Hmmm. Not exactly in the phone book - but you've got me wondering. Is there, or is there not, a directory somewhere that might enable Average Joe, the campus activist, to look people up? It's pretty sure that the NSA can look you up any time they like. Gotta leave for work in a few minutes, but I'm leaving this tab open as a reminder to see what I can see when I get home . . . .
OOOOOHHHHHH!!!!!! The very top hit on my first Google search!
Wow - that makes me part of the 1%? I learned about those directories even before I had internet access. Admittedly, I didn't have ready access to such a directory until after I had internet, but I was very much aware that one could use a phone number to find an address, along with the name of the person who paid for the phone number.
Being black was a large part of what got Obama elected.
Being liberal is another large part of what got Obama elected.
Being approved by the Powers That Be was the deciding factor.
Being young, healthy, and seemingly attractive to a lot of females didn't hurt him.
Being a charismatic speaker helped a lot.
You may pretend that race wasn't a factor in his being elected, but that makes you just as racist as any of the birthers and others who hate him for being black. Be honest with yourself, and admit that race played a part in Obama's career. Go on, admit that blacks can be just as racist as any skinhead White Supremacist - it will be good for you soul.
I'm waiting for that, as well. Personally, I know of several people who have been banned from "discussion" sites, for having expressed politically incorrect views. Primary among them, are at least 20 people who have been banned from Sodahead. (I haven't actually counted them, and can't go back to count now, because Sodahaed censors out both the comments AND the users whom they have banned. The accounts are gone, and unsearchable, completely deleted.)
Your post seems to presume that there are no Africans on any English language social media sites in the US or Europe.
FYI - I see nothing "racist" in those posts cited. I see some ignorance involved, based on some common misconceptions. Not racism.
"Projecting, much? Can't say I've ever cracked a racist joke about catching AIDS in Africa. I've never said the same or worse. The likelihood of saying the same or worse is pretty low for most normal people."
Oh, this is good! You believe that all Americans are entitled assholes. Thanks, Dude.
"Don't tell me. Some dude with a blackboard told you about impending dictatorship?
I find nothing as amusing as the rage of the entitled. You live in the most free society on Earth (or so you're fond of bragging anyway) but as soon as the party that you don't support takes power or your income tax bill goes up a little (it probably hasn't, by the way, Obama has lowered middle class taxes, you're welcome) you're crying about being "oppressed". Yeah, right. Try telling that to people who have been unable to oust their dictator for 30 years and got hit with tear gas, rubber bullets, live ammo, and speeding vehicles [youtube.com] when they tried to do something about it. Try telling that to people in other Middle Eastern countries who get the crap kicked out of them in the street when they protest about blatantly rigged elections. Try telling that to women marooned in Islamic theocratic dictatorships and prevented from going to school.
Americans being oppressed by their own government? Ha! Gimme a freaking break! Get out of your suburban bore-hole and travel a little in this world before you start complaining about the evils of government."
You have plenty of posts in which you belittle people whose opinions prove them to be "uneducated" by your standards.
You sound very much like a politically correct American liberal. Where are you from?
FFS, I see comments that are moderately stupid, but nothing actually "racist". The "righteous mob" doesn't figure in here. The mob is just as stupid as the victim. It's pretty much a non-story, as far as racism goes.
There is not a man or a woman on this planet who hasn't said anything equally stupid in their lifetime. I have. You have. Samzenpuss has. Taco has. Obama has, and Bush has, both Clintons - every single man and woman on the planet.
The politically correct crowd thinks those tweets were incredibly racist? Actually, the politically correct crowd is incredibly stupid. Screw 'em.
I'm in complete agreement with the Mighty Martian here.
More idiocy. The companies you mention are in the business or research and development. Let them research replacements for a failing computer infrastructure.
IE6? You expect to garner some sympathy from me, because corporations still rely on IE6? Let me be blunt here. Fuck 'em all. My dad had some witticisms that he tossed around all the time. Mostly, they were annoying when he tossed them around. But, the annoyance value didn't detract from their validity.
The only thing that never changes is, that everything keeps on changing. IE6 is history. It's time to move on. Those who can't or won't adapt can just fail. I don't care one whit whether you choose to be a failure - you have the right to be a failure. Just don't whine and snivel to me when you discover what a failure you truly are.
