For network Linux installs. Gotta boot the bare box from something. Having to install a CD-ROM in every system seems silly. Unless they install a 10/100/1000 network interface with a net boot option (which would, of course, have to be supported by Linux for installs) on every new system. Then I could live without a floppy drive though I'd still prefer to have one around. They're just too damned handy for dumping a file to hand to a friend or for making a quick tar of some files that you want to bring to/from work (3.5" diskettes fit so nicely in your shirt pocket).
Hmm... Wonder what would happen if he were to hand scan some of the more damaging documents (assuming that they exist) onto his laptop which would later turn up ``missing''. (``Gosh, I don't know what happened to it. I know I had it when I went into the NYT offices for that interview. I'll have to ask around.'')
Interesting site. You might want to update your bookmarks. The posted URL doesn't resolve. It's apparently moved to reactor-core.org. Just don't go there with an older version of Mozilla (I've never seen a web page make a browser actually display portions of a page outside the browser window before:-) ). Konquerer works alright (mostly) but, oddly enough, the oldest browser on my system (Netscape 4.76) works the best. Go figure.
And... I didn't see much there that might interest a developer. Unless you're interested in reading about how to write a buffer overflow.
``I'm not saying that I speed all the time. I do speed. You do, too (don't lie). Also, I generally don't try to make justifications for speeding aside from "sometimes it's fun". It doesn't matter if I'm late to work (mmm, flex time). It doesn't matter if I don't make it to McD's before they close. And if I'm late meeting friends, they'll understand (usually, they're the ones that are late).''
Actually, if anyone actually knew that I was speeding they'd be surprised. That said, yep, it happens. Sometimes you come over top a hill and don't let up on the gas, so sometimes I might hit 48 in a 45 zone but in a hundred yards the speed bleeds off. And flex time has, IMHO, removed the biggest excuse that people use for speeding. I can also take a few minutes of comp time here and there for the weekends that I sometimes have to work (an OS upgrade on a bunch of systems can result a very nice amount of comp time; five minutes here, another ten there,...). Heck, arriving at work without all the stress after pushing, pushing, pushing your way through traffic is a benefit all in itself. And, though some coworkers think I'm daft, I usually take alternate routes that might be an extra mile or so over the most direct route but are much less heavily traveled (I like driving but I can't stand the bozos you encounter on the road) and I often get their in less time than if I'd taken the direct -- but more traffic laden -- route. Unfortunately, just because the roads are less heavily traveled I run into idiots who take that to mean they should be able to drive 15-20+ miles over the posted limit (like Mr. Wrangler driver).
``I'm not condoning drunk driving. You drink and drive, you get what's coming to you. I know my limits, and I don't drive when I feel I'm even close to them. Taxis and friends are good. DUIs are bad.''
Hell, any more I feel uneasy even having one beer or glass of wine when dining out. The thing that really pisses me off is that the drunken driver usually walks away from the accident. The family of four in the other car is usually taken away in body bags.
``I'm not talking about speeding in residential areas, here. When I say "80mph", I'm generally talking about a stretch of interstate that's usually "limited" between 60mph and 75mph. I'm not talking about doing 80 in a 35mph zone. That's just stupid.''
But you'd be surprised how often I see it. Had some nut case pass me in a Wrangler this morning on the way to work. Doing probably 70 in a 40 zone. Met him at the next stop sign. Not exactly a `residential' area (actually it was; the lots were just very large, so the driveways were spaced far enough apart that the limit was higher than the normal 20-25) but this guy was totally out of line. And it didn't gain him anything. As for the interstates, I find the posted speeds desirable for economic reasons. I notice gas mileage really suffers above 60-65. Some years ago, I was commuting 75 miles each way on interstates. For a time I used to stay with the pack which meant doing about 75. Made better time but I was going through a lot more gas and the costs started to add up. I figured I was saving about a half tank or more of gas a week by just staying at the posted 65.
Yah. Loved the web site. A complete collection of the (IMHO) lame justifications that people use to explain why their speeding isn't a problem. Color me unconvinced.
