But at least it was sorry for trying to murder you.

But you do have to be smarter than the average corporate drone.

http://www.debian.org/
http://www.linux.org/

Expensive? My google voice is free.

I pay for mobile mainly for Internet access. Voice calling is just a side effect. And Its around 50 bucks a month. Pretty cheap.

And when you want to reach a business, many have no real-time want to contact them except phone. I doubt your local mom&pop hardware store has skype. ANd even if they have facebook, its unlikely they sit there monitoring it.

The issue is, if you're a big company with 50 phone lines, you want your "main" number to appear regardless of which line you call on.

If you're a small phone(VoIP/etc) company, that uses wholesale services from multiple providers, if your customer places a call and it is handled by one provider, but their number might be provided by a different provider. The providers have to let you specify what their CID is, for it to NOT be a false CID. And they have to trust you to set it appropriately.

And yes, callerID is not and will not be 100% trustworthy. Consider it an "advisory" only.

I use google voice to a similar effect, but even more strict.

I only give out my google voice number.
Only calls from a select list of close family and very close friends (less than a dozen numbers total) ring through to my actual phone(s).
A few direct family members have my direct cell number in the extremely rare case where GV has an outage they need to reach me urgently.
EVERYTHING else, gets voicemail. If its important, they'll leave a message.
If they refuse to leave a message, I don't want to talk to them.
Occasionally I'll research the callerID of hangups, mostly just to humor myself.

the work site.

There is a REASON browsers are slowly eliminating support for this sort of crap.

Even when I do give a phone number out, its a google voice number, and its set to only ring through for calls from direct family and a couple close friends.. Everyone else gets voicemail without it bothering me. Legitimate callers will leave a legitimate message and I can call them back. scammers and telemarketers just hang up.

So the question is, will they actually try to call themselves.. and if they answer, will it create a black hole?

I'm not too worried, since I'm pretty sure they wont answer.

there is literally no other choice, and even then I "pay as a guest" (deleting cookies to get around their attempt to only let me do so once) and I NEVER give them any bank account numbers or my real phone number. And I use temporary "one time use" credit card number my credit card providers offer, as well as a unique email address each time at a domain that I run my own email service on.

There was a product called DesQview, that did all that before win3 ever came out. And it did it better, more reliably, faster, and with the existing app. software.

That, coupled with 3.1's release, were what initially drove me away from MS (DOS) and to embrace linux instead.

And 30 years later, I still have little use for anything from MS. I can use it when forced (library kiosk, etc) but its like playing with a toy tractor when you are used to driving the real thing.

I suspect we probably have sufficient resources to build a sufficient number of solar panels to nearly cover the entire globe. If/when we get that far, we really don't need to build anymore.

I'm not an expert, but I've got a gut feeling that solar panels don't really "wear out" at least not as a result of generating electricity.

At the very least, I think if we manage to get enough of them and harness them efficiently enough, solar power could provide more power, and for a longer period of time, than gas and oil have/can, combined.

But it can only happen if it makes economic sense. Very few people are going to lie down big bucks, only to then PAY even more for electricity. If I spent thousands of dollars on solar panels and a storage (batteries, etc) system, I'd damn well expect my recurring power bill to plummet if not disappear entirely.

If it costs more, most people aren't going to buy it, or even be able to buy it.

If you can't make the net cost less, it will fail.

Even if initial cost is more, if it can be financed, and it reduces costs over a decade by a majority of what it costs to repay the loan, that would be good.

But huge upfront cost, only to then mean paying MORE for electric, will go over like a lead balloon.

Give me a motorhome-sized nuclear reactor a block or neighborhood can all pitch in on and buy for 25K ($1000 each across 25 homes, or $500 each across 50), that will then provide electric power for everyone at NO additional cost for two decades. The technology exists.

To be fair, solar is pretty much effectively infinite.

When it runs out, we're gonna be dead anyway, unless we've managed to colonize other planets by then.

And how much energy does it take to create this fuel? How much does it cost?

Would a tank full of it allow the car to travel a comparable distance and speed as a similar-sized tank full of gasoline or diesel fuel?

Unless it is or can be economically comparable to CURRENT costs, its useless.