MCI, Sprint or bust ...

I changed my telco service to MCI yesterday.
 
"We want you back."
 
AT&T won't get my business until they  discontinue using Clipper.
Somehow, I get the feeling that may be when hell freezes over.
 
It leaves a bit to the imagination what the "i" in the "i" plan
really stands for. Intelligence? Integrity-busters? Insecurity?
 
I urge anyone who is seriously concerned over Clipper to put their
money where their mouth is - boycott AT&T.
 
Cheers.
 

Paul Ferguson               |  "... certain unalienable Rights,
Network Integrator          |  that among these, are Life, Liberty,
Centreville, Virginia USA   |  and the pursuit of Happiness."
fergp@sytex.com             |   -- The Declaration of Independence
 
          Stop the Wiretap (Clipper/Capstone) Chip.

> AT&T won't get my business until they  discontinue using Clipper.
> Somehow, I get the feeling that may be when hell freezes over.
...  
> I urge anyone who is seriously concerned over Clipper to put their
> money where their mouth is - boycott AT&T.

Already done so. Using MCI also, though their "Friends and Family " plan
stinks of bigbro also.  What better why to catch up with those who skip out
on their phone bills than getting the names and phone numbers of all their
"friends and family", eh?

In case any corporate spies from AT&T are reading: Not only do you lose my
phone service, but your AT&T-Paradyne branch just lost out on modem sales
too.  Which is just too bad.  AT&T-P. had THE best sysop-discount deal on
14400bps modems.  I was all ready to buy a couple of them.  Tsk tsk.
-- 
Testes saxi solidi!  **********************   Podex opacus gravedinosus est!  
Stanton McCandlish,  SysOp:  Noise in the Void Data Center BBS
IndraNet: 369:1/1      FidoNet: 1:301/2      Internet: anton@hydra.unm.edu
Snail: 8020 Central SE #405, Albuquerque, New Mexico 87108 USA
Data phone: +1-505-246-8515 (24hr, 1200-14400 v32bis, N-8-1)
Vox phone:  +1-505-247-3402 (bps rate varies, depends on if you woke me up...:)

i think it's naive to boycott at&t over clipper.  i'm sure mci and
sprint are the same sort of villains as at&t.

what makes more sense is to buy some at&t shares and force the issue
at the next stockholders' meeting.  in fact, this might be a great
consciousness-raising vehicle: we could get a statement included
in the proxy booklet and force a stockholder vote.  as a stockholder
(of about 20 shares, due to my previous life as a bell labs mts), i
see cranks getting space in the booklet every year.  

how do they do that?

	peter

"Sent from the cyberdeck of: peter honeyman"
> 
> what makes more sense is to buy some at&t shares and force the issue
> at the next stockholders' meeting.  in fact, this might be a great
> consciousness-raising vehicle: we could get a statement included
> in the proxy booklet and force a stockholder vote.  as a stockholder
> (of about 20 shares, due to my previous life as a bell labs mts), i
> see cranks getting space in the booklet every year.  
> how do they do that?

Hear, hear from another former Bell Labbie MTS..  (of course, we
were in Network Support and used to have our _vendors_ call back
collect if we knew they used Sprint, because the sound was so
much better :-)

AT&T *does* have a lot of twisted stockholder proposals. They 
also have more "ma & pa" individual investors than most large 
firms, as opposed to VC & institutional votes, so the mgt feels 
VERY sensitive toward shareholder votes. That's the price a firm
must pay for cutting a regular dividend for N decades..  In fact,
the mgt is so sensitive that they even have a near-mandatory
payroll deduction program for employees to support their PAC.
Really fucked!

All it takes is just one share and you can propose an item for
vote, but I think you need many more shareholders to join in
before the vote will get anywhere near the proxy ballot. You 
can bet that AT&T mgt will do everything they can to discredit
and/or block any vote they haven't initiated themselves.

Even so, we researched this form of "protest" as a much more
effective alternative to "boycotts" (which are frankly impossible
in a post-industrial economy anyways) during the piss-test
conflict at <my prev employer>. Any brokers or VC's here, ie. 
field experts?

Twas part of my "12-Step Program To Kill Corporate Drug Testing" 
published recently in Urine Nation News. The other corporate
juggler vein to swat with a machete is to approach to a firm's
first/second tier customers and find a neato way to give them 
the shivers about the firm's offensive programs.. Like Apple 
wasn't exactly pleased when <my prev employer> started mumbling 
about insuring that all its biz partners enforced drug testing 
as well so that they could chalk up even more Malcum Balddick 
awards from the Republicans..

Mind you that AT&T earns its lunch money from corp & govt work
combined with legislative tax breaks, not so much from Jane R.
Consumer..  If there was anyway to make AT&T's corp/govt 
customers paranoid about the Wiretap chip (as they well should
be!) then AT&T might reconsider - quickly!!  It's happened
before..

Let's see, who among AT&T's bevy of cash cows might have a lil'
sumthin' to fear from having their secure comm tapped by the
Feds..  Let's see, how about mainland China?  Or possibly Mobile
Oil?  Let's apply the leverage where it will ouch the most..

pxn.