Hey! I've got a 240DL wagon and it'll accelerate pretty nicely if the car's not carrying a load (like extra passengers or cargo), running the air conditioner, or driving into the wind (though the last model years actually made some breakthroughs in reducing drag by actually rounding off some edges on the body). Of course, maybe I'm just amazed that a station wagon had any noticable acceleration at all. It will get your pulse racing when merging onto the expressway if the car in front you hits the brakes on the ramp. Then, you've gotta stand on the accelerator in order build the speed back up in order to merge.
``Teens do get a really bad wrap at times. But then there the bad eggs that always show their faces and ruin it for the others.''
``bad wrap''?
``red convertable wrapped around a tree''?
Pun intended perhaps?
Seriously... It's probably because most teens are fairly poor drivers. If not poor, they're definitely inexperienced and incapable of handling certain situations. At least the only thing that explains why a very gentle S curve in a road near where I live has been the site of something like 15 accidents with either fatalities or very serious injuries since I moved to the area (9 years ago). And in every single case, it was a car load of teenagers involved. I drive through that curve at least a couple of times a week and, for the life of me, I cannot see anything about it -- signage, banking, speed limit (it's only 40), etc. -- that could be the cause of these accidents. That leaves the inexperience of the drivers about the only explanation. Driving is a skill. It takes time to learn and many teens try to do things in a car that they're not experienced enough to do safely.
``20 yrs old and a pony car doesn' make for cheap rates.''
You wanna see your rates skyrocket? Join the military. I hear that guys in their early 20s, with a hot car, and in the service have the highest rates.
The fact that your car is designed to be operable at a hig speed doesn't mean it's safe to do so. There is nothing in that nicely designed car that is going to do anything about the reduced reaction time that you have when you're you're travelling that fast.
As for the car failing at higher speeds? I doubt that the poster was really meaning to say that, say, the car was going to disintegrate because it's being driven at 80 as opposed to 60 mph. But hitting potholes at 80 is certainly going to do more damage than hitting it at 60. It may not cause an accident but the damage is still done. (I'm guessing that maybe you replace your shocks sooner than many people.) And I'd sure as hell hate having to react to a blowout at 80 mph. Even a blowout at 60 would quite possibly result in an accident.
The main point is that the driver's reaction to an event at the higher speed doesn't speed up correspondingly. The brain's reaction time -- that time between the eyes seeing the problem, the brain saying ``Oh Shit!'', and your foot successfully hitting the brakes -- is more or less constant. You have to account for this by increasing the space between yourself and the other cars. And when's the last time you were successfully able to follow the rule of thumb of keeping a car length between you and the car in front of your for every ten miles per hour you were travelling? That is, without a couple of jerks slipping in front of you because they simply must to pull into that McDonalds on the right (even though there was no one behind you for a quarter mile)? Since it's simply not possible to maintain proper spacing any more you have to slow down or you are denying yourself sufficient reaction time. Why is it so damned difficult for some drivers to understand this?
People who think driving at high speeds is just as safe as it is at slower speeds are delusional. If you want to drive 80 mph on a regular basis, please move to Nevada. Perhaps your Boxter will feel right at home on the roads there.
Heh. My Dad used to do something very similar. I went through drivers ed in the winter when I was in high school. Made for some interesting learning situations. The term ``driving too fast for conditions'' has real meaning when you're still learning and the roads just might be icy. Anyway, my dad used to decide it would be a good time to go out practicing driving at some of the strangest times. Like during a snow storm. Thank goodness for back roads. I got to learn about steering out of for a skid on a real road (it doesn't take a lot of speed to skid in a snow storm and recovery works the same as at high speeds).
My Dad liked to take different cars when we went out on one of those sessions, too. It was good to see how important braking distance was and how it differed with different cars. (We used Pintos and LTDs at school and my folks had a dreadnought-class Kingswood station wagon and an old Dodge Coronet. Nice range of sizes. And it helped to learn parallel parking in a big car. (My dad was somewhat sadistic in this. He heard I did it in the LTD at school and decided that parking the Kingswood during the Saturday morning shopping crunch would be good for me. Amazing what you can do under pressure. You sure aren't going to ding the family car when Dad's sitting in the right seat.)
