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Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

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Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#81
post #26

I love how it isn’t until the third paragraph that the post mentions what country 555-XXXX numbers are relevant to. This is the World Wide Web folks, not the USA web. The whole blog and offering seems US centric, to the point where I’m assuming it might not work very well at all for people outside of the North American Numbering plan area. We wouldn’t know because they seem to assume that the only people who are goin…

The Ghostbusters still didn’t clue you in?

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#82
Interesting that '555-5555' is historically listed as 'IN DISPUTE'. It was well-known in the 1980s and 1990s that if you hit 0 to have an operator dial a call for you (for example to an ANI demo or other target known to use ANI), an ANI Failure would result and the output would be: area code + 555-5555.

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#83
The internet has this kind of stuff too. Addresses "reserved for documentation" by IANA / IETF. I don't remember seeing them mentioned on-screen. I guess it's easy enough to register ghostbusters (dot) info or whatever.

example.com https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc2606/ 192.0.2.55 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/rfc5737/

There must be layers upon layers of old special-case routing code in telco switches that makes it really hard to just start issuing those old 555 directory numbers to subscribers.

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#84

Every time I see a 555 number in a movie, I'm reminded that it's a movie and am dropped out of immersion. So what if the movies use a real number? They could just sign up for a number, use it, and no harm done. Or just use 867-5309. Wherever that number goes, the person there is expecting it.

Let's set more movies in the UK, there's various ranges to choose from (expand the Notes section at the top):

https://www.ofcom.org.uk/phones-telecoms-and-internet/inform...

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I see a 555 number in a movie, I'm reminded that it's a movie and am dropped out of immersion. What about a cut? A camera zoom? A title screen? Sub-titles? I am intrigued about how you experience films.

I am intrigued about how you experience films... or books for that matter. If all you see is black and white letters, does this mean you could never experience immersion in the story?

I am a filmmaker. I went to film school. Maybe that has something to do with it?

I cannot recommend enough a book called In The Blink Of An Eye by Walter Murch.

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#86
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Every time I see a 555 number in a movie, I'm reminded that it's a movie and am dropped out of immersion. What about a cut? A camera zoom? A title screen? Sub-titles? I am intrigued about how you experience films.

We see real life through a lens, we don't see real life with 555 numbers

You absolutely do NOT see real life through a lens. This is one of the first things you learn in film school.

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#87
post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We see real life through a lens, we don't see real life with 555 numbers

You absolutely do NOT see real life through a lens. This is one of the first things you learn in film school.

It's literally impossible to see without a lens.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lens_(anatomy)

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am intrigued about how you experience films... or books for that matter. If all you see is black and white letters, does this mean you could never experience immersion in the story?

I am a filmmaker. I went to film school. Maybe that has something to do with it? I cannot recommend enough a book called In The Blink Of An Eye by Walter Murch.

Ah, then there's no need to be intrigued by how WalterBright experiences films. Just remember how you experienced films before you went to film school, or remember how you experience a book or a cartoon (unless you went to book or cartoon school too I guess).

Scenes and cuts, like letters on paper, are the medium. A phone number OTOH is part of the story. Immersion is broken by a badly told story, not the medium.

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point I was attempting to make is that the usage is incorrect and misleading in this context. The way the title is worded is indeed the past tense usage.

The point the parent was making is that it is not incorrect or misleading, just ambiguous. And even then, it’s ambiguous only if you leave out the second clause. “I could have a banana” has two perfectly correct meanings: it is possible for me to have a banana right now depending on some factor (conditional), or I had the possibility to have a banana in the past (preterite). A preterite in the second clause eliminate…

Don't you need to add another verb for “I could have a banana” to work as past tense?

E.g. "I could have eaten" or "I could have had"

Edit: Oh wait, now I see it. Something like "I knew I could have a banana if I got hungry."

Re: Overview of the 555-XXXX phone number

#90
post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Paying X per area code is justified, nobody is arguing against that. Paying $2500 per area code is unreasonable, as, like I said, there is nothing inherently special about 206-555-1234 vs 206-689-5312.

And as the other poster said, there is. Even the article points out that it was difficult and expensive to maintain, why is it unreasonable to charge proportionally to that, or indeed whatever the small number of people wanting it will actually pay?

What, exactly, is difficult and expensive to maintain about a 555 number compared to any other?

Let's be real, we're all tech engineers here. Telephony backbones are all IP based now. It's all just mappings on a computer that routes your call to the right next hop. There's nothing at all special about maintaining one mapping vs another.

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