Some calls don't have an originating "number", because they come from VoIP, and there is no need to even be able to receive calls before you can make them. You just give your VoIP program a random bogus number to fill in the caller ID if it asks for one, and you can change it any time you want. You don't even have to have a real phone, it can just be software on a computer.
Mostly it's just a recording that starts talking when you answer the phone and say hello. The stupider ones don't even wait for you to pick up the handset or say hello, and your answering machine will catch them mid-shill. If you can't tell by their tone of voice (talking at you rather than asking you something), you can just keep saying hello? hello? hello? and they won't stop.
The smarter ones now are trying to do voice-recognition AI, but are still fooled by out-of-band questions like "what day is it?" and "what is today?"
Whatever you do, don't say "yes" to anything. There are rumors of scam calls that try to record you saying "yes" so that they can forward it to some other scam that wants to hear it.
I've seen a few in recent months that spoof my exchange number. It's a big red flag, because in a big city, knowing someone with the same exchange (which used to matter back in the step switch days) is really unlikely. But I can't block on that. If pretending to be my own number becomes a problem, at least I can block that one, but it hasn't been.
I had also over the past few years seen malformed numbers, and numbers from an obvious dial-out bank all in the form of ABC-DEF-GHxx where xx was different, but in the same range, like 4x or 5x. That was back when I only got to block 20 numbers. Now I can block 100, which still isn't great because CNID spoofing lets them do whatever they want.
I also can't block on the name field, and I've sometimes seen the same name call on wildly different numbers, after blocking the earlier numbers.
Pre-internet (1980s or maybe even 1970s) I had learned that "cheers" was a Britishism. The name of the bar on the television show was a reference to the Britishism.
Hugh Laurie in House had a very good neutral American accent. I had been watching the show for about six months before I realized he was that Hugh Laurie, the one who played the foppish character in Blackadder. But for some reason, Brits didn't think his accent was very good.
And sometimes brick. Both brick and cobblestone would apparently fit the classic definition of "paving". But brick lost favor once automobiles could go fast enough for the average brick surface to be too rough. Now brick is mostly only used for crosswalks, when bumpy safety tiles aren't used. Also, laying asphalt and concrete in continuous strips is much cheaper and faster to build, and more durable than brick.
Known to some as "tar macadam", hence the word "tarmac". (macadam refers to the gravel part) Which is normally only used in the US in an aviation context, to refer to airport landing strips and taxiways, even when they might be made entirely of concrete. (Though I will admit that it can be a nice coating for concrete. Here in Texas, within the past decade I have seen new roads built both with asphalt over concrete, and concrete over asphalt.)
More than that, AT&T is also using them for outbound SMTP. They used to have their own SMTP servers that relayed for customer IP addresses. Now you have to authenticate, and much more annoyingly, it requires you to go through a (Yahoo) web configuration page to allow other From: addresses in outbound mail.
Nope. I think about GEnie and AOL from time to time (especially when I find a random AOL CD somewhere), but it's been years since I last thought of Compuserve and its silly octal user IDs. I think I had an account for a few months, but jumped ship to GEnie based on price, and this was the days when GEnie charged extra for 2400 baud.
Also a bit of trivia, (IIRC) GEnie ran on the GECOS operating system, which was responsible for one of the rarely used fields in the Unix passwd file.
Note that if your MacBook Pro keyboard has an Enter key shaped like the letter "L", and an extra key between Z and left shift, you are not using a US keyboard. And the UK Pounds sign has been option-3 on the Macintosh since it first appeared in 1984.
I don't know how the Linux keyboard driver handles it, but on OS X, Fn+backspace=del, Fn+up arrow=PgUp, Fn+down arrow=PgDn, Fn+left arrow=Home, Fn+right arrow=End
And why would I need two ctrl keys when the cloverleaf command key is the one used for commands? Most of the time I'm using ctrl is as an additional modifier key or in a Terminal window. I also like that it doesn't have a keypad shoving the keyboard to the left and moving the trackpad off-center like the Dell E6520 that I also have. But I play games on that Dell, so I actually use its full keyboard, so meh.
