• Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to Sanderman
    Sanderman:
    This whole thing could have been avoided by using 0 as the dial-out digit. What emergency number starts with a 0? None.

    I didn't even know other people used other digits for dialing out. No wonder it's confusing.

    Here, I think that 9's the only sensible choice.

    0: first digit of an area code. 00: international dialling. 1: telco services etc. 2-8: local numbers. 9: well, I can't think of anything other than 999…

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to Fnord
    Fnord:
    I wonder what would happen if both sides of a call were using FaxBack. Could they get into a nice infinite loop on an unreliable connection?
    I wonder if anybody got past the fourth paragraph without thinking that…
  • Dan (unregistered)

    I've had a missed call on my cell phone that turns out to have come from another country. It shortened the number to look like it was coming from area code 435 or something like that. So I could see the fax trying to call back a number that looked like it came from area code 911.

    Maybe TRWTF is that even the fax line requires '9' to reach an outside line? Well that wouldn't change the outcome in this case though.

  • (cs) in reply to fred
    fred:
    Buffalo:
    Usher:

    MS Exchange will only send an out-of-office once per day to each sender.

    ...This repeated untold thousands of times until the Exchange server ran out of hard drive space.

    You either have a very old Exchange server, or it is not configured correctly.

    As has been pointed out here, this was not a problem that was obvious to everyone until it happened: after it happened software was updated to prevent it

    Quick distinction between auto-replies and undeliverable messages:

    Undeliverable messages must, by RFC, come from the null address <> precisely to prevent mail loops.

    Auto-replies are under no such obligation.

    There is (bad) software out there that will send out every message from a never-before-used email address, presumably to track replies; this could easily defeat Exchange's one-OOF-per-sender behavior.

  • Quirkafleeg (unregistered) in reply to Phone guy
    Phone guy:
    3) It's not using caller-id. You have to pay extra to get your phone system to work with caller id. It's extra cost,
    Not always. BT, for example, will provide that for nothing if you tell them to register your number with the TPS (Telephone Preference Service, intended for those who don't want unsolicited sales/marketing calls).
    and probably requires ISDN.
    Seems unlikely; as pointed out elsewhere, DTMF is sufficient (and I've observed a delay before the number is shown which seems to correspond to use of DTMF).
    5) The fax handshaking use the number the sender provides. In this case, 91 11 xxxxx. that is, India, Delhi.
    It therefore makes sense to configure that fax machine to report the number in international form, so long as the local telcos properly handle intra-principality/territory/country/state calls made with the international prefix.
  • fjf (unregistered) in reply to Michael
    Michael:
    fjf:
    - Smoke-filled room - Complete power outage (no emergency lights) - Blind person - Eye contact with acid - ...

    With the exception of the blind person (and I'm pretty sure there are laws or guidelines concerning this - I'd expect them to require training for all employees, though):

    Do you really want to rely on a phone in any of these circumstances?

    It may be all you have, or one of several unreliable ways to get help. That's typical for emergencies. Something unexpected happened already that caused the emergency, so emergency facilities should expect as little as possible about the situation and be as generally useful as possible.

  • Bill (unregistered) in reply to Jose Correia
    Jose Correia:
    well his only fault was to cater for an exception? i mean even if he sent a fax manually to india then the same problem would occur?? where's the WTF?

    You would have to dial the internationl access code (011) before the number if dialing manually, so it wouldn't go to 911. The caller ID only shows the number, not the access code.

    The WTF is the faxback based on caller ID, not the phone system calling 911 if you press 911.

  • (cs) in reply to Michael
    Michael:
    fjf:
    - Smoke-filled room - Complete power outage (no emergency lights) - Blind person - Eye contact with acid - ...

    With the exception of the blind person (and I'm pretty sure there are laws or guidelines concerning this - I'd expect them to require training for all employees, though):

    Do you really want to rely on a phone in any of these circumstances?

    Well, the ambulance isn't going to call itself.

