A rate of 3% or less has been quoted in regards to the maximum number of silent calls (per day? per week?) that these boiler-room call centre operations are supposed to legally adhere to.
Sorry to point out the obvious, but:
(1) Telejunkers routinely forge or block their caller ID.
(2) If you get 5 silent calls in one day, is that 5 calls from the same telejunker? Who knows? Other than *57, which carries a charge (and doesn't release the ANI number to you, only the telco who in turn only releases it to the authorities) there's no way of telling.
(3) Since there's no realistic way of knowing, it absolutely makes sense - to a telejunker, at least - to abuse the anonymity of forged/blocked CID to determine the best time to call someone back with a different CID: this time with a real, in-service phone number.
Probably explains your pro-telejunking stance on "the mere fact" of owning a telephone number makes one fair game.
Does "merely" having a phone next to my hospital bed mean that I'm expecting a call from one of the telemarketing droids you maintain the DB's for, silent call or not?
Predictive dialers have made telemarketers more annoying than in the days when they used auto-dialers or manually dialed the next number after finishing the current call. This is why people are getting more and more silent calls every day.
Even idiot companies that have an existing business relationship, use these darn predictive dialers to call customers (such as for reminders) and don't even leave voicemail most of the time.
you can't say that they are invading your privacy by calling you. The mere fact that you own a phone and have a number means that you expect people to call you. The mere fact that you own an email address, means that you expect people to email you. The mere fact that you own a cell-phone means that you expect people to SMS you.
See a trend here?
It doesn't matter what communication medium you own, it's all about prior permission. Anything else is $medium spam.
... when I read a manual (yes! some of us do read 'em) and continually see blah(TM) this blah® that in every sentence. There's just no need.
So it's more a case of watering-down the documentation than watering down the trademark recognition.
And anyway, in some parts of the world (Oz, for one) the name for Sellotape is actually Durex, which also happens to be the brand of condoms sold in the UK. In other words, people *know* what the product is, because of the context in which it is used. We don't need (TM) or ® to remind us!
I see the irony, but it's also amusing to see how the address isn't even properly munged. Simply inserting "nospam.", "no-spam.", etc, after the @ and immediately before the domain name isn't going to be very effective, as the ISP's mail server is still going to be contacted with direct to MX spam. In some instances, the mail will still get through.
(Don't know if the user did the munging, or whether slashdot's munging machine is slack).
the ability to suck mail out of existing POP3 accounts
By which time the spam has eaten up bandwidth and briefly occupied space in your pop3 inbox, so there's still a chance that a legitimate mail could bounce due to lack of space.
Client-side "spam-eaters" are all very well and good for removing the annoyance factor, but they don't help with the economics of running a mail-server.
I'm pretty happy with my new T68i too. Decided to get rid of my old Nokia 9110 Communicator for 2 reasons:
(1) The phone cuts out for no apparent reason and periodically reboots itself. 2 mates who had the same model of phone had the exact same problem, ergo it's a design fault.
(2) With all the bugs in the 9110, I wasn't going to pay almost GB£400 on a 9210 when the 9210 isn't even Triband. So for £130 (after a £50 trade-in for my old phone) I went for the T68i and haven't had a single problem since. Sure I miss the alphanumeric keyboard, but if you really can't do without one, you can always buy a chatboard that plugs into the bottom of the phone.
But I do wonder weather MS will think this a Good Thing(TM) or not.
Who cares what M$ thinks? Once you've bought the hardware, it's your property to do with as you please, unless there's some weird EULA that forbids it. Come to think of it, with M$'s track record, nothing surprises me anymore!
Following the debacle with its revolutionary glass-platter technology and the class action lawsuit that followed due to numerous disgruntled users, I don't think I'm going to trust my pr0n^H^H^H^Hmp3^H^H^H storage with anything that IBM manufactures.
I'm surprised that the Aussie government didn't hire Veri$ign to do their email snooping in addition to their wire-tapping activities.
