Well said. My guess is that MySpace does just as much for catching these predators as it does to facilitate them. MySpace leaves a great "paper trail" that can lead directly to whomever uses it for this sort of behavior.
Here are a few good tricks for telemarketers that I've learned (I was one for a brief while):
Act interested, put them on speaker phone, set the phone down and do something else. When you hear them pause, ask them a question. Then set the phone down again. This takes up a lot of their time and also saves someone else from getting a call.
Keep a phone in the bathroom - especially if, like me, you only use your phone for DSL. After they give you their pitch, don't hesitate to tell them where you are and exactly what you are doing (be careful that you dont violate any laws though!). After giving a two minute upsell, a simple "I'm taking a dump right now" can be very effective.
When I was in college, some friends & I kept a list of 800 numbers for companies that had pissed us off. While on the john we would just go down the list, waste their time, and then politely inform them about the status of turtle head / how much cable was just laid / etc.
Yeah, I know, I'm a mean bastard. They deserve it though.
Re:Disappointing? Certainly. But...
on
How Vista Disappoints
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Interface Consistency = Business Model
How does Microsoft make money? 1. Selling software. 2. Selling Books for that software. 3. Selling Certifications.
So what happens after everyone who is going to buy an OS, Book, & Cert has bought them all? What does Microsoft do? They announce that the old stuff is no longer supported, everyone has to buy the new stuff now! Then the mayhem starts. Applications slowly begin to break. Interfaces are no longer "flashy" or "in style". Then it hits the mainstream. "You don't have the new version yet? Wow, that OS is like 6 years old. You must not be on top of the IT world after all." Adoption hits critical mass, consumers start to flock to the new software. Now even the hard-core techies have to learn the bullshit new interfaces, programming languages, etc.
Point is, Microsoft's business model relies on breaking things. They can't sell the new stuff until they break the old. This is why Microsoft is dangerous to business on the whole.
> a) You may install up to two copies of the software on one device.
I'm a web developer and would like to start testing my sites with Internet Explorer 7 (which is currently in beta but overwrites IE6). Unfortunately MS requires Genuine Windows Advantage validation to download IE7. Can I validate both my host OS and my virtual guest OS with the same CD Key? Has anyone else encountered this problem? Am I the only one who can't stand this CD key validation crap?
(just kidding about that last question, i know the answer. the rest was serious though.)
I would love to cancel my AT&T / SBC services but... my rental agreement requires that I have a phone line for my security system. What can I do? If I complain to AT&T no one will care.
If the folks at NASA were smart, they would set up some incentives for those who make useful contributions or error corrections to their open source software. They could list contributors names in some official gov't document, engrave their names and shoot it out into space, whatever. But I'm sure it would be easy to think up some *very* attractive incentives for young hackers to contribute to their products. And how cool would it be to not only have helped NASA out, but also be able to say that your name is listed in the Library of Congress as a NASA software contributor, or that your name is on some tablet speeding towards outer space?
They are trying to find evidence to support their position, when they should be examining the evidence to determine if the law is warranted in the first place!
I have several entries in my contact list for "Wrong Number" (I save them anytime I get a call that's a wrong number). I also have several entries for "Wong Number" because "Wrong" has a home phone, cell, fax, pager, and other phone number...
Wouldn't the market just develop it's own solution to the problem? I mean, if no one could pick anything up, why would anyone bother to broadcast? What would happen if the solution were allowed to evolve naturally?
In my mp3 collection, I have 18,000 songs in ~3,000 albums. It took Media Center more than 24 hours to add the first 1500 albums into it's database. Of course at that point I cancelled the operation. What kind of crappy Media Center takes that long just to build a song database? Ampache does it in less than 2 hours.
i am building a computer for my grandmother. it's a compaq, and the first thing i did was format the hard drive. then i install from my copy of windows XP Home. it turns out that Compaq CD keys don't work for a regular version of XP Home or XP Corporate. i can't find the cd that came with the computer. so now i own a license for windows XP Home but am unable to install it. it's really a royal pain in the ass, especially when i have access to other versions of XP but cannot use my cd key with them.