  • (cs) in reply to legal weasel
    legal weasel:
    Ever notice that you can walk away from a fax while it scans, but even email-as-a-PDF scanner appliances force you to stand around until the document finishes scanning?

    All the recent multi-function devices that I've used allow you to enter the destination (mailbox, SMB), load the ADF and then hit the scan. No standing around required.

  • (cs) in reply to Quirkafleeg
    Quirkafleeg:
    It therefore makes sense to configure that fax machine to report the number in international form, so long as the local telcos properly handle intra-principality/territory/country/state calls made with the international prefix.

    Sounds like that's what happened. Fax machines in the USA would be set up like "1-NXX-NXX-XXXX". So FaxBack just dials the number given directly, as it assumes it would always begin with a 1 (AFAICT, or the phone system will work it out if it doesn't begin with a 1). The Indian fax machine would be set up like "91-11-NXXX-XXXX". Dialled directly, I'm sure you can see what happened there.

    These are both compatible (since "1" is the international code for the USA, but it is also the long distance prefix for USA - the above number would be "011-NXXX-XXXX" within India) but incorrect assumptions and lack of validating caused this error.

    AFAICT the fact that "9" was required to get an outside line has nothing to do with it.

    This story also reminded me of this: http://www.rinkworks.com/stupid/cs_online.shtml (search for 911)

  • Madmax (unregistered)

    Actually, I was expecting the story to end up something like:

    1. Ongoing fax problems cause two FaxBack machines to continuously fax each other.
    2. 911 calls were caused by some smart-alec faxer using 911 as a caller ID.
  • (cs) in reply to silent d
    silent d:
    The obvious solution here is a phone keypad that goes to 11.

    You sir (madam?) win today's internet.

  • Phone guy (unregistered) in reply to Quirkafleeg
    Quirkafleeg:
    Phone guy:
    3) It's not using caller-id. You have to pay extra to get your phone system to work with caller id. It's extra cost,
    Not always. BT, for example, will provide that for nothing if you tell them to register your number with the TPS (Telephone Preference Service, intended for those who don't want unsolicited sales/marketing calls).
    OK, I'll make it easy: find one (1) just one, one only, phone system, key system, digital system, PABX, PBX, that provides caller-id to the stations using BT TPS.
    and probably requires ISDN.
    Quirkafleeg:
    Seems unlikely; as pointed out elsewhere, DTMF is sufficient (and I've observed a delay before the number is shown which seems to correspond to use of DTMF).
    Seems unlikely only if you've never bought phone systems.
    Quirkafleeg:
    5) The fax handshaking use the number the sender provides. In this case, 91 11 xxxxx. that is, India, Delhi.
    It therefore makes sense to configure that fax machine to report the number in international form, so long as the local telcos properly handle intra-principality/territory/country/state calls made with the international prefix.
    ...only makes sense if you've never tried to implement it. That is the international form, and it caused a call to 911. Which is where I came in....
  • Martin (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates

    Oh my god I wish I could upvote this response. You have made my day, fellow IT Crowd fan.

  • Shantanu (unregistered)

    This particular story has something missing. India's country code is 91. So, the machine would have to dial "99111..." and not "911". So the first three digits are 991 and not 911, so there is no "special case" of bypassing the first 9 here. Probably the special case was to stop waiting and start dialing as soon as "911" was entered after the first 9.

  • dag (unregistered) in reply to Kensey
    Kensey:
    ... Apparently this model of BlackBerry has a feature where even while it's locked, you can still get to a menu that will dial 911, ...

    I believe that's actually a common (required?) feature on mobile phones. On mine (Nokia) I can dial 000, 112, and 911 while it's locked and make the call.

  • Twitch (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates

    Ha ha! The IT Crowd

    Brilliant!

  • Wulf (unregistered)

    So us using 80290 to get outside lines is just overkill yes?

  • Jishnu (unregistered) in reply to Quirkafleeg

    What about # or *?

