That is a good idea, except in the fact that the artists that are represented (if you can call it that) by the RIAA have contracts with the RIAA saying they can't do just that. That is like me going to you, saying you market my new software for me. You say OK, here is your 15 year exclusive contract so only Brendan Byrd & Co. can market your software, and we pay you 2% of the profit.
If another company comes to me tomorrow and says Brendon Byrd & Co. is ripping you off, we will give you 25%, it would be breach of contract if I go with them before the original terms of the contract (15 years in this case) are completed.
There are smaller independant labels which are doing just that, giving better cuts to the artists, looser terms on the contracts, and treat the artists better in general. Unfortunately at this point they just don't have the exposure and power to lure some big names to thier side to help get that ball rolling. Those companies aren't "taking a chance" in the sense that your post implied and butting heads with the RIAA. They are simply operating a business and offering terms to artists. They are not operating under the table and encouraging smaller artists to breach their contracts.
Wow! The time that I got fed up enough to get a cell was just after they raised the price from $.25 to $.35 per call. I can't imagine paying that much unless it was long distance, which may be equivilant to calling the cell network.
"Let's see, less people are using pay phones so let's raise the price, stop free calls by blocking certain toll-free numbers and preventing incomming calls. Oh, and the toll free numbers have to pay us a per call charge to get off of the block list. Yeah, that'll drive more customers to use the phones and get us our profits back!" - Some big-wig suit at the local phone monopoly.
I think the phone companies are too smart for their own good sometimes. They're just as bad as the RIAA.
You have your phone for a different reason than the original poster then. My only point was that he could have his cake, and eat it too, if he so desired. Since you have your phone in order to be contacted while out and about, then my response didn't necessarily apply to you.
I have my phone so that I can be contacted away from home. I could care less who gets my number because I use it as my main phone. In fact, I am moving this next week and will be getting cable instead of DSL so I won't even be hooking up a land line.
Yes, I have recieved telemarketing calls on my cell, and I just politely tell them it is a cell phone and to add it to their do-not-call list. It has worked, and I have never gotten a repeated call, or an increase in volume shortly thereafter.
As far as paying for your incomming minutes, just ignore calls that aren't local to you or where your family won't be calling from. Send them to voice mail and answer it later on. If it is important, the person will call right back if they aren't a marketer (and you could even modify your outgoing message to reflect this.) Chances are they won't even leave a message if it is a marketing call. This way you aren't charged with the incomming minute.
Personally I don't understand why so many people think telemarketing is such a big deal. It would be one thing if it was 10 times a day, but I don't know anyone that gets more than a few calls per week. I guess it just isn't hard for me to say no thanks and hang up the phone. Now if the volume were to increase drasticly, such as with e-mail spam, it would be different. But in all honesty, over the last few years the call rate has been going down for me, rather than up.
I know what you mean. I used to carry a pager, and relied on pay phones to return calls if I was out and about. Sadly it became to the point that by the time I drove around to find one, and paid the ever-increasing coinage, it made it very easy to justify the switch to a cell phone.
In my area, my coverage is very good so I don't have that problem to worry about. Most of the time I leave my phone on silent so I know about the call, but don't annoy everybody around me with it.
The answer to your first question is the second question. Companies continue to use these marketing techniques because they work. Plain and simple.
Random Marketing Company pays a person $10 an hour to make calls selling the new TV Widget at $39.95. Say the profit margin on said widget is $5 each after you take into account the cost of the phone lines, etc. A marketer can easily reach 10 potential customers per hour, not counting the 40 or so other calls where the person isn't home, hangups, busy signals, etc. If only 2 of the people contacted buy the product, it is break even. More than likely the number will be closer to 40 or 50 percent, depending on the product, price, and source of the number list. If 50% buy, that is 5 per hour, or $15 profit per person per hour. Multiply that by 100 people in the call center, $1500 per hour *profit.* Again multiply by 16 hours of calling time per day (8 am to 9 pm, and timezone differences) and voila: $24,000 profit per day. Continue down the line to 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year, and you see where the numbers go.
As for the answer to your second question, sometimes the calls actually are for good deals. When I was in high school, I worked for a company that called existing magazine customers and offered a low renewal rate. In all but a very few exceptions, these renewals cost less than the regular renewal rate, and even less than the new subscriber "fall in the lap card" rate. If a customer wanted to keep their subscription, it was stupid (in the expensive sense) of them not to take advantage of the rate.
Now don't go and say that it isn't stupid of them because credit cards aren't safe over the phone to someone you don't know. That is true. But if they wanted to renew, we were just as happy to send them an invoice as to take the number over the phone.
Sorry for the long post, but my point is that telemarketing is profitable, and will continue to be used as long as the fact stays true. The moment that people stop buying from telemarketers and it becomes an expense, is the same moment telemarketers go away.
I don't regret working for the company. There really isn't too much more of an ideal job for a student. They worked around my school hours and extra-curricular events, let me do homework on downtime between calls (and no we didn't use a predictive dialer, we had a modem at our desk that dialed the number when we hit "next call" on the dumb terminal) and they paid about $10 per hour after you added in commissions. It beat the hell out of working at some fast food joint for minimum wage and the working conditions were orders better.
This may be overly obvious, but if you don't want to be reached when you are out and about, just turn your cell phone off or leave it at home. Just because you CAN take it away from your house, doesn't mean you HAVE to. That way you still get the benefit of the cheap long distance calls, without the (in)convenience of being reached anywhere.
