For the Google archive, I am quoting a transcript of a telejunker's toll-free announcer:

<quote>
[1 second burst of music] You have reached our automated information system. You're probably calling one of our toll-free numbers that appeared on your display phone. Fund-raising efforts are now well under way and we will be calling you back to explain the programs we have for this year. Calling you is the most cost-effective way to reach our goal. If you prefer, contact our Customer Information Centre at [1-8xx-xxx-xxxx]. They will be glad to provide you with any further information. Those phones are staffed 9AM to 9PM Eastern Time. Goodbye for now.
</quote>

More information on this telejunker-for-hire can be found here (just follow the links, or search here or here).

If you've been contacted by a "charity" such as The Fraternal Order of Police ["FOP"] or a State Troopers' organisation, chances are you've been tele-spammed by Xentel DM, AKA Xentel Inc (in the US). Be aware that most of the organisations that Xentel calls on behalf of do not have charitable (tax deductable) status and even then, Xentel keeps ~80% or more of the donations.

Unfortunately, Xentel exploits/abuses a loophole in the law that allows non-profit organisations to harass scam call anyone, even if you have registered for the DNC list. The fact that Xentel makes millions of dollars a year in profit, doesn't seem to matter to either the FCC or the CRTC. It seems that only the state AG's do any real job of spanking these telespammers.

I love my VoIP service. In the bad old POTS days, we'd get 3, 4... 5 telejunk calls a day, 7 days a week, some days worse than others.

Now I can block the telespammers, my phone only rings for the occasional low-level telejunker: usually a local duct cleaner, or some 2-bit company trying to hawk windows and doors. All the toll-free numbers go straight to voicemail.

Repeat offenders get auto-forwarded to an out-of-service number. But, just as the email spammers ignore 5.5.x SMTP error messages and keep trying an email address that will never deliver, it seems the tele-spammers' autodialers ignore "number out of service" messages too:

SelectiveCallFwd   112595140000002    Unavailable 2007-10-20
SelectiveCallFwd   112595140000002    Unavailable 2007-10-27

Here are a few more parallels:

Email Spammer	Tele-Spammer
Ignores 5.5.x mailer messages.	Ignores "out-of-service" messages.
Plays numbers game: harasses millions of email users with unsolicited messages for one lousy sale.	Plays numbers game: harasses millions of phone users with unsolicited calls and voicemail messages for one lousy sale.
Sells "sucker lists" of email addresses.	Sells "sucker lists" of phone numbers.
Routinely forges "from" addresses.	Routinely forges Caller ID.
Uses rogue ISP’s to host their "bulletproof" websites.	Uses rogue SIP providers to host their VoIP systems.
Obfuscates messages to bypass spam filters.	Obfuscates Caller ID to bypass Privacy Guard.
Uses cost-shifted advertising to spam your mailbox.	Uses cost-shifted advertising to spam your cell-phone.

I'm sure there are plenty of other examples, including parallels between tele-junkers and fax spammers.

My personal favourite site for reporting telejunkers: Who Called Us.

As if proof were needed that the CRTC has no teeth, the news today is that they are finally launching a nation-wide DNC list. Great news, huh? Well, wait a sec... according to The CBC, the same exclusions will apply as the US' version: quasi-charities, or the telespammers-for-hire who call on their behalf; political parties; public opinion surveys; newspapers of general circulation; businesses you have done business with in the last 18 months (thereby establishing an EBR). The CRTC also excludes B2B calls as well.

What this essentially means (at least for me) is that the same telescumbags that I've been blocking on my VoIP line will be able to keep trying to call me. The only telemorons that this will affect, will be your common-or-garden telescum who telespam for themselves (it seems that duct cleaning and windows installation companies seem to be predisposed to this type of abusive advertising).

Some relevant links:
Fact Sheet - National Do Not Call List
Fact Sheet - Information for telejunkers

The right tool for the right job: Windows for desktops, *nix for servers. I'm sure some *nix fanboys would disagree, but let's face it, despite the world-wide contempt for the behemoth that is Microsoft - its questionable business ethics and abuse of monopoly - Linux is never going to get a foothold in the desktop-of-choice market unless things work "out-of-the-box".

Here's an example: I'd consider myself fairly tech savvy - I code in multiple languages across multiple platforms. I've tried OpenBSD and NetBSD - my preference is still FreeBSD; tried various flavours of Linux - SUSE was sh*t (never got past the installer: it switched off the VGA card) and RedHat wasn't bad.

Bombarded with even more telejunk calls than ever, I recently decided to purchase an Asterisk PBX system from Digium. I ordered my TDM11B (a TDM400P, 1 FXS Module and 1 FXO Module) on a Sunday afternoon, Digium shipped it the next day and I received it the morning after that - very impressive! My only gripe: the FXS module required a spare 12v power cable, which didn't reach across without considerable effort/re-jigging. I put my concerns into email and 7 hours later, Digium CS acknowledged my suggestion of including one in their retail starter packs. Perhaps I've become desensitised to bad ecommerce customer service over the years - my last internet purchase before this one was from geeks.com and it took them 3 days to ship my order, plus another 2 weeks to receive it via the USPS (without any tracking numbers to check the progress). The online "purchase" before that was this sorry episode over a year ago. So, all in all, Digium exceeded my expectations. Anyway, I digress...

Although Asterisk is supposed to work on multiple *nix platforms, it's officially supported on Linux. So, I downloaded and burned the 5 Fedora C6 ISO's from Red Hat. Attempted a full install on a spare hobby server (IBM PL300, 600MHz P3, 128MB RAM, 10GB HD). Installer craps out halfway through with kryptic error messages. Tried again with a minimal install (no X windows). Success. Fedora Core 6 does not recognise my TDM400P at boot up. So then I download and burn ASTLinux. It works, but is so bare bones, I can't do anything like download and compile Pico/Nano. So I download and burn the AsteriskNOW LiveCD ISO from Digium. Boots up fine - recognises my TDM400P, but PC locks up when it gets to the main menu. So I download and burn the AsteriskNOW installation disc. 8 CD's later, it figures that the last thing I try works 100%! Some custom Linux distro called "rPath Linux". I have Asterisk up and running within 20 mins of using the config web interface.

I have an idea about how to expand the functionality. Actually, someone else had the idea before me, hence a successful search on Google for "Asterisk talking caller ID". I download and install Festival, an open source text-to-speech engine. Doesn't work, but doesn't give me any error messages - just no audio. Should've realised that audio support, despite using relatively old hardware, would be a challenge.

The rPath kernel recognises both the onboard (ESS Maestro3) and SB Live (PCI) soundcards, but there's no /dev/dsp or /dev/audio or anything that remotely looks like a sound device. So I waste a whole day (no exaggeration) visiting the ALSA website, downloading and trying to install the drivers for the Maestro3 and SB Live (AKA emu10k/emu10k1) cards. Running "./configure" works; running "make clean" appears to work; running "make install" returns dumb error messages, such as "cp: cannot stat `snd-page-alloc.ko': No such file or directory". Seems like ALSA is the only source for Linux audio drivers, yet their bull$hit configure script doesn't "make" the .ko files needed to copy to the modules directory. I can't even RPM them in, as rPath doesn't support that package manager.

Well, at least my Asterisk is working - just need to work on the config to send telejunkers to the "Torture Menus". Googling around, it appears that Asterisk works on FreeBSD, but now that I've finally got it working, I don't want to change back to FreeBSD - besides, the support appears to better for Asterisk on the Linux platform.