Subj : vandals, spoofers and handles To : Charles Pierson From : August Abolins Date : Wed Jan 27 2021 21:18:00 Hello Charles! ** On Wednesday 27.01.21 - 09:34, Charles Pierson wrote to August Abolins: AA>> I had an incident of vandalism a few years ago. I reported AA>> it to the landlord first. ... CP> A police report is usually required if an insurance claim CP> is being done. There are other reasons as well of course. Someone spray-painted some graffiti on the side of the building. It resembled the anarachy "A", but I could have accepted it as an homage to me! :D AA>> This winter, I decorated the outside of my shop with a AA>> couple of seasonal potted decorations. I paid a local AA>> artist about $50 each. One morning, I found one of them AA>> missing. ... CP> That I'm kind of torn about. Simply because of the dollar CP> value, it wouldn't be very high priority for the police to CP> investigate, unless it was one of many such incidents in CP> the community. I don't recall anyone else talking about damage or loss to their outdoor decorations. CP> But, you bought and someone decided it was ok just to ttake CP> it. All it takes is a punk drunk enough or doped-up enough and then anything goes. CP> Besides the police not making it known, do your fellow CP> shopkeepers talk with each other about things? It's odd CP> that it wasn't better heard of sooner. It is odd. The only other time I'd hear about a concern from the police was when it was reported that some counterfeit bills were circulating. IMHO, I think the banks should have samples of counterfeits so that we can see what to look for. There is no known "shopkeepers talk" in my town. A few people have tried to build Facebook pages to connect the local business community. But I simply hate all the ads that I have to waste my time and resources waiting to load. And, since anyone could join, our concerns and secrets could be discovered by anyone - so I don't bother. As a business owner, I need to learn to keep my mouth shut about many things - politics or otherwise. Perhaps an invite-only Telegram group specifically intended to share reports of vandalism might work. Perhaps RETAIL_HORROR_2 could be it! re: spoofed numbers.. AA>> ..their excuse is that different countries have AA>> different equipment and it is therefore hard to unify AA>> everyone on a single stategy or "code" to fix the problem. CP> Since VOIP is becoming more common than hardlines, I'm not CP> so sure that that is a totally honest answer anymore. I agree.. there *has* to be a way to identify numbers that are gleened from a virtual pool versus a set group of numbers issued by genuine carriers. Then.. simply block all virtual numbers automatically. But all carriers have to be on the same page about this. But since this all has to do with money (the more calls the better), I doubt that any company is going to block anything by default. CP> Occasionally, I have called back the number on the caller CP> ID, only to have it be some eldery ladies home number, not CP> some company the message is suppisedly from. Ah... Ok. But I would be suspect if the number was not familiar - and not bother returning the call. If the original call is important, the person (if real) can always leave v-mail. I just got a call from 905-641-3433, identified as "Unknown" on my Blackberry, tonight. A simple reverse lookup revealed that it was some telemarketer. And.. there was no v-mail. So, there is no way that I am just going to dial it back. CP> By the way, your Handle you use at times Ogg, struck my as CP> familiar, althoygh I wasn't sure why. CP> I figured it out, That's the last name of the District CP> Attorney here in Harris County. Ogg was a kind of shortcut/nickname to my first name used by some closer friends since the 70s. I just read that: "It derives from the gaelic adjective 'og' meaning 'young' and was originally given as a baptismal or nickname of endearment." Later.. much later.. I learned that it was the name given to describe the open-container format to be used with the Vorbis audio codec. Ogg has an interesting paragraph about its naming origins in the wikipedia page for itself: " Ogg is derived from "ogging", jargon from the computer game Netrek, which came to mean doing something forcefully, possibly without consideration of the drain on future resources.[3] At its inception, the Ogg project was thought to be somewhat ambitious given the limited power of the PC hardware of the time.[8] Although it is sometimes assumed that the name "Ogg" comes from the character of Nanny Ogg in Terry Pratchett's Discworld novels, the format's developers say that is not true.[8] Still, to quote the same reference: "Vorbis, on the other hand is named after the Terry Pratchett character from the book Small Gods". " The Ogg Vorbis project started in 1993. It was originally named "Squish" but that name was already trademarked, so the project underwent a name change. The new name, "OggSquish", was used until 2001 when it was changed again to "Ogg". Ogg has since come to refer to the container format, which is now part of the larger Xiph.org multimedia project. Today, "Squish" (now known as "Vorbis") refers to a particular audio coding format typically used with the Ogg container format.[9] -- ../|ug --- OpenXP 5.0.48 * Origin: Mobile? Join CHAT here: https://tinyurl.com/y5k7tsla (1:153/757.21) .