I too have off-the-grid dreams as a house-owner, but the power companies always find a way, same thing with the electrical car that could run on water. Lobbyist will manipulate (read: FORCE) politicians into their direction, so you'll be depending on them one way or the other.
Huh? I guess there are places where you are required by law to hook up your house to the power grid, but nobody can force you to USE electricity. What's to stop you from just keeping the main breaker switched off?
I've actually known more than one person who didn't have utility power to their house, and they made it just fine. One of them engineered a small hydroelectric turbine system using a small creek that flowed across their land (they had several hundred acres in the North Carolina mountains) which they used to power a small refrigerator and occasionally a computer. The other used a collection of lead-acid car batteries which they charged up using a solar panel, then could hook up to an inverter as they needed.
I've wondered about this. Could a statement that a call may be recorded for "quality assurance" or the like be interpreted to mean that I, as the customer, also have permission to record the call... you know, to assure that I'm getting the quality of service that I expect?
Maybe it's also because I hate the new skeuomorphic design aesthetic. What's wrong with gloss, gradients, transparency, and attractive animations, or even a bevel or link here and there so we can actually tell something is clickable rather than playing mystery-meat navigation? I swear, everything is going flat-shaded, blocky, ugly, and indistinguishable, all because that's now the new "hip" look.
Skeumorphism - the use of design elements that mimic real life objects with similar functions, is actually the opposite phenomenon from the flat, light-on-pastel design trend. Though I fully agree with you - both of these UI philosophies have been severely overused.
A bit of googling will turn up plenty of articles analyzing the history of the skeuomorphism-versus-flat debate particularly at Apple, which I would argue has been one of the biggest influences in UI design over the last few years. Basically, the loss of skeuomorphism advocates such as Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall led to the pendulum swinging completely in the other direction, and many gimmicky and dated interface elements such as notes apps that look like real paper and a game center that looks like a cheap felt billiard table have been stripped away. But - what to replace it with? Well, everybody wants to stay on top of the latest design trend, and Microsoft and others seem to be migrating to flat designs, so flat it is.
Although you could argue over who copied who, essentially what you have is Microsoft and Apple in a race to see who can flatten their interfaces and strip out any traces of skeuomorphism the fastest. Sure, it looks trendy, but it's reached the point where we are sacrificing usability and accessibility in order to have the most "modern" design. Here's where I have a problem with the whole thing: computer interface elements have been pretty consistent over the last 20+ years or so. Everything behaved as expected and usually acted pretty consistent between operating systems. This is great for users, since they can focus on the task rather than the tools needed to accomplish them, and using the interface becomes second nature. To those who *design* computers rather than *use* them, this is a problem - you want the bling to be noticed. The old way of doing this was to show off your new hardware by making the UI flashy, bright, colorful, inviting - basically by ramping up the skeuomorphic elements to 11.
The problem is, the novelty of this wears off fast, and these interfaces quickly become dated. Now, flat is in, and anything that even remotely resembles skeuomorphism is stripped out. I have a number of problems with the current trend:
1) interface elements are hidden or played down, making them hard to find. Often it's hard to tell if I'm just not looking hard enough for that feature, or if it has been removed altogether. 2) It does away with conventions that have been standard for decades. This means that every time designers go wild designing a new interface, users have to spend time and effort learning a new way to accomplish a task. 3) It's less accessible. Razor thin text is hard for some people to see. Pastel on white and white on pastel text may look "hip" but can incredibly difficult to read. Interface elements that are marginalized can be hard to hunt down if the user doesn't know where to look. 4) It's inconsistent. Some programs hide buttons and scroll bars, some do not. Some use vastly different elements for simple actions such as "close window" so that the user is left guessing at the function of a UI element.
My prediction is that in a few years, "flat" will look as equally dated as skeuomorphism does now.
They already do this. After getting calls at least once a week pushing offers to upgrade our service to a bundle with a land line, and after asking them *each time* to stop calling us... we cancelled our service.
As a microbiologist, I agree that the Telegraph article is rife with errors. The original article is paywalled, but from the abstract it sounds as if the researchers described a mechanism by which lipopolysaccharide, a component of the gram-negative cell wall which provides some degree of antibiotic resistance, is exported from the cell. I understand Dong, et al to be suggesting that a compound which prevents proper transport of LPS could be used synergistically with another drug which would otherwise be blocked from entry into the cell by LPS.
Further, the use of the term "immunity" to describe antibiotic resistance is a pet peeve of mine, as these terms do not mean the same thing!
