Word: digitalizing
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...hadn't got a single ping. So much for the great home-hacking threat. But the next morning there was a pop-up on my screen. A "remote procedure call" had come in overnight from an anonymous computer with an 11-digit IP address. The firewall blocked it. Since then, hardly a day has gone by without one and sometimes 10 or more attempts by outsiders to get into my hard drive...
...digit dialing would cause a variety of minor nuisances, but none of the arguments that are often raised against it are convincing. Certainly, dialing 10 digits instead of seven would take a bit more time and slightly increase the chance that one would make a mistake in dialing. This complaint notwithstanding, the critics who warn of repetitive motion injury due to the additional finger movement have yet to experience the taxing finger-crunching of Pine...
...most plausible rationale for objecting to 10-digit dialing is that it would cause confusion about how to dial a specific number and how much one would be charged for a given call. This new dialing system, however, is surprisingly tolerant of common mistakes: adding a one before the area code would not result in an additional charge, and forgetting to dial the area code would trigger a recorded message informing the caller of the error. The remaining fault —complicated local dialing plans and non-geographically specific area codes—are representative of systemic problems within...
People might be annoyed at having to dial 10-digits to call their neighbor, but this system is far superior to the alternative of having the boundaries between area codes shift, in order to make room for additional seven-digit numbers...
Recognizing the immense investment in the existing phone system, it is unrealistic to expect any major changes in its underlying structure. It is, however, entirely reasonable to move to a sane and consistent dialing system. In addition to freeing up even more numbers, moving to 10-digit dialing in all situations accomplishes this valuable objective. Just be thankful that we don't have 12-digit phone numbers yet, as some regulators are considering...