``...hadn't driven that road in 20 years until I drove by it.''
Still the same road? That sleepy little back road where I learned about skidding is now a four lane divided traffic nightmare nowadays. Wonder what kids do for practice driving now? Oh... I forgot: Grand Theft Auto 3.
``They are used to capture and recover the vital last few minutes before an accident etc.''
Right. They'll only be capable of recording the last dumb driving maneuver (or maybe that last two) you performed before you killed yourself and that van load of school children.
Huh? Did they actually mandate this? Mandate it all they want. It isn't going to work worth a damn much of the time. If you don't want to be tracked just make your phone calls indoors or on the street surrounded by tall buildings where the rotten signal strength and multipath would provide some protection. Weak and reflected signals tend to make GPS receivers (which depend on line-of-site L-band signals) come up with extremely crappy position solutions. They'd probably have a better chance of tracking you by triangulating your position using the received signal strength at several cell antennas.
``...they will finally prove that its people over the ages of 65 that cause the accidents not those under 21!''
That is just such a load.
Open your newspaper up some time. You'll find that there are more accidents involving teenagers than you think. When mommy and daddy stop paying for the insurance you may discover this as well. Especially if you're unfortunate enough to purchase the same model of car that parents give to their irresponsible teenagers when they turn 16; your insurance rates will take your breath away.
I've been driving for thirty years with no moving violations but have had two accidents: both caused by teenagers. (Rear-ended at a red stop light by a seventeen year old doing 40 and broadsided a sixteen year old who didn't look for oncoming traffic and pulled right out into traffic from a stop sign.)
``they drive dangerously slow in areas that are impossibly to overtake and frustrate all following drivers, and the frustration they create cause accidents''
No.
The accidents are then caused by idiots who think that their time is so important that everyone else should just pull off the road until these very important people pass. But when nobody clears the road for them, they begin weaving in and out of traffic and creating a very dangerous situation. George Carlin had a great suggestion for such people: ``Leave earlier!'' (I know a cop you told me a story once with a guy that he pulled over for driving like a foot off someone's rear bumber, eventually passing the front car in a no passing zone, and in a school zone to boot. He argued with the cop, insisting that the posted speed limit was the minimum speed that you were supposed to be driving and that the driver in the other car should have been getting a ticket. The driver who did get the three tickets was nineteen. Hee hee.)
Much of what you see on the roads nowadays would, at one time, earn you a reckless driving citation and possibly the opportunity to lose your license altogether. Perhaps its time they started enforcing those laws once again. I only have a 25 minute commute to work and I manage to see a lot of boneheaded drivers. The vast majority are teenagers and not senior citizens.
``When nimbda came out it was windows boxes. This did not effect apache/*nix boxen.''
While Apache servers didn't get rooted by Nimbda, or by its cousin Code Red, they were still affected. Of course, it was more of a DOS attack since the Apache daemons were attempting to respond to the bogus requests but it was an attack nonetheless. I've seen the load shoot through the roof on Apache servers the had been targeted by nimbda/code-red infected system. I should note that this was a strange case where someone fired up an NT system (for testing) that they were unaware had become infected and both systems were inside a firewall. Makes a good case for having another layer of firewalls (and, perhaps, an IDS) inside the LAN just to protect your servers from goofy situations like this.
If the law allows for a candidate to ask for a recall, and the machines do not alow it, then the voting machines should be declared illegal.
So this voting machine manufacturer thinks their warranty supercedes the rights of the voters or the local laws where the machines are used. Seems like a judge ought to be getting these machines thrown out and the local government ought to be firing the bozo who authorized thier purchase in the first place. And perhaps the government's lawyers ought to be getting some serious looking into as well. They should have seen the potential for a firestorm in purchasing a machine with this warranty.
