steve uurtamo wrote:

especially with the "you can ignore this if you want to", i'd have to say that the most interesting part of your question was that the bet is not neccesarily related to the question itself.

my guess is that you guys bet on how many responses the question would generate.

:)

No. That's not what the bet is about. Sorry. The bet was if I could stop the various SPEWS threads. But I am actually curious about this. Because, you see, genuity, as I understand it, restored "phone" service to lower manhattan post 9/11 through voice over ip. And I was just wondering how they would fix a shafu with the internet if the only phone service was Voice over IP. And that got me thinking about this whole convergence, you know, when we all migrate to a packet switched network and the telcos are all bankrupt. And I wondered if anyone else needs/hates the phone the way I do. That's all. I think I stopped the spews thread. Thanks for your support. Jane

s.