How do I find out if this will affect my TV? (I'm at work so I don't know the model number). Is there a list somewhere? Is there a cutoff date where after a certain manufacture date everything is cool?
I agree that oftentimes what appears to be a "conspiracy" is actually just emergent properties of the system as you described. But I also think that there is a certain breed of predator that functions quite while in the modern system. And at least some of those predators (Duke Cunningham? Tom Delay? Jack Abramoff?) are probably involved in very real conspiracies, that are quite harmful to our country, our economy, and the people of the USA.
The real questions are who was responsible for hiring him, who should have checked his references, and who influenced his decisions to pressure the little guys. Those people should all be fired as publicly as possible.
Party affiliation is always relevant. It should be mentioned in every article that mentions a politician. It's a great way for everyone to learn how the political parties differ in real life as opposed to how they differ in advertising and marketing.
Popularity is absolutely the wrong goal. How about Effectiveness and small footprint? How about Easy-to-use without intrusive "value-added" bloat? How about standards compliance and a powerful, open plugin interface? Any of those would make great goals. But popularity? I sincerely hope that popularity isn't the primary goal of most open-source projects.
The majority of drug users consider alcohol to be a hard drug.
Bullshit. I know a lot of drug users. Give me an hour or two and I can think of a hundred easily. I guarantee that not one of them thinks alcohol is a hard drug. Suggesting that alcohol use and opium use have similarities is completely irrelevant to whether or not alcohol is a hard drug. These are the same kinds of arguments that they put in those little drug propaganda booklets that the D.A.R.E. program distributes. And those arguments are at best unscientific and unproven, but in most cases they are blatant lies.
I agree that Open Source gaming is "on the cusp". I think the bottleneck is that the Developers (coders) keep trying to write content for their games. Most open source games have great potential, but lousy content. To make things even worse, creating content for most games is such an arcane, laborious task, that good artists and writers are scared away.
There are scores of modders and amateur level designers out there just waiting for an engine that is easy to mod...
If you are a good shot, and are able to think clearly when bullets are flying, you are an excellent candidate. The military has physical training programs (coupled with a carefully controlled diet, and psychological/emotional framework built into the training regimen) that can turn a fat, out-of-shape twenty-something man into a perfect cannon-fodder/drone/soldier.
And if someone is over the threshold (100 pounds overweight? 200 pound overweight? who knows?) maybe they can use gastric-bypass surgery and make it cost-effective. Actually, what if the military could offer to turn a fat gamer into a lean, mean, chick-getting machine? The game is only the first part of a screening & marketing procedure.
You made it to level 50 in the game? Guess what? You qualify for a $5,000 signing bonus *and* gastric bypass surgery. You may also qualify for cosmetic surgery by skilled military technicians!
So it looks like Alek knows how to run an apache webserver, and at 11:11pm central time the webcam is still running, and giving what appears to be alot of diagnostic info about the slashdot effect. What happens when this kind of traffic hits non-apache webservers? Is Apache the only webserver that can handle the slashdot effect? Is Apache the only webserver that can handle and be admin'd by a regular guy in his spare time?
I was thinking about this recently, although in the context of using social security numbers for account numbers for things like bank accounts, schools, etc.
My question is this: Are the benefits gained greater than the losses? I haven't been able to think of a benefit that is so great that it justifies being treated like a criminal. So I guess we need to ask what is gained by having computer-scannable driver's licenses. I don't think that the average person gains anything. It's the police that gain from something like this.
Are counterfeit driver's licenses a life-threatening problem? Are they such a problem that any cop needs to be able to verify all my vital stats at the flip of a switch? If this is all just to fight terrorism than I'm just not buying it.