  • ha (unregistered) in reply to Sanderman
    This whole thing could have been avoided by using 0 as the dial-out digit. What emergency number starts with a 0? None.
    In Russia almost all emergency numbers start with 0.
  • Jerry (unregistered) in reply to Nibh

    911 should be an exception. Everyone knows "911." Not "9-911." Not "8-911." It's completely location-independent - that's the point of the 911 system.

    Also, to call India you dial 011. So in this case, you'd dial 9-011. No real problem there.

    I think you missed the WTF. Maybe someone over there isn't thinking things through before posting. WTF?

  • Know it All (unregistered) in reply to Jay

    As usual, the real WTF is the comments.

    There are several problems conspiring here. FaxBack appears to be dialling the CallerID number, which will not have the necessary routing codes (or country code) for an international number. It does, however, appear to be adding a 9 (which is common to get outside line on a PABX).

    So we have 9+some number in india, where the indian number is starting with 11, which I hear is like Delhi or something. Hence 911.

  • Voice of sanity from India (unregistered)

    Yea.. So....The country code of India isn't 11. Its 91.

    So yea.. pretty much WTF !!

    (CAPTCHA: genitus. Is it plural for genitalia?)

  • Steven (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    TRWTF is all the different emergency numbers in different countries. They ought to have big signs at all points of entry saying what the emergency number is for the benefit of visitors. I wonder how many visitors have been lying bleeding in the street wondering why their countries emergency number doesn't work here.

    In the very dim distance past, I remember being stuck while playing Police Quest (don't remember which installment), at one point you needed to call the police on a pay phone, but, not living in America, I was unaware that I needed to dial 911.

    I'm not sure, but I remember hearing that in Australia common(or well known) emergency codes forward to 000. So you could get away with dialling 911 if you were a visitor.

    Of cause, this doesn't help us when playing police quest. but I could never get past the damn drunk driver so never had any problem with 911(I was really little back then) :D

  • Andres (unregistered)

    This happens all the time. A woman in US once got a call from india trough a voip provider. She called back only to end up talking to an apparently very agitated french-speaking person. Turned out the canadian telco the voip provider was using to route the call from US to India decided that it was an emergency call based on the first three digits (112) of the phone number and sent the call to a local french-speaking PSAP.

  • (cs) in reply to Quirkafleeg
    Quirkafleeg:
    Sanderman:
    This whole thing could have been avoided by using 0 as the dial-out digit. What emergency number starts with a 0? None.

    I didn't even know other people used other digits for dialing out. No wonder it's confusing.

    Here, I think that 9's the only sensible choice.

    0: first digit of an area code. 00: international dialling. 1: telco services etc. 2-8: local numbers. 9: well, I can't think of anything other than 999…

    These numbers are not standardized and depend on what country you're in. The EU is still working towards getting them more standardized between member countries.

  • (cs) in reply to Quirkafleeg
    Quirkafleeg:
    Phone guy:
    3) It's not using caller-id. You have to pay extra to get your phone system to work with caller id. It's extra cost,
    Not always. BT, for example, will provide that for nothing if you tell them to register your number with the TPS (Telephone Preference Service, intended for those who don't want unsolicited sales/marketing calls).
    I wouldn't rely on that assumption. When I moved last year, I registered with TPS. No mention was made of caller ID (which I wouldn't have wanted anyway). The first bill was fine, but the second one included a charge for caller ID. I'm waiting to see if the third one is correct.
  • John Dane (unregistered)

    Should do what Homer did: Operator, give me number for 911, this is an emergency!

  • incre-ludus (unregistered) in reply to iSucker
    iSucker:
    For some reason, I expected for two fax machines to get into an infinite loop of FaxBacks leading to death, destruction and twitter outages.

    I welcome the first two with open arms if that facilitates the third.

  • Reenen (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates

    What if there's 2 broken fax machines, running the same software. They'll fax each other error reports in parallel till interrupted?

  • (username *)me (unregistered) in reply to Spivonious
    silent d:
    The obvious solution here is a phone keypad that goes to 11.