I can't decide if this should be rated funny, flamebait, or insightful. You have a point though... in an age of App Stores where users are faced with the noise of thousands of copycat apps, it seems that the key to success is how well you catch the attention of potential users, whether through pretty UI screenshots or a flashy looking icon. One of my (formerly) favorite weather apps was recently swept up into the modern "pencil thin white text on a light pastel background with flat UI" design craze, and removed about half the app's features while moving the rest to a single, long scrolling column. Half of the users decried the change for removing valuable functionality and destroying ease of navigation, while the other half offered praise along the lines of: "look at that pretty animated background!" and "ooooooh, shiney!"
We are not anti-fracking or anti-drilling. My goodness, we live in Texas.
Yeah, we love fracking! Now give us the 2.9 million dollars...
I love cars. However, if you drove a car into my house and caused serious injury to my family, I would expect monetary compensation from you to cover the damages and medical bills.
Here's one better: give everybody a safety orientation quiz before boarding, and those with the best scores get their choice of an aisle or window seat, choice of exit row or no exit row, and guaranteed space in an overhead bin. Oh, and the ability to select a non-sweaty seatmate. Put everybody else in the back and separate them by a soundproof door along with anybody flying with an infant-in-arms. Do that, and I won't even need the drink...
If you're so familiar with the safety briefing that you could give it yourself, then the briefings are working *exactly* as they are intended to! Emergency preparedness is intended to drill these practices into you so that when the time comes, you don't have to think about what to do, you know what to do. Believe me, in a panic situation most ill prepared people don't calmly assess their surroundings and take the time to look for the instructions, but their first reaction is to get themselves out of harm's way as soon as possible. How do I find that emergency exit now that the cabin is filled with smoke? I looked for it when I boarded and I know that it is two rows behind me. Someone who has never been told to look for this exit may not even realize that it is there, nor will they think to look for the patterns in the lights on the floor that indicate you are at an exit row.
I am a very frequent flier, and could give the safety briefing myself, but I still make an effort to put down what I'm doing and pay attention. Why? Because I want to set an example for those who *should* be listening, since I don't want something that they do in a panic later to cause me harm.
In my mind, the difference is that there is some level of skill involved in arcade gameplay which is missing in current f2p games. Having grown up in the era when arcades were still the place to spend a Saturday afternoon, I can remember the excitement of nailing that perfect play which seemed to go on and on as the difficulty became increasingly harder... or, the frustration of realizing that you just wasted your money as you crash and burn right off the bat.
Really good arcade players could go what seemed like forever on a single coin, sometimes drawing a sizable audience, while the not-so-good players had a financial (and social!) incentive to improve their gameplay. This is missing from f2p games, which aren't designed to test the player's skill, but their patience. "Trolls are destroying your crops! To double your yield, build a watchtower that will only cost 99 cents!" would be akin to an arcade game prompting you, "Want to complete this level with half of the enemies? Insert a second token now!"
The sentences are computer generated, but where did you think the actual syllables came from?
Hour after hour, she read nonsensical phrases and sentences so that the "ubergeeks" -- as she affectionately calls them; they leave her awestruck -- could work their magic by pulling out vowels, consonants, syllables and diphthongs, and playing with her pitch and speed.
if there are many of them, then you should be able to give a few examples.
I live near one of the entrances to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We have several facilities in the park (stables, nature centers, bookstores) which are run by private groups and nonprofits with permission from the NPS. When the shutdown took effect, all of them were required to close up shop and leave the park. What's even better, we have areas which are typically seldom if ever patrolled (such as backcountry and wilderness areas) which are being monitored with as many federal law enforcement personnel as possible in order to keep out visitors. At one particular park entrance, which normally patrolled by a single park ranger, TWO rangers with vehicles were stationed just to turn people away at the boundary.
Source: I know many people who work (er... worked) in the park, I have worked within the park myself, and I do volunteer work there. Interestingly, during the shutdown volunteers are *specifically* prohibited from performing any work that a paid employee would normally do.
If I've built up excellent karma through a series of insightful, informative, on-topic posts, I shouldn't have all of that negated by a single post that happens not to please the mods that day. It is designed that way to prevent abuses of the system... for example, so that someone's karma doesn't get obliterated by a few abusive mods who happen to disagree with my opinion on one single post. Yeah, I know that meta-moderation is supposed to reduce this possibility, but really, I know better than that...
