raoul@eplunix.UUCP (Nico Garcia) (07/17/90)
In article <3175@rsiatl.UUCP>, jgd@rsiatl.UUCP (John G. DeArmond) writes: [posting a reasonably clever phone hack to roll-your-own pay phone] > Hmm.. Someone else seeking a technical bandaid for a failure to > dicipline.. Ah yes, parenting in the 90's. What ever happened to > the good old American backhand? But I digress.... The social workers came and took the kids away from those parents. You think I'm kidding? > > My current problem is how to regulate the local calls now that we > >must pay for every call. I want a system where the kid must go to some > >central location, put a nickle into a box, and all the phones in the > >house will be activated for one and only one call. At all other times Hey, a nickel for a phone call is pretty cheap. And it reminds the kids that somebody *pays* for all those nice little services, like phones. Makes sense to me. > Of course, a simple solution does present itself. Simply have all > the YAs (yard apes) contribute money to a cookie jar from which > the phone bill is paid each month. No money, no talkie. > Peer pressure is amazing in its ability to regulate phone use. > Simple, easy and no batteries required. John, have you ever raised kids? Particularly teenagers? If the system starts out working, great, but as soon as somebody cheats by accident or design, it falls apart. Kind of like Mutual Assured Destruction (a metaphor for puberty if I've ever heard one). But along these lines: does everyone remember making prank phone calls? Is anyone else looking forward gleefully to when the various phone companies install Caller ID systems everywhere, so you know exactly where the little weasels are calling from? And they'll either have to use pay phones or have Ma Bell yank their service for that nonsense? And better yet: how about a moderated newsgroup or service one of these days for the publication of junk fax phone numbers, and cracker's home phones, and aluminum siding salespeople's outgoing lines so we can filter their calls from our systems? And using this automatic information as a filter on dialins? Do the devices for that kind of call filtering already exist, or am I going to have to build my own? -- Nico Garcia Designs by Geniuses for use by Idiots eplunix!cirl!raoul@eddie.mit.edu