The worst part about those Aluminum PowerBooks (both G4 and Intel) was the completely crappy case. The optical drive would inevitably get out of alignment with the slot in the case and the disk would jam when it tried to eject. I had three Aluminum models over the years. The Unibody were a lot better, but the keyboards do go bad after a while, and the trackpad stops clicking properly when enough gunk slips under the edge. Oh yeah, and that little situation with Nvidia making fucked-up chips.
One of my Intel ones had a bad screen that got replaced with a full HD display, presumably because that was all Apple had for spare parts. I wasn't exactly happy about the higher resolution (I do not have high-definition eyes any more), but at least it worked. Then at some point it developed a bad column driver, and there would be a red vertical stripe in the middle of the screen. I could usually massage it with my thumbnail, but when I resurrected it out of parts from an old one a friend gave to me a few months ago, the line would no longer go away. But now it's the rare higher-resolution screen, and the same size as the Unibody 17" that I am still using, so I'm leaving it in.
I don't remember anything about a "white spot" issue, but maybe that's the real reason they replaced mine with a full HD.
Move to the latitude of North Africa where the southern US is, add the humidity you don't get in the desert, and maybe you will understand about air conditioning.
Don't forget about Yellowstone. That and the "stray rock" are much more likely than a GRB or a random black hole. At least I'll be a safe distance away when New Madrid flips, if all those Oklahoma earthquakes are releasing its energy.
Slashdot Mirror
A call coming from outside of the country clearly can't be originating from a u.s. area code.
So what happens if it's on VoIP coming from the US-end of a VPN connection from India?
Some calls don't have an originating "number", because they come from VoIP, and there is no need to even be able to receive calls before you can make them. You just give your VoIP program a random bogus number to fill in the caller ID if it asks for one, and you can change it any time you want. You don't even have to have a real phone, it can just be software on a computer.
Mostly it's just a recording that starts talking when you answer the phone and say hello. The stupider ones don't even wait for you to pick up the handset or say hello, and your answering machine will catch them mid-shill. If you can't tell by their tone of voice (talking at you rather than asking you something), you can just keep saying hello? hello? hello? and they won't stop.
The smarter ones now are trying to do voice-recognition AI, but are still fooled by out-of-band questions like "what day is it?" and "what is today?"
Whatever you do, don't say "yes" to anything. There are rumors of scam calls that try to record you saying "yes" so that they can forward it to some other scam that wants to hear it.
I've seen a few in recent months that spoof my exchange number. It's a big red flag, because in a big city, knowing someone with the same exchange (which used to matter back in the step switch days) is really unlikely. But I can't block on that. If pretending to be my own number becomes a problem, at least I can block that one, but it hasn't been.
I had also over the past few years seen malformed numbers, and numbers from an obvious dial-out bank all in the form of ABC-DEF-GHxx where xx was different, but in the same range, like 4x or 5x. That was back when I only got to block 20 numbers. Now I can block 100, which still isn't great because CNID spoofing lets them do whatever they want.
I also can't block on the name field, and I've sometimes seen the same name call on wildly different numbers, after blocking the earlier numbers.
Gas (fuel) is a shortening of the word "gasoline"... which may have come from a trademark. You may now resume hoovering the carpet.
Pre-internet (1980s or maybe even 1970s) I had learned that "cheers" was a Britishism. The name of the bar on the television show was a reference to the Britishism.
Hugh Laurie in House had a very good neutral American accent. I had been watching the show for about six months before I realized he was that Hugh Laurie, the one who played the foppish character in Blackadder. But for some reason, Brits didn't think his accent was very good.
