I got a letter back from the FTC telling me that they couldn't do anything because "I didn't provide them enough information". I gave them the time of day, the CID, and what the robo greeting said. But I guess because I didn't talk to a human, it didn't count.
They're shitting you. I didn't have valid caller id from their call. I'm not sure how I could have identified the voice I ended up talking to. Gee, it sounds female, that eliminates 50%...
The police wouldn't followup when an eyewitness had 6 of 7 digits of the license of the driver who hit & runned me and totaled my first new car. Make/model/location out of 10 possible vehicles should mean something, right?
I kept getting mine about 11 months after I bought a new car, so the timing was particularly good. I imagine that's the person that they're targeting.
I got one of those kinds of calls in the same time frame after I bought my first car (in 1986). I presume it was legit because they asked me how many miles I had on the car, and I responded with the truth (~25k, I was driving a lot then), they hung up on me - "you're not eligible", click.
The only problem I have with your theory is that I've gotten many calls from them and I don't own a car (nor have I in the past).
My circumstances are almost as extreme as yours - I haven't owned a car under factory warranty for over two decades and it was totaled (hit & run, not my fault) a long, long time ago.
It was fairly close to that. I demanded to hear the name of the company they were representing and why they were calling me... mumble, mumble, when they insisted that my auto warranty needed renewing I told them that I hadn't owned a car (in the United States) in over a decade and no, no one in my family did either and we didn't have formal residence in the US. She ended the call *very* quickly.
Scammers. I guess I spoke to the Maureen chick, because it was a female voice on the phone I talked to.
"Depending on whose numbers you use, anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 keyboard users are injured every year Ã" some temporarily, some permanently. In time, almost 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing" Cite please?
Sounds to me like the same kind of statistics used to prove the evils of smoking.
Or better, if you are not allowed to smoke at your desk/keyboard, but are forced to take smoke breaks (that also rest your hands), then smoking is actually good for you.
I find switching mouse hands from right to left, left to right periodically is also a good stress reliever.
I *did* start to develop signs of something in the mid 1990s - sharp pain shooting up through my arm when I handled the mouse. Switching mouse hands made it go away and it's never come back.
If you are suffering at a keyboard/mouse, it's definitely a workflow issue and not something that is inevitable.
My question to Slashdot: Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable, what's keeping you from volunteering and working with geeks who are already disabled?
Nothing at all and I added Emacspeak to XEmacs supported packages just as soon as I was made aware of it. The demo I got from its author, T.V. Raman, made a lasting impression on me. Being blind doesn't mean you have to be handicapped.
The fact that Wikipedia gives references places Wikipedia ahead of the vast majority of sources out there (including virtually all of the media).
Heh. I find it vastly amusing that one of those media sites does include sources for everything - http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/ (And I trust Rush a lot more than I trust Wikipedia, even if I'm not on the Neocon bandwagon).
Any person with substantial knowledge on a topic, particularly one that isn't well known, is bound to have bias in some form.
Any person who has a brain and can think is going to have bias. That's human nature and there's NOTHING wrong with that..
Especially on Wikipedia where policy seems to be "delete all content".
That appears to be the case. I'm not sure why they have the "no trivia" policy. Trivial Pursuit was once the most popular game in the US. Encyclopedias are a natural information source for such things. (I'm also a fan of the TV game show Jeopardy!)
When I was very young my parents bought a lower end encyclopedia which I ended up reading end-to-end, partly because I love to read and partly because I love to learn new things. I am most wary of touching Wikipedia. What is wrong with this picture?
If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were to pay someone to edit some of the healthcare articles, I probably would be happy with that, but if they edited IT and computing articles, I wouldn't be so happy.
What reason is there to believe that they have any relevant expertise in health care? And if they did, wouldn't that make it a conflict of interest?
I put little credence in anything I read on Wikipedia; all of the articles regarding subjects that I have first hand experience with get something wrong.
11 years ago, I made a mistake editing about.el in XEmacs - I wrote 1998 instead of "present", which Wikipedia had faithfully copied the last time I checked. (checking again) I suppose I should be happy that Wikipedia has deleted my contributions entirely rather than continue to copy that mistake. Good going Wikipedians.
The difference is that the grad students are being paid to do what Wikipedia also wants them to do -- to find good information from reliable sources and incorporate it into the articles. There are multiple interests but no conflict of interest.
So government is good...
The conflict of interest comes in when Wikipedia says "We want well-sourced information about Company X, whether it's flattering to them or not" and Editor X is being paid by Company X to include only the flattering information."
and corporations are bad?
