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You've Dropped Your Landline — Now What?
smurphmeister writes "My wife and I recently moved up to the world of cell phones, after taking our sweet time to make sure this whole newfangled technology was going to stick around. We moved the old landline phone number to her phone, so we're disconnected from the pole. Now the question is, what to do with the copper already in our house? My first thought was an intercom system, but that just seems so old school! So what ideas do you all have for what to do with the 4 little wires running to every room of my house?"
I know! You'll need to make a weapon. Look around; can you construct some sort of rudimentary lathe?
I suggest using them for a transmitter for Very Low Frequencies (VLF), so you can chat with u-boats and scuba diving friends.
They might make good AM radio antennas. You know, the kind of radio where you can listen to ideas too far off in the ideological fringes to make it onto the Internet.
in-home telegraph system
imagine the envy and awe of your friends and neighbors as you show off a morse telegraph key in every room
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Rig up a some doorbell switches, D cell batteries and bulbs to use as a signalling device that you need another bottle of beer
but if you stick with microsoft (like most of us do)
Did you forget where you are posting?
Quit jabbering on the phone while driving. You are not that important.
Just leave it alone.
If you're really itching, hook it up to some broadband interference generator. That'll really mess with the feds.
If I ever hear anybody use the term "TwenCen" to refer to the twentieth century, I will have to go medieval on your ass (yes, yours, as I highly doubt anyone sane would use such a term on their own, so if anyone else does, I declare it your fault and your fault alone).
Or maybe Napoleonic on your ass. At a stretch, Victorian or Elizabethan. At any rate, it certainly wouldn't be some sissy TwenCen on your ass. Those people were pansies.
Ideas for future Ask Slashdot articles:
My brother's house is 5ish years old and had cat5 run to the phone jacks, BUT they still daisy chained the jacks instead of star topology.
plug your house wiring into the cell phone.
Is there supposed to be smoke and flames billowing out of the display?
http://www.amazon.com/RABBIT-VCR/dp/B001F87TWI :-P
Everyone in the house can watch you play Ultima V on your C64 or you can play old school VHS pr0n in EVERY ROOM!
I'd go on a Vegan diet but the delivery time from Vega is too long. --brownkitty
3) Just yank out all the copper and sell it, few bucks anyways
Copper from telephone lines: +$20
Drywall repair bill: -$200
Advice from Slashdot: Priceless
I was wondering what the fuck TwenCen meant until I read your post, though now I wish I hadn't. That word is so much more annoying now that I know what it means. Thanks.
I read this as "landmine".
I expected a story about a soldier placing land mines, dropping one, and being stuck in one of those "oh shit I can't move or I'll blow up" situations.
ladies and gentlemen:
/. and throughout the interwebs.
The previous message was brought to you by NORML. the National Organization for Reform of Marijuana Laws. Make mary jane legal and you will see more of our thoughtful postings on
Old bell labs hand here.
When AT&T was a monopoly they owned everything right up to and including the phone.
You only rented.
They would install and maintain the wire in your house.
The equipment was designed to last 100 years. No joke, that was the requirement.
You could beat the burglar senseless with your phone, they were heavy, it would hurt.
Then you could use it to call the police.
The recommended fix for a bad carbon microphone in the handset was to bang it on a table.
A phone today will break if you drop it.
I am wondering, if you get 25 Two Cen... do you get a FiftyCen? Is it a landline that sings rap when you turn on music on hold?
ahhhhh, a TwenCen ... makes all the difference :)
Never antropomorphize computers, they do not like that
Commissioner Anabell Brumford: Ladies and gentlemen, I would now like to introduce a most special American. Tonight, he is being honoured for his 1000th drug-dealer killed.
Lt. Frank Drebin: [to applause] Thank you. But, in all honesty, the last three I backed over with my car. Luckily, they turned out to be drug-dealers.
http://notanumber.net/
You get tree-fiddy, but that damn Loch Ness monster come an' he take it!
John
Oh please! As a former heavy smoker of the doobie the only posts you'll get from potheads is along the lines of "I'm hungry. Have you got any cookies?" or "cartoons are cool". Pot heads are about as much of a menace to society as a care bear. The only thing that needs to fear a pot head is the fridge.
if you want fun and excitement, try dealing with a cranker for awhile. It can be quite...uhhh... interesting to sit there and watch as one empties his 9mm(they just love firearms and are quite paranoid...what a combination!) over and over into a tree because he is sure the FBI has a camera in it. meanwhile all the pothead wants to know is if there is anything good on TV and if there is any leftover pizza.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
I thought it sounded like a rapper: FifCen's younger brother, TwenCen.
-b
No offense, but I've stopped responding to AC's.
"TwenCen"? Are you serious? I sure hope "Brangelina" and "Tomkat" don't find out about this.
I want to icepick someone now.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
or possibly a 'First Post!' as the final post
>>>The infrastructure that he has in place is intrinsically more valuable since it will be more compatible with future technologies
That's what they said about ISDN installations in the 80s and early 90s.
Boy were they wrong.
Technology changes too rapidly to know what the future will hold. Today a VOIP arrangement may be ideal, but next year some genius might invent a new technology that makes the whole thing obsolete. I've learned from experience you can't really predict future technological breakthroughs. Heck, when I bought a Commodore Amiga in 1985 I thought for sure it would kill-off the Macs and IBM PCs, since it was so far advanced (they had 4 colors, no multitasking, and went "beep"). But no. It took ten years but by 1995 they had caught-up to the Amiga's capability. Oh well.
Later I purchased a Digital Compact Cassette recorder since everyone owned analog cassettes, and it seemed a natural upgrade. Then I got into Digital VHS for the same reason - it records HDTV onto standard media while still playing existing personal libraries. I had no way of knowing that people would toss thousands of dollars worth of music/movies into the trash in order to buy discs instead. Such an idea seemed illogical to me, but that's exactly what happened.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
This is like a low UID pissing contest that the geologists always win. That is, at least until the cosmologists show up!
This post brought to you by your friendly neighborhood MBA.
No, they'll mess with you.
Oh pa-leaze, they got better things to do. I've been doing this for almost a year and haven't attracted any atten/#s{J!WNr&D]g*,*7bp]:^30/=gNO CARRIER
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Connect all the copper to a alarm in each room, and have it go off every 108 minutes. Then rig up a console where you can type in a code to reset it.
How did your sig still get through?
"Write down your worries and then depress your companions by reading them out loud." - Eeyore's Little Book of Gloom