DISQUS

Very humorous post. I laughed harder than I expected at the "CrustaHammer" comment. The "CrustaDive" works well also. Head first is usually more entertaining.

I guess I need to go back to high school and learn to spell. It's "reciprocal compensation" for those that want to Google it.

Sounds like some sort of "reciprical compensation" based business. This was was quite a big business in the late 90's.

The concept is this... Phone company A owns the phone number that you call. Phone company B must rely on PC-A to deliver the call and therefore PC-B must pay PC-A a "nominal per minute charge" to connect the call. New phone companies, called CLECs, sprung up overnight to take advantage of this. They typically provided cheap or free dial-up modem access lines to ISPs, thus steering a large volume of calls with long call durations into their phone networks. In this arrangement, (lots of calls * long call durations) = $$$$$$$

I thought all this was dead, but apparently not in Iowa. The connect charge is typically very, very small (a fraction of a cent per minute) so I'm not sure how they can keep this in the black.

I spent some time in UNSW too. At least you played rugby and kept fit. All I did over there was to develop a drinking habit. Just thinking of the $3.50 beers is bringing tears to my eyes...

Hi. You don't happen to be from UNSW, do you? Sigh... I so miss Sydney...