Adrian owes somebody money and that's a debt collection service calling you. At some point there was some connection between Adrian and your phone number. There is no Mrs. Jones, that's a legal psuedonym and there are probably several different people at that company authorized to represent themselves as Mrs. Jones. They're trying to find out where Adrian is or might be, so that they know where to send the sheriff. I am not qualified or licensed to dispense legal advice (or illegal advice for that matter), but if you have a phone number for these people, tell the phone company and the cops that they are harrassing you. Or pretend to be Adrian and talk to them until you find out who they are. Tell them you have their money in cash and to come right over to pick it up. Have a cop waiting to have a word with whoever shows up.
Unfortunately this only works if you are the first person to answer among the 4 or 8 or however many that that one telemarketer employee is calling. If someone else answers first, the telemarketer talks to them and everybody else gets a dead line. That's why we never answer until the ring just before the ring our answering machine picks up on. We get a lot of calls that ring once or twice and then stop.
I started this post several hours ago and had to go handle a bunch of problems before I could finish it and click the submit button. In the meantime the parent has gotten a number of replies but, since none of them seem to have interpreted the parent in the same way that I did, I'm subbmitting anyway just in case the person I'm replying to (or others)can learn something from it. Of course, if my answer to them isn't as accurate as I think it is, I'm sure that there will be a number of posts in reply to it that I can learn from.:-)
I can create a text file and give it a ".exe " extension, but that won't make it executable. I can give it a ".wav " or a ".avi " extension, but I won't get any music out of it. A file with an incorrect extension will usually just be interpreted as a corrupt and therefore unusable file. A ".gif " extension on a file means that only programs that are set up to open that kind of file will try and since those programs are, I assume, only coded to be able to do anything with those files if they actually are that kind of file, then all they would be able to do is return some sort of error message or crash or both, which, while annoying, isn't exactly the same as having your browser reformat your hard drive.
Regardless of whether you wanted Bork on the bench or not, if it can be abused, it will be abused, and not always in obvious, forseeable ways. Didn't the Doubleclick problem not start until they somewhat unexpectedly partnered up with someone else and combined databases?
How about letting smokers avoid anti-smoking commercials so that when we're sitting there indoors late at night watching TV and not concious at that moment of the existence of cigarettes or that we use them, we don't suddenly get presented with something that reminds us and sends us heading for the back door, fumbling in our pocket for our lighter.
And while we're at it, I could do without late night food ads on the same general principle.
Have you noticed that broadcast, and to a lesser extent cable, networks, and also local broadcasters on local and syndicated shows they control the scheduling of, have started "fudging" start and end times? Popular shows, like E.R., get started not at 10:00 pm right on the dot but anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes early. I think it's so they can turn a 60 minute show into a 61 or 62 minute show so as to include more ads in the proram without violating FCC regs on ad minutes per hour, although it could be to get you to watch them live and tape the competition. Are Replay or Tivo "smart" enough to adjust to this so as to not miss "taping" any of the show? Are there any VCRs that let you set the start taping time at 1 minute 37 and a half seconds before the top of the hour? Wouldn't it be nice if cable TV companies were strictly common carriers with no stake in which programs you watch so that they could provide an impartial continuous up to date data stream on the cable that would allow a computer-TV tuner-video recorder hybrid to let you tell it to "record all of the 'Harsh Realm' episodes Friday nights on FX" and it would take care of the rest?
note to all 13 year old taste and opinion nazis out there: feel free to substitute other programs in examples cited
I suggest that you...immediately...find something to worry about that's worth worrying about. The world is full of *real* problems that you could be directing your passion and energy towards.
If I were going to change my sig, it would probably be to something like "I can spell just fine, thank you, it's my fingers that have a problem".
My original post falls under the headings of "question" and "observation". When I complain, I'm much less subtle about it. Don't worry, though, if I do e-mail the good Commander to complain, I'll be sure to tell him you sent me.:-)
As I have explained on more than one occasion in other threads, it's self deprecating humor, the idea being that I never get moderated up and don't have enough karma for the bonus point that would give me a default score of 2, so that I'm stuck down at a level that I'm "too good" to browse at. Sort of a snob's comeuppance. Some here are amused by it, some aren't. Some of the other sigs I see around here I find amusing, some I don't, but I haven't seen any worth losing sleep over. Expecting all of the sigs on Slashdot to be the literal truth is asking a bit much, I fear. I actually browse at -1, always have, although nowadays there are a lot fewer pearls down there and a lot more swine droppings.
