Pushing Back Against Backdoors: 2018 Year in Review

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

And for billing purposes (even prepaid), every call is recorded.
nope. that's wiretapping and illegal.
You misread my intension, context is "for billing purposes", not "for
surveillance". (BTW, "intension" is the correct spelling for my meaning).
you used the wrong word.

Oh fergawdssakes! Are you really one of those "There is only one correct
meaning for a word" idjits?

nospam, you know better. Or you should. Words don't have meanings, they
have usages. One of the purposes of a literary education is to enable
the reader to parse usages other than his own.

*you* should know better, especially with a lame excuse about meanings
versus usage.

It's not an excuse, it's an explanation. Usage _is_ meaning. There is no
other.

it's an excuse.

you used the wrong word which conveys the wrong message.

there is zero ambiguity what 'every call is recorded' means.

"Wolf K" wrote

| next you'll be saying the dictionary has too many words in it.
|
|
| You sound like one of those people who yearns for the days when owning a
| motorbike required training as a mechanic.

Oh, I thought he was just trying to illustrate my point.


| (Read Zen and the Art of
| Motorcycle Maintenance by R. Pirsig for an elegant and elegiac memoir of
| this and other obsolete tech requirements. The book is a lot more than
| that, of course.

I was very inspired by that book when I was about 22.
Especially his heated essay on "Quality". He managed to
point out the importance of dignity in all things, using as
one example plastic kitchen cabinets with walnut-grain
contact paper and pointing out that the cabinets alone
have their own basic dignity, but that the contact paper
is a kind of degradation. It's a fake attempt to make the
cabinets more than they are.

That was during a time when we called anything that
seemed fake or cheap "plastic". It was a revelation for
me to see him make the distinction between low-budget
vs depraved/vulgar. The plastic wasn't the problem. The
problem was the state of mind that produced the plastic
and then tried to "elegantize" it with wood grain contact
paper.

Which is all the more interesting these days when we
have depraved, $5,000 handbags that are no more than
marketed logos, like a Charlie-the-Tuna version of design
appreciation. And alongside those are illegal "fake" versions
of the same thing. The fakes seem rather more authentic
to me.

Unfortunately, things don't seem to have gone well for
Robert Pirsig. In his later book he seems to have been
struggling with borderline psychosis. I'm afraid he may
have been too attached to the brilliance of his own
intellect.

In article
nospam wrote:

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

And for billing purposes (even prepaid), every call is recorded.
nope. that's wiretapping and illegal.
You misread my intension, context is "for billing purposes", not "for
surveillance". (BTW, "intension" is the correct spelling for my meaning).
you used the wrong word.

Oh fergawdssakes! Are you really one of those "There is only one correct
meaning for a word" idjits?

nospam, you know better. Or you should. Words don't have meanings, they
have usages. One of the purposes of a literary education is to enable
the reader to parse usages other than his own.

*you* should know better, especially with a lame excuse about meanings
versus usage.

the meaning, or as you put it, usage (doesn't matter what it's called)
of the phrase 'every call is recorded' is *very* clear: to save an
audible copy of every call made, both incoming and outgoing, so that
someone can listen to them at a later time.

it does not mean to simply log the time/date and length.

some businesses do record calls, and will inform callers with a
prerecorded announcement that 'all calls are recorded for quality
purposes', 'this is mr. jones on a recorded line' or something similar,
due to wiretap laws.

tl;dr 'recording calls' is not the same as 'logging calls'. you used
the wrong word.

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

On 2018-12-31 13:01, nospam wrote:
In article , Wolf K
wrote:

And for billing purposes (even prepaid), every call is recorded.
nope. that's wiretapping and illegal.
You misread my intension, context is "for billing purposes", not "for
surveillance". (BTW, "intension" is the correct spelling for my
meaning).
you used the wrong word.