What about the recent Google Maps controversy over including feudal Japanese boundaries showing Burakumin areas over modern maps?
Nothing written with respect to what human beings do is ever going to be neutral and unbiased.
I think it's kind of cool that I see a huge block of grey space beneath your title bar, and the text of your post waaaaaay off to the right conveniently split up into one and two word lines. Good going who ever coded that up!
I also love the Options button not working any more.
Indeed, even the creator of Fortran said "actually, that was a shit idea
Interesting link. John Backus is one of the Great(est) Ones. Whatever you think of the evolution of FORTRAN, it was historically a critical turning point in programming. The folks who refused to consider anything other hand coded assembly language were discredited forever with his FORTRAN compiler.
BNF (the "B" is for Backus) is about equally as important. I wonder, teaching language for language sake, should BNF be the first language taught to students. I can think of a lot of reasons why it should be.
(From a pragmatic standpoint). My CS101 was in FORTRAN. I've never been paid to code a single line in FORTRAN, no biggie[1]. I've been in many situations where sorting out input via BNF and situations where I'm maintaining code that the author obviously had no clue about it.
[1] I took CS101 when I was still in High School through a special program and it was a lot more fun helping coeds doing their homework than the course work itself. There's a lot to be said about punch card rooms for socializing.
Actually, the most hardcore lecturer/professor at my University in Australia both promoted the use of Ada and drinking heavily. I guess he taught me how to be a man.
Programming in Ada certainly put hair on my gf at the time's chest. Ewww.
All of the above can be taught in any language, including one made up by the professor (RIP Edgar Dykstra.)
Edsger Dijkstra maintained that anyone who was first taught an unstructured language like BASIC was completely and totally brain damaged from there on. See: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edsger_dijkstra.html I hope he rots in hell and I'm glad you totally mangled the spelling of his name.
The rest of your post was +5 insightful.
My CS 101 in college was in FORTRAN on punchcards, though by that point I already knew an assembly language and four or five flavors of BASIC. I've lost count of the number of different languages I've been paid to write code in. I've lost count of the number of languages I've forgotten. When I was very young I kept count of the number of computer languages I had learned until I, well, lost count at something like 20.
I think a better example is Donald Knuth. I can't find one of his intro quotes to _The Art of Programming_, but he maintained that dealing with code in several different languages before lunch was something one had to deal with. I fully agree. I also like:
The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with traditional BASIC or traditional FORTRAN, and traditional FORTRAN is extremely important historically - it proved that compiled languages could produce better code than skilled assembly language coders. Just keep in mind that learning *programming* as versus the FOTM computer language is the most important thing and you'll be fine.
I made it halfway and gave up. One of the most tedious sci-fi books i've ever had the misfortune of reading. Hardly anything happens, just a lot of Ender self reflecting.
To each his own. I like Ender's Game flawed as it is - it's clearly an epic short story (the Dragon Army battle room section) expanded into a mostly decent novel. I read the short story when it was first published, so I bought and liked the novel when it came out later.
My vote for most boring is The Hobbit. I think it's the only novel I've ever started to read and never finished. I suppose that would make LOTRO as a place I'm not supposed to go.
They chose by far the most boring of all the 'secret' locations in WoW.
To list but a few (all of which are much harder to get to these days): Hyjal, Azshara Crater, Dancing Troll Village, Programmer Isle, etc.
I don't know about the "most" part as of the places you mention, I've only been to the Dancing Troll Village.
The Troll Village is certainly cooler. It's full of NPCs. There're bridges, a bunch of huts, even fishable water. My theory is that that's where all the guys who like to post goatse links live.
The change for originality can be explained by numerous wow-clones that have flopped in the last 4 years. Even Blizzard acknowledges this, and while a WoW rehash would do 'fine' for many current WoW players, it probably wouldn't reel any new ones in.
I think you're missing the point. Why should a WoW rehash as a new game do for current WoW players? Personally, I'd rather keep playing WoW than start with another game mostly like it.
As with Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows XP, Blizzard's biggest competitor with a new MMORPG will be Blizzard's World of Warcraft. I also do not see Blizzard being a Microsoft and threatening to pull the plug on a cash cow like WoW to herd people onto a new game.
I don't see any particular start of a movement. It's Blizzard making plans on how it will compete with itself. More than likely, this will include similar incentives like they have in WoW now with TCG for current WoW players.
So... HAH, my anecdotal report meets yours in battle!