So, you are trying to justify a business that has staked it's very existence on a single bit of software. To do so, you make reference to walk in freezers, and kitchen ranges? Puh-LEASE!! The restaurant in your scenario hasn't tied it's very existence to one particular model of walk-in, after all. If/when the freezer fries, due to an electrical storm, or whatever, it can readily be replaced with newer hardware. Jeeez, Louise. The various cooking utensils? Those are replaced much more easily than the equipment for the freezers. What would be really, really, REALLY stupid, is for the restaurant to deify their one computer, convincing themselves that if the computer goes down, the restaurant is finished. No matter how much their software may have been tailored, they can always replace it with another set of software to keep track of inventory, sales, expenditures, wages, etc.
Mr. Smarty Pants says that if you have tied the success of your business to one particular piece of software, then you're an incompetent fool who doesn't deserve to be in business. And, that remains true whether you are a small town Mom & Pop business, or a Fortune 500 corporation.
Yes, you can indeed find idiots draped in expensive imported suits. And, you cannot justify or defend their idiocy.
Why would *I* run Windows, or you're using the plural, generic "you"?
I don't run Windows, except in virtual machines. Fact is, it's been a long time since I bothered with a VM.
Most people will choose Windows because, A: all the readily available commercial offerings come preinstalled with Windows. B: Years of indoctrination leave people unprepared to explore other choices. C: A lot of folk probably don't even know that there IS a choice. D: Most people believe that they HAVE TO HAVE Microsoft Office, and/or believe that Office only runs on Windows.
Or, I could sum all of that up with three letters. FUD
I may be mistaken. I had emulators in mind when I mentioned 8 bit, but I can't find any documentation that the emulator itself is actually 8 bit. The emulator can run 8 bit code, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the emulator is 8 bit, now does it?
How exactly do Atari and other emulators work on XP?
"Except ability to run about 20 years' worth of software and on far older and newer hardware, since it has had such a long service life and represented the pinnacle of backward compatibility before MS decided DOS-based software (Win98) has surely all been retired."
PLEASE! Just give up on all that 20 year old software! All that backward compatibility, and legacy support, is exactly what crippled XP more than anything else! Without all that legacy support, XP would have started out more secure than it did. JUST GIVE IT UP!! I don't want or need 20 year old software running on my system. If you really, truly believe that you need software that old, then rebuild it!!
It's not like software development is a forgotten art from 5000 years ago. Hire someone, or hire a team, to rebuild the functionality that you need. Or, do it yourself.
Stop expecting the world to operate in some twisted time warp that suits your own particular needs.
Every emulator introduces risk. 8 bit is insecure, but XP runs it. 16 bit is insecure, but XP runs it. Today, 32 bit is relatively insecure, compared with 64 bit, but Win7 maintains an emulator to that it can be run. Windows on Windows.
At least, they have dropped support for the 8 and 16 bit stuff.
Yes, you can upgrade for free, or damn near free. Simply upgrade to Linux or a BSD. Seriously. I here all sorts of nonsense about how hard it is to switch to Linux, and to Gnu. Screw all of that. Have you noticed that our economy sucks? A common refrain heard by the working class, is that we are now competing with labor markets from around the world. We have to adapt, or go out of business. Do more with less, retrain to do new tasks, yada yada yada.
My answer goes right along with all that other nonsense. If you can't be retrained to run Linux, then you're out of the workforce. And, no, I don't really give a damn that you might lose your home as a result. No one gave a small damn when coal miners were foreclosed on. Or auto workers. Or construction workers.
The "ticking time bomb" isn't Windows XP. The time bomb is America's inability to adapt to a changing reality. Windows is so 1990's. This is the 2010's now.
One problem with supporting XP, is the old 32 bit thing. Some of the security features available on 64 bit systems just don't work so well on 32 bit processors, or with 32 bit operating systems. http://www.howtogeek.com/165535/why-the-64-bit-version-of-windows-is-more-secure/ Feel free to Google for more information along those lines - there is plenty.
Worse, XP supports legacy 16 and 8 bit stuff, which is far more insecure than a rational 32 bit system.
Microsoft does indeed push the upgrade cycle for their own selfish reasons, no one can deny that. But, really and truly, XP is so obsolete that no sensible people are going to waste time trying to support it.
As soon as I could afford to purchase a 64 bit Opteron, I made the switch to 64 bit computing. The fact that 64 bit Windows XP couldn't support all of my hardware prompted me to make the switch to Linux. At that point in time, Suse Linux had the edge on AMD 64 bit computing, and everything just worked out of the box.
It's fifty bucks less, out of YOUR pocket, AFTER the subsidy is applied. I suppose that if I were to bend over, place my head between my knees, and forcefully insert my cranium into my rectum, eventually the lack of oxygen could make me forget that this "affordable" health care actually costs about double what my less affordable healthcare used to cost.