Now, if I choose to continuously spout off with a series of flamebait or off topic posts, I deserve the karma hit that will inevitably result.
If you read TFA, you'll see that 1) they did sequence DNA, 2) they found many, many species which are not the usual ones associated with contamination due to methodology, and 3) they found organisms that can theoretically survive in the extreme and varied environments believed to be present in the lake (thermophiles near suspected geothermal areas, halophiles in brackish/salty water, etc). As a microbiologist, I find it fascinating that the authors not only provide a list of species, but go so far as to paint a complete picture of how each could possibly exist in a completely functioning ecosystem. For example, they found organisms responsible for carbon and nitrogen fixation, and hypothesize that these same species will also be found throughout the lake water in their various niches.
There are two problems with your approach: one, the near vacuum of space does not allow for effective cooling via convection. Two, compressors only displace heat, and in doing so they actually generate more heat overall. A good example of this is the coils on the back of your refrigerator, which get quite warm during operation. Your kitchen warms up slightly while the interior of the fridge cools. In space, this heat does not dissipate readily and would build up until the system overheats.
Re:Collateralized vs Non-Collateralized Loans
on
Let Them Eat Teslas
·
· Score: 1
This is why a college education should not be intended for everyone. Let's face it: not everybody is cut out for higher education and a society of nothing but service employees, managers, and middlemen with bachelor's degrees or MBA's is not sustainable. Increasingly, people are being forced to spend years in school and take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt learning things that they don't need to know just because employers like to use "degree required" as a way to filter out applicants to entry-level service jobs that pay minimum wage and which don't actually require any of the skills picked up in school.
Yes, I know that technically all jailbreaks rely on security flaws, but the way that current jailbreaks are installed makes it very obvious that you are doing something not officially sanctioned by Apple. Some of the earliest jailbreaks were of the "visit this website and click this button to jailbreak" style, and I'm glad that these were patched... there was too much potential for driveby attacks on unsuspecting users. However, evasi0n requires the user to download a binary to their computer, boot the phone in DFU mode through a series of button presses, and wait through several restarts. Not only is it obvious that you are jailbreaking, but the process is just complicated enough to discourage many casual users from attempting it.
I can compile and install my own apps without going through the store. You just have to have a developer account (which is not very expensive).
I've heard that argument phrased as "if you can afford several hundred dollars for an iPhone, you can afford $99 a year for a developer account." It's not just about the money, it's about me objecting to a company that acts as a gatekeeper to a device that I own, and that expects me to pay a yearly toll to access some of the functionality of that device... access that could be revoked for any number of reasons with no recourse.
While I found the actual paper to be interesting (the researchers basically describe how they used a packet sniffer to capture data being sent to Google, then examined and reverse engineered the data to figure out exactly what was in the packets and what they could do with it), the idea of actually influencing real world trafic conditions using this method is a bit silly. First, only a very small percentage of drivers actually use live traffic data to make navigation decisions on the fly. Of those, some percentage either won't have an alternate route to choose from, or will simply stick to their route and tough it out. At best, you'd only trick a small percentage of drivers into avoiding a stretch of highway. As for "creating traffic jams", you'd have much better luck if you simply dropped a couple panes of glass off of the back of a truck or did something equally nefarious to cause an accident.
...ignore the calls but wait for them to send something in the mail (it will probably happen really soon once they start calling).
This. If a collector has what they feel is a legitimate claim, they'll be willing to work through the proper channels. If they're afraid to put anything in writing or accept certified mail at a physical address, that should be a huge red flag.
We've had the misfortune of dealing with the lowest of the low: debt collectors who go after estate settlements. They know that if they put in a claim with the court, they may only be awarded a small fraction of the money they're owed (especially if the deceased had quite a bit of debt and very few assets), so they hassle the executor (usually a surviving relative who is still in mourning) with an offer along the lines of "just send us a check for N% and we'll call it even, or we'll go after you later for the full amount". Of course, they know that what they'll actually get from the court will be much less than their settlement offer, but they make it sound like they're cutting you a deal.
Our response was always the same: submit your claim properly and the judge will consider it alongside the rest. Some did so, some didn't bother. Some were obviously scammers with no legitimate claim. Others even continued to contact us after the estate was closed rather then file with the court, but since the judge had certified that we had done everything correctly (posted public notice, etc), the debt collectors had missed the boat and no longer had any right to pursue the debt. Eventually they all left us alone.