``The problem is that today it's close to impossible to avoid infringing within some fields. Either you do a search, and you come up with several patents that may or may not be remotely related to your product. So, what do you do then?''
It's at the point now where you need to stop and do a patent search during every step of the design phase. Want to add a lowpass filter at this point in the device? Better stop and see if someone's patented that idea. How about some bypass capacitors in this circuit? Better search for that too. It's a comedy.
Right. Imagine what university medical researchers looking for cures to some of the big killer diseases could do with an annual budget equivalent to that used for advertising in the U.S? Heck, imagine if they could just get funding comparable to what Hollywood spends hyping bad movies?
``the registry is published and all non-exempt telemarketers must *not* call you if you appear in the registry under penalty of law''
But there are problems. First is getting them to listen to you at all. On many occasion, once I begin asking them to not call me any more and to place my number on the do not call list, they hang up. Second, how do I know who it is that's violating the do-not-call listing anyway? I now have to have to buy caller-id service in order to identify telemarketers who are in violation of the laws.
We currently pay a fee to have an unpublished number and it has helped enormously in cutting down the telemarketer calls. I suspect that this ruling will make that protection less effective. Even now we still get a call or two a month (heck, before we got the unpublished number we sometimes got a half dozen between 6:00 and 9:00).
``They haven't bothered getting back to me on it.''
Heck, like that's a surprise.
``I'm tired of being marketed to. I'm not a good little consumer. I'm not a demographic. Leave me the fuck alone.''
I'd say that everyone agrees with you on these. Except that the DMA believes that you are a demographic and that what you think about isn't important.
Everyone raise your hands if you'd like to see these clowns from the DMA actually produce a roomful of people who will swear under oath that they want telemarketers calling them. I keep hearing these guys say that these people exist. It's time to start proving it. But, what I expect we'll hear is that those people have a right to privacy.
And thanks for the tip on Consumer Reports. Guess I'll still be making the trip to the public library to do my product research.
``...except for calls that are recorded messages or are placed with automatic dialers.''
Yah, that part neatly shut out the telemarketers though I would have added an additional requirement: that manually-dialed sales calls must be placed from rotary dial phones.
I supposed this'll increase the amount of junk mail that I receive over and above the incredible amount that I get now. Wonder if anyone'll gripe if I just leave the garbage can sitting next to the mailbox. That way I can do a quick bit of filtering before the junk even gets into the house.
But if this means that we'll all start receiving more telemarketing calls... well, for now perhaps having that unpublished number will provide some protection (though I suspect that won't work for long). Eventually, I can see the day when we either break down and get a cellphone which we turn off (or we keep our regular phone and turn off the bell) when we don't want to be disturbed.
Slashdot Mirror
For network Linux installs. Gotta boot the bare box from something. Having to install a CD-ROM in every system seems silly. Unless they install a 10/100/1000 network interface with a net boot option (which would, of course, have to be supported by Linux for installs) on every new system. Then I could live without a floppy drive though I'd still prefer to have one around. They're just too damned handy for dumping a file to hand to a friend or for making a quick tar of some files that you want to bring to/from work (3.5" diskettes fit so nicely in your shirt pocket).
Hmm... Wonder what would happen if he were to hand scan some of the more damaging documents (assuming that they exist) onto his laptop which would later turn up ``missing''. (``Gosh, I don't know what happened to it. I know I had it when I went into the NYT offices for that interview. I'll have to ask around.'')
You say that as though that would be a problem (i.e., trolls going to the wrong site).
Interesting site. You might want to update your bookmarks. The posted URL doesn't resolve. It's apparently moved to reactor-core.org. Just don't go there with an older version of Mozilla (I've never seen a web page make a browser actually display portions of a page outside the browser window before :-) ). Konquerer works alright (mostly) but, oddly enough, the oldest browser on my system (Netscape 4.76) works the best. Go figure.
And... I didn't see much there that might interest a developer. Unless you're interested in reading about how to write a buffer overflow.