Bullshit. Even Obama was proud to call it Obamacare - until it failed. Democrats owned the damned thing all along, and Obama is the major shareholder. Screw the politically correct claptrap. There isn't a person in the United States (minus immature juveniles and senile old bastards) who doesn't know what is being referred to when Obamacare is mentioned.
Ahhhhh - the government subsidy. I've strained my limited resources of grey material to figure that out. Allow me to ponder this out loud here, please.
Let's say that I'm a young adult. I can't afford to buy a Big Mac budget meal two days in a row, so I eat a lot of Ramen noodles, carefully budgeting my very limited income so that I can buy an occasional Big Mac. Obviously, I can't afford insurance, either. Or a car. Or a girl friend. Or much of anything.
The government mandates that I MUST HAVE insurance. Amazing. But, wait. In it's infinite wisdom, government already knows that I can't buy insurance, no matter what they threaten me with. They offer me a SUBSIDY!! Oh, wonderful. With that subsidy, I can get insurance, so I don't have to wait for the IRS or DHS to come lock me up.
But, wait. That word, "subsidy". Is it permanent? Will government pay X amount toward my insurance for the rest of my life? Is it written into law that I will ALWAYS have this subsidy, with which to pay my insurance?
Wake up Amerikka - that subsidy is a temporary, fleeting thing. And, once you are registered, once you're in the system, you can never again be without insurance.
Oh well - maybe they won't have Big Macs at the relocation and reeducation camps, but the food will probably be superior to a steady diet of Ramen noodles. I hope, anyway.
You're simply pointing out the administration's ineptitude. They insisted that the system be put into place, they insisted that it meet a firm time schedule, insisted on putting incompetent "managers" in charge of everything, and further insisted on hiring incompetent "technical" advisors and "engineers".
There was no compromise in any portion of the planning or implementation. On the day of the Grand Opening, it became appallingly obvious that the Emperor had no clothes.
If anyone in a position of authority had the brains one might find stowed up an orangatan's anus, they just might have averted some of the embarrassment that we saw when the site opened to the public.
I'm perfectly happy to poke fun at Oracle, too. But, Oracle would at least have come up with some face saving explanations, and they could probably have cobbled together some backup scheme to make it appear they were doing something useful. Sometimes, appearances are more important than reality. In the case of the Obamacare site, not only did they fail utterly, but they failed to appear to understand how utterly they failed.
I can remember when there was no 911. I guess I was still in high school, when Los Angeles first started working on the system. No one around home could figure out what was so difficult about calling the sheriff's office, or the state police. We managed somehow, before the advent of a special telephone code for emergencies. In fact, you almost invariably had to go into someone's home, or a place of business to place the call - and the local emergency numbers were usually posted close to the phone. We managed.
I'm of the opinion that we should STOP putting warning labels on everything in the world. "Please do not place face in front of lawn mower discharge chute" is so stupid. Go on, PUT YOUR FACE HERE!! Doing so has a high probability of removing some crud from the gene pool - as well as decreasing the likelihood of an accidental emergency call.
Obviously, you have never heard of a rain check. The local vendor advertises a special of some sort - say, McNuggets for half price. He orders what he believes to be enough to meet demand at the lower price - but runs out. Generally, if you ask for a rain check, the manager will give you a rain check, giving you half price McNuggets on your next visit. He may even throw in a free Coke, for having inconvenienced you.
He hasn't taken anything FROM YOU after all. He made an offer, which was good for everyone who walked through the door, until he ran out of product. Unless he accepted cash money from you for the McNuggets, then failed to deliver those McNuggets which you had paid for, then he has taken nothing from you.
So, I'm visualizing here. "No, Joe, I don't want the phone to panic when I throw it against the wall." So, Joe picks Jim up, and throws HIM against the wall. Joe asks, "Do you want the phone to panic now, or not?"
Slashdot Mirror
Hmmm. Not exactly in the phone book - but you've got me wondering. Is there, or is there not, a directory somewhere that might enable Average Joe, the campus activist, to look people up? It's pretty sure that the NSA can look you up any time they like. Gotta leave for work in a few minutes, but I'm leaving this tab open as a reminder to see what I can see when I get home . . . .
OOOOOHHHHHH!!!!!! The very top hit on my first Google search!
http://www.nationalcellulardirectory.com/
So there is a directory - I need to explore it when I get home!
