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Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!harpo!seismo!hao!kpno!ut-sally!ut-ngp!werner
From: werner@ut-ngp.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.flame
Subject: A serious flame against telephone solicitations
Message-ID: <497@ut-ngp.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 1-Sep-83 01:39:16 EDT
Article-I.D.: ut-ngp.497
Posted: Thu Sep  1 01:39:16 1983
Date-Received: Sat, 27-Aug-83 18:23:24 EDT
Lines: 72

FLAME ON DEADLY ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Today a COMPUTER woke me up after the first 30 minutes of sleep
after a long night of hacking.

..... to ask me if I wanted to pay less money for life-insurance

to say I was mad is an understatement ......

I have been so fed up with people calling on the phone or on the
door to give me the benefit of their wisdom and sales-effort.

I have generally trained myself, not to get angry, recognize a sales
pitch as soon as possible, and interrupt, asking "is this a sales call,
opinion poll, or similar?"  On the affirmative,
I tell them about my belief that this a serious invasion of my
privacy to which I strenuously object, and which I would never
react to favorably, even if they were giving away things.  I've
had the most varied reactions, from people on the door trying to
insist they were giving me something for free which I just could
not miss, to aggressiveness and obsceneties.  On the phone, I have
had people hang up on me in mid-sentence, make nasty remarks,
object to me interrupting them in mid-sentence, telling me that
other people had to make a living, too, etc.

DO WE REALLY HAVE TO TAKE THIS CRAP ?????  CAN'T WE PUT A LEGAL STOP TO THIS?



Sometimes I have tried to find out who is calling me, to get a
phone number or to manage to get off whatever list my name and
phone-number is on, with no results.  My inquiries into the 
legality of all this, seems to indicate, that I have no way to put
a stop to this.

As I am living a life-style without *ANY* fixed time-table,
these people have the guts to tell me that I SHOULD TURN MY PHONE OFF
when I sleep.  HOW IS THAT, COME AGAIN ?  I am paying to have a
communications tool for private use, and not to get hooked up to
an advertising outlet.  I don't mind being woken up by people
with a valid reason to call me ( friends or business contacts )
that's the price I pay for not conforming, I guess.  But I will
not agree to turn my phone off; I want people to be able to wake
me in emergencies, or to make sure I wake up at a certain time.

But I want to put a stop to the soliciting on the phone and the
door.   Anyone out there with me?  to band together, pull out
the black robes and   ZZZZZZZZing the bad guys ???  There must be
a way to get some laws on the book or to get technology to help.
( I'll address that in a later message )

I can live with junk mail as  it is "offline" and does not interrupt me,
plus there is a NEW YORK address one can write to, to get off some
advertising master tape ( with varying results ).  And , just  maybe ,
there is some truth to the claim that it supports the general mail,
even though, some of the advertising materials pay ridiculous low
postage.

But the phone or doorbell is equivalent to a "high-level interrupt"
where it is **I** that gets interrupted at someone else's convenience.

That just stinks.  And now there is not even a chance any longer
to use persuasion and human psychology to convince the caller to
change jobs, now one gets called by a machine who doesn't even get
frustrated when lots of people simply hang up   on them.

I CAN'T STAND IT.   And let me warn all the clowns out there who may
think of suggesting that I have the choice to live without a phone,
or, that this is something I should, or have to live with,

	I'LL  have my computer call you at random times of the day
just to make sure to catch you asleep.
============================================ OFF .  I needed that.