Slashdot Mirror
I too have off-the-grid dreams as a house-owner, but the power companies always find a way, same thing with the electrical car that could run on water. Lobbyist will manipulate (read: FORCE) politicians into their direction, so you'll be depending on them one way or the other.
Huh? I guess there are places where you are required by law to hook up your house to the power grid, but nobody can force you to USE electricity. What's to stop you from just keeping the main breaker switched off?
I've actually known more than one person who didn't have utility power to their house, and they made it just fine. One of them engineered a small hydroelectric turbine system using a small creek that flowed across their land (they had several hundred acres in the North Carolina mountains) which they used to power a small refrigerator and occasionally a computer. The other used a collection of lead-acid car batteries which they charged up using a solar panel, then could hook up to an inverter as they needed.
I've wondered about this. Could a statement that a call may be recorded for "quality assurance" or the like be interpreted to mean that I, as the customer, also have permission to record the call... you know, to assure that I'm getting the quality of service that I expect?
Maybe it's also because I hate the new skeuomorphic design aesthetic. What's wrong with gloss, gradients, transparency, and attractive animations, or even a bevel or link here and there so we can actually tell something is clickable rather than playing mystery-meat navigation? I swear, everything is going flat-shaded, blocky, ugly, and indistinguishable, all because that's now the new "hip" look.
Skeumorphism - the use of design elements that mimic real life objects with similar functions, is actually the opposite phenomenon from the flat, light-on-pastel design trend. Though I fully agree with you - both of these UI philosophies have been severely overused.
A bit of googling will turn up plenty of articles analyzing the history of the skeuomorphism-versus-flat debate particularly at Apple, which I would argue has been one of the biggest influences in UI design over the last few years. Basically, the loss of skeuomorphism advocates such as Steve Jobs and Scott Forstall led to the pendulum swinging completely in the other direction, and many gimmicky and dated interface elements such as notes apps that look like real paper and a game center that looks like a cheap felt billiard table have been stripped away. But - what to replace it with? Well, everybody wants to stay on top of the latest design trend, and Microsoft and others seem to be migrating to flat designs, so flat it is.
Although you could argue over who copied who, essentially what you have is Microsoft and Apple in a race to see who can flatten their interfaces and strip out any traces of skeuomorphism the fastest. Sure, it looks trendy, but it's reached the point where we are sacrificing usability and accessibility in order to have the most "modern" design. Here's where I have a problem with the whole thing: computer interface elements have been pretty consistent over the last 20+ years or so. Everything behaved as expected and usually acted pretty consistent between operating systems. This is great for users, since they can focus on the task rather than the tools needed to accomplish them, and using the interface becomes second nature. To those who *design* computers rather than *use* them, this is a problem - you want the bling to be noticed. The old way of doing this was to show off your new hardware by making the UI flashy, bright, colorful, inviting - basically by ramping up the skeuomorphic elements to 11.
The problem is, the novelty of this wears off fast, and these interfaces quickly become dated. Now, flat is in, and anything that even remotely resembles skeuomorphism is stripped out. I have a number of problems with the current trend:
1) interface elements are hidden or played down, making them hard to find. Often it's hard to tell if I'm just not looking hard enough for that feature, or if it has been removed altogether.
2) It does away with conventions that have been standard for decades. This means that every time designers go wild designing a new interface, users have to spend time and effort learning a new way to accomplish a task.
3) It's less accessible. Razor thin text is hard for some people to see. Pastel on white and white on pastel text may look "hip" but can incredibly difficult to read. Interface elements that are marginalized can be hard to hunt down if the user doesn't know where to look.
4) It's inconsistent. Some programs hide buttons and scroll bars, some do not. Some use vastly different elements for simple actions such as "close window" so that the user is left guessing at the function of a UI element.
My prediction is that in a few years, "flat" will look as equally dated as skeuomorphism does now.
They already do this. After getting calls at least once a week pushing offers to upgrade our service to a bundle with a land line, and after asking them *each time* to stop calling us... we cancelled our service.
As a microbiologist, I agree that the Telegraph article is rife with errors. The original article is paywalled, but from the abstract it sounds as if the researchers described a mechanism by which lipopolysaccharide, a component of the gram-negative cell wall which provides some degree of antibiotic resistance, is exported from the cell. I understand Dong, et al to be suggesting that a compound which prevents proper transport of LPS could be used synergistically with another drug which would otherwise be blocked from entry into the cell by LPS.