Thank you for the civil response! Your response does clarify the meaning of your original post, and I appologize for not getting your meaning the first time. I do have a couple of counter points to your response.
With P2P, now you can just get it in the queue, and a few days later you have it.
This is very true, but I think the swappers are spoiled from the MP3 days. Download an MP3 in less time than it takes to listen to it, or a movie in several days. I think at this point most people would rather go spend $4 in the local rental store than wait that long to see a movie. Or with the wait times that high, Netflix is just as good, but higher quality.
In some ways, it's [watching on PC rather than the TV] better, because of its higher definition monitor. I never really got the impression that the holy grail of DVD rips was to play on the TV.
The reason I still feel it is the driving factor is because of comfort and the overall experience. Most people still have TVs that are very large compared to their PC monitors. A college student in a dorm room would be a definite exception. Because of that size difference, people can sit on a more comfortable couch or recliner farther away from the screen. Home Theater sound systems are still orders better than the PC counterparts. Yes, I know you can hook the PC up to the theater reciever, but most people do not do this yet.
Movies have made it clear that you're not to trade them. Now whether or not people abide by that is a seperate discussion, but what remains is that the users cannot claim ignorance.
As time goes on, I think this distinction will go away. I'm sure most of the downloaded movies do not have those warnings attached. The same ignorance can be drawn when someone downloads the movie, "It didn't have the warning on it when I started watching it like normal movies, so I thought it was a non-protected movie." I know that is stretching it at this point in time, but I believe the average music downloader would make that connection very easily when starting to download movies.
Thank you very much for the conversation, I really appreciate the thoughtful discussions here rather than the usual name calling match that appears on this forum so often. Welcome to my friends list.:-)
I agree with you wholeheartedly about how the RIAA has made their own bed. However, your last comment leaves a little to be desired for me. While there aren't as many DVD rips out there, I don't think it is because of the warning label. People used to copy VHS movies all the time, and many copied the FBI warning right along with the movie itself. I even had a friend who had a tape with nothing but the various warnings he had seen and collected.
I don't know the full reason why there aren't as many DVD rips out there, but I do have a few guesses.
1. DVD rips are huge, and broadband isn't quite as popular with the non-Slashdot crowd. It takes about 20 minutes to download the average MP3 file over a 56K modem. I don't even want to think about a DVD rip.
2. You can easily (and cheaply) burn MP3s out to a CD and listen to it on your home and car stereo. DVDs are still relatively expensive to do so. Recorders are comming down, but they still aren't at the free-after-rebate price point from the large PC chains. And the media isn't literally dime a dozen yet. MP3s really took off when it became cheap to use them away from the PC. DVDs are not yet to that point.
3. DVD ripping software isn't as simple as MP3 software. Last time I tried to copy a trailer off of a DVD to take with me to work, there were 3 separate programs that had to be installed and each one had 5 or 6 settings I had to play with to make it work right. With MP3, half of the CD player software out there asks if you want to rip it when you insert it to play. And they all go into the same directory tree. Install your favorite file sharing software, it autoscans and finds the directory, and there is the huge assortment of rips. I know there have been software advances since I tried, but that is one of the reasons I haven't tried for so long. It took too much effort for too little reward (see #2 again.)
I'm sure the warning labels do deter a few people, but I believe the majority of them are detered for price or technical limitations.
There are several aspects of the sport that make it fun and interesting.
1. It takes you to places you didn't know existed. I went out after one with my brother a month back and we had no idea where it was. Turns out it was at an old, practically adbandoned, city park. It appears to still be maintained, but in the several times I have gone back down there I haven't seen another soul.
2. It is not as easy as it seems. GPS gets you close, sometimes very close. But it can still be several yards or more off on a good day. You may get to a point where your GPS is reading the exact coordinates, but it is still 10 feet away. You have to look and find it. Some people are very creative when they hide things so it is a challenge.
3. Meeting new people with common interests. I have run into fellow cachers several times when out seeking a cache. In my area, there are even large meetings that are held, which usually end up in a day-long event.
4. Practice using GPS and navigational skills. Many people have a GPS, hoping to use it to get them out of a sticky situation when hunting, camping, or some other outdoor activity. What better way to practice than to use it to find something? In the real world, it isn't always "walk in a straight line from point A to point B" so practice is nice to have when the need arises to stray from the line.
It is basically hide and seek for big kids. It is still exciting to find one, especially if it is one you have been back to a few times trying to find and have been skunked each previous time.
I'm sure others will have some other reasons they participate as well, but those are the primary reason I do it, other than it is a good way to get outdoors and still be a geek at the same time.
I'll second that motion. A good majority of the music I purchased was as a result of looking for one song, and downloading several incorrect matches. Part of the time I actually ended up liking better than the song I was originally looking for!
I partially agree with you, but there is collateral damage.
Sure, an ISP may very well knowingly (or accidently) allow spammers to roam free on their network, and they get blacklisted. Yes it is their fault, and yes, they deserve to get blacklisted until they fix their technical issues and/or policies to disallow the spam.
The collateral damage is the users of the said ISP. For example, my mother, as much as I have tried to teach, is not technically savvy by any stretch. She has a hard enough time feeling confident in checking her e-mail and browsing the web. Say her ISP gets blocked. Now she tries to send an e-mail to a friend whose ISP subscribes to the blacklist. Her message will get bounced, or worse yet, dropped, and it is by no fault of her own, or the person to whom she is sending the message.