On a separate note, email can be secure if you want it to be. I'm sure most terrorists are clued-up enough to use encryption, so email snooping really doesn't work.
Not sure you'd get EHF out of an Antron-99 - the standing wave ratio would be off the meter. Still, with a 500watt "burner", you might get some distance out of it;)
People's memories are short. In about a year, I'll have probably forgotten about the disgraceful domain-slamming practise that VeriSign were sued over. Fortunately, Google has a very long memory when it comes to cached pages, so I always do a Google search on any company I plan to do business with beforehand. So perhaps the irony is that VeriSign is the hostname registrar for Google;)
Not forgetting that with WAP handsets, you can collect your email on your mobile. For example, on my T68i, that involves downloading the headers and disconnecting, then reconnecting if you wish to collect the body of the message(s). By the time you've downloaded the headers, even if the subject line is obviously spam, you've still wasted airtime charges in collecting the spam mail header(s).
some composers have been known to use this method on analogue audio tapes with a razor blade and sticky tape
Wonder how you'd get 20ms of sound by splicing an 8-track. Surely even a millimeter of spliced tape would be longer than 20ms? Anything longer than, say, a second would probably then be simply classified as sampling rather than granular synthesis.
... at least if you happen to find yourself sat next to a walkman-brandishing moron on the bus, you won't be subjected to any perceivable sound pollution if that's what they're listening to. It might even drive the boom-boy car drivers to extinction at the same time.
I do worry though about legal remedies just moving the problem to where the laws don't exist.
Won't make much difference if the spam itself is routed via South Korea/China/Russia - if the perpetrator is based in USA and/or is spamvertising a service based in the USA, the law can still act. Except, of course, if it's from the Governor of California!
It's got to be a matter of time before you can "chip" your Tivo box to use the reserved space for normal recording *and* disable the forced infomercials/promos in the process.
Slashdot Mirror
A rate of 3% or less has been quoted in regards to the maximum number of silent calls (per day? per week?) that these boiler-room call centre operations are supposed to legally adhere to.
Sorry to point out the obvious, but:
(1) Telejunkers routinely forge or block their caller ID.
(2) If you get 5 silent calls in one day, is that 5 calls from the same telejunker? Who knows? Other than *57, which carries a charge (and doesn't release the ANI number to you, only the telco who in turn only releases it to the authorities) there's no way of telling.
(3) Since there's no realistic way of knowing, it absolutely makes sense - to a telejunker, at least - to abuse the anonymity of forged/blocked CID to determine the best time to call someone back with a different CID: this time with a real, in-service phone number.
Probably explains your pro-telejunking stance on "the mere fact" of owning a telephone number makes one fair game. Does "merely" having a phone next to my hospital bed mean that I'm expecting a call from one of the telemarketing droids you maintain the DB's for, silent call or not?
Predictive dialers have made telemarketers more annoying than in the days when they used auto-dialers or manually dialed the next number after finishing the current call. This is why people are getting more and more silent calls every day.
Even idiot companies that have an existing business relationship, use these darn predictive dialers to call customers (such as for reminders) and don't even leave voicemail most of the time.
See a trend here?
It doesn't matter what communication medium you own, it's all about prior permission. Anything else is $medium spam.
... when I read a manual (yes! some of us do read 'em) and continually see blah(TM) this blah® that in every sentence. There's just no need.
So it's more a case of watering-down the documentation than watering down the trademark recognition.
And anyway, in some parts of the world (Oz, for one) the name for Sellotape is actually Durex, which also happens to be the brand of condoms sold in the UK. In other words, people *know* what the product is, because of the context in which it is used. We don't need (TM) or ® to remind us!
transmorgaphied by the game of Internet chinese whispers
Explains all the Chinese spam we're getting, then.
... it's easy to see just how in-bred all spammers are!
... to make me want to go back to using Lynx again.
I see the irony, but it's also amusing to see how the address isn't even properly munged. Simply inserting "nospam.", "no-spam.", etc, after the @ and immediately before the domain name isn't going to be very effective, as the ISP's mail server is still going to be contacted with direct to MX spam. In some instances, the mail will still get through.
