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https://secure.paypal.com/refer/pal=mr.skulker@webskulker.com

https://www.x.com/new_account.asp?Referrer=mr.skulker@webskulker.com

WebSkulker mentioned the second site, x.com, in the 1/4/00 issue as an online bank that will give you an immediate gift of $20 when you sign up for their service.  Please use the second link above so that WebSkulker will get credit.  You are free to withdraw the $20 and never use the service again, although you should check it out because you might find uses for it.

You get an immediate gift of $10 by signing up for PayPal at the first link above, and $10 additional for each referral.  PayPal is basically the same idea as x.com, but with a totally different marketing approach.  PayPal wants you to use their service to "beam" money around to your friends if you need to pay them for something, even something as trivial as splitting the lunch check.  To do this, you and your friends must all register with the service and you must know the email address that each used when they registered.  Suppose you wanted to pay WebSkulker $10.  All you need to do is sign on to your PayPal account, choose the Beam Money option, fill in our email address, and the amount.  The money will be transferred immediately into our account.  But where does the money come from?  When you sign up, you give them a credit card number.  They withdraw the $10 from your credit card and put it in the beam-ee's account.  There is no fee for this transaction.  Your credit card will be charged exactly $10 and we will receive exactly $10 that we could use to beam to someone else, or withdraw.

If you think about it, this means that you can accept credit card payments for anything at all without needing to sign up with a credit card company as a merchant, as long as you can talk the person who owes you money into signing up with PayPal.  Point out that they will get a $10 gift when they do, and remember that you will get a $10 referral credit when they complete the signup.

The greatest feature of PayPal is the literal beaming of money back and forth between Palm Pilot owners.  PayPal has software you can download and install on your Palm.  To split the lunch check, you use infrared to beam a transaction from one Palm to another.  The next time you synchronize, the beamed transactions will be sent to PayPal to complete the money transfers.

In yesterday's issue WebSkulker gave out two numbers that will read out the phone number you are calling from (these are often called ANI numbers for "Automatic Number Identification"):
1-800-346-0152  and
1010732-1-770-988-9664

The second one is intriguing for two reasons: the voice reads a lot more digits than just the phone number, and the special carrier code that must be used.  Several jr. skulkers sent us some more information about this.  WebSkulker has known for a while that 1010732 is owned by AT&T as a special code for a software-defined network.  Lucky225 points out that you can also use the regular AT&T code, 1010288, to access this number.  WebSkulker is pretty sure that he tried that at some point in the long past and it didn't work, but it certainly does now.

But here is something strange:  from one of our lines that is NOT pre-subscribed to AT&T, we can dial either 1010288 or 1010732 and the ANI works.  Lucky225 told us that from a line that is pre-subscribed to AT&T, you shouldn't need a carrier code at all.  That makes sense since 1010288 works.  But we have a line subscribed to AT&T and we tried it.  With no carrier code or with 1010288, the ANI does not work.  We must use 1010732 when calling from that line.

Jr. Skulker Producer lives in Canada.  He can't use carrier code 1010732 from up there so he skulked around and found that 1010858 works to reach the ANI.  That one won't work in the U.S.

Jr. Skulker Silicon Toad 007 said that 1-800-569-5699 reads out your phone number and extra digits, and it even identifies the extra digits.  But it asks for a password that he used to know, but got changed recently.

1-800-959-2000

800, 888, and 877 numbers are "portable" nowadays, which means that the owner of a particular number can move it from one long distance carrier to another if they are unhappy with their carrier's service or rates.  Jr. skulkers might sometimes be curious to know which carrier handles a number.  Remember that we are not talking about the company that owns and answers the number, but the long distance carrier that handles the traffic.

To find out, dial the number above which goes to the Pacific Bell service center that takes repair calls for the toll-free numbers that they handle as the carrier.  Press 1 to say that you want to report trouble on a number.  Press in the 800, 888, or 877 number you want to know about.  The voice will now tell you the RespOrg, or Responsible Organization, that handles that number.  Hang up, because that is what you wanted to know.

http://www.rael.org/int/english

http://www.ufoland.com/english/ufoland.html

Jr. Skulker Tracy Airhead lives in San Francisco.  He was walking around Union Square when he was accosted not by Scientologists trying to give him a personality test, not by Hare Krishna's trying to sell him flowers, not by Mormons trying to hand him pamphlets, no.  The new cult in town is the "Raelians" and they hand out their URL, the first one above.  The second is a virtual tour of their religion's theme park, UFOland.

"UFOland is based on Rael's ideas and the MESSAGE he received directly from extraterrestrials who contacted him in 1973 and 1975 in France. A 1 h 30 guided visit through 7 rooms with video.  UFOland is the LARGEST building (400 feet) in the world built with 5,800 bales of hay.  See the replica (7 m x 2,5 m) of the flying saucer aboard which Rael travelled." etc. etc.

(Why proper wording is important:  Does this mean that there are other buildings in the world also built with 5,800 bales of hay, but they are smaller than UFOland?  Or is UFOland the largest building in the world built of bales of hay, and the total number of bales used was 5,800?  Or is UFOland the largest building in the world, period, and you might be interested in knowing that it was built of bales of hay?)

Submitted by Jr. Skulker Ms. 1133

A bus stops and two Italian men get on. They sit down and engage in an animated conversation. The lady sitting behind them ignores them at first, but her attention is galvanized when she hears one of the men say the following: 

"Emma come first. Den I come. Den two asses come together. I come once-a-more. Two asses, they come together again. I come again and pee twice. Then I come one lasta time." 

"You foul-mouthed swine, " retorted the lady indignantly. "In this country we don't talk about our sex lives in public!" 

"Hey, coola down lady," said the man. "Who talkin' abouta sex? I'm a just tellin' my frienda how to spella 'Mississippi'."

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