Hey, SiteFinder is back, again...

Tue Nov 6 18:05:26 UTC 2007

Since this is verizon, one wonders why this has never been tried on
wrong, non-working phone numbers?

      Visit your local chevy dealer, no interest for 12 months! We're
      sorry, the number you have reached....

is it illegal?

How long before they'll just make you sit thru a few seconds of pitch
before connecting any call? Or any website? How hard is it to stick up
a quick bit of flash (e.g.) and then fade to the page you requested?

I don't think this is quite slippery-slopism. If you've been in this
business 20+ years, a long time, you remember having computers you
owned and weren't designed to efficiently flash ads at you, no "Free
Trial of" this and "would you like to upgrade now?" that, etc.

It's as if there's a magical constant at work in personal computing:

  The number of minutes per hour of productive work is constant,
  despite technological improvements.

For many years it was limited by the number of reboots, now as systems
have become more reliable it's become limited by the number of ads and
similar distractions you have to wade through to get anything done.

It really all comes down to the same problem, a flat-rate pricing
model, and marketeers realizing they can exploit this mercilessly at
no incremental cost (spam, "site finder", whatever.)

Without any pricing feedback in the loop all you can really do is try
to implement more and and more somewhat arbitrary rules (and ways of
enforcing them) to try to control behavior, and by whose say-so?

One is basically forced into a role analogous to the neighborhood
association or zoning board perhaps telling people what they can and
cannot do with their property (granted the latter seems to work in a
similarly charged environment.)

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