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Slashback: Stupidity, Telebastardy, Fast Search
"I read your Overture/FAST story on Slashdot and wanted to make a clarification.Thanks for the correction, Peter.Your headline implies that Overture is completely acquiring FAST. This is completely incorrect. Overture has only acquired FAST's Internet business unit assets, which includes FAST WebSearch, FAST PartnerSite and FAST's popular search site, AlltheWeb.com."
Isn't that the stuff that sells? icantblvitsnotbutter writes "In what looks like a scoop, The Register has an article covering the latest in the ongoing battle between Gary Kremen and VeriSign. The High Court of California has rejected a request to consider the legal issue of whether a domain can legally be deemed as property. This is a huge help for (relatively) money-strapped Kremen, whose opponent VeriSign was evidently using the request as a delaying tactic. VeriSign previously had breathlessly warned that a wrong decision would 'cripple the Internet'."
And they made such a pleasant version of Debian, too ... robmered writes "Three years after receiving US$135M in cash from Microsoft, and one and a half years after Xandros bought Corel's Linux assets, The Age is reporting that Corel has finally removed all Linux software from its website. The end of an era, or a margin note in history? The Age thinks the former, but the strength of Open Office, Gimp and numerous desktop environment efforts seem to indicate that the Linux bandwagon will roll on regardless."
Certainly, I would like to talk at length about your business proposal. Would you like to know my fees in advance? KC7GR writes "There's an article running at DMNews about a company called Castel, Inc. that has, supposedly, developed software that can be used by automated dialing equipment to bypass a TeleZapper, or similar SIT generators, and get through to your phone no matter what.
It is also claimed that the software can deliver any type of text or phone number to a recipient's caller ID box, no matter if it's true or false, and that it can also bypass the anti-telemarketer blocks made available by some telephone companies, such as SBC and Qwest.
Granted, this software is not cheap (about $2,700.00 per calling position, apparently), and Castel is quick to claim that they created this stuff primarily for collection agencies to help them get through to deadbeats who use TeleZappers. Does anyone here really think that'll stop telemarketers from using the same crap, just because they can?"
Brevity is one antidote to stupidity. Yoda2 writes "Here is Part II of the Salon story on the Loebner Prize that Slashdot covered yesterday."
Is that not illegal yet?
Help a college student
When someone invented a caller id blocker blocker blocker.
Er, nope.
And people still fork out $5 a month for CLI. Meanwhile there's just no way a telemarketer can get through to my phone, and I don't breach the privacy of my friends and collegues (why should I force them to give me their phone number? I wouldn't force them to give me their address before letting them in the house...) and all because of a $15 piece of junk I got from the local branch of Wal*Mart.
Bliss. And my electricity bill's lower too. Between this and my new Mac, I can power the entire house on my own smugness...
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
A possibly less slashdotted version of the TeleZapper article can be found at http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20030225/1553220. shtml.
I worked as a telemarketer once... for a week. I got paid full time for my training and then bailed and got a new job before ever making a call. So I know nothing about the industry.
I'm curious, how long do you think it would take a telemarketing company to pay off the huge chunk of change they'd require to buy enough copies of this program to outfit their entire outfit? As I recall, there were several hundred stations at the place I worked.
~SL
So does that mean if you fight for the right to have a free trial you are going to commit a crime? Is it not possible for someone to fight for something based purely on ideology rather than self-interest? What happened to standing up for what you believed because you believe it, and not because you gain from it?
If you're not willing to fight for your privacy, you don't deserve it in the first place.
Posting as directed.
This new technology allows the telemarketers to make any name appear that they want. Great. Now I'm going to get calls from "President Bush" and "Saddam Hussein" and "Michael Jackson", instead of "Unknown Out of Area Caller". Which is worse? ;-)
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
Since you claim to have nothing to hide, and there should be no concern for privacy, please post your full name and address. I'll be by shortly with a few miniature camera's to install in your bedroom, bathroom, and living room. A few taps for the phone, and other assorted recording and monitoring device. Please also pop the hood on your car so I can install the GPS tracking system. Got a cell phone? I'll need your ESN and number please.
What? You don't want to provide that? Not even your name, phone number, and address? Why ever not? I though you didn't think privacy mattered!
Gasp! You must have something to hide!
