Such moderating! Only the inaccurate information was boosted! Maybe the metamoders
will see this, maybe they won't.

Brea means tarpits. (I expect the tarpits predate the ranch.)

Oh, and La means The.

They don't come up much in conversation, but a few people I know always
refer to them as "The The Tarpits Tarpits" when they speak. (Fortunately,
as I said, they doesn't come up too often in conversation!)

The La Brea Tarpits.

Now let me see.

That would be North of the Rio Grande River, and
South of the Sierra Nevada mountains, wouldn't it?

The only thing new here is that the service is being marketed, and the public is finding out about it.

If you call forward your landline to a toll-free number, which itself is programmed to forward the
calls it receives to a second number (say your cell), the callerID on the cell phone will display the number that would have been blocked if you had just taken the call at your landline.

I do not know whether ALL toll-free companies do this, or just some of them.

Here's how it all works.

Toll-free numbers have been around for decades longer than callerID. And it makes perfect sense that people who pay for a long distance call (the 800 number owner) should see the caller's number.

The mechanism used for doing this is called ANI, and it's been around since the 1960's at least.
There is no provision for blocking the calling party's number with this mechanism. (ANI stands for automatic number identification.)

Fast forward a few decades to the invention of something very new, Signaling System Seven (SS7).
It provides a whole new way to provide a caller's number to the called party, and it has various blocking options included. However, anytime a caller's number is supposed to be blocked, it really isn't -- it is always sent. However, a special one-bit flag is ALSO sent that says "Please
don't reveal this information even tho I am supplying you with it." Then if the equipment at the receiving end thinks it has a good enough reason, it strips out the "privacy requested" flag.

Now, there is nothing that says that an SS7 switch which is handling incoming 800 calls HAS TO
strip the privacy. The old ANI mechanism is still available, and SS7 does not have to treat 800 calls differently, but at least for some long distance companies, it does.

I have a question: does anyone know whether this SS7 privacy stripping on toll free calls is explicitly authorized? Or did companies exploit a loophole and just implement the SS7 software that way on purpose. A technical disadvantage to the old ANI system is that the calling number is not transmitted until AFTER the phone call is answered.

And then they're offering call recording also. When call recording is performed by a carrier, it doesn't necessarily wait for the call to be answered before it starts recording. I don't know about the Trap Call people. But there are services that will allow you to record what your caller
is saying about you before you answer the phone, while the caller is still hearing ringing.

Quote:

"Oh Mr. Hoover, you just don't understand. We are not subject to city, state or federal regulation. We are Omnipotent. OMNIPOTENT! That's PO-TENT with an OMNI in front of it."

                      -- Lily Tomlin portraying power-mad telephone operator "Earnestine" from the album
                                                    "This is a Recording". Mr Hoover is J. Edgar ("Jedgar") Hoover,
                                                                                                    Director of the FBI.

This is an interesting and tricky problem to solve. The danger comes from people who might google your name, see the bad guy thing and go "yuck" -- and then pass you by. People like this can even
fully realize you aren't the bad guy, just someone with the same name, and still the "yuck" causes
them to pass your resume by. But if you make a big deal out of the co-incidence, including an affidavit or side-by-side photos of yourself and the bad guy, you'll make the co-incidence be more memorable than the rest of the resume. And of course you have to be upbeat and polite and not condescending too.

Here's how I'd do it:

At the top I'd put an asterisk after my name. This arouses curiosity. If you think the people might be extra stupid, use two asterisks, so they can't miss it. At the very end of the resume,
perhaps after "References: Available on request", put your footnote.

* Google Goofs to avoid. If they're a bit more formal, say
* Google Gaffes to avoid. (If this catches on, there will come to be an internet slang expression
for this section of a resume. If such an expression develops, use it.)

*Google Gaffe to avoid: Mistaken Identity. The applicant has no connection to the John Q. Public whose posts to the such-and-such forum pop up in a Google search by name.

Don't include the word pedophile, or even "bad guy" if you can help it. Your goal is to instruct the lazy and stupid not to jump to conclusions, without telling them that they are lazy and stupid.

You want to say "don't fall into the trap" without painting a big picture of a trap in their head that will dominate their memory of you. Don't even bring up the subject in your interview. Assume that if they've read your resume they know enough about the story.

Your best win here is not to be someone saddled with a huge hassle that you make a great noise about and then, finally, triumph over. Your best win here is to make the hassle seem miniscule,
as measured in how few seconds of conversation in the interviewer's mind are occupied by the hassle and how many minutes are occupied with other aspects of you and the interview.

Best of luck to you.

Henny ("Take my wife, please!) Youngman's _All Time Greatest One Liners_, available
in paperback is all the education on delivering a joke you'll ever need.

But seriously, I shouldn't make jokes about my wife. She's permanently connected
to a life support machine -- the refrigerator!

--Henny Youngman--

That anyone even has to ask this is a perfect example of what is wrong with the country. The
answer is, first of all that Democracy requires the people to be educated. And then, this educated
electorate is supposed to think about who would be the best person for the office, rather than the person they'd vote for in an actual contest of "popularity".

To make it more obvious, suppose you're a boss in a company who has to pick one of your employees to get a promotion. Who should you pick? The employee that you believe is more qualified to handle the new job? Or the one you'd enjoy "having a beer with"? If you make your judgement based on pretty much anything other than how competently they'd handle the new position, your aren't doing the company much of a favor.

Minus the reference to beer drinking, I was taught in elementary school when voting for the president of the fourth grade, say, to be sure to think who would be best, not necessarily most popular.

Thanks very much for posing the obvious question; it allowed me to make my point.