Further, the use of the term "immunity" to describe antibiotic resistance is a pet peeve of mine, as these terms do not mean the same thing!
I can't decide if this should be rated funny, flamebait, or insightful. You have a point though... in an age of App Stores where users are faced with the noise of thousands of copycat apps, it seems that the key to success is how well you catch the attention of potential users, whether through pretty UI screenshots or a flashy looking icon. One of my (formerly) favorite weather apps was recently swept up into the modern "pencil thin white text on a light pastel background with flat UI" design craze, and removed about half the app's features while moving the rest to a single, long scrolling column. Half of the users decried the change for removing valuable functionality and destroying ease of navigation, while the other half offered praise along the lines of: "look at that pretty animated background!" and "ooooooh, shiney!"
We are not anti-fracking or anti-drilling. My goodness, we live in Texas.
Yeah, we love fracking! Now give us the 2.9 million dollars...
I love cars. However, if you drove a car into my house and caused serious injury to my family, I would expect monetary compensation from you to cover the damages and medical bills.
Not all lawyers are evil or bad...
True, but the problem is that 99% of them give the rest a bad name.
Here's one better: give everybody a safety orientation quiz before boarding, and those with the best scores get their choice of an aisle or window seat, choice of exit row or no exit row, and guaranteed space in an overhead bin. Oh, and the ability to select a non-sweaty seatmate. Put everybody else in the back and separate them by a soundproof door along with anybody flying with an infant-in-arms. Do that, and I won't even need the drink...
If you're so familiar with the safety briefing that you could give it yourself, then the briefings are working *exactly* as they are intended to!
Emergency preparedness is intended to drill these practices into you so that when the time comes, you don't have to think about what to do, you know what to do. Believe me, in a panic situation most ill prepared people don't calmly assess their surroundings and take the time to look for the instructions, but their first reaction is to get themselves out of harm's way as soon as possible. How do I find that emergency exit now that the cabin is filled with smoke? I looked for it when I boarded and I know that it is two rows behind me. Someone who has never been told to look for this exit may not even realize that it is there, nor will they think to look for the patterns in the lights on the floor that indicate you are at an exit row.
I am a very frequent flier, and could give the safety briefing myself, but I still make an effort to put down what I'm doing and pay attention. Why? Because I want to set an example for those who *should* be listening, since I don't want something that they do in a panic later to cause me harm.
In my mind, the difference is that there is some level of skill involved in arcade gameplay which is missing in current f2p games. Having grown up in the era when arcades were still the place to spend a Saturday afternoon, I can remember the excitement of nailing that perfect play which seemed to go on and on as the difficulty became increasingly harder... or, the frustration of realizing that you just wasted your money as you crash and burn right off the bat.
Really good arcade players could go what seemed like forever on a single coin, sometimes drawing a sizable audience, while the not-so-good players had a financial (and social!) incentive to improve their gameplay. This is missing from f2p games, which aren't designed to test the player's skill, but their patience. "Trolls are destroying your crops! To double your yield, build a watchtower that will only cost 99 cents!" would be akin to an arcade game prompting you, "Want to complete this level with half of the enemies? Insert a second token now!"
Hour after hour, she read nonsensical phrases and sentences so that the "ubergeeks" -- as she affectionately calls them; they leave her awestruck -- could work their magic by pulling out vowels, consonants, syllables and diphthongs, and playing with her pitch and speed.
if there are many of them, then you should be able to give a few examples.
I live near one of the entrances to Great Smoky Mountains National Park. We have several facilities in the park (stables, nature centers, bookstores) which are run by private groups and nonprofits with permission from the NPS. When the shutdown took effect, all of them were required to close up shop and leave the park. What's even better, we have areas which are typically seldom if ever patrolled (such as backcountry and wilderness areas) which are being monitored with as many federal law enforcement personnel as possible in order to keep out visitors. At one particular park entrance, which normally patrolled by a single park ranger, TWO rangers with vehicles were stationed just to turn people away at the boundary.
Source: I know many people who work (er... worked) in the park, I have worked within the park myself, and I do volunteer work there. Interestingly, during the shutdown volunteers are *specifically* prohibited from performing any work that a paid employee would normally do.
There are several pointers to this guy operating out of the basement of his mom's house and being a pure troll with no merit whatsoever to his claims:
Also, the numerous spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors peppered throughout the emails are pretty hard to miss.