In this scenario, she has no idea that her ISP had been blocked. The person she is sending the message to has no idea that her ISP subscribes to a blacklist. Both people in this case are collateral damage. And as some people have mentioned in other threads there are contracts for ISP service, so simply changing ISPs is not an option for most people. My mother, for example, gets a much better rate by paying 2 years in advance, and has a contract of the same term. Luckily her ISP is very astute at spam control (one of the reasons I selected it for her) but if they had a technical issue, even temporarily, she could still get nailed.
I believe the blacklists truely do mean well, and I think they would be very useful if not taken verbatim, such as used as part of a spam score, rather than a complete blacklist. The other thing that would trememdously help is for the entries to expire after some time. I have seen a blacklist (I don't remember which one, it has been a while) that starts out by blocking an individual IP for 24 hours, then it is removed from the block. If the abuse continues, it is blocked for a week, and it goes on from there. Same with the address block. If the user changes IPs enough, the system just expands out both the time and the address block until the time limit expires and there is no further abuse.
Another thing that would make the blacklists more user friendly, is if the blacklist systems sent out status messages. Such as if ISP B blocked a message from my mom's IP, the bounce message would have a message stating why it was banned and to contact their ISP for more details. The blocking ISP should generate a list of all messages blocked by the system, and send that on a daily or weekly basis, depending on the volume. Then the recipient would not only see the benefit the list provides, but would see my mom's address and be able to let her know she didn't get the message.
I know this ended up being a lot longer of a post than I originally intended, but I feel I was able to make my point. To sum it up, while I agree that the blacklists are a good thing, there are issues, and there are innocent people who are affected by them.
Jeremy
Re:Napster will be remembered as brilliant
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You hit the nail on the head. I don't know how many CDs I purchased because I was trying to find a song I heard somewhere, and downloaded others not sure if they were it or not. Many times I downloaded something more obscure that I liked better than the original. Download a couple more to see if it was just a fluke, and off to my favorite online CD retailer and on the way it was.
This is what I expected. Landline carriers do this already (at least Qwest does) so why would wireless be any different?
I was charged a $.80 or so per month fee for number portability when there were no other local operators in my area to switch to! I asked them what I was paying portability for it the number weren't portable yet, and they said there was nothing they could do about it.
I like the wording you use, but it should not be on an insert, it should be across the center of the front of the cover art. No literate consumer should be able to say they didn't know about it before they purchased it.
If it were inside in the form of an insert, bad news. Most stores only let you return an opened media item for the exact title. If you didn't know it was right-infringing until you opened it, you would still be stuck.
It it were on top of the cover art, it would be visible, and would probably force a few artists to say, "I won't allow that text on top of my picture... Make sure you don't put it on there." Since the record label would be required to display the warning in that location, they would be forced to remove the copy protection to comply with the artist's requirements.
I know artists really don't have that much to say anymore, but if they were all upset, maybe it would help.
This doesn't work. In my area, they tried this and it got shut down pretty quick. Unless there is a solid picture of the driver in the car, it does no good. The driver is to be fined, not the owner of the car.
Too many cases had to be thrown out, due to "Yes, your honor, that is a picture of my car. However I was not driving my car."
"Who was driving your car at that day and time?"
"Well, that was 3 months ago by the time I got the mail and got this court date was set, and I don't remember if I let Marv, Harry, or Bill drive it to get lunch that day. Or it could have been my wife or daughter, I don't know which one of us took the car that day."
Burdon of proof of the driver is on the State side, not the accused. As long as you can give a reasonable doubt whether or not it was you, then you're off.
Now if they were to have several camera angles with polarized lenses take a picture, to combat window glare, they may have a chance of these holding up in court.
Photo Radar is the same way, it proves too hard to prove who was driving the car, it takes less effort for an officer to hide behind a road sign and write tickets to the person sitting in the drivers seat.
I definitely agree that people need to stop running red lights, as that is more dangerous than pretty much any other traffic violation, but these automated systems have a very long way to go before they will be acceptable evidence in court.
I know what you mean! I thought that movie was pretty cool a few years back when I saw it. I would love to have some of the tech they use in that movie, that is for sure!
Go back even farther! I still enjoy digging out my dad's old Atari and playing Asteroids, Skydive, Slot Racers, Breakout... I'm 22 years old here, but I'm not sure when my dad got it, college or after, not sure.
I also enjoy playing SMB (The original, never cared much for 2 or 3. Duck Hunt, Tiger Heli. There are newer games and systems that make those look like absolute crap, but I enjoy playing them as much (if not more in some cases) than the new games.
But, if you had a next door neighbor kid who can do just as acceptable of a job, and do it for free, would you still pay your $20 per month? Of course not. Either that, or your lawn service will convince you that it is better to pay for him, than to get it for free.
Satellite is arguably better than the traditional broadcast outlets, but a majority of the consumers don't see it that way. Look at Digital Satellite TV vs. traditional digital cable. I have had both, and Satellite is hands-down better. Less outtages (by far,) better quality, no ads in the guide, more channels, less monthly fee. But how many more consumers have land-based cable, because they don't see the value in Satellite?
My wife worked for a company selling satellite systems and service. She literally couldn't GIVE AWAY satellite systems to many existing cable customers, even though they would save $15+ per month, and get more channels! Installation was free as well. The only catch, was they had to keep service for a year. The monthly fees they would have saved over the year, would have almost paid for the year in itself.
But they believed all the hype that the cable companies put out to keep people from switching to satellite, without researching it themselves.
