I suppose that could work. But its sooo much more fun to make them hang up. Especially since a lot of them work by the principle that if they keep you on the phone they can make the sale.
If they are selling some subscription, I tell them I'm moving. Me - Who's calling? Them - xxx with the Dallas Morning News Me - Sorry, I'm moving. Them - Well sir, we do offer home delivery outside the Dallas area. Me - to South Africa.
I've found that as long as you can force them into something that they don't have a button for on their screen it can end a call. South Africa is my favorite. Most lackeys wouldn't even know where to start looking to see if their company operates in South Africa. This works great to get the extended warranty people off my back too. I've yet to run into a smart one that switches from the extended warranty to selling me new plugs...that would be impressive.
Another technique is to ask who they're calling for and tell them that person is dead. But don't just go with dead, make it something unusual. Look to the Darwin awards for ideas.
I've recently been plagued with "Courtesy Calls". I've found that asking these people if they are telemarketers really puts them on the defensive. They must have instructions to avoid being called that, perhaps it would be an admission that this is not a legitimate call from someone we've done business with but a cold call.
Me - What's this call concerning? Them - This is a courtesy call. Me - Are you sure you aren't a telemarketer. Them - this is a courtesy call. Me - Because you sound like a telemarketer. Are you sure you're not trying to sell me something? Them - umm Me - You're not very good at this.
I'm normally a pretty quiet and easy going guy. But these guys drive me nuts so I enjoy making them squirm, which they'll do if you get them out of their element. This is excellent practice dealing with pushy people that are so much better at this sort of thing than I am.
Me - Who's calling? Them - This is Kiwi Services Me - I'm sorry, we already have a supplier that meets all our kiwi needs.
After this call I thought that I could have responded with the line: "Is that kiwi the bird, or kiwi the fruit?" This would work for any company name that might have multiple meanings, but I haven't used it yet. Maybe they'll call back.
One last one. Put them on "hold" and sing to them. Don't worry if you don't know the words, you can always ask them.
Paper has a lot of benefits over its electronic equivalent.
Random Access is my favorite. I can move my pencil to anywhere on the current pages and write/draw/annotate/etc... Frequently I'll put a star out in the margin next to something important, this is something not so easily/quickly done on the computer. Or drawing lines between two related paragraphs. Basically, with paper you aren't limited to the predefined functions that are programmed into the device. Of course, you do lose all ability to grep/sort/etc. I suppose it depends on what you're taking notes on.
Math symbols are much easier to do by hand.
Personally, I think that more thought goes into writing something than goes into typing something. As a touch typer, I seem to be able to type things without it passing through my brain for real processing. When I'm forced to write something I put a lot more thought into what I'm writing.
I'm also a big proponent of doing first drafts by hand or having the discipline not to use spell/grammar checkers and not to use editing features of programs. Just write straight through, have tons of errors and get thoughts and ideas out there first. Worry about the big stuff first and the small stuff later. Naturally, I'm just typing this in and haven't written it out first, but I promise I didn't do any spelling/grammer checks.
While notebooks lack a lot of features, they do provide an inexpensive random access read-only storage for mixed media. Try taping a printout physics lab into your palm.
A friend of mine had a problem while his house was getting built and they had to redo the contracts. They sent him unsigned copies for him to sign. He retyped the whole thing, matching fonts and switching out responsibilities from OWNER to CONTRACTOR in several key areas. Sent it back in and they signed it. Now if he has problems down the line...
Seriously though, its my understanding that there must be some expectation that a EULA is being read in order for it to be enforceable. I think about this when I hit "I Agree" to a EULA every time I have to play some online game. They could change this EULA anytime and I wouldn't notice the changes. Moreover, they have the luxury of preparing this EULA with the legal dept. Do they expect all half-million of their users to run that EULA past they lawyers every time they log on? Of course not, they *expect* users to take action against "legal" papers without the consultation of legal advice.
Of course, most users get tricked into arbitration because that's the agreed upon solution in the EULA but that begs the question.
The argument needs to be made that the tool is necessary to provide backups of data as the physical media will deteriorate before the copyright expires. After all, the purchaser has a license to the copyright material its not just physical ownership of the disk.
Of course the MPAA could argue that copyright expiration is so far in the future that any consideration of post-expiration is ridiculous. And I might agree.
