Well, when the government employs the researcher instead of the researcher taking on the research on his or her own accord, that researcher becomes a government researcher for all intents and purposes.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
Though even if you want to (very inaccurately) call someone a "government researcher" just because they are funded through an NIH grant, you would still be even more inaccurate to call them a "government expert".
And of course if you start throwing around labels like "government researcher" that casually then you likely don't know much about how scientific research is funded in this world anyways.
Do you really believe the results would be the same if a pot farmer held a BBQ?
Well, growing pot happens to be illegal in most parts of the country. So how about we modify it slightly to at least start in a location where no crime is being committed?
If the BBQ happened at a private residence and pot was passed around, then yes. I do believe that the results would be the same. However if the people who were smoking pot wandered out into the surrounding community, then there is good reason to believe that the police could be involved.
Which is exactly the same that one can expect when sharing alcohol. If the people consuming the item are realistic with their own behaviors after choosing to consume the item, then the chances of being busted is approximately equal for the two.
Sorry, but you're wrong. He is not a "government expert" as some have tried to claim.
As you have shown, he works at UCLA. In case you didn't notice, the UCLA is not a government facility. It is a state school.
You pointed to the government-funded research that he has done; though that statement is accurate, it does not make him a government employee or a "government expert". He has obtained federal money to support his research, as many, many, many other scientists in this country have also done. The National Institutes of Health provide funding for many research projects, including the one that I am on. However our NIH funding does not in any way make myself or my boss "government experts".
For those not familiar with the mechanisms at work here, let me point out that at most, if not all, large research institutions (universities and the like), federal research dollars are paid to the institution on behalf of the grant awarded. Essentially the institution receives X dollars for professor Y on a given time frame. The institution then pays professor Y directly for his research costs based on those X dollars, after taking out money for expenses that professor Y is obligated to pay the institution for.
In other words, even though a researcher has grant money from the NIH, they are seldom paid directly by them, and at no point does that situation automatically make them a "government expert".
Therefore, unless he has been specifically appointed to a position within the government; the claim of him being a "government expert" is patently false.
I could not find anything to support your claim of Mr. Tashkin being a "government expert". Can you provide a citation for that claim?
Sure, if you include the NIH! His name came up in multiple studies on pot when I entered his name in the search bar there. He's also referenced here in paragraph 8.
Sorry to tell you, but you failed on that task. Working on an NIH-funded project does not make one a "government expert". I work on an NIH-funded project but I would not consider myself a "government expert". Nor would my boss, whose name is on the grant, consider himself to be a "government expert".
Indeed, the NIH is a government agency. However, everyone whose work is paid for by the NIH is not automatically a "government expert".
there isn't too many jobs in Software Development. There aren't many jobs in Utica/Rome, either
I would certainly agree with that. There aren't all that many jobs upstate, period.
However, the article trashed the climate (rather inaccurately at that) before mentioning the job market (or absence thereof). And for that I would like to disembowel their editors.
This is all you need to know, math guys: Syracuse holds the title for the U.S. city (pop: 50,000+) with the highest average annual snowfall (115 inches), besting even Anchorage, Alaska (114 inches). It also has a bit of a problem with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) due to all that snow and not a lot of sunshine. It's called the Salt City: A good thing, since there's all that snow and ice on the roads.
Available IT jobs in Syracuse (as posted on June 18 on Dice.com): 49
I'm tired of seeing people endlessly trash Upstate because of what they read about the winter. What the summary doesn't tell you about the 115 inches of snow is that you rarely have more than 10 inches on the ground at a time; the weather trends for this area lately have seen snow coming primarily on the leading edge of warm fronts in the winter. The result of this is of course you'll shovel your driveway on Monday and then put on sunglasses and a very light coat by Wednesday. In reality every winter in Upstate New York has been near-record warmth for the past several years, and after the short winter season (only about 3 months in reality) the rest of the year is temperate.
That said, the economy of Upstate New York does leave something to be desired; but that can be said for many other parts of the country as well.
But I might be brought to disembowel the next person who reads about Upstate New York and then trashes it over weather that they have not experienced for themselves.
