That's a great theory, but time and again (as in this case here) we see that this is not the way things actually work in the real world. In the real world corporate directors rarely ever face serious consequences for their decisions carried out by a corporation.
That would be a white list. Works great if you can, but it's not a solution for everyone. I regularly have my phone number given out as an emergency contact on events. I don't have the luxury of letting everyone go to voicemail and sorting it out later.
I tried a policy of not voting for anyone who robo-called me, that worked for precisely one election before that would have meant not voting at all. Unfortunately I still think picking the lesser of the evils is slightly better than staying home, so I end up voting for someone who robocalled me, because everyone on the ballot did.
The last one of these I talked to I told him the call was illegal because I'm on the do not call list.
His answer was "The call not illegal, I in *long pause* *horribly mispronounced version of the name of my city*" The attempt was ridiculous for 2 reasons, first of all if you have to pause to look up which city, and then can't pronounce it, you're probably not in that location, and secondly, there's no exemption to the do not call list for companies in the same city as you!
Apps stopped working when the robocallers started changing their caller id for every outgoing call. Now you have the choice of receiving the calls, or working off a whitelist of allowed callers. Unfortunately whitelists aren't a viable option for some people.
proving they called people without their permission is a lot easier than proving that they defrauded people, especially being that those who have been defrauded are often too embarrassed to come forward, and that there's practically no way to figure out which call centre they were talking to at the time they were defrauded.
It's nice that they got the cooperation of Canadian authorities, that will help them stop 0.0000001% of the calls... How about cooperation with all the third world countries that actually place these calls!
I still haven't figured out why this hasn't been stopped years ago through technological means. Stop allowing someone from overseas to spoof a local number that they don't own! I understand the need for caller id spoofing (the ability for a large company to make all outgoing calls appear to come from their main number) But I don't understand why that is done at the company's discretion instead of the carrier's, it should be tied to numbers you own, and only changeable by making another call to your phone carrier. There is never any legitimate reason to be able to spoof a number you don't own, or to be able to change your outgoing caller id on the fly. If this was fixed, blacklisting robocallers would be a piece of cake, but as it is they just change their caller id for every single call.
appointments don't need an exemption, they have your permission (and if they don't have your permission, they should honour your request not to be called!)
At least you're not in Canada, here we added an exemption for newspapers too. How often do I need to hang up on someone trying to sell me a newspaper subscription? and why on earth did they warrant an exemption?
I can see the argument for charities (though I disagree) and politicians love to make themselves immune to almost any legislation they pass, (hey, wouldn't you if given the choice?) But newspapers????? let them die in peace!
You could imprison the decision makers who authorized illegal activities... But wait, it's a corporation so we don't need any laws getting in the way..
robo-callers are on to you, many now chose a new randomized call display number appearing to be in your area with each call. A reverse lookup will just show the legitimate person who owns that number. There's no way to filter these without going to a strict whitelist (and even that has some chance of a collision error) and unfortunately whitelists aren't suitable for all people.
silent is a call centre. What happens is that real people are "expensive" (comparatively, even in whatever 3rd world country the call centre is in) whereas the auto-dialer is practically free. So the dialer calls more people than it has agents ready to talk to, knowing that many won't answer the phone, each one that answers is sent to an agent, but if there are no agents ready, you get silence. The goal of the system is not to match called parties to agents, the goal is to make sure that any time an agent is free there's a call immediately ready for them (minimize downtime) The end result is that many people will get called, but there will be no agent ready to talk to them.
When was the last time you heard someone complain that their full HD screen that's only 5" diagonally wasn't high enough resolution? That would be never. I'm all for higher resolutions, but unless you're using your phone in conjunction with a magnifying glass you just won't be able to see it at those resolutions. Meanwhile having a screen with that resolution is known to hurt battery life significantly, there's just no reason to do it. Well, there is one reason, meaningless marketing drivel to try to pretend that your rectangular slab is somehow way better than the competitors' rectangular slab, without having to spend any time or money actually coming up with a useful differentiator.
The thing is Google is no better. Every time I go to one of their properties in a non-Chrome browser, I get pestered to use Chrome....
It's just a new level of crap I have to ignore.
Actually Google *IS* better, because at least you're choosing to go to one of their sites and they pester you to use chrome, Windows is pestering you when you use chrome to go to google. If Mircrosoft wants to pester you when you visit Bing, fine, but that's not what they're doing.
During the whole thankfully-short boxoffice 3d craze of the early 2010's
I'm happy that it was short lived in your location, but it hasn't been in mine. To this day it is near impossible to find a 2D showing of any big name movie where I live. I'm sick of it. I regularly hunt around all the theatres to find the one in town that is playing in 2D, of course that usually means that I'm in a very crowded theatre indeed as everyone else is trying for the same thing.
