Okay, imagine for a moment you just got home from work. You are tired. You are hungry. Just then the phone rings... "Congratulations! You and your family have won a trip to Florida! Just $99 per person..." Frustrated, you hang up the phone, mutter to yourself and raid the fridge. Half an hour later, the phone rings (maybe its your girlfriend calling?)... "Hello! This is Mark from Better Windows and Doors, are you happy with your doors and windows? Would you like a free estimate as to what it would cost to replace them?" "No, fuck off! Stop calling me!" you respond and hang up the phone. You sit back down to eat your meal and then watch a movie (Die Hard with a Vengeance!), when suddenly (or not so suddenly!) the phone rings... "Hello We're doing a public survey for the Bush White House. Which country do you think George W. Bush should attack next? Syria, Iran or North Korea?" "I don't think he should attack anybody! Now please leave me alone!" you shout into the phone. The Bush-NAZI on the other end calls you a communist/liberal/hippie/pothead (or all 4) and then hangs up. Meanwhile you've just missed the best part of the movie where Bruce Willis killed some guy. And now you're really pissed off (it was on tv, not DVD/tape)... You start to think of a plan to GET EVEN with the fucking telemarketers. Maybe if you bought a gun, went down to their offices and held a bunch of those fucking telemarketers hostage for several days... and then afterwards, claim temporary insanity... And while you're down there in that office, you could find the boss/manager/owner and chop his balls off (or at least shoot him in the leg)... Someone is bound to do it someday... go crazy and kill a bunch of telemarketers. It may even have already happened, and it didn't make the news. The point is, its not helping anybody. Sure, the telemarketing companies make money off it, but in general it pisses off the entire public at large. If companies want to learn how to market their stuff, they should hire focus groups. Telemarketing doesn't work due to inaccuracies because most people hang up on them. In many ways, it is a breach of privacy. Which IS illegal. Its also harrassment, when they keep calling and calling. These days whenever I get a telemarketer (they call at least once every day) I tell them to "Go home and get a real job!" But someday, if I just really get fed up with all the damn phone calls... I am going to ask them where their offices are, find the place, walk in there and ask to speak to manager/etc... and then punch asshole in the fucking nose and walk out. The worst that could happen is I would be charged with assault. Actually holding up the charges, I could also say I just went down there to complain, and instead the guy provoked me. And lets face it, I am easily provoked. 1 or 2 months in a minimum security prison is no big deal. I would get a lot of reading done. If he punched back, I could counter-charge him assault. And charge him with harassment, breach of privacy and everything else I can think of. Due to RANDOM dialers, telemarketers can also call your cellphone and waste your time and minutes (since cellphones usually charge by the minute, regardless of the fact that THEY called you) and therefore cost you time AND MONEY. What amazes me is that random dialers are not illegal. And they SHOULD be. Eventually politicians are going to clue in to the fact that the public really HATES telemarketers. And it will be made illegal. It is really just a matter of time, and influence. I therefore urge people... call your local government office and tell them its time they passed laws (or by-laws) that make telemarketing illegal. You can even KEEP calling them... again and again. Phone them on their cellphones, at their homes... They will take the hint. You can also email them. (Again and again!) Which brings me to another issue. SPAM! I receive about 200 emails per day... 99% of it is spam. Roughly 20 of them (per day!) are viruses (which are filtered out and deleted due to my anti-virus software). About 70% of the spam I receive is from Hotmail. If I just BLOCKED Hotmail completely I would get rid of a huge part of my spam/virus problem (and miss some emails sent from real people). Spam costs the world economy $3 billion US (according to Microsoft estimates) in electricity, hardware, etc. Indeed, 75% of ALL emails is spam. And spam doesn't even work. People just delete it. (I don't even download it, I delete it from my server BEFORE even downloading my emails). So it isn't even effective advertising. Google Adsense is effective advertising... spam is just plain annoying. And governments (in particular the United States since most spam originates in the US) do have the power to make spam illegal. And its so simple. We just need to pass a federal law that says spammers will be jailed for 30 days, fined $50,000, all their equipment will be confiscated and they won't be allowed to use a touch-tone phone or computer for 5 years. And then create a new subsection of the FBI to handle it, and have 1-800 numbers and a website which people can report spammers IP addresses to (the IP address tells you which computer the spam originated on, even hotmail cannot disguise that). Furthermore, they can give out information on how to create email programs (like Outlook Express) that AUTOMATICALLY report spamming IPs, and block/auto-delete all emails from those IP addresses. And that is only one of the ways... unfortunately, the Bush government is more interested in oil/war than they are in the American public. If I ever met a person who said they did internet spamming for a living, I would surely beat the crap out of the person. : ) And claim temporary insanity.