... it won't make a damned bit of difference in the overall spamming epidemic. One spammer thrown in jail is like stomping on an ant colony; it might give some immediate satisfaction to those who are of that persuasion, but there are still trillions of ants left doing the same thing.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: spam is an economic problem. If the US wrote 500 new anti-spam laws today, making it illegal to so much as consider sending out spam, it wouldn't matter worth shit. People who are sending out spam today do it because people pay them to do it; and they will find places to send it from so that they can keep making money at it. They all know that the US laws aren't worth anything anywhere outside the US (and their worth inside the US is debatable as well), which is part of why we see so much spam come from other countries.
Yet we waste huge sums of cash arresting, trying, and imprisoning people for pot.
I think that depends on how you define "waste" or "huge sums of cash".
You could save billions by legalizing it
There are a variety of levels of legalization, and I rarely (if ever) see anyone really define just how legal they want it to be.
I, for one, see pot as currently being approximately as legal as alcohol. That is, if you use it in private, your chances of being busted are essentially zero. But if you are clearly under the influence, and you are in public, then you are an idiot and if you get arrested it is your own stupid fault. The only difference is the distribution, and if we wanted to resolve that part and leave alone the enforcement of offenses committed while under the influence, I would be fine with that.
On the other hand, we could choose to take the word of the most extreme and vocal pro-pot-propagandists and legalize everything involving pot. We could make it perfectly acceptable to wander around in public stoned out of your mind for whatever reason and pretend that pot has no bad effects, ever. I think that kind of absurd illusion is perhaps even more dangerous than the current situation.
and put millions into the nation's coffers by taxing it.
I generally see that as one of the strongest arguments for legalizing it one way or the other. Although of course the idea that we would pull in tons of tax revenue is based on the assumption that everyone who currently sells would register as a business, charge taxes, report revenue, etc. And it is not clear to me what the incentive would be for those people to do so if they can already make ample money by selling under the radar.
Our only health care problem is the way we pay for it. The answer is simple: Do what every civilized country has done and nationalize it. Get rid of private insurance; the free market only works when the person paying has choices, and we have none in our system.
The problem is our "leaders" don't have the balls to stand up to the instrance companies, none of whom should even be in business.
I could hardly agree with you more on that. I have argued for national health care for years.
And to anybody who smokes the stuff, or has a friend or family member who does, it is a HELL of a lot more important than Bush's wars or instability somewhere halfway across the globe.
I have a friend who smokes several times a week. He is a psychological disaster; perhaps not initially from the pot but clearly in no way helped by it. He hasn't worked any kind of job in several years, he gets social security disability benefits because of his acute paranoia. He claims he can't function in public without being stoned, but nobody who isn't stoned enjoys his company when he is.
Aside from allowing him to kill himself by lung cancer a little faster, I don't see what good would be done for him by legalizing marijuana. He is psychologically addicted to being high.
This is one of - if not the - largest disagreements between myself and "the left" in this country. Thankfully progressives in this country are not single-minded borg-like constituents who require everyone to fit the same mold.
Equally important, it says nothing about the type of violation. Previous poster tried to make a claim to the numbers in jail for possession; this article doesn't say what the 500,000 people were jailed for.
I have mentioned before that functionally, marijuana enforcement is actually quite analogous to alcohol enforcement; if you do either in your own home (and stay there) your chances of being arrested are essentially zero. This number of 500,000 in jail "for drugs" does nothing to refute my claim.
Almost one million arrests per year ? 50 to 100,000 people or so in jail at any one time for possession ?
Do you have a reliable source for any of that? Those numbers are thrown around by the pro-pot-propagandists all the time, but they never have good sources to back them up.
And being arrested while under the influence in public and charged with possession is a far, far different thing than being arrested "just for possession". In case you haven't noticed, most law enforcement officers don't have x-ray vision; they need a reason to search someone. If that person was at home or otherwise not attracting attention they wouldn't give the police reason to search them.
In other words, marijuana enforcement is, in application, quite similar to alcohol enforcement. Pot just has a faster growing lobby (no pun intended).
Hmm. Our economy is a disaster. We have two wars going on with no real plan to get out of either. We have a health care problem in this country that nobody has proposed a meaningful solution to. The national debt is increased every year with no end in sight. We have multiple states on the verge of financial ruin. Our national infrastructure is falling apart in many ways and places. Our education system is falling behind further every year.