Actually, if anyone actually knew that I was speeding they'd be surprised. That said, yep, it happens. Sometimes you come over top a hill and don't let up on the gas, so sometimes I might hit 48 in a 45 zone but in a hundred yards the speed bleeds off. And flex time has, IMHO, removed the biggest excuse that people use for speeding. I can also take a few minutes of comp time here and there for the weekends that I sometimes have to work (an OS upgrade on a bunch of systems can result a very nice amount of comp time; five minutes here, another ten there, ...). Heck, arriving at work without all the stress after pushing, pushing, pushing your way through traffic is a benefit all in itself. And, though some coworkers think I'm daft, I usually take alternate routes that might be an extra mile or so over the most direct route but are much less heavily traveled (I like driving but I can't stand the bozos you encounter on the road) and I often get their in less time than if I'd taken the direct -- but more traffic laden -- route. Unfortunately, just because the roads are less heavily traveled I run into idiots who take that to mean they should be able to drive 15-20+ miles over the posted limit (like Mr. Wrangler driver).
Hell, any more I feel uneasy even having one beer or glass of wine when dining out. The thing that really pisses me off is that the drunken driver usually walks away from the accident. The family of four in the other car is usually taken away in body bags.
But you'd be surprised how often I see it. Had some nut case pass me in a Wrangler this morning on the way to work. Doing probably 70 in a 40 zone. Met him at the next stop sign. Not exactly a `residential' area (actually it was; the lots were just very large, so the driveways were spaced far enough apart that the limit was higher than the normal 20-25) but this guy was totally out of line. And it didn't gain him anything. As for the interstates, I find the posted speeds desirable for economic reasons. I notice gas mileage really suffers above 60-65. Some years ago, I was commuting 75 miles each way on interstates. For a time I used to stay with the pack which meant doing about 75. Made better time but I was going through a lot more gas and the costs started to add up. I figured I was saving about a half tank or more of gas a week by just staying at the posted 65.
Yah. Loved the web site. A complete collection of the (IMHO) lame justifications that people use to explain why their speeding isn't a problem. Color me unconvinced.
Hey! I've got a 240DL wagon and it'll accelerate pretty nicely if the car's not carrying a load (like extra passengers or cargo), running the air conditioner, or driving into the wind (though the last model years actually made some breakthroughs in reducing drag by actually rounding off some edges on the body). Of course, maybe I'm just amazed that a station wagon had any noticable acceleration at all. It will get your pulse racing when merging onto the expressway if the car in front you hits the brakes on the ramp. Then, you've gotta stand on the accelerator in order build the speed back up in order to merge.
``bad wrap''?
``red convertable wrapped around a tree''?
Pun intended perhaps?
Seriously... It's probably because most teens are fairly poor drivers. If not poor, they're definitely inexperienced and incapable of handling certain situations. At least the only thing that explains why a very gentle S curve in a road near where I live has been the site of something like 15 accidents with either fatalities or very serious injuries since I moved to the area (9 years ago). And in every single case, it was a car load of teenagers involved. I drive through that curve at least a couple of times a week and, for the life of me, I cannot see anything about it -- signage, banking, speed limit (it's only 40), etc. -- that could be the cause of these accidents. That leaves the inexperience of the drivers about the only explanation. Driving is a skill. It takes time to learn and many teens try to do things in a car that they're not experienced enough to do safely.
You wanna see your rates skyrocket? Join the military. I hear that guys in their early 20s, with a hot car, and in the service have the highest rates.
You're the one who doesn't seem to understand.
The fact that your car is designed to be operable at a hig speed doesn't mean it's safe to do so. There is nothing in that nicely designed car that is going to do anything about the reduced reaction time that you have when you're you're travelling that fast.
As for the car failing at higher speeds? I doubt that the poster was really meaning to say that, say, the car was going to disintegrate because it's being driven at 80 as opposed to 60 mph. But hitting potholes at 80 is certainly going to do more damage than hitting it at 60. It may not cause an accident but the damage is still done. (I'm guessing that maybe you replace your shocks sooner than many people.) And I'd sure as hell hate having to react to a blowout at 80 mph. Even a blowout at 60 would quite possibly result in an accident.