Slashdot Mirror
Well said. My guess is that MySpace does just as much for catching these predators as it does to facilitate them. MySpace leaves a great "paper trail" that can lead directly to whomever uses it for this sort of behavior.
Here are a few good tricks for telemarketers that I've learned (I was one for a brief while):
Act interested, put them on speaker phone, set the phone down and do something else. When you hear them pause, ask them a question. Then set the phone down again. This takes up a lot of their time and also saves someone else from getting a call.
Keep a phone in the bathroom - especially if, like me, you only use your phone for DSL. After they give you their pitch, don't hesitate to tell them where you are and exactly what you are doing (be careful that you dont violate any laws though!). After giving a two minute upsell, a simple "I'm taking a dump right now" can be very effective.
When I was in college, some friends & I kept a list of 800 numbers for companies that had pissed us off. While on the john we would just go down the list, waste their time, and then politely inform them about the status of turtle head / how much cable was just laid / etc.
Yeah, I know, I'm a mean bastard. They deserve it though.
Interface Consistency = Business Model
How does Microsoft make money? 1. Selling software. 2. Selling Books for that software. 3. Selling Certifications.
So what happens after everyone who is going to buy an OS, Book, & Cert has bought them all? What does Microsoft do? They announce that the old stuff is no longer supported, everyone has to buy the new stuff now! Then the mayhem starts. Applications slowly begin to break. Interfaces are no longer "flashy" or "in style". Then it hits the mainstream. "You don't have the new version yet? Wow, that OS is like 6 years old. You must not be on top of the IT world after all." Adoption hits critical mass, consumers start to flock to the new software. Now even the hard-core techies have to learn the bullshit new interfaces, programming languages, etc.
Point is, Microsoft's business model relies on breaking things. They can't sell the new stuff until they break the old. This is why Microsoft is dangerous to business on the whole.
> a) You may install up to two copies of the software on one device.
I'm a web developer and would like to start testing my sites with Internet Explorer 7 (which is currently in beta but overwrites IE6). Unfortunately MS requires Genuine Windows Advantage validation to download IE7. Can I validate both my host OS and my virtual guest OS with the same CD Key? Has anyone else encountered this problem? Am I the only one who can't stand this CD key validation crap?
(just kidding about that last question, i know the answer. the rest was serious though.)
I would love to cancel my AT&T / SBC services but... my rental agreement requires that I have a phone line for my security system. What can I do? If I complain to AT&T no one will care.
If the folks at NASA were smart, they would set up some incentives for those who make useful contributions or error corrections to their open source software. They could list contributors names in some official gov't document, engrave their names and shoot it out into space, whatever. But I'm sure it would be easy to think up some *very* attractive incentives for young hackers to contribute to their products. And how cool would it be to not only have helped NASA out, but also be able to say that your name is listed in the Library of Congress as a NASA software contributor, or that your name is on some tablet speeding towards outer space?
They are trying to find evidence to support their position, when they should be examining the evidence to determine if the law is warranted in the first place!
I have several entries in my contact list for "Wrong Number" (I save them anytime I get a call that's a wrong number). I also have several entries for "Wong Number" because "Wrong" has a home phone, cell, fax, pager, and other phone number...
Wouldn't the market just develop it's own solution to the problem? I mean, if no one could pick anything up, why would anyone bother to broadcast? What would happen if the solution were allowed to evolve naturally?
In my mp3 collection, I have 18,000 songs in ~3,000 albums. It took Media Center more than 24 hours to add the first 1500 albums into it's database. Of course at that point I cancelled the operation. What kind of crappy Media Center takes that long just to build a song database? Ampache does it in less than 2 hours.
sounds kinda like slashdot to me.
i am building a computer for my grandmother. it's a compaq, and the first thing i did was format the hard drive. then i install from my copy of windows XP Home. it turns out that Compaq CD keys don't work for a regular version of XP Home or XP Corporate. i can't find the cd that came with the computer. so now i own a license for windows XP Home but am unable to install it. it's really a royal pain in the ass, especially when i have access to other versions of XP but cannot use my cd key with them.
