Re: E-Mail addiction

[Johanna Halbeisen Rebecca Johnson School]

Hello, TK and Netters,
        I've been away from LM_NET for almost a month now, but came on
tonight to find your piece about e-mail addiction.  Had to add this one:

America Offline: Welcome Back to Reality!

 Every day you hear more and more people talking about it. You hear
 about it at work, in restaurants, even on the bus. More and more
 Americans are discovering how much more free time they have, how
 much easier it is to manage their finances and personal & business
 relationships. They have discovered the joys of being ...
                 * * *  O F F - L I N E  * * *
 Our free software includes utilities to seek out and destroy all
 remnants of communications software on your computer (also works
 over a network). It even removes that pesky little winsock.dll from
 your hard drive once and for all! Say good-bye to the World Wide
 Web and hello to the friends and family you forgot you had! Our
 software, once run, remains memory-resident, and like a background
 virus checker, protects your computer from re-installation of
 telecommunications software.

 Here's how the program works:

 1. First you run the good-bye letter generation program that
 automatically logs you into all your favorite on-line services and
 posts good-bye notes to the news groups and message areas of your
 choice. It encourages people to call or even write you if they want
 to talk to you, and lets them know that you're going to be okay, but
 that you're just going offline. (It even logs you into your
 favorite chat areas and makes witty parting comments, and leaves
 requests with sysops to cancel your account.)

 2. Our program recognizes every version of every known communications
 software package for DOS, Windows, Windows 95, Windows NT, OS/2 and
 Unix, (and there's even a special version for you Mac Users).
 [Editor's Note: Right: the "special Mac version" comes on a single
 disk, and has a smiley-face icon that says "Click Me!" -- instead of
 *seven* disks and a 235-page instruction manual. :-) ]
 [cont'd] ... It will remove all of these programs and overwrite
 your hard drive with null strings so they can't be undeleted. And
 just so you don't try to sneak in through a back door -- like an
 automated check payment window in a program like Quicken -- our
 software also removes the serial communications abilities of all
 financial and related software.

 3. Hardware reconfiguration. Our software alters your system
 configuration so that no device that even remotely resembles a
 modem or other communications interface will ever work on your
 computer again. It installs a "listening program" as a permanent
 TST so that even if your computer somehow encounters a modem tone,
 it will immediately reboot, thereby keeping you effectively offline,
 even in a network environment.

 4. Hardware destruction. The next step is to destroy your modems.
 This is best done with a hammer. We recommend a hammer because we
 know you will start to feel, in that destructive release, the first
 real joy of your new life offline. With each crushing blow, we
 encourage you to think of the countless hours you've wasted, the
 completely irrelevant information you have gathered, and the many
 people who completely mis-represented themselves to you when you
 were online.

 5. Finally, our software brings you a brief lesson on meditation to
 help you begin to relax without being online. It also includes a
 list of things that you can do offline, like feeding your cat that
 you forgot you had, watering the plants, doing the dishes, seeing
 your friends in person, writing notes on pieces of paper, calling
 your parents on their birthdays instead of sending e-mail. The list
 includes more than 1,000 offline living tips.

 We're sure you'll agree that this software is the best of its kind
 for getting offline quickly -- and staying that way!

 To get your free software, please send a hand-written note to
 America Offline, Inc., 7489 Setting Sun Way, Columbia, MD 21046.
 Include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.
 Please specify your operating system and 3.5 or 5.25 inch disks.
 Note: Our software is not available on CD ROM, and we do not have a
 support BBS or a Web page or even a fax machine.
 OUR SOFTWARE IS NOT AVAILABLE ONLINE. UPLOADING IT IS EXPRESSLY
 FORBIDDEN!

 Anonymous \ Thanks to the Internet
  >>
Hmmm...I'm tempted!

--
Johanna Halbeisen                               "We are confronted by
Rebecca M. Johnson School(K-8)                   insurmountable opportunties."
Springfield, Mass
jhalbei@k12.oit.umass.edu                               Pogo