Screen shot or battle log or it didn't happen!
kelnos is Afflicted by Steve's Hunter's Mark. Steve's Hunter's Mark dissipates from kelnos. Steve has slain kelnos. Steve's ranged shot hit kelnos for 21456 damage(6542 Overkill)
* Poor privacy. T-Mobile doesn't need to know who I am or anything about me -- it's not their business. If I want to switch phones, it's easy enough to do. I don't want their junk mail, I don't want targeted ads, I don't want them selling my call history, I don't want them selling my number...basically, there are very few reasons for me to want T-Mobile to know who I am other than "someone who wants telecom service without lock-in and will pay for it".
The "l" in T-Mobile stands for lock-in. They sold me a phone that they later admitted could not be unlocked for some reason or another, after I explicitly requested a phone with international service and capability to use SMART. In 2004, they sold me a phone which did both. In 2006 they lied and sold me a piece of junk (for what I needed) that is sitting a drawer unused.
I HATE T-Mobile, HATE them. Rotten company. Rotten customer service.
Me (screaming at T-Mobile after a trip overseas): Why didn't my phone work?
T-Mobile Customer Service Rep: Sir, you were supposed to call us and enable international service before leaving the USA... um, which our records show you did on several occasions. I'm very sorry.
Rotten company, rotten service. T-Mobile sucks. They deserve to die.
I don't mean to get all Oprah on people that are complaining about SMS prices, but if they gave up two hours a month of their World of WarCraft time, and put in an extra two hours a month working at the Gas N' Sip, they'd be able to buy unlimited SMS, and we could end this tired meme once and for all...
I'm NOT willing to give up two hours a month of World of Warcraft time, but I DO want to know why SMS has to be so much more expensive in the US than in the 3rd world.
Slashdot Mirror
I got a letter back from the FTC telling me that they couldn't do anything because "I didn't provide them enough information". I gave them the time of day, the CID, and what the robo greeting said. But I guess because I didn't talk to a human, it didn't count.
They're shitting you. I didn't have valid caller id from their call. I'm not sure how I could have identified the voice I ended up talking to. Gee, it sounds female, that eliminates 50% ...
The police wouldn't followup when an eyewitness had 6 of 7 digits of the license of the driver who hit & runned me and totaled my first new car. Make/model/location out of 10 possible vehicles should mean something, right?
I kept getting mine about 11 months after I bought a new car, so the timing was particularly good. I imagine that's the person that they're targeting.
I got one of those kinds of calls in the same time frame after I bought my first car (in 1986). I presume it was legit because they asked me how many miles I had on the car, and I responded with the truth (~25k, I was driving a lot then), they hung up on me - "you're not eligible", click.
The only problem I have with your theory is that I've gotten many calls from them and I don't own a car (nor have I in the past).
My circumstances are almost as extreme as yours - I haven't owned a car under factory warranty for over two decades and it was totaled (hit & run, not my fault) a long, long time ago.
They were just calling everybody.
It was fairly close to that. I demanded to hear the name of the company they were representing and why they were calling me ... mumble, mumble, when they insisted that my auto warranty needed renewing I told them that I hadn't owned a car (in the United States) in over a decade and no, no one in my family did either and we didn't have formal residence in the US. She ended the call *very* quickly.
Scammers. I guess I spoke to the Maureen chick, because it was a female voice on the phone I talked to.
"Depending on whose numbers you use, anywhere from 60,000 to 100,000 keyboard users are injured every year Ã" some temporarily, some permanently. In time, almost 100% of keyboard users will have trouble typing" Cite please?
Sounds to me like the same kind of statistics used to prove the evils of smoking.
Or better, if you are not allowed to smoke at your desk/keyboard, but are forced to take smoke breaks (that also rest your hands), then smoking is actually good for you.
I find switching mouse hands from right to left, left to right periodically is also a good stress reliever.
I *did* start to develop signs of something in the mid 1990s - sharp pain shooting up through my arm when I handled the mouse. Switching mouse hands made it go away and it's never come back.
If you are suffering at a keyboard/mouse, it's definitely a workflow issue and not something that is inevitable.
My question to Slashdot: Given that some form of disability is almost inevitable, what's keeping you from volunteering and working with geeks who are already disabled?
Nothing at all and I added Emacspeak to XEmacs supported packages just as soon as I was made aware of it. The demo I got from its author, T.V. Raman, made a lasting impression on me. Being blind doesn't mean you have to be handicapped.
Just try and outlast, say, a bored housewife with an axe to grind and nothing better to do than grind it.
You just described my ex-wife, you insensitive clod!
The fact that Wikipedia gives references places Wikipedia ahead of the vast majority of sources out there (including virtually all of the media).
