TELECOM Digest OnLine - Sorted: Re: Unlisted Phone Number

Re: Unlisted Phone Number

T (nospam.kd1s@cox.nospam.net)
Sat, 10 Mar 2007 13:05:12 -0500

In article <telecom26.68.9@telecom-digest.org>, hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com
says:

> Bell always used to encourage "In an emergency dial 0" and operators
> were trained to take down the details if necessary and pass them on to
> the police. Not anymore, they push 911, they don't want their
> operators involved in that anymore. I wonder if the current phone
> books even say to dial an operator for an emergency. They really
> discourage it.

That assumes that anything even happens when you dial zero. With VoIP
there've been no operator services whatsoever.

> On Mar 8, 1:18 pm, Rick Merrill <rick0.merr...@NOSPAM.gmail.com>
> wrote:

>> The addresses that Switchboard.com and others have do not come from
>> the telephone directory and therefore they often list "unlisted
>> numbers."

> Those web services are inaccurate. What troubles me is that lay
> people take them for gospel. (Recently the Inquirer published college
> profs saying Wikpedia is NOT an allowable/authorative reference source
> for papers; though many people think it is.)

> On those sites I am listed with a phone I disconnected in 2001. I am
> not listed with my present phone. Actually I am, but my name is
> spelled wrong so a name look up won't find me.

You could find me on the web directories but it's very easy to delete
your information from them.

> I got upset when a distant relative called me and complained "I had a
> tough time finding you, your phone is not listed." I replied that my
> phone is and always has been listed in the phone book. She said
> "well, it wasn't on the web."

> There's a heck of a lot of crap on the web and ordinary consumers
> don't know it.

That's ok for the next week or so I'll be doing battle with both AT&T
and Verizon for having the wrong listings on their web sites for my
office.

> Another example is these automatic routing programs from map services.
> I know several people who ended up on dead-end streets in high crime
> neighborhoods because the mapgen thought it was an on-ramp and it
> wasn't. There are many streets on official maps that don't exist in
> reality -- they were planned but never physically put in or deleted.
> The mapgens don't know it. They also can't tell the difference
> between a through street and an alleyway and route people wrong.

> But it amazes me that otherwise intelligent people use these functions
> and thing because they came from the computer/web they're perfectly
> reliable. (Why they can't look themselves on a road map I don't
> know.)

Actually the mapgens work well for my city if only because there
really haven't been many new streets added in the past few years.

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