Subj : deaf and dumb To : August Abolins From : Charles Pierson Date : Wed Jan 27 2021 09:34:20 On 26 Jan 2021, August Abolins said the following... AA> CP> Why is that? I mean your not being comfortable with AA> CP> involving the poluce? AA> AA> I don't like the idea that I would need to get the police AA> involved. I wouldn't like to deal with the drama. I get not wanting to deal with drama. If it's not a common occurance I'd not want to either. AA> I had an incident of vandalism a few years ago. I reported it to AA> the landlord first. They inturn reported it to the police. AA> Apparently it was serious enough to report to the police. But my AA> first thought was not to bother with the police. AA> A police report is usually required if an insurance claim is being done. There are other reasons as well of course. AA> This winter, I decorated the outside of my shop with a couple of AA> seasonal potted decorations. I paid a local artist about $50 AA> each. One morning, I found one of them missing. I could have AA> taken those piece in every night (but they were heavy), so I AA> left them as is each night. It wasn't a problem for over a AA> month. But then, some punk decides to help themselves to one of AA> them. I didn't bother reporting that either. That I'm kind of torn about. Simply because of the dollar value, it wouldn't be very high priority for the police to investigate, unless it was one of many such incidents in the community. But, you bought and someone decided it was ok just to ttake it. AA> Prior to that, it was known that some punk was going around town AA> and turning off the propane tanks of the businesses. But I AA> didn't know that until I spoke to the propane company. AA> AA> If the reporting is to be effective, it needs to be reciprocal. AA> In otherwords, it there is reason to suspect that someone is AA> going around town vandalizing things, then the store owners AA> should be notified by the police. But that doesn't happen. We AA> may only read about certain events a week later in the AA> newspaper. Besides the police not making it known, do your fellow shopkeepers talk with each other about things? It's odd that it wasn't better heard of sooner. AA> AA> I read into this matter some time ago, and it turns out that AA> their excuse is that different countries have different AA> equipment and it is therefore hard to unify everyone on a single AA> stategy or "code" to fix the problem. Since VOIP is becoming more common than hardlines, I'm not so sure that that is a totally honest answer anymore. AA> But I also read that allowing such calls to come through is a AA> money maker. The receiving country has a billing mechanism to AA> charge the calling country. So, why would the receiving country AA> deny *any* calls when there is opportunity to collect calling AA> fees. Blocking all those spoofing and spammng calls would be a AA> big loss of revenue. I'm sure tax revenue plays a part on the government side. AA> CP> So now you have the problem of people calling back those AA> CP> spoofed numbers to complain instead giving some sweet old AA> CP> lady an earful. AA> AA> Not sure what you mean by that. AA> Occasionally, I have called back the number on the caller ID, only to have it be some eldery ladies home number, not some company the message is suppisedly from. So "Stop calling me, I have no interest in using your company for insurance/filing for disability/renewing my car warranty on my 20 year old car" is directed to this poor woman instead of the scammers. AA> CP> Probably, Although at 6.5 feet tall or so, I have been told AA> CP> I tend to look intimidating even though I am thin. AA> AA> Height is another plus factor. There is probably less chance AA> that any punk will want to mess with someone who towers over AA> them. There is some truth to that. By the way, your Handle you use at times Ogg, struck my as familiar, althoygh I wasn't sure why. I figured it out, That's the last name of the District Attorney here in Harris County. --- Mystic BBS v1.12 A46 2020/08/26 (Raspberry Pi/32) * Origin: theoasisbbs.ddns.net:1357 .