Heh. I find it vastly amusing that one of those media sites does include sources for everything - http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/
(And I trust Rush a lot more than I trust Wikipedia, even if I'm not on the Neocon bandwagon).
Any person with substantial knowledge on a topic, particularly one that isn't well known, is bound to have bias in some form.
Any person who has a brain and can think is going to have bias. That's human nature and there's NOTHING wrong with that..
Especially on Wikipedia where policy seems to be "delete all content".
That appears to be the case. I'm not sure why they have the "no trivia" policy. Trivial Pursuit was once the most popular game in the US. Encyclopedias are a natural information source for such things. (I'm also a fan of the TV game show Jeopardy!)
When I was very young my parents bought a lower end encyclopedia which I ended up reading end-to-end, partly because I love to read and partly because I love to learn new things. I am most wary of touching Wikipedia. What is wrong with this picture?
If the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation were to pay someone to edit some of the healthcare articles, I probably would be happy with that, but if they edited IT and computing articles, I wouldn't be so happy.
What reason is there to believe that they have any relevant expertise in health care? And if they did, wouldn't that make it a conflict of interest?
I put little credence in anything I read on Wikipedia; all of the articles regarding subjects that I have first hand experience with get something wrong.
11 years ago, I made a mistake editing about.el in XEmacs - I wrote 1998 instead of "present", which Wikipedia had faithfully copied the last time I checked. (checking again) I suppose I should be happy that Wikipedia has deleted my contributions entirely rather than continue to copy that mistake. Good going Wikipedians.
The difference is that the grad students are being paid to do what Wikipedia also wants them to do -- to find good information from reliable sources and incorporate it into the articles. There are multiple interests but no conflict of interest.
So government is good ...
The conflict of interest comes in when Wikipedia says "We want well-sourced information about Company X, whether it's flattering to them or not" and Editor X is being paid by Company X to include only the flattering information."
and corporations are bad?
What about the recent Google Maps controversy over including feudal Japanese boundaries showing Burakumin areas over modern maps?
Nothing written with respect to what human beings do is ever going to be neutral and unbiased.
Which city have you been to where the ambient light pollution is brighter than the moon?
Central Tokyo comes pretty close.
Very simple, AC's start moderated at 0 instead of 1, which means even most moderators will not see them
Wrong solution for what has been a suggestion from the first day moderation was added - moderators should read at -1.
There are not too many posts from Anonymous Cowardons that I want to mod up when I have mod points, but sometimes I do.
weird fonts and poor layouts
I think it's kind of cool that I see a huge block of grey space beneath your title bar, and the text of your post waaaaaay off to the right conveniently split up into one and two word lines. Good going who ever coded that up!
I also love the Options button not working any more.
What will they think of next?
Indeed, even the creator of Fortran said "actually, that was a shit idea
Interesting link. John Backus is one of the Great(est) Ones. Whatever you think of the evolution of FORTRAN, it was historically a critical turning point in programming. The folks who refused to consider anything other hand coded assembly language were discredited forever with his FORTRAN compiler.
BNF (the "B" is for Backus) is about equally as important. I wonder, teaching language for language sake, should BNF be the first language taught to students. I can think of a lot of reasons why it should be.
(From a pragmatic standpoint). My CS101 was in FORTRAN. I've never been paid to code a single line in FORTRAN, no biggie[1]. I've been in many situations where sorting out input via BNF and situations where I'm maintaining code that the author obviously had no clue about it.
[1] I took CS101 when I was still in High School through a special program and it was a lot more fun helping coeds doing their homework than the course work itself. There's a lot to be said about punch card rooms for socializing.
Actually, the most hardcore lecturer/professor at my University in Australia both promoted the use of Ada and drinking heavily. I guess he taught me how to be a man.
Programming in Ada certainly put hair on my gf at the time's chest. Ewww.
Yep, real men use ADA. ...And drink very heavily.
I think I've worked with you and many of your clones. Are you something like an anti-Twitter?
All of the above can be taught in any language, including one made up by the professor (RIP Edgar Dykstra.)
Edsger Dijkstra maintained that anyone who was first taught an unstructured language like BASIC was completely and totally brain damaged from there on. See:
http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/e/edsger_dijkstra.html
I hope he rots in hell and I'm glad you totally mangled the spelling of his name.
The rest of your post was +5 insightful.
My CS 101 in college was in FORTRAN on punchcards, though by that point I already knew an assembly language and four or five flavors of BASIC. I've lost count of the number of different languages I've been paid to write code in. I've lost count of the number of languages I've forgotten. When I was very young I kept count of the number of computer languages I had learned until I, well, lost count at something like 20.
