or what have you.
Sure... but just how long do you think it will take to do that?
Bear in mind that even just connecting a phone call takes between 3 to 4 seconds, let alone leaving an annoying message like "This is the IRS, a warrant has been issued, blah blah blah...", work out just how long it will take to call that many numbers.
See the problem?
It strains credulity to think that these companies have been doing this long enough to have completed even half a billion calls, let alone multiple billions.
Given that it takes between 3 and 4 seconds to simply complete a connection for a phone call, let alone leave a message, and that there are only about 31 million seconds in a year... well.... you do the math.
Do the math please.
How many seconds are in an hour?
How long does it take to connect a phone call?
To make a billion phone calls would take over 20 years.
I somehow don't think these companies have been at it that long... maybe a quarter of that.
How can anyone read that and not think it is hyperbole?
They are only banning *PUBLIC FACING* pranks.
People still seem entirely welcome to prank their coworkers as they might otherwise do... but honestly, I think that this idea is actually entirely fair.
The idea being discussed here is to get rid of the time change twice a year.
That means one of two things: either standard time year 'round, or DST year 'round... in either case, DST will have nothing to do with summer.
If you really believe that evening daylight is more useful, I suggest you do some reading on the impact of daylight on serotonin and melatonin cycles, and why the timing of such exposure is important.
DST needs to go away... but permanent standard time is really the most rational thing to do. Permanent DST just amounts to shifting time zones... and is isomorphic to just starting your work day an hour earlier... which you might as well do, rather than making 1pm the middle of the day instead of noon (which would technically make noon 12am, since it is before midday).
You assume that in any way this law is supposed to somehow care about you or your copyright. The law would exist only to protect the big players.
So basically, don't allow live content anymore, right?
You realize that for this to be effective, you would also basically have to outlaw skype or any form of group chat that has video as well, don't you?
You don't need to convince people to go along with it... you just start doing it.
People who are dissatisfied with it will have to leave to get away from it, but most people will be indifferent, and within a generation it will be accepted as "normal".
It's obviously censorship... but even complete censorship does not mean it is unworkable. There's no real technological barriers that would prevent a government from limiting and controling general public access to information from outside. It's entirely doable... and any notion of living in a "free" society will likely have to be abandoned in favor of whatever definition of "free" the government convinces its citizens to buy into.
See here for what is essentially the same argument, but with a much more detailed explanation than what I provided.
That is completely false. Any negative assertion can always be restated as logically equivalent positive assertion, so if it were not possible to prove a negative assertion, you could not prove a positive one either, effectively meaning that you could not prove anything.
Bonus points if you can get your phone to simply treat a picture of your middle finger as your face...
If X spoofs, the callback query from Y doesn't end up going to X, and so X has no control over whether the response is going to succeed or fail.
Er... no, your phone would ask did the other phone call 1-800 help, not the service that provides the number... I just realized that wouldn't work at all., because the 1-800 help exchange is not physically connected to your phone.
That would mean that the caller has to give you the number it is calling in addition to its own CID info, and then you, as a recognized user of the 1-800 help number, would be able to authenticate the call against one that the 1-800 help number really did forward to you by asking them (which they should know since they just fowarded the call to you), and you would only do this since the 1-800 line is not your actual phone number.
They don't ask "did you call Ray's phone", they ask "did you call 1-800-help", and it may be able to do this even before it finished forwarding the incoming call to the -800 number to your phone.
No... most calls did not show the number... the separate call display unit I had at the time either said "unknown" or "no caller info sent", with the the area where the phone number itself would appear on the device being blank. Other times, when the number did show up, in the text area for the display, it only showed the city and province or state that the caller was calling from, and not the caller's actual name. I actually don't remember how long this was the case, but it did it for long enough that even over 20 years later, I still don't pay as much attention to the name that is associated with a number in the caller ID info as I do to the actual number that shows up. Partial info was still moderately useful in the early days of caller ID even without the full name of the caller because the people who made the most use of it still knew the people's phone numbers for their friends and family, and unrecognized phone numbers were just that, unrecognized.
Why do you figure it would take until after the third ring? I'd imagine that this only would add one more ring to the delay for the info, at most. Secondly, even if you answer right after the first ring, before you've got the complete story, that shouldn't stop you from receiving the lookup info that you asked for as soon as you received the call, if it was available. Finally, as technology improved, I'd imagine that the delay before getting the lookup info back would get shorter and shorter, eventually becoming as unnoticeable as the fact that when your phone now first starts to ring, full CID info is shown as soon as it starts to ring... you don't have to wait for the first ring to finish like you used to.
Kind of like Caller ID itelf when it was first being rolled out flagged most incoming calls as :"unknown", or "no caller info sent".