If I've built up excellent karma through a series of insightful, informative, on-topic posts, I shouldn't have all of that negated by a single post that happens not to please the mods that day. It is designed that way to prevent abuses of the system... for example, so that someone's karma doesn't get obliterated by a few abusive mods who happen to disagree with my opinion on one single post. Yeah, I know that meta-moderation is supposed to reduce this possibility, but really, I know better than that...
Now, if I choose to continuously spout off with a series of flamebait or off topic posts, I deserve the karma hit that will inevitably result.
If you read TFA, you'll see that 1) they did sequence DNA, 2) they found many, many species which are not the usual ones associated with contamination due to methodology, and 3) they found organisms that can theoretically survive in the extreme and varied environments believed to be present in the lake (thermophiles near suspected geothermal areas, halophiles in brackish/salty water, etc). As a microbiologist, I find it fascinating that the authors not only provide a list of species, but go so far as to paint a complete picture of how each could possibly exist in a completely functioning ecosystem. For example, they found organisms responsible for carbon and nitrogen fixation, and hypothesize that these same species will also be found throughout the lake water in their various niches.
No, that's, "horizontal breakfast bar"
There are two problems with your approach: one, the near vacuum of space does not allow for effective cooling via convection. Two, compressors only displace heat, and in doing so they actually generate more heat overall. A good example of this is the coils on the back of your refrigerator, which get quite warm during operation. Your kitchen warms up slightly while the interior of the fridge cools. In space, this heat does not dissipate readily and would build up until the system overheats.
This is why a college education should not be intended for everyone. Let's face it: not everybody is cut out for higher education and a society of nothing but service employees, managers, and middlemen with bachelor's degrees or MBA's is not sustainable. Increasingly, people are being forced to spend years in school and take on tens of thousands of dollars in debt learning things that they don't need to know just because employers like to use "degree required" as a way to filter out applicants to entry-level service jobs that pay minimum wage and which don't actually require any of the skills picked up in school.
But there's simply no comparison between a poorly stocked drawer at Radio Shack...
You mean to tell me that there's a Radio Shack somewhere that still has individual parts in drawers?
I can compile and install my own apps without going through the store. You just have to have a developer account (which is not very expensive).
I've heard that argument phrased as "if you can afford several hundred dollars for an iPhone, you can afford $99 a year for a developer account." It's not just about the money, it's about me objecting to a company that acts as a gatekeeper to a device that I own, and that expects me to pay a yearly toll to access some of the functionality of that device... access that could be revoked for any number of reasons with no recourse.
While I found the actual paper to be interesting (the researchers basically describe how they used a packet sniffer to capture data being sent to Google, then examined and reverse engineered the data to figure out exactly what was in the packets and what they could do with it), the idea of actually influencing real world trafic conditions using this method is a bit silly. First, only a very small percentage of drivers actually use live traffic data to make navigation decisions on the fly. Of those, some percentage either won't have an alternate route to choose from, or will simply stick to their route and tough it out. At best, you'd only trick a small percentage of drivers into avoiding a stretch of highway. As for "creating traffic jams", you'd have much better luck if you simply dropped a couple panes of glass off of the back of a truck or did something equally nefarious to cause an accident.
...ignore the calls but wait for them to send something in the mail (it will probably happen really soon once they start calling).
This. If a collector has what they feel is a legitimate claim, they'll be willing to work through the proper channels. If they're afraid to put anything in writing or accept certified mail at a physical address, that should be a huge red flag.
We've had the misfortune of dealing with the lowest of the low: debt collectors who go after estate settlements. They know that if they put in a claim with the court, they may only be awarded a small fraction of the money they're owed (especially if the deceased had quite a bit of debt and very few assets), so they hassle the executor (usually a surviving relative who is still in mourning) with an offer along the lines of "just send us a check for N% and we'll call it even, or we'll go after you later for the full amount". Of course, they know that what they'll actually get from the court will be much less than their settlement offer, but they make it sound like they're cutting you a deal.
Our response was always the same: submit your claim properly and the judge will consider it alongside the rest. Some did so, some didn't bother. Some were obviously scammers with no legitimate claim. Others even continued to contact us after the estate was closed rather then file with the court, but since the judge had certified that we had done everything correctly (posted public notice, etc), the debt collectors had missed the boat and no longer had any right to pursue the debt. Eventually they all left us alone.
What state?
You might have as well used an hourglass so the user could spend their time shaking it trying to get the sand to fall faster.
I tried that once; it didn't work but I must have accidentally made the hourglass flip over, and I had to wait even longer!