I think it's true that capitalism drives the resistance to technologies when it comes from vested interests - e.g. the RIAA - "Hey! Somebody's cheating US from our profits! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
New technologies win in spite of those objections because they are ENABLING technologies. E.g. people will carry on ripping CDs (they own) onto mp3 players (they own) because it's better. The CD producers will carry on whinging, but as Canute showed - just telling the tide to go back will never work.
I hope that the call handling hardware (ACD?) is capable of handling a preemptive press of a '5'. Then it would make sense to dial 999 [pause] 5. This I will try if I'm ever unfortunate enough to need it.
One problem in handling emergency calls is the number of hoax and unintentional calls: hence, calls are treated by the (human and tech) system as probably valid but possibly hoax/unintentional.
A second problem is the nuimber of trivial emergency calls that are made. Some are almost incredible, e.g: a woman dialled 999 to report that her rabbit had the wrong ears, it has emerged.
After buying the bunny, the woman found that its ears were not floppy as promised on the newspaper advert.
She called the emergency number to complain about the imperfect pet.
Amongst other nuisance calls revealed by the Central Scotland Police based in Stirling were two people who dialled 999 after being splashed by cars in wet weather.
When told it was inappropriate to use the number for the soaking, one woman verbally abused the call handler.
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Oh my word – some common sense.
Re:
I think it's true that capitalism drives the resistance to technologies when it comes from vested interests - e.g. the RIAA - "Hey! Somebody's cheating US from our profits! The sky is falling! The sky is falling!"
New technologies win in spite of those objections because they are ENABLING technologies. E.g. people will carry on ripping CDs (they own) onto mp3 players (they own) because it's better. The CD producers will carry on whinging, but as Canute showed - just telling the tide to go back will never work.
Devaluating Emergency Calls
I hope that the call handling hardware (ACD?) is capable of handling a preemptive press of a '5'. Then it would make sense to dial 999 [pause] 5. This I will try if I'm ever unfortunate enough to need it.
One problem in handling emergency calls is the number of hoax and unintentional calls: hence, calls are treated by the (human and tech) system as probably valid but possibly hoax/unintentional.
A second problem is the nuimber of trivial emergency calls that are made. Some are almost incredible, e.g: a woman dialled 999 to report that her rabbit had the wrong ears, it has emerged.
After buying the bunny, the woman found that its ears were not floppy as promised on the newspaper advert.
She called the emergency number to complain about the imperfect pet.
Amongst other nuisance calls revealed by the Central Scotland Police based in Stirling were two people who dialled 999 after being splashed by cars in wet weather.
When told it was inappropriate to use the number for the soaking, one woman verbally abused the call handler.