MS didn't sue earlier because it's really hard to find a legal entity to sue. When you get one of these calls, the thing calling you is not directly attached to a land line. It's a software pbx system that may be running on a compromised machine in some part of the world. The call only gets connected to the person you talk to after you connect and the system determines you may be a real person willing to talk to someone. The calls get routed through compromised voip service providers, compromised pbx systems, or termination lines leased with false id and credit cards. By the time the provider knows what's happening, tens of thousands of calls have been made and the front end system just moves to another provider. As to "opting out" -- only legitimate telemarketing organizations bother with do not call lists. These asshats just random dial. It's cheaper.

To figure out who to sue, you have to participate in the scam long enough to have an actual transaction processed and then follow the money -- but that's not so simple now. Most of these particular kinds of scams don't accept payment at the telecenter you're talking to. They just install the ransomware on the pc. Then once you're already compromised you have to pay someone else -- through a web site, a wire payment, or some other mechanism that's much easier to hide than just a credit card transaction.

Thanks, but the only person to quote for that one (including the poor grammar) is me. I'm glad you enjoyed it. As I just said to someone else who disagrees, "If you put some steel across a span with lots of triangle shapes to it, intuitively you may look at it and say "should hold". I'd probably walk across it willingly. I would not, however, want to count on driving trucks over it regularly without someone with engineering training and rigor applying math and proven science to the problem first."

If you put some steel across a span with lots of triangle shapes to it, intuitively you may look at it and say "should hold". I'd probably walk across it willingly. I would not, however, want to count on driving trucks over it regularly without someone with engineering training and rigor applying math and proven science to the problem first.

I'd love to read a real comment (yeah, I know, it's almost like I'm new here) from someone who is actually capable of understanding the math here. It would be great to see a reasonable discussion on the actual implications here.

As to people saying "that's obvious" -- what you can intuit and what you can prove are not the same thing. The only thing prove by a "that's obvious" comment is that the person posting it doesn't have a clue.

actually, many many people are saved by AEDs every day. I've seen it done. In one case at my daughter's school a kid's grandfather dropped during a drama production. A student ran and got the AED our department had placed in the school, a parent used it on the floor of the auditorium. The man WALKED to the ambulance when it arrived a few minutes later.

But an automatic defibrillator will not shock an arrested rhythm. The machine can only shock specific kinds of fibrillation -- where the heart is fluttering in a disorganized way that doesn't pump blood the way it should. A fully arrested heart wouldn't be detected by the machine. You'd need a trained medic to manually shock in those cases.

Yeah, except that I get hired to write the code that other people sell as software as a service. I need to invent software as a service as a service services.

Miss a payment and that fancy application code I built for your website that you run for a huge corporation stops working.... hmmmm.... if only I wasn't so damn ethical...

Flag on the play.<br>Anonymous Coward 1 minute ago<br>Flag on the play.<br>Multiple mis-identification of a sponsors product.<br>Defense.<br>5 Yard Penalty.<br>Automatic FIRST down.

Like every other robot, endlessly repeating the disingenuous arguments and nonsense spewed forth by political entertainment clowns who don't care one bit who they hurt so long as they keep up their ratings, you have lots of declarations about lies and hell, but almost no facts. How boring.

Shit! There were proto-republicans!

Fscking Google. Too clever by half.

Pretty much the same, on a floating barge here in Portland. Just read an article about it the paper (dead tree version). It's pretty clearly tied to google, that's clear. Also, the registrations of these two barges were a three letter designation and then 0010 and 0011 so there's probably at least one more out there (0001) somewhere and quite possibly at 0000 too.

His whole set of ideals and processes is about not having to trust an individual person to make you secure. What he publishes is open, as are the software and techniques he espouses. The point is that if he's not trustworthy there should be people out there that will spot it. Personally, I'm not qualified but I do have some level of trust that there are plenty of people who are and who do check. If not, we're all screwed but there's no point in going down that path.

What, SAML wasn't a big enough pain in the ass for you?