Unfortunately it must be true, as no one could have made that up. Of course Jar Jar being a Jedi goes a long way towards explaining why Vader went over to the Dark Side.:-)
If a leaked CIA document were sitting on a UK website and the US govt. was threating any US site that linked to it, would that story be relegated to the sidelines as this one has been, or be considered "Stuff that matters." enough to be featured in the main lineup?
I forget which movie it was in, but I'm pretty sure it was a Thunderbird. He spoke into a microphone and his words appeared across the taillight panel like a Times Square news crawl.
I don't need the formula for Coke(insert lawyer appeasement here), but I sure do wish VCR's and other consumer electronics came bundled with service manuals. They're going to publish a few to sell for 35 or 50 dollars to service shops anyway, they could put one in every box for an extra 2 dollars. That way, getting the thing repaired wouldn't be such a hassle whether you do it yourself or pay someone else.
With the idea being to look for interesting questions to moderate up, I don't understand why a moderator would waste a point to mark an off-topic question as a troll, but based upon some of what I've seen around here lately, I'd say that Malda is painfully overdue an uninterrupted month's vacation somewhere with balmy breezes and nothing any higher tech than a stone axe.
In your recent article in the May 2000 MIT Technology Review, couched in rather a lot of words and obfusticated with marginally related scare stories, you seem to have a rather skewed view of the role of copyright, implying that once upon a time readers purchased from publishers ink-splattered pieces of paper bound together and covered, with copyright adding a modicum to the price (said increase being passed on to the person, the author, responsible for the unique and particular arrangement of those ink splatters) which was a minor and therefore tolerable annoyance, but now that modern electronics allow readers to perform for themselves the service previously provided by publishers, and even to serve as publisher for other readers, that same copyright that financially rewarded the author for his/her labors is no longer acceptable. Is that your philosophy, now that publishers can be supplanted by technology we might as well go ahead and deprive the authors of any financial reward for their labors and ignore their wishes concerning their creations? Do you feel that they have some obligation to society to create with no hope or thought of financial reward? If they have dark skin shall we inform them of another obligation to society to labor without reward, this time involving cotton fields? Or to put it more simply, now that we can bypass publishers, let's go ahead and fuck over the authors, just because we can? 'Cause it sure sounds that way to me.
Perhaps someone should have advised Neumann János that if he wanted to continue to be known as Neumann János he should have avoided having his name changed to John von Neumann.
Slashdot Mirror
Adrian owes somebody money and that's a debt collection service calling you.
At some point there was some connection between Adrian and your phone number.
There is no Mrs. Jones, that's a legal psuedonym and there are probably several different people at that company authorized to represent themselves as Mrs. Jones.
They're trying to find out where Adrian is or might be, so that they know where to send the sheriff.
I am not qualified or licensed to dispense legal advice (or illegal advice for that matter), but if you have a phone number for these people, tell the phone company and the cops that they are harrassing you.
Or pretend to be Adrian and talk to them until you find out who they are.
Tell them you have their money in cash and to come right over to pick it up.
Have a cop waiting to have a word with whoever shows up.
Unfortunately this only works if you are the first person to answer among the 4 or 8 or however many that that one telemarketer employee is calling.
If someone else answers first, the telemarketer talks to them and everybody else gets a dead line.
That's why we never answer until the ring just before the ring our answering machine picks up on.
We get a lot of calls that ring once or twice and then stop.
I can create a text file and give it a " .exe " extension, but that won't make it executable. I can give it a " .wav " or a " .avi " extension, but I won't get any music out of it. A file with an incorrect extension will usually just be interpreted as a corrupt and therefore unusable file. .gif " extension on a file means that only programs that are set up to open that kind of file will try and since those programs are, I assume, only coded to be able to do anything with those files if they actually are that kind of file, then all they would be able to do is return some sort of error message or crash or both, which, while annoying, isn't exactly the same as having your browser reformat your hard drive.
A "
Okay, it's been 5 days.
I see that you made sure to include the complete list of your credentials to pass judgement.
Regardless of whether you wanted Bork on the bench or not, if it can be abused, it will be abused, and not always in obvious, forseeable ways. Didn't the Doubleclick problem not start until they somewhat unexpectedly partnered up with someone else and combined databases?
And while we're at it, I could do without late night food ads on the same general principle.
Popular shows, like E.R., get started not at 10:00 pm right on the dot but anywhere from 30 seconds to 2 minutes early.
I think it's so they can turn a 60 minute show into a 61 or 62 minute show so as to include more ads in the proram without violating FCC regs on ad minutes per hour, although it could be to get you to watch them live and tape the competition.