(Don't know if the user did the munging, or whether slashdot's munging machine is slack).
the ability to suck mail out of existing POP3 accounts
By which time the spam has eaten up bandwidth and briefly occupied space in your pop3 inbox, so there's still a chance that a legitimate mail could bounce due to lack of space.
Client-side "spam-eaters" are all very well and good for removing the annoyance factor, but they don't help with the economics of running a mail-server.
I'm pretty happy with my new T68i too. Decided to get rid of my old Nokia 9110 Communicator for 2 reasons:
(1) The phone cuts out for no apparent reason and periodically reboots itself. 2 mates who had the same model of phone had the exact same problem, ergo it's a design fault.
(2) With all the bugs in the 9110, I wasn't going to pay almost GB£400 on a 9210 when the 9210 isn't even Triband. So for £130 (after a £50 trade-in for my old phone) I went for the T68i and haven't had a single problem since. Sure I miss the alphanumeric keyboard, but if you really can't do without one, you can always buy a chatboard that plugs into the bottom of the phone.
... Windows for iPod!
But I do wonder weather MS will think this a Good Thing(TM) or not.
Who cares what M$ thinks? Once you've bought the hardware, it's your property to do with as you please, unless there's some weird EULA that forbids it. Come to think of it, with M$'s track record, nothing surprises me anymore!
How long will it be before ICANN are forced to release the .bush TLD?
Animals only "phone home" if they are fitted with spyware/malware products (a la RealDownload Demon).
Following the debacle with its revolutionary glass-platter technology and the class action lawsuit that followed due to numerous disgruntled users, I don't think I'm going to trust my pr0n^H^H^H^Hmp3^H^H^H storage with anything that IBM manufactures.
I'm surprised that the Aussie government didn't hire Veri$ign to do their email snooping in addition to their wire-tapping activities.
On a separate note, email can be secure if you want it to be. I'm sure most terrorists are clued-up enough to use encryption, so email snooping really doesn't work.
... that none of the residents are chickenboner spamming trailer trash, or else their lil DSL link won't be worth the fight in the first place.
There's a high-tech device you can buy which will help with that problem - it's called a chainsaw ;)
Not sure you'd get EHF out of an Antron-99 - the standing wave ratio would be off the meter. Still, with a 500watt "burner", you might get some distance out of it ;)
People's memories are short. In about a year, I'll have probably forgotten about the disgraceful domain-slamming practise that VeriSign were sued over. Fortunately, Google has a very long memory when it comes to cached pages, so I always do a Google search on any company I plan to do business with beforehand. So perhaps the irony is that VeriSign is the hostname registrar for Google ;)
See cell phones
Not forgetting that with WAP handsets, you can collect your email on your mobile. For example, on my T68i, that involves downloading the headers and disconnecting, then reconnecting if you wish to collect the body of the message(s). By the time you've downloaded the headers, even if the subject line is obviously spam, you've still wasted airtime charges in collecting the spam mail header(s).
some composers have been known to use this method on analogue audio tapes with a razor blade and sticky tape
Wonder how you'd get 20ms of sound by splicing an 8-track. Surely even a millimeter of spliced tape would be longer than 20ms? Anything longer than, say, a second would probably then be simply classified as sampling rather than granular synthesis.
... at least if you happen to find yourself sat next to a walkman-brandishing moron on the bus, you won't be subjected to any perceivable sound pollution if that's what they're listening to. It might even drive the boom-boy car drivers to extinction at the same time.
Well we can live in hope.
I do worry though about legal remedies just moving the problem to where the laws don't exist.
Won't make much difference if the spam itself is routed via South Korea/China/Russia - if the perpetrator is based in USA and/or is spamvertising a service based in the USA, the law can still act. Except, of course, if it's from the Governor of California!
It's got to be a matter of time before you can "chip" your Tivo box to use the reserved space for normal recording *and* disable the forced infomercials/promos in the process.