wrote in message news:ecdddfda-e79f-4c51-9d28-

stuff snipped

I don't see anyone saying cell phones work exactly the same all over
the world.

There's a pretty strong implication that you can read something out of the
scattered reports of grief-stricken people that some phones - probably from
a number of different carriers - are behaving oddly. Possible reasons -
journalists trying to hack them like the Murdoch newspapers in England did -
government agencies tracking them in case terrorism was involved - grief
stricken relatives dialing the wrong numbers - the possibilities are so
endless that to read something from them seems to really be grasping at
straws. If China's involved, you can bet someone's watching those phones
for anything that might involve terrorism.

If someone (like a journo trying to crack voicemail) was repeatedly dialing
a lost cell phone, isn't it possible that would affect what someone calling
in at the same time hears? So many possibilities other than "the phones are
still on - somewhere." I suppose the wish is that the plane is hijacked and
we'll get a ransom note one of these days but Occam's razor says: "Watery
grave" the most likely explanation.

A more newsworthy item would be a person who actually *talked* to a
passenger - not gotten what they believe to be an odd response from a phone
that's probably a few hundred feet over water. The phone "rang funny" just
doesn't seem to me to be indicative of anything, especially on phones that
have been transported from country to country.

But don't you think that people that have been using them
in Malaysia, China, etc know how they behave there?

Flights between countries with roaming and all sorts of odd cell phone
handoffs would lead me to believe that this is a cellular network issue, a
not an indication that anyone's still alive.

That includes some Malaysian Airline officials. They appear to be saying
that the cell
phones are ringing like they are on and in cell phone service.

Dude, my confidence in ANY sort of Malaysian official is probably at an all
time low. (-:

Can't you tell the difference on your phone?

I haven't dropped it in the ocean yet, where I am 80% confident that's where
the MH370 phones are. The other 20% is reserved for crashing on land
somewhere. If you believe the searchers, the crash site can't be in the
water. I don't remember what crash it was, but I do remember some plane
getting so thoroughly buried under silt it was nearly impossible to see from
the air.

If there is no cell phone service in an area the phone is in or
the phone is off, and you call it, what happens in
your experience? You can't tell the difference? The phone just
rings the same? With all the phones I've had, all the places I've
used them, I could tell a difference between how they behave when
called when the phone was off or on. The phone I have right now,
if it's on and I call it, I hear it ring 5 times, if it's not on
it goes to voicemail in 1.5 rings. I think that is what the people
over there are saying. There could be reasons, like everything else
in this story it could be misreported, etc, but I don't see why it
should be dismissed as nonsense because it's consistent with my
experience.

Your experience in America with a total of what, three carriers? These
systems are infinitely configurable. With the government and press both
likely to be snooping those numbers and the roaming issues, odd phone
behavior is dispostive of nothing, at least in my mind.

And it could be consistent with the other evidence too. They are
still searching boths sides and across the middle of Malaysia, no?
If crashed over land there is some chance some phones could have
survived. Don't get me wrong, I don't think that's likely, but
neither do I think what the people are saying is completely nuts.

I don't think it likely either and I think it shows that when people are
starved for information about their probably deceased love ones, they will
grasp at any straw left to them. It's more a concern that these people are
giving themselves false hope. It would be worse if it turns out to be the
fault of snoops ringing those phones and trying to hack into their voicemail
systems. Given everything we know about the Chinese government and the
press, that's the most likely explanation of oddball ringing. I guess a
little false hope might soften the eventual blow the relatives of the
passengers will face.

As you've pointed out before, we've not got the world's "best and
brightest - or most truthful" working on the problem. I also read, I think
in BusinessWeek, that it would cost $300M per airline to build real-time
black box transmissions through a satelite link. Not gonna happen given how
few of these they drop that turn into mysteries. The bottom line is that a
777 is a big honkin' thing and while one might go missing for a while, it
can't *stay* missing.

Even when we have video of the crash, like TWA 800, the puzzle can be very
hard to solve. I saw video that sure as hell looked like a missile but I
also saw the reassembled wreckage that didn't support a missile strike. I
can easily see a president, R or D, deciding to conceal a terrorist attack
to prevent widespread panic. Not sure it happened there, but there's enough
meat to feed a small army of conspiracy theorists.

--
Bobby G.