Will Martin <wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil> (06/07/90)
I was looking thru the Hello Direct catalog to see if they sold anything like the no-hands speakerphone Darwin Weyh wanted but didn't find any device that would do that, which surprised me; I would think such a unit would be standard equipment for disabled people. At least something with a footswitch or a knee-bump pad or some other no-hands phone answer mechanism, maybe that would be usable by a support-dog or other disabled-helping trained animal. But no luck. Anyway, whilst looking thru the Summer 1990 catalog, on page 25, I noticed two "call control" devices to either retrict toll calls or prevent all outgoing calls with a keyswitch. The former hangs on the wall at the modular jack; the latter seems to be glued to the back of the phone. Both of them appear to use ordinary modular cords; the device has a jack on it, and a short modular cord coming out. On the first, you plug the short cord into the wall socket and plug the phone cord into the device. On the other, you stick the keyswitch block on the back of your phone, plug the short cord into the phone's jack, and the phone cord into the box. What stops people from simply unplugging the modular cords from these control devices and bypassing them by plugging the phone cord direct into the wall jack or into the telephone, respectively? Am I missing something? This appears trivial to bypass. If they had the security "TelCord-Lok" connectors shown on page 38, at least this unplugging and replugging would be difficult, but they don't. By the way, does anyone out there use these "TelCord-Lok" screw-secured modular plugs? The catalog illustration carefully avoids showing just what kind of a screw they use, and they ask $10 for the "special tool" to connect/disconnect these plugs, but it sort of looks like a male Torx-type head screw in the side view they show. Is that what it is? I think an ordinary socket-type nutdriver would work on it, if so. Needle-nose pliers should do it in any case ... And a scissors cuts the cord. :-) Regards, Will wmartin@st-louis-emh2.army.mil OR wmartin@stl-06sima.army.mil