Wow - that makes me part of the 1%? I learned about those directories even before I had internet access. Admittedly, I didn't have ready access to such a directory until after I had internet, but I was very much aware that one could use a phone number to find an address, along with the name of the person who paid for the phone number.
Great post, Malkavian. It should be modded to the sky, but no one with mod points seems to be applying them.
Being black was a large part of what got Obama elected.
Being liberal is another large part of what got Obama elected.
Being approved by the Powers That Be was the deciding factor.
Being young, healthy, and seemingly attractive to a lot of females didn't hurt him.
Being a charismatic speaker helped a lot.
You may pretend that race wasn't a factor in his being elected, but that makes you just as racist as any of the birthers and others who hate him for being black. Be honest with yourself, and admit that race played a part in Obama's career. Go on, admit that blacks can be just as racist as any skinhead White Supremacist - it will be good for you soul.
I'm waiting for that, as well. Personally, I know of several people who have been banned from "discussion" sites, for having expressed politically incorrect views. Primary among them, are at least 20 people who have been banned from Sodahead. (I haven't actually counted them, and can't go back to count now, because Sodahaed censors out both the comments AND the users whom they have banned. The accounts are gone, and unsearchable, completely deleted.)
Your post seems to presume that there are no Africans on any English language social media sites in the US or Europe.
FYI - I see nothing "racist" in those posts cited. I see some ignorance involved, based on some common misconceptions. Not racism.
"Projecting, much? Can't say I've ever cracked a racist joke about catching AIDS in Africa. I've never said the same or worse. The likelihood of saying the same or worse is pretty low for most normal people."
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=4514373&cid=45587511
Implying that all car dealers are corrupt.
Oh, this is good! You believe that all Americans are entitled assholes. Thanks, Dude.
"Don't tell me. Some dude with a blackboard told you about impending dictatorship?
I find nothing as amusing as the rage of the entitled. You live in the most free society on Earth (or so you're fond of bragging anyway) but as soon as the party that you don't support takes power or your income tax bill goes up a little (it probably hasn't, by the way, Obama has lowered middle class taxes, you're welcome) you're crying about being "oppressed". Yeah, right. Try telling that to people who have been unable to oust their dictator for 30 years and got hit with tear gas, rubber bullets, live ammo, and speeding vehicles [youtube.com] when they tried to do something about it. Try telling that to people in other Middle Eastern countries who get the crap kicked out of them in the street when they protest about blatantly rigged elections. Try telling that to women marooned in Islamic theocratic dictatorships and prevented from going to school.
Americans being oppressed by their own government? Ha! Gimme a freaking break! Get out of your suburban bore-hole and travel a little in this world before you start complaining about the evils of government."
You have plenty of posts in which you belittle people whose opinions prove them to be "uneducated" by your standards.
You sound very much like a politically correct American liberal. Where are you from?
"Tweeted something incredibly racist"
FFS, I see comments that are moderately stupid, but nothing actually "racist". The "righteous mob" doesn't figure in here. The mob is just as stupid as the victim. It's pretty much a non-story, as far as racism goes.
There is not a man or a woman on this planet who hasn't said anything equally stupid in their lifetime. I have. You have. Samzenpuss has. Taco has. Obama has, and Bush has, both Clintons - every single man and woman on the planet.
The politically correct crowd thinks those tweets were incredibly racist? Actually, the politically correct crowd is incredibly stupid. Screw 'em.
I'm in complete agreement with the Mighty Martian here.
More idiocy. The companies you mention are in the business or research and development. Let them research replacements for a failing computer infrastructure.
IE6? You expect to garner some sympathy from me, because corporations still rely on IE6? Let me be blunt here. Fuck 'em all. My dad had some witticisms that he tossed around all the time. Mostly, they were annoying when he tossed them around. But, the annoyance value didn't detract from their validity.
The only thing that never changes is, that everything keeps on changing. IE6 is history. It's time to move on. Those who can't or won't adapt can just fail. I don't care one whit whether you choose to be a failure - you have the right to be a failure. Just don't whine and snivel to me when you discover what a failure you truly are.
So, you are trying to justify a business that has staked it's very existence on a single bit of software. To do so, you make reference to walk in freezers, and kitchen ranges? Puh-LEASE!! The restaurant in your scenario hasn't tied it's very existence to one particular model of walk-in, after all. If/when the freezer fries, due to an electrical storm, or whatever, it can readily be replaced with newer hardware. Jeeez, Louise. The various cooking utensils? Those are replaced much more easily than the equipment for the freezers. What would be really, really, REALLY stupid, is for the restaurant to deify their one computer, convincing themselves that if the computer goes down, the restaurant is finished. No matter how much their software may have been tailored, they can always replace it with another set of software to keep track of inventory, sales, expenditures, wages, etc.
