Annoying phone calls and documents clog our telephone, email, and other communications networks. Inventors, and the institutions backing them, are trying to fight technology with technology. Here are three of their patent applications: “Detecting and rejecting annoying documents,” international patent application WO 2007070622 A3, Filed Dec 14, 2006 by Anurag Agarwal and Deepak Jindal (Google […]
Tag: telephone
Ig Nobel filmmaker tries to retrieve deleted email
Bahram Sadeghi documented his recent attempt to recover a deleted email message. Sadeghi telephoned the NSA (America’s National Security Agency). The NSA is known to record and store much of the world’s email traffic. He asked: “I understand you keep track of lots of e-mails and internet data, can you help me? The conversation continued from there: […]
The day engineers ceased to be boring (in Britain)
In August 1996, British civil engineers ceased to be officially boring. Glenda Browne, prompted by the appearance of the special Boring Machines issue the Annals of Improbable Research, alerts us to a report about that historic occasion. The AP wire service reported, in 1996: CIVIL ENGINEERS NO LONGER BORING — YELLOW PAGES SAYS SO DIRK BEVERIDGE , Associated Press […]
Switchboard operators and their pranks
This old video documentary by AT&T tells the early history of the telephone switchboard, and includes bits of colorful tale-telling, including some about the naughty behavior of some switchboard operators. Much of the documentary, though, is reassuringly, seriously dull: