2600 Flash
At the Last Stroke...
At precisely 11 am on April 2nd a man's voice was heard on Britain's telephone talking clock for the first time.
The smooth baritone voice of part-time actor Brian Cobby, 55-years-old, replaced the modulated contralto of Pat Simmons, whose voice was retired after 21 years at precisely 10:59 and 50 seconds.
Last December Mr. Cobby was chosen from among 5,000 competitors to tell the nation the precise time every 10 seconds in a recorded telephone message that is expected to receive 300 million calls this year.
Only two other voices have been heard on the telephone clock since it was devised in 1939. Both were women's.
Mr. Cobby, an assistant supervisor at a telephone exchange in Brighton in southern England, said it was "a great honor to be Britannia's wristwatch." He was paid the equivalent of $6,000 to record the 8,640 time announcements in one 24-hour period.
Good Apples for the Soviets
The Reagan Administration appears to be prepared to cooperate with Soviet efforts to put personal computers in secondary schools, according to industry officials negotiating export licenses.
"We expected it would be more difficult, so I was quite pleasantly surprised" said Alfred Eisenstaedt, a vice president of Apple Computer who was in Washington to discuss computer exports with Commerce and Defense Department officials. "They just want to make sure we do it right."
The Soviets are already producing their own "Agat" - a Soviet knockoff of an Apple II, but they are not able to produce enough. That is why IBM, Commodore, Sinclair Research, and Apple are all competing for the Soviet market.
The Commerce Department has argued that it makes no sense to bar American companies from selling computers the Russians could easily obtain in Japan and Britain. The Defense Department, which has taken a harder line, seems unperturbed by the thought of exporting thousands of machines, provided they are used for education. By law the sale of "hardened" machines that are designed to withstand battlefield conditions are barred.
Hackers Go Free
Four teenagers who used home computers to tap into a space agency computer at the Marshall Space Flight Center will not be prosecuted. United States Attorney Frank Donaldson announced.
The FBI seized the youths' computer equipment at their homes in Huntsville, Alabama, last July 16 after tracing the phone calls used to enter the computer. Unauthorized access to a computer is not permitted.
One of the youths, Robert Grumbles, 17-years-old, said he wished the FBI would return his $5,000 computer because "I don't see any reason for them to keep it." [Keep up the spirit, Rob.]
Robot Kills Man
Last summer, a Michigan man was the first worker killed by a robot in this country. The 34-year-old victim, working with automated die-casting machinery last July, was pinned between the back of a robot and a steel pole, the National Center for Disease Control reported. The worker suffered a heart attack, lapsed into a coma and died five days later.
There are more than 6,200 robots in use nationwide.
'Santa Fraud'
Randy Grimm didn't know it cost 55 cents every time he called a sports trivia game, so the 15-year-old dialed it 330 times last month hoping to answer the quiz correctly and win a prize. His mother received her telephone bill: 18 pages long, with more than $190 worth of "976" calls. But Ms. Grimm doesn't want to pay, and neither do the parents of Josie Aaronson-Gelb and Rachel Krebs-Falk, who repeatedly called a Santa Claus message last December, not knowing it was costing 50 cents a shot.
Josie and Rachel, both 7, are plaintiffs of record in a $10 million lawsuit filed in San Francisco Superior Court against Pacific Bell and the company that operates the Santa Claus Line.
The suit accuses Bell and "Santa Fraud" of deceptive advertising "designed to falsely mislead children into believing the calls were free" and inducing them to call repeatedly.
The suit, filed on behalf of all California children, asks for a refund for an estimated 100,000 families and $10 million in punitive damages to set up a children's protection fund to fight deceptive advertising.
Overseas Pirates
In the large cities in Holland last year, you couldn't switch on the TV at times without tuning in to a pirate station. With equipment costing as little as £20, they would break into the cable networks that service as much as 90% of Holland's urban areas. Some would transmit anything they could get their hands on, just for the sport of it - while others tried to do things that were genuinely new to TV. Artists and performers were quick to join in, and for a while the country enjoyed a madcap, unpredictable after-hours TV service. There was everything from pop video to pornography, from foreign TV shows to feature films, even one station that transmitted occasional satanic sermons.
Threats of prosecution over copyright of some of the bootleg material put a stop to many of the pirates. In addition, the cable owners have now started switching off their systems outside regular hours, a remedy that was deemed illegal on a technicality last year. Most of the pirates have now gone back to the radio and the anarchic highlights of after-hours Dutch cable TV may never be seen again.
Real Life WarGames?
A Stanford University computer operations specialist has filed a lawsuit to block the U.S. from hooking up a computer system that would automatically launch nuclear missiles in response to an incoming nuclear attack.
Clifford Johnson argues that it is unconstitutional to give war-making power to the so-called launch-on-warning computer system. He recently suffered a legal setback when the federal district judge declined to render a decision. The case will now go to the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
Although the U.S. does not officially have the capability to deploy the launch on-warning system, the technology to do so is definitely being developed by The Pentagon, Johnson claims. And he says, Secretary of Defense (((Caspar Weinberger))), who is the defendant in the lawsuit, has stated that the U.S. has not closed the door on the launch-on-warning option.
Not only does Johnson fear that the launch-on-warning computer could somehow malfunction and start a nuclear war, but he points out that the satellites and radar that would warn the computer of an enemy missile launch could themselves sound a false alert, one that the computer would be unable to distinguish from the real thing.
"To hook this system up m peacetime is in essence an act of war" Johnson says, "because there is a definite risk of it going off accidentally."
Silver Pages
Southwestern Bell Media is publishing a new phone book, printed in a larger typeface for senior citizens. It is expected to arrive in New Jersey in August and will be published in 110 cities across the United States and will feature stores that offer discounts to those age 60 and older. The directory, called the Silver Pages, will also include information on agencies on aging. [Hopefully, these directories won't weigh 50 pounds.]
Other News
*) A telephone operators' union threatened to picket an appearance by Joan Rivers at an AFL-CIO meeting. The union thinks that the comedian went a bit too far in bad-mouthing operators in a commercial she did for MCI Communications, which doesn't use operators. The 650.000-member Communications Workers of America also charges that Rivers reneged on her acceptance of a challenge to work a day as an operator.
*) The telephone company cannot seem to get the lines uncrossed at Fremantle International. The company has six telephone lines. For the last several weeks, incoming callers have been cutting into conversations in progress on other Fremantle lines. And when calls come it, all lights flash on all the phones, so it is just a guess which is the incoming call and which are calls in progress. Further, an incoming call might connect to a call-in service one with a seductively voiced woman. "We've just been doing major business with the Christian Broadcasting Network" reported Craig MacDonald, the company's marketing director. "That's when it becomes not amusing."
*) Bell Canada said it began charging large users of U.S. directory assistance to eliminate abuse of the service by customers who use free directory assistance to compile customer lists for sale to U,S. companies. Phone lines will now have free directory assistance for the first 250 requests.
*) Pacific Bell has found a way to let a single phone line carry two voice and three computer conversations at the same time.
*) United States banks lost an estimated $70 million to $100 million from fraudulent use of automated teller machines in 1983, with customers forfeiting millions from lost or stolen cards, the Government says. Banks suffered the bulk of the losses.