All posts by Lonewriter

Business, Culture, Government, Technology

Pet Peeve. One Of Many…

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Telemarketers, bah humbug.

I have both my home and cell phones on the “National Do Not Call Registry” which was set up by the Federal Trade Commission and the Federal Communications Commission in 2003.

AFTER 14 YEARS, does it work? NOPE, not as far as I can tell. I still get several calls per day from telemarketers, phishers, and scammers.

Has anyone gone to prison for breaking the law? Again, NOPE, not as far as I can find out. There have been some fines levied but that’s about the extent of any punishment.

Okay, here’s where my “PET PEEVE” comes in. The PHONE COMPANIES can stop all of this, but THEY WON”T!

They could easily monitor any number they have and observe if the registered user is generating an unusual number of outgoing calls. They can also coordinate with the FTC and FCC to make sure a “business” is not calling people on the Do Not Call Registry.  Right now IT’S THE RESPONSIBILITY of the SCAMMER to comply with the law.  I may be a bit of a simpleton, but a law that requires a lawbreaker to self-police seems awfully stupid.  That is about as effective as a convenience store owner hanging a “No guns allowed” sign to prevent armed robberies.  “Crap, I was going to rob the place but they won’t allow me to bring  my gun into the store”.

The other thing that the phone companies are allowing on their systems is giving the SCAMMERS the ability to SPOOF CALLER ID with fake numbers and names. This makes it IMPOSSIBLE TO REPORT a violation to the authorities.  They again have control over the signalling that generates the Caller ID messages. Once more it would be easy for the phone companies to check that the Caller ID originating from the SCAMMER is their registered number which would allow us poor slobs to file a complaint. They can easily prevent ANY caller from spoofing Caller ID.

BUT THEY DON”T! The phone companies are more than happy to let this go on because they are MAKING MONEY.

The phone companies get money from the SCAMMERS, for every phone line, every phone number, and every call made, which gives the phone companies little incentive to shut the SCAMMERS down.

MONEY TALKS and BOVINE EXCREMENT (you and me) WALKS.

Culture

What’s The Limit?

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Now that all the hoopla and protests over the inauguration of Donald Trump as President of the United States has settled down a bit, I was just musing over the fact that the group that says they stand for “tolerance”, HATES those that disagree with their viewpoint.

One stupid blonde singer even went so far as to say she would like to “blow up the White House”. How tolerant. Another equally stupid “celebrity” said she wanted to understand the conservative viewpoint. When asked what she would say to President Trump if given the opportunity, her response was that she would tell him to “F*ck off!“. Great move on understanding and expressing tolerance.

That got me thinking. What is “tolerance”?

As a life long builder, I was taught that “tolerance” was how much error was acceptable. In a machined part one might specify plus zero, minus five ten thousandth’s of an inch as an acceptable “tolerance” for a finished part. For electronics it might be plus/minus one percent of the part’s listed value.  Closer to the desired norm is always better.  You always worked hard to eliminate variations to keep everything within “tolerance”.

Tolerance is how much variation from something’s desired value that would still be considered acceptable.  I guess President Trump is outside the “tolerance” limits for some folks.

BUT that begs the bigger question. Why is there an emphasis to “teach tolerance”? Doesn’t that imply you only need accept something outside of the “norm”, up to some limit?  How much skin color variation is acceptable? How much devotion someone has in their faith? How conservative someone’s views are?  And who on the left was ordained king or queen (I want to be tolerant) to define what are the “norms” and what are the limits?

Shouldn’t “acceptance” be emphasized rather than “tolerance”?

Maybe the lefties have it right (I know, bad pun).  Tolerance is better than acceptance.   “Tolerance” means you don’t need to have “acceptance” that there are opposing viewpoints outside of some unwritten limit.  “Blowing them up” is an acceptable action to take. Kill off all who don’t believe until everyone believes the same thing.

Hmm, isn’t that how ISIS thinks?

Government, Politics

The Other F’ing Idiot Senator From The PRK!

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Oh man! I saw some of the confirmation hearing for Representative Mike Pompeo for Director of the CIA. Baby Senator Kamala “I have no F’ing clue why I’m on this commitee” Harris spent her time attempting to sound intelligent by grilling Rep. Pompeo on LGBT treatment, discrimination against mothers, and finally NASA’s conclusions on global warming.

The first two have some relevance, as Mr. Pompeo will need to manage employee policies of the CIA. It’s the last line of questioning about global warming which she kept harping about and spent the most time on, that was absolutely asinine.

Komrade Harris kept hounding Mr. Pompeo, if he believed NASA’s conclusions about global warming (renamed to climate science because they can’t prove global warming) was debatable. Mr. Pompeo said he did not want to get into the debate about the validity of climate science as he said he had not read the NASA report and that the focus of the CIA will be to help fight the wars that is being waged against our country, and NOT on the debate about the validity of climate science.  Komrade Harris wouldn’t give up on her line of questioning until Mr. Pompeo agreed to discuss this topic with her at a later time.  Her performance proves that she is clueless and quite the F’ing idiot!

Komrade Harris apparently believes that if NASA does something, it is akin to a “work of god” and cannot be questioned.  She seems to believe there is no debate on “climate science”  because NASA issued a “holy” report.  The blind belief in climate science apparently is a litmus test for her as to the suitability of an individual to direct the CIA.  Huh? WTF?  Anyone have the odds on her endorsing to CONFIRM Rep. Pompeo?  A million to one?

Someone needs to remind Komrade Harris about the “Mars Climate Orbiter“. Golly, it even has the word “Climate” in it.  The gods of NASA managed to lose control of their (really “our” as taxpayers) $125,000,000.00 Orbiter because they used metric units (meters, newton-meters) for some data and English units (feet, pounds) for others in their flight calculations. The probe was so off course when it reached Mars that it crashed into the surface in a “FLAMING BALL OF WRECKAGE” without making a single orbit or sending back any useful data.  The gods of NASA were perplexed when they couldn’t locate the probe as it neared the Red Planet.  It took some time before they figured out that they had commanded the probe to smash into Mars.  No DATA from the orbiter.  Pretty good return on $125 million, 1999 dollars.  That’s close to $200 million in today’s dollars, folks.  Oopsie.

The error in units, by the gods of NASA, is something that a high school student might make, but an infallible god?  On top of that, they had 9 months after launch to figure out they had a problem.  However, not until well after the Orbiter augured into the dirt, did the gods notice that the telemetry calculation numbers made no sense.

Pretty good work for infallible gods!  But who am I to question the work of gods?

Getting back to Komrade Harris, perhaps she believes that global warming is an area for the CIA Director to focus on because, like “Soon to be gone” Secretary of State Kerry, she believes ISIS can be defeated by giving them solar panels!  You can read my commentary on that topic HERE.