And several critical countries around the world are increasingly unstable; including one that is developing nuclear weapons and ICBMs that could reach our country.
And for some reason marijuana is an important issue? Are you kidding me? I don't see how it could possibly be more relevant than any of the issues I already listed. If we could solve all of them, then I would be comfortable with our national government looking into this "marijuana issue" (whatever the hell the issue is). But until then I don't see why it merits the time of our government.
How about I have no illegally downloaded or obtained music on my phone, but the RIAA still cannot search it in ANY way until they get a warrant and have to submit to the proper procedural and regulation requirements that any government agency would have to.
Allow me to clarify.
I am in no way opposed to what you suggest. However as I have nothing illegally obtained on my phone, I am offering my phone to the RIAA in exchange for the money they would pay their team of slimy lawyers to write up the case against me. The end result would be the same for them; they'd still spend lots of money and have nothing to show for it. But this way I get the cubic yard of cash instead of their lawyers.
BTW, not sure if you meant to say this by "any government agency", but the RIAA is not a government agency.
My phone has 5 megapixel camera, opera mini as browser and full Java support.
From my point of view, those are all useful for communication functions.
And none of them require Xzibit's greatest hits to be played on your phone's speaker, nor are any of them enhanced in any way by having the complete Lynyrd Skynyrd box set.
Of course you are free to do as you wish with your phone. However, as I said, if the RIAA thinks for some reason that it would be worthwhile to search my phone, I'm willing to cut out the middle man. They can have my phone if they give me the legal fees that they would pay their lawyers to sue for it.
Why the fuck my earlier comment was moderated (-1, troll) is beyond me. Whomever I pissed off, you can go fuck yourself. If you don't like phones that ring, you can go beat off somewhere. What I said was not trolling. And if you moderated it down just because it was my comment and you hate me, you can go to hell twice.
Just because the ringtone you are using may have been created by some computer guy playing with beeps rather than a professional musician, doesn't necessarily change whether it's covered by ASCAP or not.
That ringtone came with my phone. The company who made my phone already paid for it. If the person who made it wasn't working for the phone manufacturer, they have already signed away their rights to it to them.
the RIAA will sue for your phone to see if you have any illegal downloaded ring tones
To the RIAA, I say fucking bring it. They can search my phone every way they want they won't find any illegal music on there. Some of us use our phones for - can you believe it - communication, rather than entertainment. Hell I'll save them the time, then can send me the money they'd pay their assmonkey lawyer and I'll send them my phone in exchange. Then I'll take that money and buy myself a newer phone and send them a thank-you card.
My phone just rings. I know it sounds crazy, but some people (OK maybe just me) actually prefer their phones to ring like - well, phones. I don't want to hear the latest hit R&B jingle or other such shit. I want to know that my phone is ringing. And sometimes, when I feel wild, I'll change to a slightly different ring tone that sounds like a different phone.
If people who are stupid enough to pay for musical ringtones get sued, I say thats just fine with me. I never liked the music that most people play as ringtones anyways. If they start getting fined and sued maybe those people will think twice before turning their phones into random top40 samplers.
Sprint leases out their network to other cell phone carriers (Boost, for example)
Boost Mobile was bought out by Nextel, who then were bought out by Sprint. Which would mean that Sprint is essentially leasing their network to themselves when they lease it to Boost.
You are correct, Sprint has leased their network to other carriers in the past. However I am not aware of any currently operating independent companies that are leasing the Sprint network.
I don't see how the SSN requirement has anything to do with carrier exclusivity agreements for phones. The Palm Pre is a TDMA phone that will only work on Sprint anyways. We aren't talking about a GSM phone that can be moved to other carriers. If palm wanted the Pre to work on other networks they would have to introduce additional models for the other protocols that are used in this country and/or the rest of the world.
Why on earth would any reasonable person expect a letter to the FCC to accomplish anything? I've tried to contact the FCC before and they just respond with the same canned response every time, telling me they cannot do anything. Might as well send a letter to Santa.