On a side note, I currently don't have any TV service at all, not even a local broadcast antenna. I'm tired of watching TV shows that are crummy to start with, and has more commercial time than acting time in any given.5 hour period. But if I were paying for it again, I would be doing what I could to lower the price to value ratio.
I don't know what law you are thinking of that says "if somebody asks the undercover cop if they're a cop, they have to say 'yes'." because that statement is entirely false. If you are thinking of entrapment laws, they merely state that police can't entice a person into doing something they wouldn't normally do.
An officer can't unlock a business door and beg someone to go steal a TV. They can, however, leave the door unlocked and survail the site, and arrest anyone who goes in and does steal.
By the same reason, if an officer logs into a w4rez site, and offers a version of WhizSoft Doors XT for download, he can log their information and press charges against the person who downloaded it. Even if the person asked if they are a cop, and he told them no. Now if the officer randomly spammed people's email and/or instant message software telling people to download a free copy of the software, that would be across the line because it is pushing people to do something they wouldn't normally do.
IANAL, but this is the way it was described to me by several friends of mine involved in the Law Enforcement "industry." But it does make sense to me.
I used a device a little while back called the Internet Phone Wizard. You can take a look at http://www.internetphonewizard.com which has prices and such. The device sounds like what you are looking for, as it functions as a USB standard audio interface that feeds a POTS phone. It does have some dial tone generation stuff in it, and a line grabbing feature (plug in phone line, then phone, then you hit # to get the IP line instead of the POTS line) but once you pick up the phone and press a number, the dial tone goes away and you can feed audio to a standard phone.
The software it comes with uses many of the standard Internet to Telephone gateways such as deltathree, dialpad, etc. It worked as well as those services, which is why I no longer needed mine. I don't have a use for a telephone audio card at the moment, so I eBayed it and recovered my costs.
If you need a VOIP to POTS sollution, I would not recommend the device, but again, that is not because of the device itself, just the services it connects to. But if you need to be able to feed audio into a phone, it would work great.
I installed Kazaa the other day at home, knowing it would attempt to install the BDE3 (I think) viewer. Since my hard drive is NTFS, I created the BDE directory under my second account, and used NTFS permissions to be only readable/writable by the "Administrator" account. I thought that would stop it from installing. I was wrong, however. The program simply installed inside of a different directory.
It doesn't run because I did the same thing to that directory, but it still installed when I took fairly advanced measures to prevent it. The fact that programmers are writing applications that users have no control over is a step in the wrong direction. I don't want the "3D Advertising Projector" on my system, yet it installed anyway. That to me sounds like something Norton should be protecting from...
I do write simple programs for personal use for myself. I have given a few to friends, but I never install a "Jeremy in 3D" viewer or anything like that. Note to programmers: If it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the operation of the program, go ahead and force installation, but tell the user what it is and why you need it. If it is not essential, simply put a check box to not install it. Or at least instructions on how to safely remove it.
I understand that Kazaa is trying to make some money by forcing ads, but when people won't even install their software because of the ads, they are shooting themselves in the foot. If they used simple HTML banners, I probably wouldn't go to the trouble to block them.
Another thing that annoys me greatly is the Real Player (whatever they are calling this version) notification program. It pops up ads and new version notifications near the systray. There is not an option ANYWHERE I can find to disable that function. They used to have the real icon in the tray that you could close. And they had an option to keep it from loading. How much of my system resources is it taking to check in the background for new updates/ads? There are a few things I need real for (unfortunately) or I would uninstall it and be done with it. If I try to play a stream that won't play with the version I have, I will upgrade on my own. I don't need a resource hog app telling me when to upgrade.
As an amateur radio operator, I can add my $.02 worth.
In working with Packet Radio (data communications over amateur radio) I found that the emissions from my PC were way too high to use the "rubber duck" antenna on my radio, if it were in the same room. I found 2 fixes. One was to put an external antenna on my roof and use it. The other was to put a RF Choke (little black bulge on certain cables) on EVERY cable comming out of the back of the PC.
The EMI won't affect much outside a 10-20 foot radius, but AM radios, etc... that he tries to listen to in the same room or adjacent room will be hosed.
As far as pacemakers, etc... go, I don't have any idea.
Other than the "American Patriot" rhetoric at the end of your post
Sorry, this is one subject I get carried away with. I didn't mean for it to sound like farmers are "better" than anyone else, but I would challenge most anyone who thinks their tech job is hard work to try farming for a year. I work at a large PC factory as an engineer, and have to remind myself on a constant basis that as hard as it may seem, it is still easier than moving sprinkler pipe and worrying about whether to buy crop insurance or fertilizer.:-) But it is a different work, not necessarily a harder work. More mental/stress vs. physical.
I feel I have a fairly good handle on the issue as I have been on the farming side of the fence. My "American Patriot" rhetoric comes from hearing too many people making comments such as "Lazy farmers sitting in an air-conditioned tractor cab all day..." when they have absolutely no clue beyond their window-sill garden they grow a couple of stalks of sweet corn in. I guess I forget a lot that there are people in this world who DO have a clue and research, and more importantly understand, what they are talking about.
Thank you for responding intelligently rather than flaming me for my little rant. If there were more people like you making comments, I don't think I would go off on rants like that as often.
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That is a good idea, except in the fact that the artists that are represented (if you can call it that) by the RIAA have contracts with the RIAA saying they can't do just that. That is like me going to you, saying you market my new software for me. You say OK, here is your 15 year exclusive contract so only Brendan Byrd & Co. can market your software, and we pay you 2% of the profit.