Well, I didn't say it would be practical and hinted as much that they all have parachutes so that they'll all do well in case of a buyout. That was before I looked at the insider trading of SCOX. You'll see that the directors bought a ton of shares at 1/10 of a penny each. The shares were not previously on the market meaning that they pretty much just conjured them out of thin air. I'm sure this will be called compensation but I call it robbing the shareholders.
While not practical, my desire is just to have fun firing them in as public and humiliating manner as possible. The fact they would all leave rich would certainly detract from my fun.
The other main thrust of my thinking was that $600 between 121,000 users actually sounds attainable. Not for SCOX since the price wouldn't sit still and all the shares aren't available but perhaps for something equally large. Think at how small a segment of the OSS community is really after blender then compare that to how many people might be interested in buying a license for Unix that could be moved to GPL. Its a bit late for that move since most things have been redone or acquired legally in by other means. Also, the thought of doing business with SCOX is now out of the question.
I agree with you though, here's the plan: Kill the sheep, salt the fields, burn the bridges. Keep a database on those involved on their side and hit them economically. Get people off SCO now, drop business with their law firm, drop business with other firms that directors are also on.
What if the OSS did receive a gift certificate for a couple million dollars, what would the shopping list be? I use emacs, so I've already got everything I could ever need except maybe a module to control my tv.
That's 121 thousand people each spending $600 for 100 shares.
Are there 121 thousand people that would consider it humurous enough to buy the company just to fire fire everyone? They probably all have parachutes set up to rob the company should they be fired and then the company would have to die. Think of this like the blender project only a hell of a lot bigger.
A lot of grandparents are getting out of school district taxes for just this reason. Actually the real reason is because they show up to vote for the people that give them this break.
I think this is where the resistance really is. The average American really doesn't care about the switch to metric but cows are stubborn and getting them switched over to metric is going to be tough.
Yea, it gets in the way of his office hours right up until a student knocks and he says, "Come in."
Any student unable to knock politely at the door doesn't deserve any extra attention. Furthermore, they were probably just there to whine about grades anyway.
That sounds like a shortcoming of the language. Languages are for manipulating data. Data does not exist so that you can have an easy time manipulating it in an inferior language (read JAVA).
Re:How does Gator operate?
on
Gator Examined
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· Score: 2, Funny
Advertising works exceptionally well on the stupid, uninformed and lazy which is exactly the demographic for Gator's users.
Re:Great Refutation
on
Gator Examined
·
· Score: 2, Informative
Its a reference to a quick little story about a group of blind people that meet an elephant. Each describes the elephant based upon the part they are touching.
Re:Uphill water flow at Disneyworld since 1971..
on
Water Flows Uphill
·
· Score: 1
If you go rafting through canyons enough, you'll eventually come across an area where the strata of the rock will make it look like its uphill. While this is eery, when the strata tilts the other way it can look like you're in for a 45 degree descent which is downright scary.
My idea to solve this problem is for the developers to create a character with a cheat such that the character can run on the underside of the ground. In all other respects this would be a normal character. Obviously, this would only be for use by the customer service people when trying to flush out a suspected cheat. You could run along the ground near the cheater and if he follows you he's caught.
Abusive police are much more reported than abuse of police which is far, far more common. I won't deny that abuse does occur, but its very rare. Sure, there may be a lot of claims that it happened but a almost all of these claims are by criminals. Criminals tend to lie about their actions and for some strange reason, if they can create doubt about abuse they somehow become innocent (er, not guilty) of their crimes.
Police will welcome anything that can stem the flood of false claims and get them out of court quicker.
Most cops I know are cops because they just are. Its something in them that makes them want to stand in harms way, same with firefighters.
Yes and no. Hospitals are required to treat life threatening issues. So when a person comes in with a heart attack and racks up a $20k bill its the state that's left holding the ticket.
That said, would this mean that any of us with insurance would have exemptions to this tax?
Required to purchase a burger: 1. proof of insurance 2. waiver 3. upsizing the meal combo requires proof of recent physical
Slashdot Mirror
I suppose that could work. But its sooo much more fun to make them hang up. Especially since a lot of them work by the principle that if they keep you on the phone they can make the sale.
If they are selling some subscription, I tell them I'm moving.
Me - Who's calling?
Them - xxx with the Dallas Morning News
Me - Sorry, I'm moving.
Them - Well sir, we do offer home delivery outside the Dallas area.
Me - to South Africa.