The main point is that the driver's reaction to an event at the higher speed doesn't speed up correspondingly. The brain's reaction time -- that time between the eyes seeing the problem, the brain saying ``Oh Shit!'', and your foot successfully hitting the brakes -- is more or less constant. You have to account for this by increasing the space between yourself and the other cars. And when's the last time you were successfully able to follow the rule of thumb of keeping a car length between you and the car in front of your for every ten miles per hour you were travelling? That is, without a couple of jerks slipping in front of you because they simply must to pull into that McDonalds on the right (even though there was no one behind you for a quarter mile)? Since it's simply not possible to maintain proper spacing any more you have to slow down or you are denying yourself sufficient reaction time. Why is it so damned difficult for some drivers to understand this?
People who think driving at high speeds is just as safe as it is at slower speeds are delusional. If you want to drive 80 mph on a regular basis, please move to Nevada. Perhaps your Boxter will feel right at home on the roads there.
Heh. My Dad used to do something very similar. I went through drivers ed in the winter when I was in high school. Made for some interesting learning situations. The term ``driving too fast for conditions'' has real meaning when you're still learning and the roads just might be icy. Anyway, my dad used to decide it would be a good time to go out practicing driving at some of the strangest times. Like during a snow storm. Thank goodness for back roads. I got to learn about steering out of for a skid on a real road (it doesn't take a lot of speed to skid in a snow storm and recovery works the same as at high speeds).
My Dad liked to take different cars when we went out on one of those sessions, too. It was good to see how important braking distance was and how it differed with different cars. (We used Pintos and LTDs at school and my folks had a dreadnought-class Kingswood station wagon and an old Dodge Coronet. Nice range of sizes. And it helped to learn parallel parking in a big car. (My dad was somewhat sadistic in this. He heard I did it in the LTD at school and decided that parking the Kingswood during the Saturday morning shopping crunch would be good for me. Amazing what you can do under pressure. You sure aren't going to ding the family car when Dad's sitting in the right seat.)
Still the same road? That sleepy little back road where I learned about skidding is now a four lane divided traffic nightmare nowadays. Wonder what kids do for practice driving now? Oh... I forgot: Grand Theft Auto 3.
That person, IMNSHO, should be considering themselves fortunate that they still have a driver's license after 43 speeding violations. :-)
Whupp, whupp, whupp!
Take cover! Here come the black helicopters!
Huh? Did they actually mandate this? Mandate it all they want. It isn't going to work worth a damn much of the time. If you don't want to be tracked just make your phone calls indoors or on the street surrounded by tall buildings where the rotten signal strength and multipath would provide some protection. Weak and reflected signals tend to make GPS receivers (which depend on line-of-site L-band signals) come up with extremely crappy position solutions. They'd probably have a better chance of tracking you by triangulating your position using the received signal strength at several cell antennas.
That is just such a load.
Open your newspaper up some time. You'll find that there are more accidents involving teenagers than you think. When mommy and daddy stop paying for the insurance you may discover this as well. Especially if you're unfortunate enough to purchase the same model of car that parents give to their irresponsible teenagers when they turn 16; your insurance rates will take your breath away.
I've been driving for thirty years with no moving violations but have had two accidents: both caused by teenagers. (Rear-ended at a red stop light by a seventeen year old doing 40 and broadsided a sixteen year old who didn't look for oncoming traffic and pulled right out into traffic from a stop sign.)
No.
The accidents are then caused by idiots who think that their time is so important that everyone else should just pull off the road until these very important people pass. But when nobody clears the road for them, they begin weaving in and out of traffic and creating a very dangerous situation. George Carlin had a great suggestion for such people: ``Leave earlier!'' (I know a cop you told me a story once with a guy that he pulled over for driving like a foot off someone's rear bumber, eventually passing the front car in a no passing zone, and in a school zone to boot. He argued with the cop, insisting that the posted speed limit was the minimum speed that you were supposed to be driving and that the driver in the other car should have been getting a ticket. The driver who did get the three tickets was nineteen. Hee hee.)
