Gizmodo: can you hear me now

Verizon Tech Busted for Using Customer Lines to Make $220K in Sex Calls

Sean Fallon — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 18:20:00 EDT

Add Joseph Vaccarelli, of Nutley, NJ to the long list of employees busted for engaging in sex-related activities on the job. A former Verizon technician, Vaccarelli stands accused of making $220,000 in sex calls using the landlines of some 950 customers. The math works out like this: 900 chat lines, 5,000 calls and a hand-numbing 45,000 minutes of talk time. Apparently he spent 15 weeks over a 40-week span for solid sex chats. Despite its name, it looks like Nutley is off the hook as the horniest town in America. [wcbstv via Geekologie]

Gadget Gives "Watching Your Butthole" in Prison a Whole New Meaning

Sean Fallon — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 17:40:29 EST

In order to combat the rising number of mobile phones smuggled into prisons, the UK Government is considering installing the Boss II scanner chair in every jail in England and Wales. The Boss makes every inmate its bitch thanks to three sensitive sensors that can detect internally hidden metal items as small as a pin or a sim card. Two Boss chairs are already being used in local prisons and have helped detect 21 mobile phones since April.

At first it may seem like a lot of trouble (and pain) to go through just to make a very foul-smelling phone call now and then, but it appears that the inmates can use the phones to make drug deals or intimidate witnesses on the outside. All I know is that I would hate to be the guy at the prison who had to "retrieve" those phones. [Times Online]

Verizon's "Can You Hear Me Now" Guy Has Rules

Jason Chen — Thu, 20 Sep 2007 17:20:33 EDT

Much like Ronald McDonald and Dick Cheney, Verizon's "Can You Hear Me Now" guy makes public appearances, but is actually not one person, but many different people dressed up for the part. And because of this, Verizon has a fairly thick rulebook of how the guy should be dressed, how he should appear, and how nobody should ever, ever talk to him.

Besides the requirement for always having "Good" follow "Can you hear me now"—which coincidentally is the only thing he's allowed to say—the guy should be in his mid-20s to late-30s, and should never be seen doing anything else besides testing the network. That means no interviews by the press (he's just a dude in a jumpsuit) and no appearances without a background of the Verizon Wireless testbed (no ribbon cutting ceremonies for supermarkets).

No "too pretty" guys either, which means that's one other side job we won't be able to take. [Consumerist]