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
So, who aquired Make.Money.FAST?
Karma: Marginal (mostly due to the border around the website)
developed software that can be used by automated dialing equipment to bypass a TeleZapper, or similar SIT generators, and get through to your phone no matter what.
I would think that this would do far more to hurt the industry than help them, especially as far as the government deciding whether or not to regulate do not call lists.
--sex
Very popular slashdot journal for adul
If you have your own phone switch, you can send out any caller id you want. It's not authoritative, never has been. It's about the same as a reply-to address in email. It's a shame the poster didn't buy Kevin Mitnick's book after it was mentioned on slashdot so many times, because he does cover caller id spoofing for social engineering on people who do think caller id is a secure way to id the caller.
Incoming Call From: Richard Stallman ...
GNU/Decline?
Parent-parent posting was worded cleverly (or stupidly, depending on intent):
"Fight it", not "fight for it".
1.My kids' names
2.Their ages
3.Their birthdates
4.The school they go to
5.My address
6.What they look like
7.What route they take home from school
8.Who their teachers are
9.Where hteir soccer practice is held
10.The secret password we use to authenticate and
11.When I am home and when I am not
authorize pick-up-the-kid-from-wherever functions
Oh and privacy isn't just about secrecy, it's about private spaceand private property. Private property means control over that property.
I think every address should have a public phone to which certain callers are restricted to only leaving messages. Kind of like how you can yell from across the street at me all you like, bu the minute you get on my property I cantell you to go away in which case refusal to do might cause your yell-from-across-the-street privileges to be legally revoked as well.
Dinner time is highly private property. Weekends and afternoons are highly private property. Ho
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
...and Castel is quick to claim that they created this stuff primarily for collection agencies to help them get through to deadbeats who use TeleZappers.
Ok, so let me get this straight. I'm Joe deadbeat, but I still pay for a phone. But, since I've been labled a "deadbeat" by EQUIFAX or some rabid collecation agency, it's OK for them to spoof my CallerID or bypass means that I have put in place to try to require callers to present a valid call?
This type of morality, it's OK to do X to Y beacuse they are Z, just sickens me. I personally think that anyone who subscribes to this kind of slipperly slope logic should get a punch in the mouth.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
We all have something to hide. Some people are hiding very bad things... others are hiding things that big business or government tells us are bad... but almost everyone does anyways.
Nobody is 100% innocent.
I'm in charge of the phones, among other things here at the office. And our Nortel switch can already transmit whatever the owner wants, for CID info, according to the company that handles our maitenance contract. The tech told me that it's childishly simple to change it to almost anything.
And this system, is several years old.
"Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs." P.J. O'Rourke
Wow, a business being held accountable for their actions? Who would have thought!
Of course VeriSign would have no problem nuking your domain should you fail to pay them for registering your domain name to you. By definition then you are paying for the domain name to be registered to you.
If I purchased a car and the dealership turned around and gave my car to someone else do you think they'd get away with it for long?
If I order food from a restaraunt and they make an error on my order do they turn around and tell my "Tough sh*t"?
Why then, if someone were to pay VeriSign for a service, should VeriSign not be accountable for said paid for service?
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
In Texas, law explicitly requires callers to identify themselves in CallerID with a phone number the business can be reached at (NOT attached to an autodialer), or if the equipment is not capable of presenting a number, they must state their company name and callback number in the first 30 seconds of a call.
Note that by having ANY id, your equipment can obviously present callerID.
For once, Texas has a useful law.
Experience-Based Language Acquisition (EBLA) is an open source software system written in Java that enables a computer to learn simple language from scratch based on visual perception. It is the first "grounded" language system capable of learning both nouns and verbs. Moreover, once EBLA has established a vocabulary, it can perform basic scene analysis to generate descriptions of novel videos.
A more detailed summary is available here and this is the project web site.
I've always been intrigued by Salon's output, but I cannot honestly take this article seriously. The author has a very clear pro-Loebner bias that he doesn't even try to conceal. His hostility towards Minsky, Dennett, and the rest of the established academic community is so blatant (and unfounded) that it's embarrassing to read. Take this quote:
Decision sciences, by the simplest possible definition, refers to computerized assistance in resource allocation. An example provided by a press release from MIT announcing the creation of a decision sciences program was "complex computer-based 'passenger yield management' systems and models that the airlines use to adjust pricing of each flight's seats in order to maximize revenue and profitability to the airline." That's a far cry from the bold claims made by A.I. visionaries in decades past. But focusing on such systems has a signal advantage for scientists who have been failing miserably at the Turing test. It gets them off the hook.