I've found that as long as you can force them into something that they don't have a button for on their screen it can end a call. South Africa is my favorite. Most lackeys wouldn't even know where to start looking to see if their company operates in South Africa. This works great to get the extended warranty people off my back too. I've yet to run into a smart one that switches from the extended warranty to selling me new plugs...that would be impressive.
Another technique is to ask who they're calling for and tell them that person is dead. But don't just go with dead, make it something unusual. Look to the Darwin awards for ideas.
I've recently been plagued with "Courtesy Calls". I've found that asking these people if they are telemarketers really puts them on the defensive. They must have instructions to avoid being called that, perhaps it would be an admission that this is not a legitimate call from someone we've done business with but a cold call.
Me - What's this call concerning?
Them - This is a courtesy call.
Me - Are you sure you aren't a telemarketer.
Them - this is a courtesy call.
Me - Because you sound like a telemarketer. Are you sure you're not trying to sell me something?
Them - umm
Me - You're not very good at this.
I'm normally a pretty quiet and easy going guy. But these guys drive me nuts so I enjoy making them squirm, which they'll do if you get them out of their element. This is excellent practice dealing with pushy people that are so much better at this sort of thing than I am.
Me - Who's calling?
Them - This is Kiwi Services
Me - I'm sorry, we already have a supplier that meets all our kiwi needs.
After this call I thought that I could have responded with the line: "Is that kiwi the bird, or kiwi the fruit?" This would work for any company name that might have multiple meanings, but I haven't used it yet. Maybe they'll call back.
One last one. Put them on "hold" and sing to them. Don't worry if you don't know the words, you can always ask them.
Paper has a lot of benefits over its electronic equivalent.
Random Access is my favorite. I can move my pencil to anywhere on the current pages and write/draw/annotate/etc... Frequently I'll put a star out in the margin next to something important, this is something not so easily/quickly done on the computer. Or drawing lines between two related paragraphs. Basically, with paper you aren't limited to the predefined functions that are programmed into the device. Of course, you do lose all ability to grep/sort/etc. I suppose it depends on what you're taking notes on.
Math symbols are much easier to do by hand.
Personally, I think that more thought goes into writing something than goes into typing something. As a touch typer, I seem to be able to type things without it passing through my brain for real processing. When I'm forced to write something I put a lot more thought into what I'm writing.
I'm also a big proponent of doing first drafts by hand or having the discipline not to use spell/grammar checkers and not to use editing features of programs. Just write straight through, have tons of errors and get thoughts and ideas out there first. Worry about the big stuff first and the small stuff later. Naturally, I'm just typing this in and haven't written it out first, but I promise I didn't do any spelling/grammer checks.
While notebooks lack a lot of features, they do provide an inexpensive random access read-only storage for mixed media. Try taping a printout physics lab into your palm.
A friend of mine had a problem while his house was getting built and they had to redo the contracts. They sent him unsigned copies for him to sign. He retyped the whole thing, matching fonts and switching out responsibilities from OWNER to CONTRACTOR in several key areas. Sent it back in and they signed it. Now if he has problems down the line...
Seriously though, its my understanding that there must be some expectation that a EULA is being read in order for it to be enforceable. I think about this when I hit "I Agree" to a EULA every time I have to play some online game. They could change this EULA anytime and I wouldn't notice the changes. Moreover, they have the luxury of preparing this EULA with the legal dept. Do they expect all half-million of their users to run that EULA past they lawyers every time they log on? Of course not, they *expect* users to take action against "legal" papers without the consultation of legal advice.
Of course, most users get tricked into arbitration because that's the agreed upon solution in the EULA but that begs the question.
The argument needs to be made that the tool is necessary to provide backups of data as the physical media will deteriorate before the copyright expires. After all, the purchaser has a license to the copyright material its not just physical ownership of the disk.
Of course the MPAA could argue that copyright expiration is so far in the future that any consideration of post-expiration is ridiculous. And I might agree.
Well, I didn't say it would be practical and hinted as much that they all have parachutes so that they'll all do well in case of a buyout. That was before I looked at the insider trading of SCOX. You'll see that the directors bought a ton of shares at 1/10 of a penny each. The shares were not previously on the market meaning that they pretty much just conjured them out of thin air. I'm sure this will be called compensation but I call it robbing the shareholders.
While not practical, my desire is just to have fun firing them in as public and humiliating manner as possible. The fact they would all leave rich would certainly detract from my fun.