If another company comes to me tomorrow and says Brendon Byrd & Co. is ripping you off, we will give you 25%, it would be breach of contract if I go with them before the original terms of the contract (15 years in this case) are completed.
There are smaller independant labels which are doing just that, giving better cuts to the artists, looser terms on the contracts, and treat the artists better in general. Unfortunately at this point they just don't have the exposure and power to lure some big names to thier side to help get that ball rolling. Those companies aren't "taking a chance" in the sense that your post implied and butting heads with the RIAA. They are simply operating a business and offering terms to artists. They are not operating under the table and encouraging smaller artists to breach their contracts.
Wow! The time that I got fed up enough to get a cell was just after they raised the price from $.25 to $.35 per call. I can't imagine paying that much unless it was long distance, which may be equivilant to calling the cell network.
"Let's see, less people are using pay phones so let's raise the price, stop free calls by blocking certain toll-free numbers and preventing incomming calls. Oh, and the toll free numbers have to pay us a per call charge to get off of the block list. Yeah, that'll drive more customers to use the phones and get us our profits back!" - Some big-wig suit at the local phone monopoly.
I think the phone companies are too smart for their own good sometimes. They're just as bad as the RIAA.
You have your phone for a different reason than the original poster then. My only point was that he could have his cake, and eat it too, if he so desired. Since you have your phone in order to be contacted while out and about, then my response didn't necessarily apply to you.
I have my phone so that I can be contacted away from home. I could care less who gets my number because I use it as my main phone. In fact, I am moving this next week and will be getting cable instead of DSL so I won't even be hooking up a land line.
Yes, I have recieved telemarketing calls on my cell, and I just politely tell them it is a cell phone and to add it to their do-not-call list. It has worked, and I have never gotten a repeated call, or an increase in volume shortly thereafter.
As far as paying for your incomming minutes, just ignore calls that aren't local to you or where your family won't be calling from. Send them to voice mail and answer it later on. If it is important, the person will call right back if they aren't a marketer (and you could even modify your outgoing message to reflect this.) Chances are they won't even leave a message if it is a marketing call. This way you aren't charged with the incomming minute.
Personally I don't understand why so many people think telemarketing is such a big deal. It would be one thing if it was 10 times a day, but I don't know anyone that gets more than a few calls per week. I guess it just isn't hard for me to say no thanks and hang up the phone. Now if the volume were to increase drasticly, such as with e-mail spam, it would be different. But in all honesty, over the last few years the call rate has been going down for me, rather than up.
I know what you mean. I used to carry a pager, and relied on pay phones to return calls if I was out and about. Sadly it became to the point that by the time I drove around to find one, and paid the ever-increasing coinage, it made it very easy to justify the switch to a cell phone.
In my area, my coverage is very good so I don't have that problem to worry about. Most of the time I leave my phone on silent so I know about the call, but don't annoy everybody around me with it.
The answer to your first question is the second question. Companies continue to use these marketing techniques because they work. Plain and simple.
Random Marketing Company pays a person $10 an hour to make calls selling the new TV Widget at $39.95. Say the profit margin on said widget is $5 each after you take into account the cost of the phone lines, etc. A marketer can easily reach 10 potential customers per hour, not counting the 40 or so other calls where the person isn't home, hangups, busy signals, etc. If only 2 of the people contacted buy the product, it is break even. More than likely the number will be closer to 40 or 50 percent, depending on the product, price, and source of the number list. If 50% buy, that is 5 per hour, or $15 profit per person per hour. Multiply that by 100 people in the call center, $1500 per hour *profit.* Again multiply by 16 hours of calling time per day (8 am to 9 pm, and timezone differences) and voila: $24,000 profit per day. Continue down the line to 7 days a week, 52 weeks per year, and you see where the numbers go.
As for the answer to your second question, sometimes the calls actually are for good deals. When I was in high school, I worked for a company that called existing magazine customers and offered a low renewal rate. In all but a very few exceptions, these renewals cost less than the regular renewal rate, and even less than the new subscriber "fall in the lap card" rate. If a customer wanted to keep their subscription, it was stupid (in the expensive sense) of them not to take advantage of the rate.
Now don't go and say that it isn't stupid of them because credit cards aren't safe over the phone to someone you don't know. That is true. But if they wanted to renew, we were just as happy to send them an invoice as to take the number over the phone.
Sorry for the long post, but my point is that telemarketing is profitable, and will continue to be used as long as the fact stays true. The moment that people stop buying from telemarketers and it becomes an expense, is the same moment telemarketers go away.
I don't regret working for the company. There really isn't too much more of an ideal job for a student. They worked around my school hours and extra-curricular events, let me do homework on downtime between calls (and no we didn't use a predictive dialer, we had a modem at our desk that dialed the number when we hit "next call" on the dumb terminal) and they paid about $10 per hour after you added in commissions. It beat the hell out of working at some fast food joint for minimum wage and the working conditions were orders better.
Jeremy
This may be overly obvious, but if you don't want to be reached when you are out and about, just turn your cell phone off or leave it at home. Just because you CAN take it away from your house, doesn't mean you HAVE to. That way you still get the benefit of the cheap long distance calls, without the (in)convenience of being reached anywhere.
Thank you for the civil response! Your response does clarify the meaning of your original post, and I appologize for not getting your meaning the first time. I do have a couple of counter points to your response.
