This is also a recent
phenomenon in
Portland,
Oregon. As is stated in the
503 writeup, the 971 areacode was overlaying the
503, forcing
Portlanders to dial ten digits instead of
seven. I recently talkeded to an
interesting man who had an idea about, get this,
eight digit dialing, wherein:
Instead of an
area code to proceed all
phone calls, if it's in the
local area code, you just hit
'*' on the phone, which, in (if you actually
buy what he's saying) computer terms means '
here'. He cited the
advantage that all
area codes could add another
million extensions, because you could therein
dial *000-0000.
This guy was a little
whacked, though, and also
heralded the benefits of switching from
base 10 to
base 8, or
octal. He said the government could save 10
billion dollars.
Yeah.
Right.
The
moral of this
writeup is that
ten digit dialing is a
pain in the ass, and you shouldn't talk to
crazy guys who walk around
Borders wearing a
hard-hat, and claim to have written the fastest
sine and
cosine functions in the world.