And later: In other words, if you read between the lines what you come up with is that one reason "serious" A.I. scientists don't try to mimic human speech anymore is that they discovered they can't do it.
Okay, so he's holding up the academics to ridicule because they abandoned the Turing Test. Why did they abandon the Turing Test. Will, according to the filty academic, it's because: ""The Turing test is not very useful for many A.I. scientists today because they work on projects that have nothing to do with human linguistic performance."
So, the respectable AI people aren't working with the Turing Test because they aren't working with linguistics. Gosh, that seems fairly reasonable to me. I mean, I suppose it's possible that the entire AI academic community, en masse, chose to boycott a hack contest run by an East Coast elite who started the contest because "He's a hedonist who thinks work is an abomination and sloth is our greatest virtue. He got interested in A.I. because he hoped the day would come when robots and A.I.'s could do all the work and people could play all the time." The rich kid wants to play so those damn academics better make me a robot who can bake me a pie. But I digress....
The contest focuses on a field that has been abandoned by current AI research. Why? Because we can't make it work yet. The hardware isn't there yet. So we're doing other stuff. Look at the progress of chess programs, mission-critical systems, UT bots. AI is getting better. A souped-up ELIZA isn't going to confirm that. They attack the AI people for not producing better entries for a contest the AI people don't find valid. Loebner and the author, who are obviously in the same camp, are trying to have it both ways. Bullshit. If Salon wants my money to stay afloat, they'll have to do better than this.
~Chazzf
No statement is true, not even this one.
Well, then you should have no problem if I send you a set of envelope sized clear ziplock sandwich bags that you can use for your mail instead of wasting your money on envelopes, right?
If I included postage on them would you use them? It's not a bad deal really. I mean, if you have nothing to hide, why should you worry if the postman you hate across the street opens all your mail (undetected, because it's ziplock!) and gives it a peruse. Maybe he can even report any mistakes you've made on paying your Visa to the credit agency for you, or errors on your income tax report to the IRS! How excellent!
If you don't want that, well, you must have something to hide. I mean, it's not like it's even going to cost you anything to do this, you'd _make_ money, and your only cost is the privacy you don't value anyways!
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
It might even be possible to say that by intentionally bypassing someone's blocks they put on your incoming calls that you're harassing them. IANAL though. I only play one on slashdot.
And why exactly can't we have a SPEWS/blackhole type of call blocking list? I'm paitently waiting.
The question remains:
If people are willing to subscribe to/buy telezappers, block lists, do not call lists, etc...
Can't telemarketers get the point that these people are not potential sales, they're only potential angry call recipients?
Not only that, but wouldn't forging a phone number come under some sort of legal troubles... especially if you used a number that somebody else owns?
It is also claimed that the software can deliver any type of text or phone number to a recipient's caller ID box, no matter if it's true or false, and that it can also bypass the anti-telemarketer blocks made available by some telephone companies, such as SBC and Qwest.
Anybody with an IDSL or PBX phone system can put in anything they want on Caller ID. And recognizing SIT tones is a feature on better telemarketing rigs, and generally one that can be turned off. They don't "bypass" the telezapper, they simply ignore it. Duh.
On the other hand, any telemarketer that pays $2700 for something so obivously a ripoff will get no sympathy from me.
Isn't Castle, Inc's software a direct violation of the DMCA? It purposely gets around blocks AND can falsely report information to a caller id box. Sounds like it's time to pull out the lawyers.
"There is a way that seems right to a man, but its end is the way of death." Proverbs 16:25 (NKJV)
Just because someone has nothing to hide it doesn't mean they are happy for everyone to know everything in intimate detail. That I have nothing to hide as far as the government or law enforcement is concerned doesn't mean I am happy to have you watch me in the shower.
I always assumed that the term "nothing to hide" meant roughly that I had nothing that would cause me too much grief if it became known to people who mattered to me in some way (eg I don't want my wife to know about the pr0n or my boss to know its gay pr0n).