Much of what you see on the roads nowadays would, at one time, earn you a reckless driving citation and possibly the opportunity to lose your license altogether. Perhaps its time they started enforcing those laws once again. I only have a 25 minute commute to work and I manage to see a lot of boneheaded drivers. The vast majority are teenagers and not senior citizens.
Well, someone had to be first to ship with this compiler. I wouldn't worry. Vendors will catch up.
While Apache servers didn't get rooted by Nimbda, or by its cousin Code Red, they were still affected. Of course, it was more of a DOS attack since the Apache daemons were attempting to respond to the bogus requests but it was an attack nonetheless. I've seen the load shoot through the roof on Apache servers the had been targeted by nimbda/code-red infected system. I should note that this was a strange case where someone fired up an NT system (for testing) that they were unaware had become infected and both systems were inside a firewall. Makes a good case for having another layer of firewalls (and, perhaps, an IDS) inside the LAN just to protect your servers from goofy situations like this.
Um, do these use an RJ45 or a BNC connector?
If the law allows for a candidate to ask for a recall, and the machines do not alow it, then the voting machines should be declared illegal.
So this voting machine manufacturer thinks their warranty supercedes the rights of the voters or the local laws where the machines are used. Seems like a judge ought to be getting these machines thrown out and the local government ought to be firing the bozo who authorized thier purchase in the first place. And perhaps the government's lawyers ought to be getting some serious looking into as well. They should have seen the potential for a firestorm in purchasing a machine with this warranty.
It's at the point now where you need to stop and do a patent search during every step of the design phase. Want to add a lowpass filter at this point in the device? Better stop and see if someone's patented that idea. How about some bypass capacitors in this circuit? Better search for that too. It's a comedy.
Try me. I'm willing to listen.
And I just took a couple of Excedrins so I dare say that your explanations couldn't possibly make my head feel any worse. :-)
Right. Imagine what university medical researchers looking for cures to some of the big killer diseases could do with an annual budget equivalent to that used for advertising in the U.S? Heck, imagine if they could just get funding comparable to what Hollywood spends hyping bad movies?
But there are problems. First is getting them to listen to you at all. On many occasion, once I begin asking them to not call me any more and to place my number on the do not call list, they hang up. Second, how do I know who it is that's violating the do-not-call listing anyway? I now have to have to buy caller-id service in order to identify telemarketers who are in violation of the laws.
We currently pay a fee to have an unpublished number and it has helped enormously in cutting down the telemarketer calls. I suspect that this ruling will make that protection less effective. Even now we still get a call or two a month (heck, before we got the unpublished number we sometimes got a half dozen between 6:00 and 9:00).
Heck, like that's a surprise.
I'd say that everyone agrees with you on these. Except that the DMA believes that you are a demographic and that what you think about isn't important.
Everyone raise your hands if you'd like to see these clowns from the DMA actually produce a roomful of people who will swear under oath that they want telemarketers calling them. I keep hearing these guys say that these people exist. It's time to start proving it. But, what I expect we'll hear is that those people have a right to privacy.
And thanks for the tip on Consumer Reports. Guess I'll still be making the trip to the public library to do my product research.
Yah, that part neatly shut out the telemarketers though I would have added an additional requirement: that manually-dialed sales calls must be placed from rotary dial phones.
I supposed this'll increase the amount of junk mail that I receive over and above the incredible amount that I get now. Wonder if anyone'll gripe if I just leave the garbage can sitting next to the mailbox. That way I can do a quick bit of filtering before the junk even gets into the house.
But if this means that we'll all start receiving more telemarketing calls... well, for now perhaps having that unpublished number will provide some protection (though I suspect that won't work for long). Eventually, I can see the day when we either break down and get a cellphone which we turn off (or we keep our regular phone and turn off the bell) when we don't want to be disturbed.