I don't like the analogy, but if you continue through with it, then yes - both Yahoo! and Hotmail offer you an option to disable spam filters in which case everything will arrive in your inbox.
That depends if they are being considered spam, or being dropped altogether. Nobody seems real clear on that yet.
Well not really! This is like the "No Solicitors" sign you see everywhere nowdays. I guess it's part of their right to block invitations, but blocking "customer service" because of ethnicity or origin that's unethical!
Yes, but your city council does not put the "No Solicitors" sign on your door for you, and give you no option to remove it if you happen to enjoy solicitors.
System designers really have to start thinking farther and farther ahead. For example - most modern desktop motherboards still have 3-4G memory limits - my older ones have 768M limits even though I have ram chips in hand that could bring that up to a gig if the MB could handle it. In 10 years from now, I can see NV memory modules that could hold 500G
I agree with you, but there are probably things that we aren't considering. When designing a circuit/processor/motherboard/whatever for both speed and efficiency, you need to set design paramaters that are reasonable for the motherboard's percieved lifetime (generally 2-3 years I would guess). If you make a motherboard with today's technology that supports 500GB of RAM, there are going to have to be significant tradeoffs with speed and other things for that support. It is hard to design hardware that is so open ended.
Although it would be nice, I don't think it's practical/cost-efficient.
Relay operators, and the telephone companies that they are contracted through, are NOT ALLOWED to imply ANYTHING about ANY of the calls. They can't even acknowledge that prank calls DO happen, much less that fraud calls happen.
I worked as a relay operator for 9 months. It wasn't that terrible of a job, for the most part. I have made some previous posts on it in the last story, if you search for those.
In the greetings, we weren't even allowed to say that the person calling was deaf or hard-of-hearing, since anybody can use a TTY and we couldn't make any assumptions at all. Instead we said the system was commonly used by people who were deaf or hard-of-hearing. Saying the system is sometimes used for fraud would be COMPLETELY crossing the line, however.
Not really. You're working as a telephone line. You also have to include grunts, stutters, all sorts of things.
You can never be sure who they are talking to, unless they say "Relay operator answer this for me" or something like that beforehand, so you relay it.
People constantly say something, change their mind because it was rude or something, and say no wait erase that. Also they say something bad while the TTY user is typing, thinking that you won't let them know that it was said.
You don't like being talked to, because if you are being monitored, you lose points for it, and there goes your raise. It's hard to handle that situation properly, so you're almost guaranteed to get a bad eval by QA.
They could be fired/jailed for that.
When I worked as a Relay Operator, the main things stressed were Confidentiality and Transparency.
You are NEVER NEVER allowed to talk to either end. Your job is a telephone line. You can't answer questions, you can't do anything. If you get asked questions, you basically have to tell the person that you are a telephone line and don't know anything, and to ask the person who they are talking to. Or my favorite thing to do was just type the questions that they asked me to the TTY user.
If you don't want to take the call, the best thing you can do is hang up. It saves the operator (me at one time) a lot of time and frustration.
If the person calls back 2 or 3 times, you might want to take the call, however. The scammers/people who aren't who they say they are won't have you do that. The real deaf people are used to that, so they have you call back a few times in hopes to get a different person who will take the call, or give you a chance to convince the person to talk.
But if you still have no intention of taking the call, just hang up, saying as little as possible.
I worked as a relay operator for about 9 months before I quit because it was ridiculous.
Mind you, this wasn't normal tty relay. This was IP-Relay, which allows anyone with a computer to use it as a tty basically.
Because I've signed NDA's and don't really want to break federal law, I can't go into detail about any calls, but I think I can safely say that what the article describes is pretty accurate.
Also, As for sex lines, that's not too common with IP-Relay. What is common though is bored high school kids calling each other and being very creative with what they make you say/type.
It's funny for a while, and not that bad of a job, but a lot of it is tedious, dull, and annoying (Touchtone menus...AARGH).
According to the article, they would have died instantaneously at that point 19 miles up due to blunt trauma, lack of oxygen, etc. So, while it is still sad and horrible, it isn't like he fell 19 miles still alive.
Slashdot Mirror
I don't like the analogy, but if you continue through with it, then yes - both Yahoo! and Hotmail offer you an option to disable spam filters in which case everything will arrive in your inbox.
That depends if they are being considered spam, or being dropped altogether. Nobody seems real clear on that yet.
Otherwise, I agree with your point.
Well not really! This is like the "No Solicitors" sign you see everywhere nowdays. I guess it's part of their right to block invitations, but blocking "customer service" because of ethnicity or origin that's unethical!
Yes, but your city council does not put the "No Solicitors" sign on your door for you, and give you no option to remove it if you happen to enjoy solicitors.
Konqueror does this for me, although I never use it. I had to open it up to test it out. I always just use command line.
I was interviewed (via phone) by MSNBC for a story on the TDD fraud. You can find my slashdot posts about it if you feel like.
I must say I felt proud to live in Wisconsin after Feingold was the only senator in the country with the balls to stand up to that.