How do I find out if this will affect my TV? (I'm at work so I don't know the model number). Is there a list somewhere? Is there a cutoff date where after a certain manufacture date everything is cool?
I agree that oftentimes what appears to be a "conspiracy" is actually just emergent properties of the system as you described. But I also think that there is a certain breed of predator that functions quite while in the modern system. And at least some of those predators (Duke Cunningham? Tom Delay? Jack Abramoff?) are probably involved in very real conspiracies, that are quite harmful to our country, our economy, and the people of the USA.
The real questions are who was responsible for hiring him, who should have checked his references, and who influenced his decisions to pressure the little guys. Those people should all be fired as publicly as possible.
This would make a perfect entertainment system remote by using a VNC Client... Anyone know if this is doable?
If God didn't want us to make clones of humans, he wouldn't have invented science...
Party affiliation is always relevant. It should be mentioned in every article that mentions a politician. It's a great way for everyone to learn how the political parties differ in real life as opposed to how they differ in advertising and marketing.
Popularity is absolutely the wrong goal. How about Effectiveness and small footprint? How about Easy-to-use without intrusive "value-added" bloat? How about standards compliance and a powerful, open plugin interface? Any of those would make great goals. But popularity? I sincerely hope that popularity isn't the primary goal of most open-source projects.
Bullshit. I know a lot of drug users. Give me an hour or two and I can think of a hundred easily. I guarantee that not one of them thinks alcohol is a hard drug. Suggesting that alcohol use and opium use have similarities is completely irrelevant to whether or not alcohol is a hard drug. These are the same kinds of arguments that they put in those little drug propaganda booklets that the D.A.R.E. program distributes. And those arguments are at best unscientific and unproven, but in most cases they are blatant lies.
I agree that Open Source gaming is "on the cusp". I think the bottleneck is that the Developers (coders) keep trying to write content for their games. Most open source games have great potential, but lousy content. To make things even worse, creating content for most games is such an arcane, laborious task, that good artists and writers are scared away.
There are scores of modders and amateur level designers out there just waiting for an engine that is easy to mod...
If you are a good shot, and are able to think clearly when bullets are flying, you are an excellent candidate. The military has physical training programs (coupled with a carefully controlled diet, and psychological/emotional framework built into the training regimen) that can turn a fat, out-of-shape twenty-something man into a perfect cannon-fodder/drone/soldier.
And if someone is over the threshold (100 pounds overweight? 200 pound overweight? who knows?) maybe they can use gastric-bypass surgery and make it cost-effective. Actually, what if the military could offer to turn a fat gamer into a lean, mean, chick-getting machine? The game is only the first part of a screening & marketing procedure.
You made it to level 50 in the game? Guess what? You qualify for a $5,000 signing bonus *and* gastric bypass surgery. You may also qualify for cosmetic surgery by skilled military technicians!
So it looks like Alek knows how to run an apache webserver, and at 11:11pm central time the webcam is still running, and giving what appears to be alot of diagnostic info about the slashdot effect. What happens when this kind of traffic hits non-apache webservers? Is Apache the only webserver that can handle the slashdot effect? Is Apache the only webserver that can handle and be admin'd by a regular guy in his spare time?
careful what you say. big brother really is watching.
4
http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2001/12/20/211923/8
I was thinking about this recently, although in the context of using social security numbers for account numbers for things like bank accounts, schools, etc.
My question is this: Are the benefits gained greater than the losses? I haven't been able to think of a benefit that is so great that it justifies being treated like a criminal. So I guess we need to ask what is gained by having computer-scannable driver's licenses. I don't think that the average person gains anything. It's the police that gain from something like this.
Are counterfeit driver's licenses a life-threatening problem? Are they such a problem that any cop needs to be able to verify all my vital stats at the flip of a switch? If this is all just to fight terrorism than I'm just not buying it.