The other main thrust of my thinking was that $600 between 121,000 users actually sounds attainable. Not for SCOX since the price wouldn't sit still and all the shares aren't available but perhaps for something equally large. Think at how small a segment of the OSS community is really after blender then compare that to how many people might be interested in buying a license for Unix that could be moved to GPL. Its a bit late for that move since most things have been redone or acquired legally in by other means. Also, the thought of doing business with SCOX is now out of the question.
I agree with you though, here's the plan:
Kill the sheep, salt the fields, burn the bridges. Keep a database on those involved on their side and hit them economically. Get people off SCO now, drop business with their law firm, drop business with other firms that directors are also on.
What if the OSS did receive a gift certificate for a couple million dollars, what would the shopping list be? I use emacs, so I've already got everything I could ever need except maybe a module to control my tv.
Market Cap $72.6M.
That's 12 million shares at $6 each.
That's 121 thousand people each spending $600 for 100 shares.
Are there 121 thousand people that would consider it humurous enough to buy the company just to fire fire everyone? They probably all have parachutes set up to rob the company should they be fired and then the company would have to die. Think of this like the blender project only a hell of a lot bigger.
Let me save you the misery:
"Dallas Beats Buffalo, Again"
The second mouse gets the cheese.
A lot of grandparents are getting out of school district taxes for just this reason. Actually the real reason is because they show up to vote for the people that give them this break.
How did you submit this? The nanites should have prevented such a submission. Peculiar.
--- BEGIN NANITE ORDER ---
MEMWIPE 24 HOURS
REBOOT
---- END NANITE ORDER ----
Move along.
Math isn't standards. Math is about the relations of things after standards are chosen.
Exploring the implications of an arbitrary set of standards (axioms) is what math is about.
Choosing standards that reflect reality is physics.
I think this is where the resistance really is. The average American really doesn't care about the switch to metric but cows are stubborn and getting them switched over to metric is going to be tough.
First you have to find 10 cows with 10 udders...
Yea, it gets in the way of his office hours right up until a student knocks and he says, "Come in."
Any student unable to knock politely at the door doesn't deserve any extra attention. Furthermore, they were probably just there to whine about grades anyway.
That sounds like a shortcoming of the language. Languages are for manipulating data. Data does not exist so that you can have an easy time manipulating it in an inferior language (read JAVA).
Are there translations of SQL for anything? I'd just love to leave some of that laying around for whoever has to see my code after me.
Wow! Its 100% fatal to women? Get the lawyers!
Advertising works exceptionally well on the stupid, uninformed and lazy which is exactly the demographic for Gator's users.
Its a reference to a quick little story about a group of blind people that meet an elephant. Each describes the elephant based upon the part they are touching.
If you go rafting through canyons enough, you'll eventually come across an area where the strata of the rock will make it look like its uphill. While this is eery, when the strata tilts the other way it can look like you're in for a 45 degree descent which is downright scary.
Its interesting that we decide they belong in our Genus and not that we belong in theirs.
My idea to solve this problem is for the developers to create a character with a cheat such that the character can run on the underside of the ground. In all other respects this would be a normal character. Obviously, this would only be for use by the customer service people when trying to flush out a suspected cheat. You could run along the ground near the cheater and if he follows you he's caught.
LMAO!
This would be too funny. I've got to see something like this.
Here google, google, google.
Yikes!
Abusive police are much more reported than abuse of police which is far, far more common. I won't deny that abuse does occur, but its very rare. Sure, there may be a lot of claims that it happened but a almost all of these claims are by criminals. Criminals tend to lie about their actions and for some strange reason, if they can create doubt about abuse they somehow become innocent (er, not guilty) of their crimes.
Police will welcome anything that can stem the flood of false claims and get them out of court quicker.
Most cops I know are cops because they just are. Its something in them that makes them want to stand in harms way, same with firefighters.
Of course you need to constantly wrap your last line in:
if (z1 != null) {
z1.Add(z2);
}
Of course its real easy to get used to the LISP version of:
(+ z1 z2 z3 z4 z5)
Yes and no. Hospitals are required to treat life threatening issues. So when a person comes in with a heart attack and racks up a $20k bill its the state that's left holding the ticket.
That said, would this mean that any of us with insurance would have exemptions to this tax?
Required to purchase a burger:
1. proof of insurance
2. waiver
3. upsizing the meal combo requires proof of recent physical