He's getting the votes of everybody I know in the state for doing that.
You can't forget the father of modern pocket rocketry, Hugh G. Rection
That's a great link. Very impressive and better than the stuff at gamefaqs!
If I had mod points, you'd get them.
System designers really have to start thinking farther and farther ahead. For example - most modern desktop motherboards still have 3-4G memory limits - my older ones have 768M limits even though I have ram chips in hand that could bring that up to a gig if the MB could handle it. In 10 years from now, I can see NV memory modules that could hold 500G
I agree with you, but there are probably things that we aren't considering. When designing a circuit/processor/motherboard/whatever for both speed and efficiency, you need to set design paramaters that are reasonable for the motherboard's percieved lifetime (generally 2-3 years I would guess). If you make a motherboard with today's technology that supports 500GB of RAM, there are going to have to be significant tradeoffs with speed and other things for that support. It is hard to design hardware that is so open ended.
Although it would be nice, I don't think it's practical/cost-efficient.
And would also be highly illegal.
Relay operators, and the telephone companies that they are contracted through, are NOT ALLOWED to imply ANYTHING about ANY of the calls. They can't even acknowledge that prank calls DO happen, much less that fraud calls happen.
I worked as a relay operator for 9 months. It wasn't that terrible of a job, for the most part. I have made some previous posts on it in the last story, if you search for those.
In the greetings, we weren't even allowed to say that the person calling was deaf or hard-of-hearing, since anybody can use a TTY and we couldn't make any assumptions at all. Instead we said the system was commonly used by people who were deaf or hard-of-hearing. Saying the system is sometimes used for fraud would be COMPLETELY crossing the line, however.
Yeah, but a camera is less likely to be tampered with, if you get my meaning. It's easy to modify a chat log, it's harder to modify video.
Not really. You're working as a telephone line. You also have to include grunts, stutters, all sorts of things. You can never be sure who they are talking to, unless they say "Relay operator answer this for me" or something like that beforehand, so you relay it. People constantly say something, change their mind because it was rude or something, and say no wait erase that. Also they say something bad while the TTY user is typing, thinking that you won't let them know that it was said.
No, you don't.
I worked the job for 9 months.
You don't like being talked to, because if you are being monitored, you lose points for it, and there goes your raise. It's hard to handle that situation properly, so you're almost guaranteed to get a bad eval by QA.
They could be fired/jailed for that. When I worked as a Relay Operator, the main things stressed were Confidentiality and Transparency. You are NEVER NEVER allowed to talk to either end. Your job is a telephone line. You can't answer questions, you can't do anything. If you get asked questions, you basically have to tell the person that you are a telephone line and don't know anything, and to ask the person who they are talking to. Or my favorite thing to do was just type the questions that they asked me to the TTY user.
That doesnt work at all.
What they use is the free internet relay service, which lets you use your computer as a TTY.
www.ip-relay.com is one.
ATT also has one, someone earlier posted the URL.
If you don't want to take the call, the best thing you can do is hang up. It saves the operator (me at one time) a lot of time and frustration.
If the person calls back 2 or 3 times, you might want to take the call, however. The scammers/people who aren't who they say they are won't have you do that. The real deaf people are used to that, so they have you call back a few times in hopes to get a different person who will take the call, or give you a chance to convince the person to talk.
But if you still have no intention of taking the call, just hang up, saying as little as possible.
It saves the operators a lot of trouble.
I worked as a relay operator for about 9 months before I quit because it was ridiculous.
Mind you, this wasn't normal tty relay. This was IP-Relay, which allows anyone with a computer to use it as a tty basically.
Because I've signed NDA's and don't really want to break federal law, I can't go into detail about any calls, but I think I can safely say that what the article describes is pretty accurate.
Also, As for sex lines, that's not too common with IP-Relay. What is common though is bored high school kids calling each other and being very creative with what they make you say/type.
It's funny for a while, and not that bad of a job, but a lot of it is tedious, dull, and annoying (Touchtone menus...AARGH).
Something tells me you won't likely win the peace prize with that.
Chemistry would probably be your best bet...
Have a beer or two. Do some yoga. Get a massage... You're gonna be taking blood pressure pills within a year I'm predicting, hehe.
Let's hope that the rovers find a Yar rock or something and we get some spicy pictures!
According to the article, they would have died instantaneously at that point 19 miles up due to blunt trauma, lack of oxygen, etc. So, while it is still sad and horrible, it isn't like he fell 19 miles still alive.
Do you mean the puma?
Or the warthog?
Thanks for the picture. I mirrored it for you at http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~stefan/mars-hires.jpg
That should survive any slashdotting we can throw at it.
That story is possibly the awesomest story I have ever read.
Thanks for posting a link to it, I just sent it to a bunch of my friends.
I have always interpreted that one as the Universe giving us the finger.
I just googled it.
Here's a site
It looks like the most fun I will ever have in my life. I need to get a bunch of friends together and play a few games of that.