Randy Von Smith

Comment Threads

• zack.weinberg commented on Things that keep me awake at night #1: The end of telephony
  People who use the standard file-in-folder paradigm literally every day, who are constantly dealing with it, seem to learn pathologically, internalising representations of it that are violently at odds with what they see, and adopting crazily odd ways of doing things. I would love to see some detailed studies on this. I've observed what I think is a related phenomenon. My relatives who did not grow up with computers can be divided into two classes. One group believes they could understand the machine, if they put in the effort. Some of these people have put in the effort, some have...
• Jay commented on Things that keep me awake at night #1: The end of telephony
  A friend of mine from college used to keep a copy of the mass market Necronomicon by the door. He was a legend among local Jehovah's Witnesses....
• katielaurenlucas commented on Things that keep me awake at night #1: The end of telephony
  "But I must admit that spam calls give me a perfect opportunity for some stress-reducing rudeness." I've taken to not being rude at them. I talk to them; find out the names of their kids, what sort of area they live in. That sort of thing.. The kind of conversation they'd regret having if I turned out to be a nutter, but it's OK because I'm a reasonably personable chatty person. Then I calmly tell them that if their company ever calls me again I'll find their children and cut their faces off and hang up. It is surprisingly effective...
• richard.gadsden commented on Things that keep me awake at night #1: The end of telephony
  We could get the phone book back. If you want a general-purpose whitelist, then the residential section of the phone book would be a pretty good start....
• kdansky commented on Things that keep me awake at night #1: The end of telephony
  I got rid of my landline phone because the only calls I got on it were telemarketers and my mother, whom I'm trying to teach to use Skype instead. My Internet is now via TV cable (which I also don't use for TV). At least calling to mobile phone is still ludicrously expensive, so I'm not getting any calls on that. As for white-listing problems: When they have to send a request first (like in Skype), it's pretty easy to get right....