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Comment by alextingle | Hacker News Reader

The proper solution would have been to switch to a premium rate line, and profit from it!

I would not give up my uninterrupted sleep for a few dollars on the side. I don't think I would even want to be interrupted for the small profit of premium lines. I have better things to do than personal support for this type of customer, and I imagine the SQLite devs think similarly.

If one wanted to be very mean, and using a premium rate UK number as an example:

At £1.50/minute, you can put them into a holding queue with "All developers are currently occupied, please wait and your call will be answered shortly" played every 45 seconds. If the developer wakes up they can choose to answer, otherwise most people will hang up after a few minutes.

Assuming the average person kept on the line for 3-4 minutes, and 100 calls a month, that's £450/month revenue...

This would fall afoul of the UK regulator for premium rate numbers (PhonepayPlus) http://code.phonepayplus.org.uk/the-avoidance-of-undue-delay...

(See also: https://www.xkcd.com/1494/)

It definitely would now, but back pre-2006..?

Get an 900 number, then put a menu service answering machine, that would answer the call, thank the user for their patience, charge them, then spell out the name of a an email account or web form where they can go to send you bug report.

;-)

But you could pay someone else to answer these calls for you, couldn't you?

Or just give the callers a canned reply telling them to wait, then never route the call anywhere.

Given the message above that would constitute fraud I guess.

Automated response that looks at your schedule and tells them how long til the next scheduled time for taking calls. Maybe lets them know their position in the queue as well. Would it be fraud if you answered during the scheduled time?

Lol, I agree $_$

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