:-)
With P2P, now you can just get it in the queue, and a few days later you have it.
This is very true, but I think the swappers are spoiled from the MP3 days. Download an MP3 in less time than it takes to listen to it, or a movie in several days. I think at this point most people would rather go spend $4 in the local rental store than wait that long to see a movie. Or with the wait times that high, Netflix is just as good, but higher quality.
In some ways, it's [watching on PC rather than the TV] better, because of its higher definition monitor. I never really got the impression that the holy grail of DVD rips was to play on the TV.
The reason I still feel it is the driving factor is because of comfort and the overall experience. Most people still have TVs that are very large compared to their PC monitors. A college student in a dorm room would be a definite exception. Because of that size difference, people can sit on a more comfortable couch or recliner farther away from the screen. Home Theater sound systems are still orders better than the PC counterparts. Yes, I know you can hook the PC up to the theater reciever, but most people do not do this yet.
Movies have made it clear that you're not to trade them. Now whether or not people abide by that is a seperate discussion, but what remains is that the users cannot claim ignorance.
As time goes on, I think this distinction will go away. I'm sure most of the downloaded movies do not have those warnings attached. The same ignorance can be drawn when someone downloads the movie, "It didn't have the warning on it when I started watching it like normal movies, so I thought it was a non-protected movie." I know that is stretching it at this point in time, but I believe the average music downloader would make that connection very easily when starting to download movies.
Thank you very much for the conversation, I really appreciate the thoughtful discussions here rather than the usual name calling match that appears on this forum so often. Welcome to my friends list.
I agree with you wholeheartedly about how the RIAA has made their own bed. However, your last comment leaves a little to be desired for me. While there aren't as many DVD rips out there, I don't think it is because of the warning label. People used to copy VHS movies all the time, and many copied the FBI warning right along with the movie itself. I even had a friend who had a tape with nothing but the various warnings he had seen and collected.
I don't know the full reason why there aren't as many DVD rips out there, but I do have a few guesses.
1. DVD rips are huge, and broadband isn't quite as popular with the non-Slashdot crowd. It takes about 20 minutes to download the average MP3 file over a 56K modem. I don't even want to think about a DVD rip.
2. You can easily (and cheaply) burn MP3s out to a CD and listen to it on your home and car stereo. DVDs are still relatively expensive to do so. Recorders are comming down, but they still aren't at the free-after-rebate price point from the large PC chains. And the media isn't literally dime a dozen yet. MP3s really took off when it became cheap to use them away from the PC. DVDs are not yet to that point.
3. DVD ripping software isn't as simple as MP3 software. Last time I tried to copy a trailer off of a DVD to take with me to work, there were 3 separate programs that had to be installed and each one had 5 or 6 settings I had to play with to make it work right. With MP3, half of the CD player software out there asks if you want to rip it when you insert it to play. And they all go into the same directory tree. Install your favorite file sharing software, it autoscans and finds the directory, and there is the huge assortment of rips. I know there have been software advances since I tried, but that is one of the reasons I haven't tried for so long. It took too much effort for too little reward (see #2 again.)
I'm sure the warning labels do deter a few people, but I believe the majority of them are detered for price or technical limitations.
There are several aspects of the sport that make it fun and interesting.
1. It takes you to places you didn't know existed. I went out after one with my brother a month back and we had no idea where it was. Turns out it was at an old, practically adbandoned, city park. It appears to still be maintained, but in the several times I have gone back down there I haven't seen another soul.
2. It is not as easy as it seems. GPS gets you close, sometimes very close. But it can still be several yards or more off on a good day. You may get to a point where your GPS is reading the exact coordinates, but it is still 10 feet away. You have to look and find it. Some people are very creative when they hide things so it is a challenge.
3. Meeting new people with common interests. I have run into fellow cachers several times when out seeking a cache. In my area, there are even large meetings that are held, which usually end up in a day-long event.
4. Practice using GPS and navigational skills. Many people have a GPS, hoping to use it to get them out of a sticky situation when hunting, camping, or some other outdoor activity. What better way to practice than to use it to find something? In the real world, it isn't always "walk in a straight line from point A to point B" so practice is nice to have when the need arises to stray from the line.
It is basically hide and seek for big kids. It is still exciting to find one, especially if it is one you have been back to a few times trying to find and have been skunked each previous time.
I'm sure others will have some other reasons they participate as well, but those are the primary reason I do it, other than it is a good way to get outdoors and still be a geek at the same time.
Jeremy
I'll second that motion. A good majority of the music I purchased was as a result of looking for one song, and downloading several incorrect matches. Part of the time I actually ended up liking better than the song I was originally looking for!
I partially agree with you, but there is collateral damage.
Sure, an ISP may very well knowingly (or accidently) allow spammers to roam free on their network, and they get blacklisted. Yes it is their fault, and yes, they deserve to get blacklisted until they fix their technical issues and/or policies to disallow the spam.
The collateral damage is the users of the said ISP. For example, my mother, as much as I have tried to teach, is not technically savvy by any stretch. She has a hard enough time feeling confident in checking her e-mail and browsing the web. Say her ISP gets blocked. Now she tries to send an e-mail to a friend whose ISP subscribes to the blacklist. Her message will get bounced, or worse yet, dropped, and it is by no fault of her own, or the person to whom she is sending the message.