    Clearly the solution is a backslash key.

  • (cs)

    What I don't get is how the 911 dispatch couldn't understand the fax call to begin with. I would expect them to have support for fax calls, I mean, seriously.

    What if a mute person who was stargazing accidentally saw someone get murdered on the other side of town? Oh, and they had spilled soda on their text-to-speach thingy.

  • Mayhem (unregistered) in reply to RogerWilco
    RogerWilco:
    Quirkafleeg:
    Sanderman:
    This whole thing could have been avoided by using 0 as the dial-out digit. What emergency number starts with a 0? None.

    I didn't even know other people used other digits for dialing out. No wonder it's confusing.

    Here, I think that 9's the only sensible choice.

    0: first digit of an area code. 00: international dialling. 1: telco services etc. 2-8: local numbers. 9: well, I can't think of anything other than 999…

    These numbers are not standardized and depend on what country you're in. The EU is still working towards getting them more standardized between member countries.

    Also the number you dial for an outside line usually depends far more on what your internal numbers are. For example in my office we use 6 to dial out as all the internal numbers start with 94xx or 95xx, for the reason that the ddis are in the format xxx-9xxx. If you dial 0 by mistake, it goes straight to reception.

    And with respect to fax machines, our bank still uses a fax for probably 80% of the communication to and from corporate customers. The machines also scan a copy to PDF of everything sent or recieved for an electronic copy but I believe some customers will only accept faxes for legal reasons.

  • Shinobu (unregistered) in reply to Jishnu

    Yes, that would be the sensible solution. For added user-friendliness, make sure that interlocal calls don't need a special prefix, and then decide whether you want to use * or # to prefix either (outside) local numbers or inside numbers. Oh, some websearching revealed that there are already telecom systems that work like that.

  • David Stone (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates

    Ten points for the IT Crowd reference, but do the hot emergency workers come in the package with the fax machine?

  • (cs) in reply to Steven
    Steven:
    I'm not sure, but I remember hearing that in Australia common(or well known) emergency codes forward to 000. So you could get away with dialling 911 if you were a visitor

    Only on GSM mobile phones, and AFAICT it's the phone that detects that it is an emergency call and transmits "Emergency. There's an emergency going on" rather than a specific number. That way it can use any GSM network rather than just the one it is registered with. (Most populated parts of Australia have coverage with three different GSM networks)

    Local numbers beginning with 911 are valid numbers in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth. Until the mid-1990s there were 56 area codes each with the ability to have valid numbers beginning with 911. Since the renumbering there are only four area codes, but one (07, Queensland) have no numbers beginning with 9 yet.

    Mobile phones can get away with this as the number is sent in a packet, where ordinary phones sends the number one at a time. During the 2000 Sydney Olympics it was actively decided not to tamper with the phone system and instead promote 000 more.

  • TimG (unregistered) in reply to henke37
    henke37:
    What I don't get is how the 911 dispatch couldn't understand the fax call to begin with. I would expect them to have support for fax calls, I mean, seriously.
    Obviously so they can take emegency reports via fax.

    This one time, this guy held up convenience store and a heroic patron furtively gets out a Sharpie, scribbles "HELP, WE ARE BEING HELD UP" on a piece of paper, and feeds it through a handy fax machine, praying the whole time that the crook doesn't hear the fax machine handshake. But the crook does hear it, and just as he's about to blow away the faxing guy, the police storm in and shoot him up. And then, it turns out he was robbing the store to finance a would-be terrorist campaign!

    True story.

  • (cs) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    In the UK (where 999 is the "official" relevant number) only the first two digits are generally required.

    This has two advantages:

    • When in an internal system 999 is still enough to get to the emergency services.
    • With old rotary dial phones 99 starts the connection, the third 9 keeps you busy, so that by the time you finish dialling the operator is already there.
    That can't be exactly right, because phone numbers for Northenden, near Manchester, start with 998. If you also needed a 9 for an outside line, you would dial 9998xxxx.

