FOLLOWING our report on 23 February, many readers have told us of another way to defeat those hated 鈥減ress 1 for this, press 2 for that鈥� automated switchboards. We鈥檙e pleased to pass it on. Even if the companies that inflict these systems on us read this column, changing their technology to defeat these tricks will cost them so much time and money they might decide to go back to employing caller-friendly humans instead.
The ploy suggested is to fool the switchboard into thinking you are a technically incompetent Luddite, stuck in a time warp. Ignore all requests to 鈥減ress the star key鈥� and do absolutely nothing. The automated system then assumes you are incapable of following any instructions, or you are still using an old dial phone.
Dial phones work by sending out a rapid series of pulses that control switches at the network exchange. Modern phones use a keypad to generate audio tones, which is what exchanges are now designed to deal with. But the exchanges must also recognise pulses so that anyone with an old phone can still make a call.
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We鈥檙e happy to say that the 鈥淧ress 1鈥� switchboards don鈥檛 recognise pulses. So if the caller doesn鈥檛 obligingly press the star key to prove the phone sends tones, a human operator has to take the call.
Unfortunately, the switchboard may wait for quite a long time before deciding there really are no tones coming and alerting the operator. This is why it pays to try the previous trick we recommended of repeatedly pressing 0. In many switchboards, this activates a default that has been built into the system, and it should immediately alert an operator. But if it fails, hang up, redial, do nothing and wait patiently.
Together, we will beat them in the end.
A COUPLE of weeks ago, Feedback questioned why light signals in Global Crossing鈥檚 network of fibre-optic cables were apparently working at only the speed of sound (23 February). It seems Global Crossing鈥檚 creditors had similar questions. According to the financial press, the company has filed for bankruptcy.
SOMETIMES those in charge of even the greatest of universities can have problems making up their minds.
If you e-mail the board of graduate studies at the University of Cambridge, here is the automated reply you receive in return: 鈥淭his message is automatically generated in response to your mail message (perhaps re-directed) to bgs@hermes.cam.ac.uk. Feel free to send more mail, as this reply will not be repeated (provided you send from the same address). This reply is from The University of Cambridge Board of Graduate Studies Admissions Enquiry Service. ** Please do not send further messages** (ignore the first four lines of this message).鈥�
AND further to the above, we鈥檙e not sure Clare College, Cambridge, is the best place to study maths. Reader Monica Lee recently received promotional literature for a book entitled Clare through the Twentieth Century. At the bottom it states: 鈥淔or addresses outside the British Isles the price, including postage and packaging, is 拢50 (拢45 plus 拢15 for post and packaging).鈥�
THERE ARE some things you just cannot do with CDs. Fortunately.
A few years ago a music enthusiast was lecturing the Birmingham Jazz Record Society on the music of the avant-garde French jazz violinist Jean-Luc Ponty. A local audio buff provided a record player and put on a selection of vinyl LPs, while the expert expounded.
At 10 pm, with supposedly another hour to go, all the records had been played. The expert wound up the talk early, took some questions and said goodnight.
It was only when the audio buff was packing up his equipment that he noticed the record player had been set to play the LP discs at 45 rpm instead of 331/3 rpm. No one in the audience, let alone the Ponty expert, noticed that there was anything unusual about the music.
We got this story from jazz enthusiast Alan Purslow, who the audio buff had sworn to secrecy until after the Ponty expert鈥檚 death. 鈥淭ill his dying day,鈥� says Purslow, 鈥渉e never knew why he had finished his recital so early.鈥�
WINNER of the 鈥淛ust in case you were worried that their research was biased鈥� award for cautiously titled papers goes to 鈥淔atigue in progressive multiple sclerosis: results of a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, crossover trial of oral 4-aminopyridine鈥� by Rossini and others, Multiple Sclerosis, vol 7, p 354.
THE ENGLISH version of 101 Traditional Recipes for Spaghetti by Walter Pedrotti includes an interesting discussion of salt that isn鈥檛 salt. It says: 鈥淎s far as salt is concerned, an essential ingredient in the preparation of pasta, it is better to use unrefined sea salt. There are many elements present in this salt which are eliminated during refinement: chloride, sodium, magnesium, sulphur, calcium, potassium, bromine, carbon, zinc, strontium, boron, silica, fluoride鈥tc.鈥�
Presumably, refined salt would be ideal for homeopathic cooking.
ACCORDING to the Ananova news website, Britain is in for a strange summer. 鈥淢eteorologists,鈥� the site tells us, 鈥渁re predicting one of the wettest and most unpredictable summers in a decade 鈥︹��
ADVICE from the spring issue of the Automobile Association magazine: 鈥淩emember that the driven tyres will wear more quickly, so rotate front to back (or vice versa) when they are part worn.鈥�
How would you do vice versa? Or, rather, how wouldn鈥檛 you?
FINALLY, thank you to the many readers who wrote in telling us which female politician said 鈥淏ut, at the end of the day, in the morning we shall 鈥︹�� on BBC Radio 4 (Feedback, 2 March). For the answer, see this week鈥檚 letters (The bottom line).