Path: utzoo!telecom-request Date: 12 Apr 91 00:35:13 GMT From: Michael Coleman Newsgroups: comp.dcom.telecom Subject: Re: Another Kind of Selective Ringing Message-ID: Organization: UCLA, Computer Science Department Sender: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu Approved: Telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Submissions-To: telecom@eecs.nwu.edu X-Administrivia-To: telecom-request@eecs.nwu.edu X-Telecom-Digest: Volume 11, Issue 286, Message 7 of 10 Lines: 34 john@zygot.ati.com (John Higdon) writes: [Password box not as useful as Caller ID, and is rude to callers. And what about the case where the phone is not touch-tone, or some broken COCOT phone?] Well, this may be true, but this is not nearly as rude as I would *like* to be. I recall that in a story "Friday" by Robert Heinlein, one of the characters had a "door bell" which presented a transaction which boiled down to something like this: This is the __ residence. If you feel you have something to discuss that I will find important, you can summon me by inserting $20; if I agree, I will return it. Along these lines, I would love to have as my residential line something similar to a 1-900 number, except that I could cancel the charge with a push of a button. The phone company will never provide this sort of service for a reasonable price, of course. I don't want to be rude to my friends, but I would like to be as rude as possible with unsolicited callers, in the hope that they will stop. As for the objection that not everyone has a correctly-functioning touch-tone phone, I agree that this could occasionally be a problem. It's difficult to come up with a perfect solution when the individual is pitted against the phone company, the telemarketing industry, and other assorted lowlifes. If they would cease and desist, none of this would be necessary. MC