As you don't particularly matter to me its not a question of 'nothing to hide', it's just none of your damn business.
All the telezapper does it emit the first of the three tones in a standard SIT signal... you know, the little "doo dee dweep the number you have dialed is no longer in service" thing you get from time to time. This tone is handled in the automated dialing software the same way that any other tones (1,2,3,#,etc) are... i.e. however the programmer wants to handle it, depending on the application. There's no magic involved in "getting around" a telezapper, it would involve one line of programming code to simply ignore it.
by the way, you don't NEED a telezapper... if you use an answering machine, just record the SIT tone (or even the first 1/3rd of it) at the beginning of your outgoing message. Human callers expect weird noises from answering machines, they just ignore it. But automated dialers which are programmed to look for it assume the number is disconnected.
To get the SIT tones, just google up sit.wav, you can find it all over the place.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
But what about 911? They use something other than Caller ID, don't they? Something that can't be spoofed by the end user? If they don't, or it can in fact be spoofed as well, I can see quite a bit of abuse once this practice becomes mainstream. What is their "special" Caller ID called? How is it transmitted to them? Can regular people receive it?
What you're talking about is ANI, which IIRC is "automated number information". It's out-of-band information (unlike caller ID) which is primarily used for billing purposes by whatever carriers lie between the caller and callee. It cannot be blocked (unless you're one of the rated carriers in the middle, then you're regulated out the ass anyway.)
I used to write automated call software (incoming and outgoing) and I worked with this all the time. It used to REALLY piss off people who have their caller ID blocked (or have used *67) yet have their number recognized anyway. Hehehe.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
It isn't a question of my privacy. It is a question of my *right* to be secure in my person, home, and papers.
The privacy issue is the privacy of the telemarketer or collection agency. *They* are the ones crying right to "privacy" while trying to devise ways to violate my *right* to be secure in my home by demanding entry without revealing who they are first.
If someone comes to my door wearing a ski mask and asks to be let in but won't tell me who they are, well guess what? *I ain't lettin' 'em in.*
Go figure.
What this software does is allow them to knock on my door and request entry *while disguised as my girlfriend.*
Well, as my dear, sweet, little old granny used to say, " They can blow that shit right out their fuckin' ass!"
Granny was a pisser. I miss the old bat.
Well, I can just pull the plug on the damned phone I guess. The telemarketers get more use out of it than I do. I'm not sure why I bother paying thirty bucks a month so MCI can call me and ask me to pay fifty bucks a month anyway.
I suppose then they'll find a way to legally force me to have a phone as way to protect their "freedom" to try to sell me shit I don't want.
Oh. Wait. *I didn't say that.*
Oh Shit. Now I've gone and done it.
KFG
Since these devices answer, then play the SIT tones, a fair number of predictive dialers are immune to them anyway. The reason is that they detect answer supervision and move their tone detectors to another call. Real SITs are sent without answer supervision, and moving the detectors to the next call saves resources.
As to sending false CLID, a PRI trunk can be made to do it, if the carrier doesn't enforce checking. For that much outbound calling, probably a lot of carriers would be more than happy, if they bother doing that in any case.
I don't know, or perhaps don't recall, where the name lookup is done. If it is from the A end, it would be equally easy to fake. If it is done at the receiving telco, they would have to give the real number of the institution being faked.
There is a plethora of discussion on Telezappers in comp.dcom.telecom. Check the Google archive.
Don't know about 911, but corporate customers can get ANI (Automatic Number Identification) on their lines. Some prefixes have ANI built-in, like 888. ANI has been around for a long time, long before CID. I'm sure that googling will turn up tons and tons of information on ANI for you, if you're more interested.
CID has always been a consumer-level service, and this just shows that a little better.
If the Loebner prize isn't respected by your peers, then the competition isn't that much worth the work of cleaning up your system for the competition. If competing was simply a case of opening up a telnet port to the equivalent of your running nightly build, it wouldn't be such a big issue running in each and every competition out there.
OS Software is like love: The best way to make it grow is to give it away.
1. The fact that I don't have a girlfriend
2. The fact I use M$ Windoze
3. The fact that I like vi and COBOL.
There's a growing sense that even if The Future comes,
most of us won't be able to afford it.
