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on the folly of trusting cell phones
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Sun, 11 Sep 2005 16:08:23 -0400
Begin forwarded message: From: gailbracy <gailbracy () homelandhugs org> Date: September 11, 2005 3:56:30 PM EDT To: dave () farber net Subject: on the folly of trusting cell phonesA little humor about cell phones in dire straits, for an unusually dreary
day... My husband and I were in NYC August 2003, when the lights went out. That afternoon, a Friday, he had taken the train to Long Island, and I was browsing about, window-shopping, trying to stay in shade as it washorrifically hot and muggy. I'd just sat down at an outside café across from
Rockefeller Plaza having a cool snack, getting energy to get back to the Hilton where we were staying on the 27th floor. Across the plaza was an exhibit of "One Hundred Years of Flight" which coincided with the Wright Brothers accomplishments. I was raised on thecoast of North Carolina, and even though they were from Ohio, we claimed The Brothers as our own. I'd visited the Wright Brothers museum in Kitty Hawk
many times as a child. As I viewed the various exhibits, I noticed people pouring out of thebuildings in what seemed to me to be droves. It was so odd that so many were coming out at once, but I'm not a New Yorker, and it was after all, Friday
afternoon.But it soon became obvious this wasn't a typical Friday. People walking in the middle of streets, thousands of them, cars jamming into gridlock. Wowsa! I'm thinking. I asked a guy what was going on and found out the power went
out, that's all he knew. Then I noticed many fiercely dialing their cellphones, with no luck. I got worried then hugely spooked. Electric adrenaline shot through my body as I worked my way back to the area where all the news
stations were. Maybe the tickers would say something... For a few dreadful minutes, we were all thinking the same thought: thismaybe another terrorist attack. My blood turned cold but there was nothing
to do but wait. My cell phone didn't work either. A street vendor had a battery-powered radio and hoards of us gathered around to hear scary yet false reports that a power plant in Jersey was on fire. Gulp.But I had my camera and no matter what, I was going down taking pictures.
Maybe my camera will endure and some good soul will find it and tell my story. I accepted my fate, and started snapping.And then, a call!! It was my son down in North Carolina, asking me how I was doing. He told me the details of the black-out and that he was watching it all on MSNBC. I was standing at the blue CNN sculpture and my son could see that whole area from a camera that was apparently stationed somewhere above
me.I got directly in front of the CNN sculpture and amid the masses, started jumping up and down in my bright red shirt so he could spot me on TV and he did! We then tried to determine where the camera was. He was hanging out of a window on the fourth floor of the NBC building! So, ham that I am, told my
son to roll the video tape, I'm going to get this guy's attention.Across the from the NBC building, I stand on the edge of a fountain, with my working cell phone in hand frantically waving. Sure enough the camera guy sees me, panned in and my son tapes silly me, yukking it up in the middle of
chaos.Then, in one crazy-cool moment, my cell phone slipped from my hand, a fatal "kerplop", and there it goes, drowning in the fountain behind me. I trudged into the water to retrieve it, as New Yorkers around me rolled their eyes at
the stupid tourist.Needless to say, I felt immensely foolish killing off the one working cell
phone in Manhattan, but I sure had some great photos. I got back to the Hilton, climbed the 27 floors to my still-chilled room, watched theblackened skyline and thanked my lucky stars above it was "merely" a power
failure.Finally, as New York began blinkering back to life, I heard a frail little
chirp from my cell phone, and there in the dark, it came back to life. -----Original Message----- From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net] Sent: Thursday, September 01, 2005 3:37 AM To: Ip Ip Subject: [IP] Katrina and the folly of trusting cell phones Begin forwarded message: From: Lauren Weinstein <lauren () vortex com> Date: September 1, 2005 12:27:52 AM EDT To: dave () farber net Cc: lauren () vortex com Subject: Katrina and the folly of trusting cell phones Dave, In watching the interviews from the areas devastated by the aftermath of Katrina, one warning comes through loud and clear, and while it's not a new one, it's still critically important: Trusting cell phones to work in many emergency situations can be dangerous or fatal. Over and over we hear people saying how their cell phones became useless (except perhaps for snapping photos). And it wasn't a "simple" matter of call traffic overloading. Even in areas where equipment wasn't flooded, power cutoffs led to microcell batteries running down within a couple of days. With so much reliance on these small, seemingly ubiquitous cell sites, power failures can turn regional cellular networks into largely useless hardware in short order. It's particularly upsetting to hear people noting that this agency or that organization depended more than ever on inexpensive cell phones rather than the expensive dedicated radio equipment that they used to use, and when the cellular network went down their communications were disrupted in major ways. --Lauren-- Lauren Weinstein lauren () pfir org or lauren () vortex com or lauren () eepi org Tel: +1 (818) 225-2800 http://www.pfir.org/lauren Co-Founder, PFIR - People For Internet Responsibility - http://www.pfir.org Co-Founder, EEPI - Electronic Entertainment Policy Initiative - http://www.eepi.org Moderator, PRIVACY Forum - http://www.vortex.com Member, ACM Committee on Computers and Public Policy Lauren's Blog: http://lauren.vortex.com DayThink: http://daythink.vortex.com ------------------------------------- You are subscribed as gbi () actti com To manage your subscription, go to http://v2.listbox.com/member/?listname=ipArchives at: http://www.interesting-people.org/archives/interesting- people/
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