I suspect I received the same call. In the evening on June 8th I had a call that showed up on my (cell phone!) caller ID as 866-246-2310. It was a robocall in a very conversational tone, calling herself "Erica" or something like that. It offered something for VISA, Mastercard, or American Express. It said "press 1 to talk to an agent" or "press 2 to be removed from our calling list". I pressed 2 and haven't heard anything else yet. We'll see how long it lasts.
Coincidentally, it appears that the Responsible Organization ("RespOrg") for that number is Marchex Voice Services. You can check the RespOrg for a toll-free by calling Ameritech at 800-337-4194; they can give you the RespOrg ID and phone number. Of course the RespOrg will refuse to reveal the identity of who is using the toll-free number but you can at least call them and tell them about the call.
So to answer your question, this is indeed a scam. It is actually a very old scam, possibly being run by a new group. I have discussed theseproblems injournal entries before.
You call AT&T about a problem, and you should expect them to do something
Honestly, the phone company (AT&T, Verizon, whomever) likely doesn't have the information needed to solve your problem anyways. If you are calling because Bogus Warranty, Inc at 800-555-5555 called you, that's great but your phone company can't even verify that the number belongs to who you think it belongs to; they don't have that information - nobody at your phone company does. And to make it even better, the phone company has no right to access that information.
You know how when you get spammed, you can run a WHOIS search on evilspammingdomain.com and figure out who owns it? There exists no such tool for 800 numbers. Instead we have a list of hundreds of Responsible Organizations ("RespOrgs") who do toll-free registration. They - and only they - know who is behind the toll-free numbers. But they are under no obligation to share that information with anyone; hence they generally won't do it unless a subpoena is served.
Though of course the subpoena is useless because by the time someone has obtained it and served it, the customer of the toll-free number has already left for a different RespOrg and the RespOrg who was just served has already deleted the records.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, when the government employs the researcher instead of the researcher taking on the research on his or her own accord, that researcher becomes a government researcher for all intents and purposes.
Did you actually read what I wrote?
Though even if you want to (very inaccurately) call someone a "government researcher" just because they are funded through an NIH grant, you would still be even more inaccurate to call them a "government expert".
And of course if you start throwing around labels like "government researcher" that casually then you likely don't know much about how scientific research is funded in this world anyways.
I have mentioned before that functionally, marijuana enforcement is actually quite analogous to alcohol enforcement
So on the one hand, pot is treated like alcohol by law enforcement. But on the other hand, it's not. Which is it?
Perhaps I was not abundantly clear; the consumption of marijuana is treated functionally the same as the consumption of alcohol.
Which I for one am just fine with.
Do you really believe the results would be the same if a pot farmer held a BBQ?
Well, growing pot happens to be illegal in most parts of the country. So how about we modify it slightly to at least start in a location where no crime is being committed?
If the BBQ happened at a private residence and pot was passed around, then yes. I do believe that the results would be the same. However if the people who were smoking pot wandered out into the surrounding community, then there is good reason to believe that the police could be involved.
Which is exactly the same that one can expect when sharing alcohol. If the people consuming the item are realistic with their own behaviors after choosing to consume the item, then the chances of being busted is approximately equal for the two.
Sorry, but you're wrong. He is not a "government expert" as some have tried to claim.
As you have shown, he works at UCLA. In case you didn't notice, the UCLA is not a government facility. It is a state school.
You pointed to the government-funded research that he has done; though that statement is accurate, it does not make him a government employee or a "government expert". He has obtained federal money to support his research, as many, many, many other scientists in this country have also done. The National Institutes of Health provide funding for many research projects, including the one that I am on. However our NIH funding does not in any way make myself or my boss "government experts".
For those not familiar with the mechanisms at work here, let me point out that at most, if not all, large research institutions (universities and the like), federal research dollars are paid to the institution on behalf of the grant awarded. Essentially the institution receives X dollars for professor Y on a given time frame. The institution then pays professor Y directly for his research costs based on those X dollars, after taking out money for expenses that professor Y is obligated to pay the institution for.
In other words, even though a researcher has grant money from the NIH, they are seldom paid directly by them, and at no point does that situation automatically make them a "government expert".
Therefore, unless he has been specifically appointed to a position within the government; the claim of him being a "government expert" is patently false.
I could not find anything to support your claim of Mr. Tashkin being a "government expert". Can you provide a citation for that claim?