In this scenario, she has no idea that her ISP had been blocked. The person she is sending the message to has no idea that her ISP subscribes to a blacklist. Both people in this case are collateral damage. And as some people have mentioned in other threads there are contracts for ISP service, so simply changing ISPs is not an option for most people. My mother, for example, gets a much better rate by paying 2 years in advance, and has a contract of the same term. Luckily her ISP is very astute at spam control (one of the reasons I selected it for her) but if they had a technical issue, even temporarily, she could still get nailed.
I believe the blacklists truely do mean well, and I think they would be very useful if not taken verbatim, such as used as part of a spam score, rather than a complete blacklist. The other thing that would trememdously help is for the entries to expire after some time. I have seen a blacklist (I don't remember which one, it has been a while) that starts out by blocking an individual IP for 24 hours, then it is removed from the block. If the abuse continues, it is blocked for a week, and it goes on from there. Same with the address block. If the user changes IPs enough, the system just expands out both the time and the address block until the time limit expires and there is no further abuse.
Another thing that would make the blacklists more user friendly, is if the blacklist systems sent out status messages. Such as if ISP B blocked a message from my mom's IP, the bounce message would have a message stating why it was banned and to contact their ISP for more details. The blocking ISP should generate a list of all messages blocked by the system, and send that on a daily or weekly basis, depending on the volume. Then the recipient would not only see the benefit the list provides, but would see my mom's address and be able to let her know she didn't get the message.
I know this ended up being a lot longer of a post than I originally intended, but I feel I was able to make my point. To sum it up, while I agree that the blacklists are a good thing, there are issues, and there are innocent people who are affected by them.
Jeremy
You hit the nail on the head. I don't know how many CDs I purchased because I was trying to find a song I heard somewhere, and downloaded others not sure if they were it or not. Many times I downloaded something more obscure that I liked better than the original. Download a couple more to see if it was just a fluke, and off to my favorite online CD retailer and on the way it was.
Jeremy
The one I have always used:
"Volts Jolt, Mills Kill."
Same idea, but this one reinforces it a little more I think.
Jeremy
This is what I expected. Landline carriers do this already (at least Qwest does) so why would wireless be any different?
I was charged a $.80 or so per month fee for number portability when there were no other local operators in my area to switch to! I asked them what I was paying portability for it the number weren't portable yet, and they said there was nothing they could do about it.
I partially agree.
I like the wording you use, but it should not be on an insert, it should be across the center of the front of the cover art. No literate consumer should be able to say they didn't know about it before they purchased it.
If it were inside in the form of an insert, bad news. Most stores only let you return an opened media item for the exact title. If you didn't know it was right-infringing until you opened it, you would still be stuck.
It it were on top of the cover art, it would be visible, and would probably force a few artists to say, "I won't allow that text on top of my picture... Make sure you don't put it on there." Since the record label would be required to display the warning in that location, they would be forced to remove the copy protection to comply with the artist's requirements.
I know artists really don't have that much to say anymore, but if they were all upset, maybe it would help.
Jeremy
This doesn't work. In my area, they tried this and it got shut down pretty quick. Unless there is a solid picture of the driver in the car, it does no good. The driver is to be fined, not the owner of the car.
Too many cases had to be thrown out, due to "Yes, your honor, that is a picture of my car. However I was not driving my car."
"Who was driving your car at that day and time?"
"Well, that was 3 months ago by the time I got the mail and got this court date was set, and I don't remember if I let Marv, Harry, or Bill drive it to get lunch that day. Or it could have been my wife or daughter, I don't know which one of us took the car that day."
Burdon of proof of the driver is on the State side, not the accused. As long as you can give a reasonable doubt whether or not it was you, then you're off.
Now if they were to have several camera angles with polarized lenses take a picture, to combat window glare, they may have a chance of these holding up in court.
Photo Radar is the same way, it proves too hard to prove who was driving the car, it takes less effort for an officer to hide behind a road sign and write tickets to the person sitting in the drivers seat.
I definitely agree that people need to stop running red lights, as that is more dangerous than pretty much any other traffic violation, but these automated systems have a very long way to go before they will be acceptable evidence in court.
I know what you mean! I thought that movie was pretty cool a few years back when I saw it. I would love to have some of the tech they use in that movie, that is for sure!
Jeremy
Go back even farther! I still enjoy digging out my dad's old Atari and playing Asteroids, Skydive, Slot Racers, Breakout... I'm 22 years old here, but I'm not sure when my dad got it, college or after, not sure.
I also enjoy playing SMB (The original, never cared much for 2 or 3. Duck Hunt, Tiger Heli. There are newer games and systems that make those look like absolute crap, but I enjoy playing them as much (if not more in some cases) than the new games.
But, if you had a next door neighbor kid who can do just as acceptable of a job, and do it for free, would you still pay your $20 per month? Of course not. Either that, or your lawn service will convince you that it is better to pay for him, than to get it for free.
.5 hour period. But if I were paying for it again, I would be doing what I could to lower the price to value ratio.
Satellite is arguably better than the traditional broadcast outlets, but a majority of the consumers don't see it that way. Look at Digital Satellite TV vs. traditional digital cable. I have had both, and Satellite is hands-down better. Less outtages (by far,) better quality, no ads in the guide, more channels, less monthly fee. But how many more consumers have land-based cable, because they don't see the value in Satellite?
My wife worked for a company selling satellite systems and service. She literally couldn't GIVE AWAY satellite systems to many existing cable customers, even though they would save $15+ per month, and get more channels! Installation was free as well. The only catch, was they had to keep service for a year. The monthly fees they would have saved over the year, would have almost paid for the year in itself.
