One could almost wonder if the OPD could have brought in the so-called "expert" to deliberately confuse the issue for Mr. Kesse.Thank you for this info, wpaylor. First I've seen anything definitive on that, and helpful.
Having said that, I'm a graybeard computer type and done a lot of communications programming in my time. While I haven't dealt with cell tower ping programming, I'm comfortable with what's going on with it having researched this several times.
I've read Drew Kesse commenting on this and saying that pretty directly, and I've commented before on it but bears repeating here. The "not reliable" thing is not relevant, and as far as I'm concerned is probably still "not reliable" the way Kesse is thinking of it. What he is going on about is this notion that a cell tower in contact with a cell phone is not always the closest cell tower to the phone. That is known, has always been known, and cell tower pings were never a guarantee of location of the phone. That isn't the issue at all, although of course any clue as to whereabouts is helpful.
Drew referenced this with his "a phone can't be in two places at once" comment, I believe in that technical post. I've explained repeatedly in posts that a cell phone can jump from contact with one tower to another and maybe back, and maybe back quickly, especially when moving. If a signal is blocked or weakened due to structures a tower further away may be strongest signal, and then when closest tower's signal regains strength may become controlling tower again.
This is not a big deal at all, and is actually helpful as it provides triangulation information as to what part of cell tower area phone was in when switching back and forth. Lemonade should have been made out of this, and instead you have this silly stuff.
Moreover, the only important thing is when did activity from each of these phones stop? When were they last heard from, anywhere?
Now someone who knows something about the data may say "well, there was no data, and it's probably because pings were that reliable in 2006" yada yada, which could be blah blah blah stuff that amounts to we have no stinkin data. Fine, whatever, just out with it.
On the other hand the "two places" comment implied there was some data, and the question is when activity stop for each phone? That doesn't guarantee that the phone wasn't still on and ping data no longer available, but it does say how long the phones were active. Geez, this is 101 stuff. I shouldn't have to post stuff like this for OPD/Verizon whatever.
Now unless an amateur blogger was making up some wild stories for Kesse, the both phones stopping at 10:40 pm is really specific stuff. The "not reliable" stuff is pure silliness. We're not talking about pseudo pseudo GPS (because there is actually pseudo GPS), we're talking about how long were the phones active that we know of.
That is all. Quit making excuses OPD and get with the program.
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