Sure, if you include the NIH! His name came up in multiple studies on pot when I entered his name in the search bar there. He's also referenced here in paragraph 8.
Sorry to tell you, but you failed on that task. Working on an NIH-funded project does not make one a "government expert". I work on an NIH-funded project but I would not consider myself a "government expert". Nor would my boss, whose name is on the grant, consider himself to be a "government expert".
Indeed, the NIH is a government agency. However, everyone whose work is paid for by the NIH is not automatically a "government expert".
there isn't too many jobs in Software Development. There aren't many jobs in Utica/Rome, either
I would certainly agree with that. There aren't all that many jobs upstate, period.
However, the article trashed the climate (rather inaccurately at that) before mentioning the job market (or absence thereof). And for that I would like to disembowel their editors.
This is all you need to know, math guys: Syracuse holds the title for the U.S. city (pop: 50,000+) with the highest average annual snowfall (115 inches), besting even Anchorage, Alaska (114 inches). It also has a bit of a problem with Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) due to all that snow and not a lot of sunshine. It's called the Salt City: A good thing, since there's all that snow and ice on the roads.
Available IT jobs in Syracuse (as posted on June 18 on Dice.com): 49
I'm tired of seeing people endlessly trash Upstate because of what they read about the winter. What the summary doesn't tell you about the 115 inches of snow is that you rarely have more than 10 inches on the ground at a time; the weather trends for this area lately have seen snow coming primarily on the leading edge of warm fronts in the winter. The result of this is of course you'll shovel your driveway on Monday and then put on sunglasses and a very light coat by Wednesday. In reality every winter in Upstate New York has been near-record warmth for the past several years, and after the short winter season (only about 3 months in reality) the rest of the year is temperate.
That said, the economy of Upstate New York does leave something to be desired; but that can be said for many other parts of the country as well.
But I might be brought to disembowel the next person who reads about Upstate New York and then trashes it over weather that they have not experienced for themselves.
... it won't make a damned bit of difference in the overall spamming epidemic. One spammer thrown in jail is like stomping on an ant colony; it might give some immediate satisfaction to those who are of that persuasion, but there are still trillions of ants left doing the same thing.
I've said it before, and I'll say it again: spam is an economic problem. If the US wrote 500 new anti-spam laws today, making it illegal to so much as consider sending out spam, it wouldn't matter worth shit. People who are sending out spam today do it because people pay them to do it; and they will find places to send it from so that they can keep making money at it. They all know that the US laws aren't worth anything anywhere outside the US (and their worth inside the US is debatable as well), which is part of why we see so much spam come from other countries.
Yet we waste huge sums of cash arresting, trying, and imprisoning people for pot.
I think that depends on how you define "waste" or "huge sums of cash".
You could save billions by legalizing it
There are a variety of levels of legalization, and I rarely (if ever) see anyone really define just how legal they want it to be.
I, for one, see pot as currently being approximately as legal as alcohol. That is, if you use it in private, your chances of being busted are essentially zero. But if you are clearly under the influence, and you are in public, then you are an idiot and if you get arrested it is your own stupid fault. The only difference is the distribution, and if we wanted to resolve that part and leave alone the enforcement of offenses committed while under the influence, I would be fine with that.
On the other hand, we could choose to take the word of the most extreme and vocal pro-pot-propagandists and legalize everything involving pot. We could make it perfectly acceptable to wander around in public stoned out of your mind for whatever reason and pretend that pot has no bad effects, ever. I think that kind of absurd illusion is perhaps even more dangerous than the current situation.
and put millions into the nation's coffers by taxing it.
I generally see that as one of the strongest arguments for legalizing it one way or the other. Although of course the idea that we would pull in tons of tax revenue is based on the assumption that everyone who currently sells would register as a business, charge taxes, report revenue, etc. And it is not clear to me what the incentive would be for those people to do so if they can already make ample money by selling under the radar.
Our only health care problem is the way we pay for it. The answer is simple: Do what every civilized country has done and nationalize it. Get rid of private insurance; the free market only works when the person paying has choices, and we have none in our system.
The problem is our "leaders" don't have the balls to stand up to the instrance companies, none of whom should even be in business.
I could hardly agree with you more on that. I have argued for national health care for years.