Are Replay or Tivo "smart" enough to adjust to this so as to not miss "taping" any of the show?
Are there any VCRs that let you set the start taping time at 1 minute 37 and a half seconds before the top of the hour?
Wouldn't it be nice if cable TV companies were strictly common carriers with no stake in which programs you watch so that they could provide an impartial continuous up to date data stream on the cable that would allow a computer-TV tuner-video recorder hybrid to let you tell it to "record all of the 'Harsh Realm' episodes Friday nights on FX" and it would take care of the rest?
note to all 13 year old taste and opinion nazis out there: feel free to substitute other programs in examples cited
I feel *so* much more reassured about the future of the country and the economy now. :-)
If I were going to change my sig, it would probably be to something like "I can spell just fine, thank you, it's my fingers that have a problem".
My original post falls under the headings of "question" and "observation". When I complain, I'm much less subtle about it. Don't worry, though, if I do e-mail the good Commander to complain, I'll be sure to tell him you sent me. :-)
An ISP right downstairs? I wish! Goodbye modem, hello fat pipe! Some guys have all the luck. :(
As I have explained on more than one occasion in other threads, it's self deprecating humor, the idea being that I never get moderated up and don't have enough karma for the bonus point that would give me a default score of 2, so that I'm stuck down at a level that I'm "too good" to browse at. Sort of a snob's comeuppance. Some here are amused by it, some aren't. Some of the other sigs I see around here I find amusing, some I don't, but I haven't seen any worth losing sleep over.
Expecting all of the sigs on Slashdot to be the literal truth is asking a bit much, I fear.
I actually browse at -1, always have, although nowadays there are a lot fewer pearls down there and a lot more swine droppings.
How does the old scale translate to the new and why did they change?
Unfortunately it must be true, as no one could have made that up. Of course Jar Jar being a Jedi goes a long way towards explaining why Vader went over to the Dark Side. :-)
"Drop-down lists of prospective subjects, verbs and objects in English allow one to concoct novel Irish curses from a three-part menu."
Jefferson City, Missouri's Lincoln University offers this amusing little interactive time sponge here and The Register explains it here.
The Irish-language curse engine (An tInneal Mallachtaí)!
Jefferson City, Missouri's Lincoln University offers this amusing little interactive time sponge here and The Register explains it here.
Keep 'em in Australia, we got enough problems of our own.
If a leaked CIA document were sitting on a UK website and the US govt. was threating any US site that linked to it, would that story be relegated to the sidelines as this one has been, or be considered "Stuff that matters." enough to be featured in the main lineup?
There's also that Citizen's Band radio thing.
I don't need the formula for Coke(insert lawyer appeasement here), but I sure do wish VCR's and other consumer electronics came bundled with service manuals. They're going to publish a few to sell for 35 or 50 dollars to service shops anyway, they could put one in every box for an extra 2 dollars. That way, getting the thing repaired wouldn't be such a hassle whether you do it yourself or pay someone else.
With the idea being to look for interesting questions to moderate up, I don't understand why a moderator would waste a point to mark an off-topic question as a troll, but based upon some of what I've seen around here lately, I'd say that Malda is painfully overdue an uninterrupted month's vacation somewhere with balmy breezes and nothing any higher tech than a stone axe.
In your recent article in the May 2000 MIT Technology Review, couched in rather a lot of words and obfusticated with marginally related scare stories, you seem to have a rather skewed view of the role of copyright, implying that once upon a time readers purchased from publishers ink-splattered pieces of paper bound together and covered, with copyright adding a modicum to the price (said increase being passed on to the person, the author, responsible for the unique and particular arrangement of those ink splatters) which was a minor and therefore tolerable annoyance, but now that modern electronics allow readers to perform for themselves the service previously provided by publishers, and even to serve as publisher for other readers, that same copyright that financially rewarded the author for his/her labors is no longer acceptable. Is that your philosophy, now that publishers can be supplanted by technology we might as well go ahead and deprive the authors of any financial reward for their labors and ignore their wishes concerning their creations? Do you feel that they have some obligation to society to create with no hope or thought of financial reward? If they have dark skin shall we inform them of another obligation to society to labor without reward, this time involving cotton fields? Or to put it more simply, now that we can bypass publishers, let's go ahead and fuck over the authors, just because we can? 'Cause it sure sounds that way to me.
Perhaps someone should have advised Neumann János that if he wanted to continue to be known as Neumann János he should have avoided having his name changed to John von Neumann.
As someone said twentysomething years ago about video games, the soldiers of the future ae training themselves, one quarter at a time.