Is the Number Up For the Residential Phone Book? 360
Hugh Pickens writes "The first phone directory was issued in 1878, two years after Alexander Graham Bell invented the telephone and for decades regulators across the US have required phone companies to distribute directories in paper form. But now the Washington Post reports that Verizon, the largest provider of landline phones in the Washington DC region, is asking state regulators for permission to stop delivering the residential white pages in Virginia and Maryland. About a dozen other states are also doing away with printed phone books as surveys show that the number of households relying on residential white pages dropped from 25 percent in 2005 to 11 percent in 2008. The directories will be available online, printed or on CD-ROM upon request but the inches-thick white pages, a fixture in American households for more than a century, will no longer land on porches with a thud each year. 'I'm kind of amazed they lasted as long as they have,' says Robert Thompson, a professor of popular culture at Syracuse University. 'But there are some people nostalgic about this. Some people like to go to the shelf and look up a number.'"
No way! (Score:2, Funny)
What am I supposed to burn in my fireplace? Wood? Bull, you burn wood. This aint' 1876, bitch. I start my phone book fire by rubbing two Blackberry's together and heat the rest of the rooms in my house using monitors to watch my live video stream of the blaze.
What a relief! (Score:1, Funny)
Now it is going to be much harder for the Terminator to find out where Sarah Connor lives...
Please think of the children! (Score:4, Funny)
And what to use for haircuts?
Re:Suprised! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Simple option? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Back when I was a kid... (Score:3, Funny)
Now how are kids supposed to reach the table without phone books to sit on?
Those 800 page long-obsolete tech books you keep on your shelf but can't bear to part with. Taking just a quick glance at my own shelf indicates that the SCO Unix System V SVR3 reference manual would substitute quite nicely for a medium-sized metro area. phone book.
Re:Please think of the children! (Score:3, Funny)
You have children and you don't have all of the Harry Potter books?
Re:Simple option? (Score:3, Funny)
Unopened doesn't mean unused. For instance, if you replace your vegetable crisper with phone books, your fridge can now hold a keg level.