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Message Digest
Volume 28 : Issue 323 : "text" Format
Messages in this Issue:
Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens
Re: Jamaica running out of phone numbers
Re: A new scam? "Congratulations! This is your lucky day, ..."
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Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:58:49 -0500
From: Bill Horne <bill@horneQRM.net>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: 'Sexting' popular among teens
Message-ID: <j_GdnS4HN_-oVILWnZ2dnUVZ_qCdnZ2d@speakeasy.net>
David Kaye wrote:
> hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com wrote:
>
>> IMHO, while this practice should be discouraged, kids should not be
>> prosecuted under felony charges for this sort of thing. But I've
>> heard from some parents who feel aggressive law enforcement is the
>> right way to go.
>
> This whole WINS news story is troubling because it goes on and on
> about young people's brains not being as developed, etc., and them not
> knowing the consequences of their actions, etc. What WINS fails to
> say is that times have changed and today's younger folks really don't
> think of naked photos as any big deal. And why should they be?
> Bodies are pretty. We're born naked, after all.
Times may have changed, but young people have not: evolution has not
progressed to the point where teenagers are able to appreciate the
long-term consequences of their actions, or to anticipate undesirable
outcomes when short-term aggrandizement takes the place of long-term
societal benefit.
My wife and I have good friends whose son's cell phone was stolen. The
phone contained private pictures of their son and some of his friends,
in their birthday suits. The thieves amused themselves by sending the
pictures to everyone on the phone's number list, including the boy's
teachers.
What followed could best be described as a comedy of errors, with his
school's officials violating almost every procedure, rule, and law that
could possibly be applied: our friends were able to keep their child in
school, but only because his rights had been so flagrantly abused as to
cast doubt on the basic competencies of the school employees involved.
In other words, he got very lucky.
This is a topic that covers a wide swath of industrial life - policy,
technology, legal, and socioeconomic. Let's step back a pace, and
consider the perspective of each player.
1. The radio station is selling advertising, and sex sells. If their
listeners are afraid of it, they'll hype it until the last
drive-time radio is back in the last commuter's garage. They don't
care if it's true: they care about selling soap. I'd say "Shame on
them", but the shame is ours, and they're just exploiting it.
2. The school systems are selling the impression of safety, and
draconian rules and kneejerk reactions make parents think their
tiny cuddwy luvvy ones are "safe". The truth is always different:
anyone who has endured American public-school culture and practice
knows that bureaucrats value conformity over safety, mediocrity
over achievement, and control over common sense. Students who don't
(pun intended) fit the mold are dropped off the end of the assembly
line and swept away: there is no room on that conveyor belt for
free thinkers, risk-takers, or sub-standard cogs destined for the
industrial machine.
3. The students are thumbing their noses at "normalcy", which is what
young people do. In one sense, this *IS* nothing new: children
always question their parents (and their parents' surrogates), and
do things that both will someday regret. What IS new is the
technology available to the children for use in getting their
parents' attention, and since every child does whatever it takes to
get the attention, no matter what the century or the government
or the "norm" is 'sposed to be, we're seeing the latest sideshow in
a carnival that has been running since Adam and Eve. Children can't
judge the consequences of their actions - that is a truism as old
as humanity, and they are, after all, children - but for adults
to bleat about the consequences of giving such tools to children is
like telling kids that they shouldn't touch the firearm dad keeps
in the drawer next to his bed.
4. The body politic (that's us) is desperately trying to make Marshall
McLuhan's and Pete Seeger's predictions come true: we're marching
backward into Bonanza land, reaching over our shoulders for an
innocence that we can never quite grasp. Even if we can't have it,
we'll settle for a pale imitation, and demand that civil servants
reassure us again and again that everything is in control and
nothing can ever go wrong - "... while Superman, for the thousandth
time, sells talking dolls and conquers crime, dutifully they learn
the date of birth of Paul Revere".
The question is "Where does this lead us?", and my crystal ball is as
cloudy as everyone else's. My opinions, for what they're worth:
It is, of course true that we were born naked. It's also true that we
can't survive that way, at least in the majority of the world's
climates. Clothing isn't optional, and never has been, so covering our
bodies is the norm, and always will be. That is, however, a separate
issue from the way that an endless line of control freaks uses the
promise of approbation and the threat of humiliation to impose their
will on others: everyone from religious zealots to egomaniacs with
Messiah complexes to senatorial candidates are all eager to order
everyone else to put on the latest fashion and attitudes instead of
putting off their shame.
