New And Improved Rant Thread, now with 50% more profanity!

[Qingdai]

Troll!

[wildernesse]

For all of you who work in tech support/customer service, I apologize for myself. The web seminar I am attending (CLE) this morning has been acting differently than usual--not keeping a connection, and timing out b/c it is in demo mode a lot later than usual. I have called tech support TWICE, and both times by the time I speak to a person (not very long), the moment the person answers the phone, my latest refreshing of the window has resulted in the problem being resolved.

And I sound half awake (because that's the truth) and rambly. And, yes, it is the same tech support guy, who was laughing with me. Yes, WITH. I told him thank you for not calling me an idiot out loud, and that I promise not to call him back today.

Stupid CLE paranoia. Stupid eastern time zone. Stupid couldn't go to sleep until 3 am. <--The rant.

[Ensign Steve]

I got a late start this morning and I didn't get my coffee and I was a cranky bitch about that but at least I made it to English class just in time to fail a quiz I wasn't prepared for. At lunchtime I spilled my entire meal out onto the floor upon pulling it out of the microwave, but you know what? I'm fucking eating it anyway because that's my only fucking lunch and I don't care who knows it because everybody already knows I'm nasty. Also I have raging PMS, which I'm sure is totally unrelated to all of the above.

[Watser?]

First known case of robotic PMS

[Ensign Steve]

[Ymir's blood]

* Ymir's blood makes a note not to speak unless spoken to this weekend.

[Brimshack]

Goddam Microsoft! Stop capitalizing 'i'! If you'd at least wait until I actually put a space after it that would be nice. You'd help me correct a frequent mistake if you did that. But you don't. I don't need every "in" to be capitalized, nor all my "it"s. Fucker. Goddammit, I make enough mistakes without you adding some of your own.

[wei yau]

Damn, deliberately screwing up how "iPhone" is typed out is pretty petty, even for Microsoft.

[Ensign Steve]

No, I don't fucking know why the carpet is all wet. I'm going to go out on a limb here and guess that there was some kind of leak or flood. You see the fans being used to dry it off, right? Obviously somebody is on top of the situation. Just because I am the only one with an office in this wing who works on Fridays does not make me the official person to talk to about the wet carpet to every fucking idiot who comes through the hall. I know you're just here to take a dump in the cushy bathroom, anyway. You would think it would be a refreshing change of pace to have any topic of conversation other than the weird weather (it's cold one day and warm the next, am I right?!) or the fact that I'm the only one who works in this wing on Friday, and gosh it's awfully quiet back here (it was ). But when you're the nth person to ask me about it, I'm over it. Who are you? I don't even know you. If you don't have any business with me or my department, please just keep your mouth shut, take your dump, and fucking leave.

[LadyShea]

Hey perverts! Quit giving your weird and gross sex stuff cutesy names! When I look up something related to candy for a fucking Christmas craft project I don't want the first hit to be Urban Dictionary's graphic depiction of what you do with blood and semen RIGHT THERE IN THE RESULTS so I can't not see it.

Now I can never, ever unread it and I am queasy.

[Naru]

I ordered a really sweet new laptop from Dell. Two weeks ago. It isn't scheduled to ship for another week.

WHYYYYYY

[Crumb]

Did you tell them that you know velvetydoughnuts?

[curses]

That might be his problem.

[Shelli]

Originally Posted by Ymir's blood

God damn political callers. I don't care what issues or parties you support. I don't care if you want to ban pork spending (fat chance) or create jobs or whatever. Since you won't stop calling, the phone is unplugged till tomorrow evening. Let ring five times or ten, it doesn't matter and no you can't leave robo messages on the answering machine. Suck it.

That crap drove me fucking nuts, too.

What I'd like to know is this... Why is it that if you're on the "do not call list" in (as I am) that it's illegal for telemarketers to call your number, but it's not illegal for roboticians to do so? What's the difference? They're both trying to sell you something and all of it's shit.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

Our fridge is dead, new one coming tomorrow (so that's a lot of food to be tossed out). The oven hasn't worked since January, and the cooktop is on its last legs. We're already having trouble making ends meet.

Please tell me it gets easier.

[Janet]

I believe you'll find that roboticians wrote the Do Not Call List law, which is why they are exempt. Self-serving bastards that they are.

[Ymir's blood]

Yeah, that was pretty much my response too. The people who wrote the laws stand to benefit from exempting themselves from it.

[Anastasia Beaverhausen]

My parents used to (still do? I haven't been home in a year) get quite a few charity calls, mostly from the firefighters fund. So they're not exempt, either, at least in

[lisarea]

Non-commercial speech, including political and charity calls, is protected by the first amendment, so they can't prohibit those the way they can with actual sales calls.

[Angakuk]

I am not at all sure that it is a 1st amendment matter. The 1st amendment, if I understand it correctly (a highly debatable proposition) protects public speech acts. It seems to me that a telephone call falls into the category of private communication and ought to be treated differently than public communication. Personally, I think that if the right to privacy can be stretched to include a woman's right to an abortion, then it also ought to be amenable to being stretched to include my right to not have my privacy invaded by unsolicited telephone calls. The roboticians are violating my constitutional right to not be bothered by their shit. IMHO, all automated telephone calls, with the exception of emergency services, ought to be made illegal.

[Ymir's blood]

The First Amendment thing doesn't really seem valid to me. It isn't a prohibition on them saying what they want, but rather in whether they are allowed to contact someone who has asked them not to. The list is opt-in, after all.

[lisarea]

Okay, but that's still why.

Political and charitable calls are not prohibited under the no call law because it is generally thought that including them would make it difficult for the law to face a constitutional challenge. The laws for door to door solicitations often make the same commercial vs. non-commercial distinction for the same reason.

Take, for example, this decision. The first 'key aspect' in finding the DNC list constitutional is that it does not restrict non-commercial speech.

State laws vary, and there are restrictions on different types of calls covered under different legislation as well. Robocalls, for example, may be covered under your state law and are also covered more strictly under the Telemarketing Sales Rule than regular live calls are.

[Ymir's blood]

I still think that politicians are less inclined to try and restrict such calls simply because they rely on them themselves. Otherwise, it isn't like legislatures haven't passed laws that they knew would fail Constitutional review, simply to gain points with voters. I'd say that most voters would back expanding the scope of the no call list, enthusiastically.

If not for my brother not having a cell phone and the ISP being the phone company, I'd drop the land line in a heartbeat. The latter is the real kicker, as a low end cell phone plan is pretty comparable in price to what the phone company charges for service.

[lisarea]

True, but it's also difficult to draw a bright line the way you can with commercial speech. There is plenty of legal precedent for limiting commercial speech, and it's fairly easy to define. And even that is still a contentious issue. How would you even do that with non-commercial speech, particularly in such a way that it would survive a constitutional challenge?

Telemarketing cases generally follow the same guidelines as door-to-door solicitation cases, which have been through the courts as well; and the rulings are often based on precedent set in those cases. And if you try to limit non-commercial door to door solicitations, the Jehovah's Witnesses sue and win.

[Ymir's blood]

I just don't see that this is about speech though, but whether or not an individual has the right to limit who can contact them over the phone. It isn't the message, just the means of delivery. For instance, if someone was standing on the sidewalk shouting their message at your house through a bullhorn, they'd get told to stop by the police - theoretically. That's how I see it, as a harassment issue, not one of speech.