"nobody" is a reasonable proxy for "not enough people to be a viable market"
I never truly believed there wasn't a single person on the planet who wanted it. But I do know from experience that they are very much in the minority.
Interestingly enough, people chose colour over black and white when given the option. People chose 2D over 3D when given the option. So your comparison falls down right there.
"3D" isn't in any way "better" than 2D, it isn't even really 3 dimensional. whereas adding colour, or sound, added a noticeable improvement. Sure for someone who is fully colour blind the addition of colour may not have helped them, but it never was an actual disadvantage for anyone. "3D" is a major disadvantage for many people as it requires glasses that nobody wants to wear, requires specific viewing angles, forces odd focus demands on our eyes, and gives many people headaches.
What enthusiasm? The fact that when all your showings are in 3D people reluctantly choose it over the 2D showing that you aren't even offering? Sure, that's enthusiasm....
3D is failing because nobody wanted it in the first place. They never wanted it at home, and they still don't want it in theatres. The only reason 3D sells is the lack of alternatives. For several years you almost couldn't buy a TV without it. That wasn't proof that people wanted it, it was proof that people were still buying TVs. My local theatre takes big name releases and does one 2D showing on a weekday at 2pm and 5 3D showings a night, people aren't "choosing 3D" they're trying to watch the movie.
I have in the past, and will continue to in the future, drive across town to find a 2D showing of a movie instead of being forced to watch in 3D.
If you are a safe driver, it makes you safer, if you're an idiot who isn't paying attention to the road, it makes you safer, but not as safe as an already safe driver.
Under no circumstances does this technology make you less safe. Only you can do that by being stupid and not paying attention to the road.
Autopilot doesn't "lull you into a sense of false security" YOU "lull you into a sense of false security" but only if you were already an unsafe driver.
Slashdot Mirror
As you point out, they're all scams operating offshore, they don't care what the law says because the chance of the law affecting them is zero.
That's a great theory, but time and again (as in this case here) we see that this is not the way things actually work in the real world. In the real world corporate directors rarely ever face serious consequences for their decisions carried out by a corporation.
Those are easy, I never answer calls from myself, I don't like what I have to say anyway.
That would be a white list. Works great if you can, but it's not a solution for everyone. I regularly have my phone number given out as an emergency contact on events. I don't have the luxury of letting everyone go to voicemail and sorting it out later.
I tried a policy of not voting for anyone who robo-called me, that worked for precisely one election before that would have meant not voting at all. Unfortunately I still think picking the lesser of the evils is slightly better than staying home, so I end up voting for someone who robocalled me, because everyone on the ballot did.
The last one of these I talked to I told him the call was illegal because I'm on the do not call list.
His answer was "The call not illegal, I in *long pause* *horribly mispronounced version of the name of my city*" The attempt was ridiculous for 2 reasons, first of all if you have to pause to look up which city, and then can't pronounce it, you're probably not in that location, and secondly, there's no exemption to the do not call list for companies in the same city as you!
Apps stopped working when the robocallers started changing their caller id for every outgoing call. Now you have the choice of receiving the calls, or working off a whitelist of allowed callers. Unfortunately whitelists aren't a viable option for some people.
proving they called people without their permission is a lot easier than proving that they defrauded people, especially being that those who have been defrauded are often too embarrassed to come forward, and that there's practically no way to figure out which call centre they were talking to at the time they were defrauded.
It's nice that they got the cooperation of Canadian authorities, that will help them stop 0.0000001% of the calls... How about cooperation with all the third world countries that actually place these calls!
I still haven't figured out why this hasn't been stopped years ago through technological means. Stop allowing someone from overseas to spoof a local number that they don't own! I understand the need for caller id spoofing (the ability for a large company to make all outgoing calls appear to come from their main number) But I don't understand why that is done at the company's discretion instead of the carrier's, it should be tied to numbers you own, and only changeable by making another call to your phone carrier. There is never any legitimate reason to be able to spoof a number you don't own, or to be able to change your outgoing caller id on the fly. If this was fixed, blacklisting robocallers would be a piece of cake, but as it is they just change their caller id for every single call.
appointments don't need an exemption, they have your permission (and if they don't have your permission, they should honour your request not to be called!)
At least you're not in Canada, here we added an exemption for newspapers too. How often do I need to hang up on someone trying to sell me a newspaper subscription? and why on earth did they warrant an exemption?