Mr. Smarty Pants says that if you have tied the success of your business to one particular piece of software, then you're an incompetent fool who doesn't deserve to be in business. And, that remains true whether you are a small town Mom & Pop business, or a Fortune 500 corporation.
Yes, you can indeed find idiots draped in expensive imported suits. And, you cannot justify or defend their idiocy.
Why would *I* run Windows, or you're using the plural, generic "you"?
I don't run Windows, except in virtual machines. Fact is, it's been a long time since I bothered with a VM.
Most people will choose Windows because, A: all the readily available commercial offerings come preinstalled with Windows. B: Years of indoctrination leave people unprepared to explore other choices. C: A lot of folk probably don't even know that there IS a choice. D: Most people believe that they HAVE TO HAVE Microsoft Office, and/or believe that Office only runs on Windows.
Or, I could sum all of that up with three letters. FUD
I may be mistaken. I had emulators in mind when I mentioned 8 bit, but I can't find any documentation that the emulator itself is actually 8 bit. The emulator can run 8 bit code, but that doesn't necessarily mean that the emulator is 8 bit, now does it?
How exactly do Atari and other emulators work on XP?
"Except ability to run about 20 years' worth of software and on far older and newer hardware, since it has had such a long service life and represented the pinnacle of backward compatibility before MS decided DOS-based software (Win98) has surely all been retired."
PLEASE! Just give up on all that 20 year old software! All that backward compatibility, and legacy support, is exactly what crippled XP more than anything else! Without all that legacy support, XP would have started out more secure than it did. JUST GIVE IT UP!! I don't want or need 20 year old software running on my system. If you really, truly believe that you need software that old, then rebuild it!!
It's not like software development is a forgotten art from 5000 years ago. Hire someone, or hire a team, to rebuild the functionality that you need. Or, do it yourself.
Stop expecting the world to operate in some twisted time warp that suits your own particular needs.
Every emulator introduces risk. 8 bit is insecure, but XP runs it. 16 bit is insecure, but XP runs it. Today, 32 bit is relatively insecure, compared with 64 bit, but Win7 maintains an emulator to that it can be run. Windows on Windows.
At least, they have dropped support for the 8 and 16 bit stuff.
So - where does one go to have his Studebaker updated or upgraded? How about a DeSoto?
Yes, you can upgrade for free, or damn near free. Simply upgrade to Linux or a BSD. Seriously. I here all sorts of nonsense about how hard it is to switch to Linux, and to Gnu. Screw all of that. Have you noticed that our economy sucks? A common refrain heard by the working class, is that we are now competing with labor markets from around the world. We have to adapt, or go out of business. Do more with less, retrain to do new tasks, yada yada yada.
My answer goes right along with all that other nonsense. If you can't be retrained to run Linux, then you're out of the workforce. And, no, I don't really give a damn that you might lose your home as a result. No one gave a small damn when coal miners were foreclosed on. Or auto workers. Or construction workers.
The "ticking time bomb" isn't Windows XP. The time bomb is America's inability to adapt to a changing reality. Windows is so 1990's. This is the 2010's now.
One problem with supporting XP, is the old 32 bit thing. Some of the security features available on 64 bit systems just don't work so well on 32 bit processors, or with 32 bit operating systems. http://www.howtogeek.com/165535/why-the-64-bit-version-of-windows-is-more-secure/ Feel free to Google for more information along those lines - there is plenty.
Worse, XP supports legacy 16 and 8 bit stuff, which is far more insecure than a rational 32 bit system.
Microsoft does indeed push the upgrade cycle for their own selfish reasons, no one can deny that. But, really and truly, XP is so obsolete that no sensible people are going to waste time trying to support it.
As soon as I could afford to purchase a 64 bit Opteron, I made the switch to 64 bit computing. The fact that 64 bit Windows XP couldn't support all of my hardware prompted me to make the switch to Linux. At that point in time, Suse Linux had the edge on AMD 64 bit computing, and everything just worked out of the box.
Not if you've just completed upgrading. I upgraded to Suse Linux long ago. Has it been a decade? Yep, more than a decade actually.
So, which flavor of Linux are you using? Or, did you go with a BSD? We're all curious, I'm sure!