    Can't test this right now though! Where I'm sitting, I would have to include the Greater Manchester area code i.e, 9 0161 998...

  • Captain Pants (unregistered) in reply to Lorne Kates

    The guy whose "bright idea" it was to make a special case for 911 doesn't deserve the sarcasm -- I was in a situation once where someone had to call 911, but didn't know to dial 9 first. Fortunately I was there to do it for him, but help was delayed and the victim wound up dying.

  • Robin (unregistered)

    British Standard 6302 clearly states that each telephone must have a piece of paper attached to it with a surface area no smaller than two square centimetres on which to write the number, "otherwise a naïve user might not be able to summon the emergency services". There's a standard for office phones, which has the same clause – can't remember the number of it.

  • repeat of other posts (unregistered) in reply to Syntax
    Syntax:
    As long as you're not in the UK ;) (999 is emergencies)
    911 and 112 will work as well.
  • Drak (unregistered) in reply to Steven
    Steven:
    I'm not sure, but I remember hearing that in Australia common(or well known) emergency codes forward to 000. So you could get away with dialling 911 if you were a visitor.

    Of cause, this doesn't help us when playing police quest. but I could never get past the damn drunk driver so never had any problem with 911(I was really little back then) :D

    'TAKE SOBRIETY TEST' i believe the correct action was. I was too young at the time too but me and my brother somehow managed to figure it out.

    'READ MIRANDA RIGHTS' was another one of those hard to come up with things.

  • Spudley (unregistered)

    [note: in the UK, the emergency number is 999]

    I had a case a number of years ago where I dialed a support number for one of our software suppliers. They'd come up with the clever idea of having their freephone support number end with the digits "999"; I guess they thought we'd call them if we had a software emergency.

    Anyway, I dialed the number, spoke to the support team and resolved my issue. But immediately I put the phone down, I got called by our own front desk, where the receptionist sounding quite panicked.

    Turned out our system had picked up the '999' in the number I'd diaked and alerted the front desk that there was an emergency call being made, I guess so that they would know to expect an ambulance to show up.

    Clever idea, but a bit silly that it picked up 999 at the end of a longer number.

  • Steve H (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    Ave:
    Anon:
    AC:
    Timothy Baldridge:
    So in reality this is just a bug no-one noticed. What they should do is have a special case exception for when the user needs to dial India, for instance: 9911... of course then the Fax machines would need to support that in the call-back routines as well.

    Until there is an emergency, and a user frantically dials 9-911, expecting that he still has to dial a 9 to get an outside line to 911.

    That will still get you to the emergency services. 911 and 9911 should both work.

    which means, surely, that it is impossible to call India

    No, pay attention. To call India (in the US from a phone with 9 for an outside line) you would dial:

    9 011 91 ......

    No you. You can drop the international 0.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to The General
    The General:
    Bob:
    In the UK (where 999 is the "official" relevant number) only the first two digits are generally required.

    This has two advantages:

    • When in an internal system 999 is still enough to get to the emergency services.
    • With old rotary dial phones 99 starts the connection, the third 9 keeps you busy, so that by the time you finish dialling the operator is already there.
    That can't be exactly right, because phone numbers for Northenden, near Manchester, start with 998. If you also needed a 9 for an outside line, you would dial 9998xxxx.

    Can't test this right now though! Where I'm sitting, I would have to include the Greater Manchester area code i.e, 9 0161 998...

    Hmm - I did say generally, although I believed it was universal. I know it to have been the case at a number of locations (none near Manchester). One of me early jobs was writing the software for a phone exchange, and we support 99 as the emergency number - for the reasons stated above. Presumably it simply can't be supported by switches near Manchester, although I'd vaguely expect a renumbering at some point (unless we're all to be using 112 soon) Of course the "time for the operator to answer" isn't as good an argument any more, dtmf doesn't really take that long after all - the "outside line" argument still holds though.