And sometimes brick. Both brick and cobblestone would apparently fit the classic definition of "paving". But brick lost favor once automobiles could go fast enough for the average brick surface to be too rough. Now brick is mostly only used for crosswalks, when bumpy safety tiles aren't used. Also, laying asphalt and concrete in continuous strips is much cheaper and faster to build, and more durable than brick.
an asphalt-slurry mix road or street
Known to some as "tar macadam", hence the word "tarmac". (macadam refers to the gravel part) Which is normally only used in the US in an aviation context, to refer to airport landing strips and taxiways, even when they might be made entirely of concrete. (Though I will admit that it can be a nice coating for concrete. Here in Texas, within the past decade I have seen new roads built both with asphalt over concrete, and concrete over asphalt.)
...game play YOU!
More than that, AT&T is also using them for outbound SMTP. They used to have their own SMTP servers that relayed for customer IP addresses. Now you have to authenticate, and much more annoyingly, it requires you to go through a (Yahoo) web configuration page to allow other From: addresses in outbound mail.
(LA120's are also not great if your OS wants some sleep- yes, I have tried)
It took me way too many seconds to imagine how a Decwriter could keep your operating system from sleeping. Perhaps you meant SO?
The sad part is that they honor it retroactively.
I knew it as Compu$lurp, but the main point is that it predated Microsoft with the changing the S to a dollar sign meme.
Nope. I think about GEnie and AOL from time to time (especially when I find a random AOL CD somewhere), but it's been years since I last thought of Compuserve and its silly octal user IDs. I think I had an account for a few months, but jumped ship to GEnie based on price, and this was the days when GEnie charged extra for 2400 baud.
Also a bit of trivia, (IIRC) GEnie ran on the GECOS operating system, which was responsible for one of the rarely used fields in the Unix passwd file.
No, Who?'s on first base. Where? is the stadium.
Note that if your MacBook Pro keyboard has an Enter key shaped like the letter "L", and an extra key between Z and left shift, you are not using a US keyboard. And the UK Pounds sign has been option-3 on the Macintosh since it first appeared in 1984.
powerbook uk keyboard
I don't know how the Linux keyboard driver handles it, but on OS X, Fn+backspace=del, Fn+up arrow=PgUp, Fn+down arrow=PgDn, Fn+left arrow=Home, Fn+right arrow=End
And why would I need two ctrl keys when the cloverleaf command key is the one used for commands? Most of the time I'm using ctrl is as an additional modifier key or in a Terminal window. I also like that it doesn't have a keypad shoving the keyboard to the left and moving the trackpad off-center like the Dell E6520 that I also have. But I play games on that Dell, so I actually use its full keyboard, so meh.
Numeric underflow on a temperature sensor? It never goes below 0F in Cupertino, so that can't possibly happen.
The worst part about those Aluminum PowerBooks (both G4 and Intel) was the completely crappy case. The optical drive would inevitably get out of alignment with the slot in the case and the disk would jam when it tried to eject. I had three Aluminum models over the years. The Unibody were a lot better, but the keyboards do go bad after a while, and the trackpad stops clicking properly when enough gunk slips under the edge. Oh yeah, and that little situation with Nvidia making fucked-up chips.
One of my Intel ones had a bad screen that got replaced with a full HD display, presumably because that was all Apple had for spare parts. I wasn't exactly happy about the higher resolution (I do not have high-definition eyes any more), but at least it worked. Then at some point it developed a bad column driver, and there would be a red vertical stripe in the middle of the screen. I could usually massage it with my thumbnail, but when I resurrected it out of parts from an old one a friend gave to me a few months ago, the line would no longer go away. But now it's the rare higher-resolution screen, and the same size as the Unibody 17" that I am still using, so I'm leaving it in.
I don't remember anything about a "white spot" issue, but maybe that's the real reason they replaced mine with a full HD.
What we really want to know is what Netcraft says about it.
Move to the latitude of North Africa where the southern US is, add the humidity you don't get in the desert, and maybe you will understand about air conditioning.
This is clearly the next step after the paperless office.
Would dogs and cats be living together?
Don't forget about Yellowstone. That and the "stray rock" are much more likely than a GRB or a random black hole. At least I'll be a safe distance away when New Madrid flips, if all those Oklahoma earthquakes are releasing its energy.