-- Lemmy
A friend of mine lives in Denver and his phone has a service provided by Qwest (I think he got the service when they were still USWest) that plays a message stating that "this number does not accept solicitations... if you're a solicitor hang up and put this # on do-not-call list, otherwise press 1..." His phone doesn't ring unless the caller presses 1. There is also some legislation in Colorado that states, with a system like that, any solicitor who presses 1 to go through anyway can be sued for something like $10k per incident. My friend tells me there have been very few times when a solicitor comes through (where he then mentions the possible fine and they hang up abruptly).
I wonder why there aren't more phone companies offering such a service and why more states don't back up the disturbances with hefty fines. Maybe the telemarketers' lobbyists are lining pockets... maybe(?).
> > Abort, Retry, Fail?
>
> Phuleeeze. These are telemarketers. It'll be:
> Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail?
Puhleeeze. These are TELEMARKETERS. Itll be:
Retry, Retry, Retry, Retry?
The best thing you can do, to STOP them from calling someone else -- is to quicly say "OHHH! great, i was just looking ot buy a %whatever%. Can you hold a moment while I get a pad and paper".
;)
Then put the phone down until you hear it buzzing (they hang up).
this stretches the calls out so they cant bother more people.
pass it on
get dragon naturally speaking (voice recognition) and a text to speech proggy, combined with one of those bots. hook it all up to your phone line, i bet you can seriously annoy the telemarketers having them talk to eliza!
:P
thanks god for canada... we rarely ever get any kind of marketing calls here
They are going in together with YAHOO. It seems that PacBell has a customer base in place as an ISP, and YAHOO would like to rape it. I have been with SBC for about five years as a PPP customer.. but now they are constantly sending me emails under the heading "action required" that direct me to the Yahoo download page .
Note this has to be downloaded to a Microsoft machine.
No linux support.
I do not like it at all that they insist me download software on my end that their end will talk to. I have no idea of any hidden agenda what the software on my end is doing, nor, under DMCA, is there really any way for me to even legally discuss whats going on.
So, it looks like I may have to change ISP only because Yahoo wants me held captive.
Does anybody have ideas for a good ISP? I am looking at www.copper.net .
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
I simply do not understand people who duck telemarketers. They are the greatest free stress relievers in existance.
Come home from work pissed (as in mad, not drunk), the phone rings, tear the jackass on the other end a new one. You don't know them, they are vermin, your karma is clean.
I have made MCI telemarketers cry before.
Hey, if they want respect they should pick up cans or work at MickeyD's...
I used to write automated call software (incoming and outgoing) and I worked with this all the time. It used to REALLY piss off people who have their caller ID blocked (or have used *67) yet have their number recognized anyway. Hehehe.
In fact, I used to work for a guy that would hold a grudge against everybody that ever quit the job, and he would literally call them and harass them and do all kinds of weird shit. So, when I quit working for him, I quit answering the phone. He was also paranoid and had his call ID blocked, so nobody could see his number when he calls them. The first time he called (idiot, he left a message so I knew it was him) I waited until the answering machine finished, and then I picked up the phone and blocked his number. You don't have to know the number you're blocking, you just have to be able to block it right after they call.
He was confused, and it took him something close to a week to figure out that he should call from another phone. Heh. Then he didn't harass me, saying something about respecting me for figuring out how to block his phone. Idiot.
Like what I said? You might like my music
You can get the ANI if you have a toll-free number... I guess the idea is that you're paying for the call, so you have the right to know who's calling or something. A couple years ago, you could call 1-800-MY-ANI-IS and get the number of the phone you were calling from read back to you. Apparently it got abused too much and they (MCI, I think) discontinued it or something.
Are there devices that can get the ANI data, outside of being a 911 operator? Or does the phone company only allow certain circuits access to ANI?
It's been five years since I was in the telecom industry, so things have probably changed. But at the time, the only way to get ANI was to have a leased line directly into the switch of a carrier who was willing to provide it. (Not all were... some would only provide it to other tarriffed carriers. I don't know if this was a legal thing or just their way of not having to deal with riff-raff like me.) However, in any given area (basically all over the US) I never had any problem finding a provider, although since it involved a leased line (be it POTS, ISDN, whatever) it was very expensive, and as someone else mentioned, it's only available with a toll-free number, so in addition to leased-line costs you get to pay for all the phone calls too.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target