I think a better example is Donald Knuth. I can't find one of his intro quotes to _The Art of Programming_, but he maintained that dealing with code in several different languages before lunch was something one had to deal with. I fully agree. I also like:
The most important thing in the programming language is the name. A language will not succeed without a good name. I have recently invented a very good name and now I am looking for a suitable language.
Ref: http://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/authors/d/donald_knuth.html
There's nothing intrinsically wrong with traditional BASIC or traditional FORTRAN, and traditional FORTRAN is extremely important historically - it proved that compiled languages could produce better code than skilled assembly language coders. Just keep in mind that learning *programming* as versus the FOTM computer language is the most important thing and you'll be fine.
I made it halfway and gave up. One of the most tedious sci-fi books i've ever had the misfortune of reading. Hardly anything happens, just a lot of Ender self reflecting.
To each his own. I like Ender's Game flawed as it is - it's clearly an epic short story (the Dragon Army battle room section) expanded into a mostly decent novel. I read the short story when it was first published, so I bought and liked the novel when it came out later.
My vote for most boring is The Hobbit. I think it's the only novel I've ever started to read and never finished. I suppose that would make LOTRO as a place I'm not supposed to go.
They chose by far the most boring of all the 'secret' locations in WoW.
To list but a few (all of which are much harder to get to these days):
Hyjal, Azshara Crater, Dancing Troll Village, Programmer Isle, etc.
I don't know about the "most" part as of the places you mention, I've only been to the Dancing Troll Village.
The Troll Village is certainly cooler. It's full of NPCs. There're bridges, a bunch of huts, even fishable water. My theory is that that's where all the guys who like to post goatse links live.
The change for originality can be explained by numerous wow-clones that have flopped in the last 4 years. Even Blizzard acknowledges this, and while a WoW rehash would do 'fine' for many current WoW players, it probably wouldn't reel any new ones in.
I think you're missing the point. Why should a WoW rehash as a new game do for current WoW players? Personally, I'd rather keep playing WoW than start with another game mostly like it.
As with Microsoft Vista and Microsoft Windows XP, Blizzard's biggest competitor with a new MMORPG will be Blizzard's World of Warcraft. I also do not see Blizzard being a Microsoft and threatening to pull the plug on a cash cow like WoW to herd people onto a new game.
I don't see any particular start of a movement. It's Blizzard making plans on how it will compete with itself. More than likely, this will include similar incentives like they have in WoW now with TCG for current WoW players.
So... HAH, my anecdotal report meets yours in battle!
Screen shot or battle log or it didn't happen!
kelnos is Afflicted by Steve's Hunter's Mark.
Steve's Hunter's Mark dissipates from kelnos.
Steve has slain kelnos.
Steve's ranged shot hit kelnos for 21456 damage(6542 Overkill)
* Poor privacy. T-Mobile doesn't need to know who I am or anything about me -- it's not their business. If I want to switch phones, it's easy enough to do. I don't want their junk mail, I don't want targeted ads, I don't want them selling my call history, I don't want them selling my number...basically, there are very few reasons for me to want T-Mobile to know who I am other than "someone who wants telecom service without lock-in and will pay for it".
The "l" in T-Mobile stands for lock-in. They sold me a phone that they later admitted could not be unlocked for some reason or another, after I explicitly requested a phone with international service and capability to use SMART. In 2004, they sold me a phone which did both. In 2006 they lied and sold me a piece of junk (for what I needed) that is sitting a drawer unused.
I HATE T-Mobile, HATE them. Rotten company. Rotten customer service.
Me (screaming at T-Mobile after a trip overseas): Why didn't my phone work?
T-Mobile Customer Service Rep: Sir, you were supposed to call us and enable international service before leaving the USA ... um, which our records show you did on several occasions. I'm very sorry.
Rotten company, rotten service. T-Mobile sucks. They deserve to die.
I don't mean to get all Oprah on people that are complaining about SMS prices, but if they gave up two hours a month of their World of WarCraft time, and put in an extra two hours a month working at the Gas N' Sip, they'd be able to buy unlimited SMS, and we could end this tired meme once and for all...
I'm NOT willing to give up two hours a month of World of Warcraft time, but I DO want to know why SMS has to be so much more expensive in the US than in the 3rd world.
Seriously, how do they think T-Mobile's competitors are going to legally pay and use such information?
Yeah, that struck me as funny too. I guess the crackers are just as mentally challenged as T-Mobile.