As for myself, I've left Suse behind, currently running Sabayon.
uname -a
Linux sabayon.home 3.11.0-sabayon #1 SMP Tue Nov 26 08:21:55 UTC 2013 x86_64 AMD Phenom(tm) 9850 Quad-Core Processor AuthenticAMD GNU/Linux
It's fifty bucks less, out of YOUR pocket, AFTER the subsidy is applied. I suppose that if I were to bend over, place my head between my knees, and forcefully insert my cranium into my rectum, eventually the lack of oxygen could make me forget that this "affordable" health care actually costs about double what my less affordable healthcare used to cost.
Bullshit. Even Obama was proud to call it Obamacare - until it failed. Democrats owned the damned thing all along, and Obama is the major shareholder. Screw the politically correct claptrap. There isn't a person in the United States (minus immature juveniles and senile old bastards) who doesn't know what is being referred to when Obamacare is mentioned.
Ahhhhh - the government subsidy. I've strained my limited resources of grey material to figure that out. Allow me to ponder this out loud here, please.
Let's say that I'm a young adult. I can't afford to buy a Big Mac budget meal two days in a row, so I eat a lot of Ramen noodles, carefully budgeting my very limited income so that I can buy an occasional Big Mac. Obviously, I can't afford insurance, either. Or a car. Or a girl friend. Or much of anything.
The government mandates that I MUST HAVE insurance. Amazing. But, wait. In it's infinite wisdom, government already knows that I can't buy insurance, no matter what they threaten me with. They offer me a SUBSIDY!! Oh, wonderful. With that subsidy, I can get insurance, so I don't have to wait for the IRS or DHS to come lock me up.
But, wait. That word, "subsidy". Is it permanent? Will government pay X amount toward my insurance for the rest of my life? Is it written into law that I will ALWAYS have this subsidy, with which to pay my insurance?
Wake up Amerikka - that subsidy is a temporary, fleeting thing. And, once you are registered, once you're in the system, you can never again be without insurance.
Oh well - maybe they won't have Big Macs at the relocation and reeducation camps, but the food will probably be superior to a steady diet of Ramen noodles. I hope, anyway.
You're simply pointing out the administration's ineptitude. They insisted that the system be put into place, they insisted that it meet a firm time schedule, insisted on putting incompetent "managers" in charge of everything, and further insisted on hiring incompetent "technical" advisors and "engineers".
There was no compromise in any portion of the planning or implementation. On the day of the Grand Opening, it became appallingly obvious that the Emperor had no clothes.
If anyone in a position of authority had the brains one might find stowed up an orangatan's anus, they just might have averted some of the embarrassment that we saw when the site opened to the public.
I'm perfectly happy to poke fun at Oracle, too. But, Oracle would at least have come up with some face saving explanations, and they could probably have cobbled together some backup scheme to make it appear they were doing something useful. Sometimes, appearances are more important than reality. In the case of the Obamacare site, not only did they fail utterly, but they failed to appear to understand how utterly they failed.
I can remember when there was no 911. I guess I was still in high school, when Los Angeles first started working on the system. No one around home could figure out what was so difficult about calling the sheriff's office, or the state police. We managed somehow, before the advent of a special telephone code for emergencies. In fact, you almost invariably had to go into someone's home, or a place of business to place the call - and the local emergency numbers were usually posted close to the phone. We managed.
I'm of the opinion that we should STOP putting warning labels on everything in the world. "Please do not place face in front of lawn mower discharge chute" is so stupid. Go on, PUT YOUR FACE HERE!! Doing so has a high probability of removing some crud from the gene pool - as well as decreasing the likelihood of an accidental emergency call.
Obviously, you have never heard of a rain check. The local vendor advertises a special of some sort - say, McNuggets for half price. He orders what he believes to be enough to meet demand at the lower price - but runs out. Generally, if you ask for a rain check, the manager will give you a rain check, giving you half price McNuggets on your next visit. He may even throw in a free Coke, for having inconvenienced you.
He hasn't taken anything FROM YOU after all. He made an offer, which was good for everyone who walked through the door, until he ran out of product. Unless he accepted cash money from you for the McNuggets, then failed to deliver those McNuggets which you had paid for, then he has taken nothing from you.
Stuff happens.
So, I'm visualizing here. "No, Joe, I don't want the phone to panic when I throw it against the wall." So, Joe picks Jim up, and throws HIM against the wall. Joe asks, "Do you want the phone to panic now, or not?"
Judgement call here, LMAO!
And, you are obviously one of those people who should NOT have a panic button on your phone. In fact, maybe you shouldn't have a phone.