Am I going to long for the good old days of Nigerian 419?After picking up the land-line phone mid-day (always a bad idea) only to 
slam it down before the telemarketer even spoke, I have in mind an 
invention.  If my brain can detect the crosstalk from a call-center before 
the human, sub-human, or machine starts speaking, why not have a box that 
just hangs up for me?  Maybe it could blow a police whistle (play a 
sample) into the phone first.Currently, a strategy of leaving the machine on as a screener works pretty 
well, but I still get Carey-on-RIAA style mad when the damn phone rings 
and it's NOT anyone I want to talk to......I want to like Spider Robinson's works.  Really.  I mean having a "Bridge 
of Birds" attraction in the "China that never was" portion of the theme 
part in "The Free Lunch...."   But, I really fell for his anti-paparatzi 
device (invented by a princess Diana fan).   Doggone.  I've now completely 
reasoned my way around it.  It has a built-in defense against the first 
obvious way of confounding it, but that leads directly to an exploit that 
uses off the shelf hardware that a paparatzi ought to have in her kit.
That's so often the problem with Robinson.  He doesn't think that you the 
reader are nearly so smart as he.  Heh.   I admit that reading a lot of 
slushpile manuscripts does not improve one's opinion of fellow-man, but
I always resent him for not being thorough.Eirikurhttp://xent.com/mailman/listinfo/fork