But they believed all the hype that the cable companies put out to keep people from switching to satellite, without researching it themselves.
On a side note, I currently don't have any TV service at all, not even a local broadcast antenna. I'm tired of watching TV shows that are crummy to start with, and has more commercial time than acting time in any given
Jeremy
Knowing FedEx (and the other major carriers) I'm guessing you ate it?
I don't know what law you are thinking of that says "if somebody asks the undercover cop if they're a cop, they have to say 'yes'." because that statement is entirely false. If you are thinking of entrapment laws, they merely state that police can't entice a person into doing something they wouldn't normally do.
An officer can't unlock a business door and beg someone to go steal a TV. They can, however, leave the door unlocked and survail the site, and arrest anyone who goes in and does steal.
By the same reason, if an officer logs into a w4rez site, and offers a version of WhizSoft Doors XT for download, he can log their information and press charges against the person who downloaded it. Even if the person asked if they are a cop, and he told them no. Now if the officer randomly spammed people's email and/or instant message software telling people to download a free copy of the software, that would be across the line because it is pushing people to do something they wouldn't normally do.
IANAL, but this is the way it was described to me by several friends of mine involved in the Law Enforcement "industry." But it does make sense to me.
I used a device a little while back called the Internet Phone Wizard. You can take a look at http://www.internetphonewizard.com which has prices and such. The device sounds like what you are looking for, as it functions as a USB standard audio interface that feeds a POTS phone. It does have some dial tone generation stuff in it, and a line grabbing feature (plug in phone line, then phone, then you hit # to get the IP line instead of the POTS line) but once you pick up the phone and press a number, the dial tone goes away and you can feed audio to a standard phone.
The software it comes with uses many of the standard Internet to Telephone gateways such as deltathree, dialpad, etc. It worked as well as those services, which is why I no longer needed mine. I don't have a use for a telephone audio card at the moment, so I eBayed it and recovered my costs.
If you need a VOIP to POTS sollution, I would not recommend the device, but again, that is not because of the device itself, just the services it connects to. But if you need to be able to feed audio into a phone, it would work great.
I installed Kazaa the other day at home, knowing it would attempt to install the BDE3 (I think) viewer. Since my hard drive is NTFS, I created the BDE directory under my second account, and used NTFS permissions to be only readable/writable by the "Administrator" account. I thought that would stop it from installing. I was wrong, however. The program simply installed inside of a different directory.
It doesn't run because I did the same thing to that directory, but it still installed when I took fairly advanced measures to prevent it. The fact that programmers are writing applications that users have no control over is a step in the wrong direction. I don't want the "3D Advertising Projector" on my system, yet it installed anyway. That to me sounds like something Norton should be protecting from...
I do write simple programs for personal use for myself. I have given a few to friends, but I never install a "Jeremy in 3D" viewer or anything like that. Note to programmers: If it is ABSOLUTELY ESSENTIAL to the operation of the program, go ahead and force installation, but tell the user what it is and why you need it. If it is not essential, simply put a check box to not install it. Or at least instructions on how to safely remove it.
I understand that Kazaa is trying to make some money by forcing ads, but when people won't even install their software because of the ads, they are shooting themselves in the foot. If they used simple HTML banners, I probably wouldn't go to the trouble to block them.
Another thing that annoys me greatly is the Real Player (whatever they are calling this version) notification program. It pops up ads and new version notifications near the systray. There is not an option ANYWHERE I can find to disable that function. They used to have the real icon in the tray that you could close. And they had an option to keep it from loading. How much of my system resources is it taking to check in the background for new updates/ads? There are a few things I need real for (unfortunately) or I would uninstall it and be done with it. If I try to play a stream that won't play with the version I have, I will upgrade on my own. I don't need a resource hog app telling me when to upgrade.
As an amateur radio operator, I can add my $.02 worth.
In working with Packet Radio (data communications over amateur radio) I found that the emissions from my PC were way too high to use the "rubber duck" antenna on my radio, if it were in the same room. I found 2 fixes. One was to put an external antenna on my roof and use it. The other was to put a RF Choke (little black bulge on certain cables) on EVERY cable comming out of the back of the PC.
The EMI won't affect much outside a 10-20 foot radius, but AM radios, etc... that he tries to listen to in the same room or adjacent room will be hosed.
As far as pacemakers, etc... go, I don't have any idea.
Sorry, this is one subject I get carried away with. I didn't mean for it to sound like farmers are "better" than anyone else, but I would challenge most anyone who thinks their tech job is hard work to try farming for a year. I work at a large PC factory as an engineer, and have to remind myself on a constant basis that as hard as it may seem, it is still easier than moving sprinkler pipe and worrying about whether to buy crop insurance or fertilizer. :-) But it is a different work, not necessarily a harder work. More mental/stress vs. physical.
I feel I have a fairly good handle on the issue as I have been on the farming side of the fence. My "American Patriot" rhetoric comes from hearing too many people making comments such as "Lazy farmers sitting in an air-conditioned tractor cab all day..." when they have absolutely no clue beyond their window-sill garden they grow a couple of stalks of sweet corn in. I guess I forget a lot that there are people in this world who DO have a clue and research, and more importantly understand, what they are talking about.
Thank you for responding intelligently rather than flaming me for my little rant. If there were more people like you making comments, I don't think I would go off on rants like that as often.
Take it easy,
Jeremy