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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?
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
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:
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.
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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 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.
This is like a low UID pissing contest that the geologists always win. That is, at least until the cosmologists show up!
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