And to anybody who smokes the stuff, or has a friend or family member who does, it is a HELL of a lot more important than Bush's wars or instability somewhere halfway across the globe.
I have a friend who smokes several times a week. He is a psychological disaster; perhaps not initially from the pot but clearly in no way helped by it. He hasn't worked any kind of job in several years, he gets social security disability benefits because of his acute paranoia. He claims he can't function in public without being stoned, but nobody who isn't stoned enjoys his company when he is.
Aside from allowing him to kill himself by lung cancer a little faster, I don't see what good would be done for him by legalizing marijuana. He is psychologically addicted to being high.
This is one of - if not the - largest disagreements between myself and "the left" in this country. Thankfully progressives in this country are not single-minded borg-like constituents who require everyone to fit the same mold.
This says 500,000 in the US for drugs, but, doesn't break it down on a per drug basis:
http://www.economist.com/world/unitedstates/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13415267
Equally important, it says nothing about the type of violation. Previous poster tried to make a claim to the numbers in jail for possession; this article doesn't say what the 500,000 people were jailed for.
I have mentioned before that functionally, marijuana enforcement is actually quite analogous to alcohol enforcement; if you do either in your own home (and stay there) your chances of being arrested are essentially zero. This number of 500,000 in jail "for drugs" does nothing to refute my claim.
Almost one million arrests per year ? 50 to 100,000 people or so in jail at any one time for possession ?
Do you have a reliable source for any of that? Those numbers are thrown around by the pro-pot-propagandists all the time, but they never have good sources to back them up.
And being arrested while under the influence in public and charged with possession is a far, far different thing than being arrested "just for possession". In case you haven't noticed, most law enforcement officers don't have x-ray vision; they need a reason to search someone. If that person was at home or otherwise not attracting attention they wouldn't give the police reason to search them.
In other words, marijuana enforcement is, in application, quite similar to alcohol enforcement. Pot just has a faster growing lobby (no pun intended).
The Government's leading expert on marijuana says legalize it.
His name's Dr. Donald Tashkin.
I could not find anything to support your claim of Mr. Tashkin being a "government expert". Can you provide a citation for that claim?
Hmm. Our economy is a disaster. We have two wars going on with no real plan to get out of either. We have a health care problem in this country that nobody has proposed a meaningful solution to. The national debt is increased every year with no end in sight. We have multiple states on the verge of financial ruin. Our national infrastructure is falling apart in many ways and places. Our education system is falling behind further every year.
And several critical countries around the world are increasingly unstable; including one that is developing nuclear weapons and ICBMs that could reach our country.
And for some reason marijuana is an important issue? Are you kidding me? I don't see how it could possibly be more relevant than any of the issues I already listed. If we could solve all of them, then I would be comfortable with our national government looking into this "marijuana issue" (whatever the hell the issue is). But until then I don't see why it merits the time of our government.
How about I have no illegally downloaded or obtained music on my phone, but the RIAA still cannot search it in ANY way until they get a warrant and have to submit to the proper procedural and regulation requirements that any government agency would have to.
Allow me to clarify.
I am in no way opposed to what you suggest. However as I have nothing illegally obtained on my phone, I am offering my phone to the RIAA in exchange for the money they would pay their team of slimy lawyers to write up the case against me. The end result would be the same for them; they'd still spend lots of money and have nothing to show for it. But this way I get the cubic yard of cash instead of their lawyers.
BTW, not sure if you meant to say this by "any government agency", but the RIAA is not a government agency.
My phone has 5 megapixel camera, opera mini as browser and full Java support.
From my point of view, those are all useful for communication functions.
And none of them require Xzibit's greatest hits to be played on your phone's speaker, nor are any of them enhanced in any way by having the complete Lynyrd Skynyrd box set.
Of course you are free to do as you wish with your phone. However, as I said, if the RIAA thinks for some reason that it would be worthwhile to search my phone, I'm willing to cut out the middle man. They can have my phone if they give me the legal fees that they would pay their lawyers to sue for it.
Honestly... who actually enjoys the sound of a ringing phone?
I would much rather hear a phone ring than hear it play a low-fidelity rendition of Britney's latest hit.