I can see the argument for charities (though I disagree) and politicians love to make themselves immune to almost any legislation they pass, (hey, wouldn't you if given the choice?) But newspapers????? let them die in peace!
You could imprison the decision makers who authorized illegal activities... But wait, it's a corporation so we don't need any laws getting in the way..
robo-callers are on to you, many now chose a new randomized call display number appearing to be in your area with each call. A reverse lookup will just show the legitimate person who owns that number. There's no way to filter these without going to a strict whitelist (and even that has some chance of a collision error) and unfortunately whitelists aren't suitable for all people.
silent is a call centre. What happens is that real people are "expensive" (comparatively, even in whatever 3rd world country the call centre is in) whereas the auto-dialer is practically free. So the dialer calls more people than it has agents ready to talk to, knowing that many won't answer the phone, each one that answers is sent to an agent, but if there are no agents ready, you get silence. The goal of the system is not to match called parties to agents, the goal is to make sure that any time an agent is free there's a call immediately ready for them (minimize downtime) The end result is that many people will get called, but there will be no agent ready to talk to them.
When was the last time you heard someone complain that their full HD screen that's only 5" diagonally wasn't high enough resolution? That would be never.
I'm all for higher resolutions, but unless you're using your phone in conjunction with a magnifying glass you just won't be able to see it at those resolutions. Meanwhile having a screen with that resolution is known to hurt battery life significantly, there's just no reason to do it. Well, there is one reason, meaningless marketing drivel to try to pretend that your rectangular slab is somehow way better than the competitors' rectangular slab, without having to spend any time or money actually coming up with a useful differentiator.
The thing is Google is no better. Every time I go to one of their properties in a non-Chrome browser, I get pestered to use Chrome....
It's just a new level of crap I have to ignore.
Actually Google *IS* better, because at least you're choosing to go to one of their sites and they pester you to use chrome, Windows is pestering you when you use chrome to go to google. If Mircrosoft wants to pester you when you visit Bing, fine, but that's not what they're doing.
During the whole thankfully-short boxoffice 3d craze of the early 2010's
I'm happy that it was short lived in your location, but it hasn't been in mine. To this day it is near impossible to find a 2D showing of any big name movie where I live. I'm sick of it. I regularly hunt around all the theatres to find the one in town that is playing in 2D, of course that usually means that I'm in a very crowded theatre indeed as everyone else is trying for the same thing.
"nobody" is a reasonable proxy for "not enough people to be a viable market"
I never truly believed there wasn't a single person on the planet who wanted it. But I do know from experience that they are very much in the minority.
Interestingly enough, people chose colour over black and white when given the option. People chose 2D over 3D when given the option.
So your comparison falls down right there.
"3D" isn't in any way "better" than 2D, it isn't even really 3 dimensional. whereas adding colour, or sound, added a noticeable improvement. Sure for someone who is fully colour blind the addition of colour may not have helped them, but it never was an actual disadvantage for anyone. "3D" is a major disadvantage for many people as it requires glasses that nobody wants to wear, requires specific viewing angles, forces odd focus demands on our eyes, and gives many people headaches.
Which is exactly why they pushed it so hard, it's virtually free to build, and they thought they could make a fortune selling it.
The part they missed was that people didn't want it.
What enthusiasm? The fact that when all your showings are in 3D people reluctantly choose it over the 2D showing that you aren't even offering? Sure, that's enthusiasm....
3D is failing because nobody wanted it in the first place. They never wanted it at home, and they still don't want it in theatres. The only reason 3D sells is the lack of alternatives. For several years you almost couldn't buy a TV without it. That wasn't proof that people wanted it, it was proof that people were still buying TVs. My local theatre takes big name releases and does one 2D showing on a weekday at 2pm and 5 3D showings a night, people aren't "choosing 3D" they're trying to watch the movie.
I have in the past, and will continue to in the future, drive across town to find a 2D showing of a movie instead of being forced to watch in 3D.
Apparently she Slashdot couldn't handle the percent sign in my comment, that's 40 percent fewer collisions.
In fact it's working so poorly that the report states there are 40 fewer collisions while using it. We could all hope other systems work so poorly.
But let's not let facts get in the way of your preconceived notions.
Personal responsibility is so last century, we don't do that any more. It's always SOMEONE's fault, and it's never our own!
If you are a safe driver, it makes you safer, if you're an idiot who isn't paying attention to the road, it makes you safer, but not as safe as an already safe driver.
Under no circumstances does this technology make you less safe. Only you can do that by being stupid and not paying attention to the road.
Autopilot doesn't "lull you into a sense of false security" YOU "lull you into a sense of false security" but only if you were already an unsafe driver.