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The Public Telephone API | 394 comments | Create New Account
Comments belong to whoever posts them. Please notify us of inappropriate comments.
The Public Telephone API
Authored by: BitOBear on Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 02:45 AM EDT
There are other such magical numbers:

4-1-1 information

6-1-1 customer service

7-1-1 highway emergency (regional, some places have *-7-7, some places have
nothing)

8-1-1 utility emergency (mostly don't dig here info of late).

All of these numbers are implemented by all telephone carriers. Try 6-1-1 on
your cell phone, you get the same service as you would get if you call the 800
number for your carrier. They even -prefer- you to call 6-1-1 because you can be
routed to your provider with zero chance of leaving their (free to them)
system.

The use of 0 or 1 in the us, and 011 (in the US) to get to the international
dialing plan.

The problem is that you split your analogy in the wrong place. There are
-details- of your call that are common -before- the actual phone number.

You know why we use those two dashes in writing down a U.S. phone number? e.g.
xxx-yyy-zzzz, because technically only the "zzzz" part is your phone
number. The xxx is your "area code" and the "yyy" part is
your prefix. This rarely matters any more, but its true. There are (or at least
were) rules for things like the middle digit of your area code is always a zero
or a one, (e.g. x0x or x1x) and your prefix "never" had zero or one
there. This part of the Public Telephone API went away in the last 20 years or
so. But at one point it was -vital- to the functioning of the system.

So your analogy is correct but you have to draw a line through it.

This line is, by the way, the same line you have to draw through -any- API. Much
of the API is fixed and common (the magic numbers in the X-1-1 series, the
country code, the area code, the prefix, the international dialing indicator
[011 in the U.S., its something else in every other country if I recall].

On the other side of the line is the part that is "task specific".
This is that last part of the phone number. The last four digits (in the US)
that tell the hardware you have found by the well formed API which subscriber
line you want to use. This is the argument to the system.

The "file name" part of invoking the "open a file API" is
arbitrarily assignable. the zzzz part is the only arbitrary part of your phone
number. so if there is a java.lang.file.open("name") [I actually don't
know that there is, it might be java.io.file.open() or who knows what] the
arbitrary part -starts- in the parentheses. The part outside the parentheses is
as fixed in stone as anything. If either of the ones I guessed at are correct,
the other -will- -fail- -utterly- for its non-existence. For it's absence within
the API.

And now that you have tunneled all the way through the "placing a
call" API, you actually have to have a conversation which has its own
formal and informal rules based on the kind of call you are going to have.

Going back to your robot thing. Suppose Google wanted to sell you the individual
robots to replace the Sun robots which they deemed inferior, but they didn't
want to replace the whole robot system. The replacement robots would -have- to
use the same commands in order to function. The robot controll system is Java et
al. The individual robots are the classes inside the Sun Official Java Runtime
Class Library, and the classes inside the Apache Harmony Java Runtime Class
Library.

The Classes do the work.

The Robots do the work.

It is established in law that there is no right to prevent inter-operation of
components, which is why you can buy after-market hardware for your car,
including replacing vital components like engine parts or transmissions.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

9-1-1 contract
Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 06:56 AM EDT
Fun facts about emergency numbers:

Official emergency numbers:
UK 999
EU 112
USA 911

But in the UK, 112 and 911 are redirected to 999 anyway, for everyone's safety
(we get enough tourists that dial the wrong numbers)

Now, as to why 999 *was* the best: Look at an old rotary telephone, 9 is all
the way round, with the stop immidiately after it. Imagine a panicing user
trying to dial a number. 999 is "all the way round" three times: very
hard to mess up, and you can do that fast, as you don't need to worry about
exactly stopping in the middle, unlike when you're trying to hit 1 or 2.

Of course, these days, it's still faster, as you don't have any travel time for
your finger, put it on the 9 and keep pressing, but it's easier for an unlocked
phone to dial it by accident in your pocket, as most phones don't require
unlocking to dial emergency numbers, again for the convinience of panicing
users.

[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]

  • 9-9-9 - Authored by: rsteinmetz70112 on Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 09:19 AM EDT
    • 9-9-9 - Authored by: Anonymous on Thursday, April 26 2012 @ 10:43 AM EDT
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