Why the fuck my earlier comment was moderated (-1, troll) is beyond me. Whomever I pissed off, you can go fuck yourself. If you don't like phones that ring, you can go beat off somewhere. What I said was not trolling. And if you moderated it down just because it was my comment and you hate me, you can go to hell twice.
Just because the ringtone you are using may have been created by some computer guy playing with beeps rather than a professional musician, doesn't necessarily change whether it's covered by ASCAP or not.
That ringtone came with my phone. The company who made my phone already paid for it. If the person who made it wasn't working for the phone manufacturer, they have already signed away their rights to it to them.
the RIAA will sue for your phone to see if you have any illegal downloaded ring tones
To the RIAA, I say fucking bring it. They can search my phone every way they want they won't find any illegal music on there. Some of us use our phones for - can you believe it - communication, rather than entertainment. Hell I'll save them the time, then can send me the money they'd pay their assmonkey lawyer and I'll send them my phone in exchange. Then I'll take that money and buy myself a newer phone and send them a thank-you card.
My phone just rings. I know it sounds crazy, but some people (OK maybe just me) actually prefer their phones to ring like - well, phones. I don't want to hear the latest hit R&B jingle or other such shit. I want to know that my phone is ringing. And sometimes, when I feel wild, I'll change to a slightly different ring tone that sounds like a different phone.
If people who are stupid enough to pay for musical ringtones get sued, I say thats just fine with me. I never liked the music that most people play as ringtones anyways. If they start getting fined and sued maybe those people will think twice before turning their phones into random top40 samplers.
Sprint leases out their network to other cell phone carriers (Boost, for example)
Boost Mobile was bought out by Nextel, who then were bought out by Sprint. Which would mean that Sprint is essentially leasing their network to themselves when they lease it to Boost.
You are correct, Sprint has leased their network to other carriers in the past. However I am not aware of any currently operating independent companies that are leasing the Sprint network.
I don't see how the SSN requirement has anything to do with carrier exclusivity agreements for phones. The Palm Pre is a TDMA phone that will only work on Sprint anyways. We aren't talking about a GSM phone that can be moved to other carriers. If palm wanted the Pre to work on other networks they would have to introduce additional models for the other protocols that are used in this country and/or the rest of the world.
Why on earth would any reasonable person expect a letter to the FCC to accomplish anything? I've tried to contact the FCC before and they just respond with the same canned response every time, telling me they cannot do anything. Might as well send a letter to Santa.
I suspect I received the same call. In the evening on June 8th I had a call that showed up on my (cell phone!) caller ID as 866-246-2310. It was a robocall in a very conversational tone, calling herself "Erica" or something like that. It offered something for VISA, Mastercard, or American Express. It said "press 1 to talk to an agent" or "press 2 to be removed from our calling list". I pressed 2 and haven't heard anything else yet. We'll see how long it lasts.
Coincidentally, it appears that the Responsible Organization ("RespOrg") for that number is Marchex Voice Services. You can check the RespOrg for a toll-free by calling Ameritech at 800-337-4194; they can give you the RespOrg ID and phone number. Of course the RespOrg will refuse to reveal the identity of who is using the toll-free number but you can at least call them and tell them about the call.
So to answer your question, this is indeed a scam. It is actually a very old scam, possibly being run by a new group. I have discussed these problems in journal entries before.
You call AT&T about a problem, and you should expect them to do something
Honestly, the phone company (AT&T, Verizon, whomever) likely doesn't have the information needed to solve your problem anyways. If you are calling because Bogus Warranty, Inc at 800-555-5555 called you, that's great but your phone company can't even verify that the number belongs to who you think it belongs to; they don't have that information - nobody at your phone company does. And to make it even better, the phone company has no right to access that information.
You know how when you get spammed, you can run a WHOIS search on evilspammingdomain.com and figure out who owns it? There exists no such tool for 800 numbers. Instead we have a list of hundreds of Responsible Organizations ("RespOrgs") who do toll-free registration. They - and only they - know who is behind the toll-free numbers. But they are under no obligation to share that information with anyone; hence they generally won't do it unless a subpoena is served.
Though of course the subpoena is useless because by the time someone has obtained it and served it, the customer of the toll-free number has already left for a different RespOrg and the RespOrg who was just served has already deleted the records.