Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!mailrus!accuvax.nwu.edu!nucsrl!telecom-request From: Dave Levenson Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: 666 and Ignorant People Message-ID: <10659@accuvax.nwu.edu> Date: 10 Aug 90 02:46:31 GMT Sender: news@accuvax.nwu.edu Organization: Westmark, Inc., Warren, NJ, USA Lines: 52 Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 10, Issue 555, Message 3 of 9 Our Moderator writes: > Where telcos are concerned, subscribers whose phone numbers end in > X666 have complained bitterly about receiving huge numbers of obscene > and/or hate calls, accusing them of being Satan worshippers, etc. > The people spreading the rumor are vicious. PT] I met a man on the platform at a commuter rail station here in NJ last year. He began looking through the trash in a container near the canteen. He found an empty candy-bar box and asked me if I knew what the UPC bar-code symbol was for. Trying to be helpful, I told him that it identified the manufacturer and the product for the automated cash-registers with price-lookup features. He launched into a tirade against the manufacturer of the candy, the manufacturers of cash-registers, and _me_. He was convinced that there was a secret way of encoding 666 in binary, and that Satan was hiding among the bars in the UPC symbol. Then I told him that there are no 6's in binary; only 0 and 1. He told me that he knew better; that his brother knew about these things, and that there were _hexes_ in binary. I showed him the decimal interpretation of the bar-code, printed just below the symbol, as usual. As it happened, it contained no 6's. He calmed down, a bit. About then, the train arrived! The number on the side of the first car was 7666! He refused to board the train; deciding to wait for the next one (about 30 minutes, I think). I changed my mind about 800 service from MCI. Our best-selling software product is the MoneyRoom(tm). They were offering us the number 1-800-MONEYRM, but unfortunately, that's 800-666-3976, and you never know what sort of nut will run up our 800 bill over that prefix! Dave Levenson Voice: 908 647 0900 Fax: 908 647 6857 Westmark, Inc. UUCP: {uunet | rutgers | att}!westmark!dave Warren, NJ, USA AT&T Mail: !westmark!dave [Moderator's Note: But we know that money is the root of all evil, and that is why the telephone dial has MNO on the '6' key; so that if you try to spell out 'money' your real satanic motives will be obvious to everyone. :) I don't know about 800-666, but 312-666 has had its share of nuts. Checker Taxicab Radio Dispatching had the same telephone number for over sixty years: From MONroe 3700 to MO-6-3700 and for the last decade, they promoted it as 666-3700. In addition to a few thousand legitimate calls each day they always got a few dozen crackpots accusing them of being one of Satan's subsidiaries. A few years ago they gave it up and now use 312-TAXICAB. PT]