    Randomly at Uni we had it drummed into us that we should dial 4444 - security would then call 999 if necessary.

  • Patrick (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    When you get a call from a foreign country it tends to get domesticated so that it looks like a domestic number. For example, you call from 1-555-555-5555 in the US to the UK, in the UK it might appear as 0555 5555555, which is obviously wrong. So presumably their FaxBack gets a number which it is unable to tell is actually international and tries to call it back. And, even if the caller ID didn't try and mangle the number into the local format, it's still not going to include YOUR international access code (011 in the US, I think 00 in the UK) because the caller didn't enter that, it's not part of the phone number. I'm not sure if there is a reliable way to tell if a number presented by your caller ID is international or not.

    Something's wrong with your caller ID then, because all the ones I've seen write international calls as "+<country><area><local>" - just a string of digits with a plus in front (no prefix). On the other hand, it could be the phone that's mangling the number, if the makers tried to be smart and make it look "nice".

  • Mayhem (unregistered) in reply to The General
    Bob:
    In the UK (where 999 is the "official" relevant number) only the first two digits are generally required.

    This has two advantages:

    • When in an internal system 999 is still enough to get to the emergency services.
    • With old rotary dial phones 99 starts the connection, the third 9 keeps you busy, so that by the time you finish dialling the operator is already there.

    Interesting. The tale I heard from a telecom engineer was that 999 was chosen so that it would have to be a deliberate effort for someone to ring, since the numbers went 9 > 1,0 and to register a 9 you had to rotate the full dial as opposed to a small flick that could be accidental. 111 was chosen for use in New Zealand for the same reason except that their dials were numbered the other way from 1 > 9,0. In both cases 0 was the shortest possible rotation on the dial as it got you the operator.
    How the americans ended up with 911 I have no idea.

  • TG (unregistered)

    The country code for India is "91", not "11". This actually makes the story easier to believe.

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Mayhem
    Mayhem:
    Interesting. The tale I heard from a telecom engineer was that 999 was chosen so that it would have to be a deliberate effort for someone to ring, since the numbers went 9 > 1,0 and to register a 9 you had to rotate the full dial as opposed to a small flick that could be accidental. 111 was chosen for use in New Zealand for the same reason except that their dials were numbered the other way from 1 > 9,0. In both cases 0 was the shortest possible rotation on the dial as it got you the operator. How the americans ended up with 911 I have no idea.

    IIRC 0 is the complete rotation - causing 10 pulses. so 9 takes skill, it's neither all the way, nor a nudge - but it takes a while... http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/rotary_dial_mobile.jpg seems to back me up there.

    911 is harder to dial on push button phones, 999 is as easy as any other number (and looking at how my daughter holds the phone probably quite likely) - did the US get push button phones early?

  • Mayhem (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    Mayhem:
    Interesting. The tale I heard from a telecom engineer was that 999 was chosen so that it would have to be a deliberate effort for someone to ring, since the numbers went 9 > 1,0 and to register a 9 you had to rotate the full dial as opposed to a small flick that could be accidental. 111 was chosen for use in New Zealand for the same reason except that their dials were numbered the other way from 1 > 9,0. In both cases 0 was the shortest possible rotation on the dial as it got you the operator. How the americans ended up with 911 I have no idea.

    IIRC 0 is the complete rotation - causing 10 pulses. so 9 takes skill, it's neither all the way, nor a nudge - but it takes a while... http://technabob.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2006/12/rotary_dial_mobile.jpg seems to back me up there.

    911 is harder to dial on push button phones, 999 is as easy as any other number (and looking at how my daughter holds the phone probably quite likely) - did the US get push button phones early?

    Doing a bit of reading, you're right there. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loop_disconnect_dialing both systems use 10 clicks for 0, but 9 clicks for the 9 or 1. Same idea, different number ordering.
    Interestingly it says Sweden used 1 click for the 0 and 10 for the 9. I wonder what their emergency number was before Europe standardised on 112. 888 maybe?

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