If everyone were naked, it wouldn't be interesting. In this matter,
Jerry Lewis was right: if we raise our kids well, we can take them
into a whorehouse and it won't make any difference. The fact is that
we live in a society which raises children to be ashamed and secretive
about their bodies and sex, because it's a very effective and
easy-to-implement control mechanism that even the dullards in public
office and the "leaders" in our factories can use without retraining.
It's not the children who need to answer for feelthy peektures on
their cellphones: Walt Kelly was right, long before cellphones or
megapixels had entered our vocabulary.
"We have met the enemy, and he is us".
Bill Horne
--
(Speaking for myself)
(Filter QRM from my address for direct replies)
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2009 08:10:14 GMT
From: "Liron" <nomail@sick.of.getting.spam>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: Jamaica running out of phone numbers
Message-ID: <GXITm.61238$ze1.41691@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
Canberra, in Australia, a city of around 200,000-300,000 people around 1990,
had 800,000 useable 6 digit numbers, and yet they also must have been
running out of numbers, for Canberra numbers were changed from (062) xx yyyy
to (06) 2xx yyyy, thus providing an additional 200,000 numbers. For
example, you could have (06) 20xx yyyy but not (062) 0x yyyy. So all the
home phones, second home phones, business phones, faxes, DID blocks,
separate voice mailbox numbers, fax numbers, etc. etc., that either were
there or would appear over the next decade, would have been enough to cause
them to make this move. Mobile phones had nothing to do with this as they
had their own area code.
Liron
<user@domain.invalid> wrote in message
news:hfl62n$1jk1$1@adenine.netfront.net...
> Adam H. Kerman wrote:
>> John Mayson <john@mayson.us> wrote:
>>
> [...]
>>> Jamaica was assigned eight million usable numbers in 1997, but is
>>> now down to one million, according to Maurice Charvis, OUR deputy
>>> director general, due largely to the growth in the mobile market.
> [...]
>> Jamaica has 2.7 million people, about the size of Chicago. Can they
>> prove that the 876 allocations were done efficiently without number
>> portability? Of course not. But then, this hasn't prevented NANPA
>> from assigning new area codes anywhere else.
> [...]
> Of course, not everyone has a home phone, a mobile and an office phone (or
> they would have used more than 8 million numbers already) but PABX's will
> have a block of numbers with many spares.
Date: Wed, 09 Dec 2009 07:28:59 GMT
From: "Liron" <nomail@sick.of.getting.spam>
To: redacted@invalid.telecom.csail.mit.edu
Subject: Re: A new scam? "Congratulations! This is your lucky day, ..."
Message-ID: <%kITm.61229$ze1.24847@news-server.bigpond.net.au>
See if your carrier has online billing where it can list all the
numbers dialled. If so, then you can check the number dialled. If it
was the one that you intended to dial yet you the number not available
recording please dial another number, then you're onto something.
Liron
"tlvp" <mPiOsUcB.EtLlLvEp@att.net> wrote in message
news:op.u4li3bg3o63xbg@acer250.gateway.2wire.net...
> What in the world is happening here?
>
> Again today, for the third time in my +1-203 at&t territory, an 800
> number I dialed fetched up with a telephone company "number has
> changed" interrupt informing me of the "new number" (today, as
> 1-800-712-5000). At the new number I meet the greeting in the
> "Subject:" line, followed by an urgent sales pitch offered by a very
> enthusiastic mini-skirted-high-school-cheer-leader voice.
>
> I hang up, dial my intended 800 number again, and get through to the
> party I originally intended.
>
> OK: the first time something like that happened to me, several weeks
> ago, I had, to be honest, misread the number I wanted, hence
> misdialed.
>
> The second time I'm pretty sure I had dialed correctly.
>
> On today's occasion, I'm certain I dialed correctly, as I was
> looking at the number's listing in my phone book as I was dialing.
>
> So, again: what's going on? Is at&t selling randomly selected
> failed-call-completion moments to nefarious telephone marketers? Or
> what?
>
> Cheers, -- tlvp
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End of The Telecom digest (3 messages)
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