Oh fergawdssakes! Are you really one of those "There is only one correct
meaning for a word" idjits?

nospam, you know better. Or you should. Words don't have meanings, they
have usages. One of the purposes of a literary education is to enable
the reader to parse usages other than his own.

*you* should know better, especially with a lame excuse about meanings
versus usage.

It's not an excuse, it's an explanation. Usage _is_ meaning. There is no
other.

it's an excuse.

Excuse for what?

for refusing to acknowledge that 'every call is recorded' means
something other than what you intended.

My goodness, but you really, really want to be right, eh?

OK, I'll give you what you want. I do want: I didn't use the best word
for my meaning.

it's not a question of wanting to be right, but at least you finally
admit you used the wrong word.

But so what? Happens all the time.

yep. people are often sloppy. some learn from it and others make
excuses.

however, 'every call is recorded' meaning 'only metadata is kept' is
not a question of sloppiness. it's simply wrong.

If you were interested in a
conversation, you'd have had no trouble parsing it as intended. And you
might have, politely, pointed out that "logging all calls" would be a
better way of saying it.

that's what did, explaining that recording is illegal and only the
metadata (date/time & length) is kept.

NB "better". That's how one converses. But you
never do that kind of thing. Instead, you pounce on flaws and faults. So
I conclude that you're a sad asshole who's incapable of civil
conversation. Which starts with the attitude "What did this guy want to
say?", not "What mistakes did this guy make?" You just want to find
fault. You want to be _right_.

ad hominem.

A sad ambition for a smart cove like you.

you used the wrong word which conveys the wrong message.

there is zero ambiguity what 'every call is recorded' means.

There is zero ambiguity for _you_ because you're either unwilling or
incapable of processing ambiguity. From your past posts, I'd say you're
incapable, and are unwilling to learn.

ad hominem.

On Mon, 31 Dec 2018 09:37:52 -0000 (UTC), LO AND BEHOLD; Jasen Betts
determined that the following was of great
importance and subsequently decided to freely share it with us in
:

✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ On 2018-12-29, Mayayana wrote:
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ ✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ Unfortunately, that's also a big part of the reason there's a vortex.
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ ✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ Geeks can fend for themselves and dismiss anyone who can't as an idiot.
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ ✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ It's not enough to have things like Mozilla prefs and Linux /etc config
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ ✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ files. Control of the system needs to work like any other technology,
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ ✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ with buttons and adjustments that anyone can use.
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡
✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡✡ next you'll be saying the dictionary has too many words in it.

they'd say it if they only knew enough words.

--
[THIS POAST HAS PASSED TRIMCHECK® VALIDATION]

THIS SPACE FOR RENT
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iB6B8jGSdLA

"Thanks to muzzies and their apologist-enablers like puppy whistle, this
seems to be the new norm in the world. It's spreading like a cancer,
and it's time we admit we're at war with pure evil. We need to put an
end to this muzzie plague, or life on Earth is going to become pure hell
everywhere. We need to get these people out of every civilized
country, and there's only one way to do it. IOW, we have to become
like them, with an emphasis on expediency over cruelty." - Checkmate (of alt.checkmate)

"Pussy Willow has just proven that Trump's crackdown on previously
unenforced immigration policies is working. We'll deal with the domestic
terrorists as needed, but we don't need to be letting the muzzie
terrorists get a foothold in our country too. One need only look at what
they're doing in Europe right now to know we're doing the right thing by
keeping them out, which is our right and our duty. - Checkmate (#1 pussy willow fan)

-

"You just made puppy whistle's sig line longer." - Janithor

-

"If I have a complaint about the (Southern Poverty) Law Center's description (of the alt-right movement), it is the phrase "heavy use of social media," which implies the alt-right is a real-world movement which uses a lot of social media. This is backwards: it is an online movement which occasionally appears in the real world. Where it gets punched." - Jason Rhode

-

"I think we should destroy every last ****ing mosque in America." - "Checkmate, DoW #1" proves for us that white males are violent in Message-ID:

-

Golden Killfile, June 2005
KOTM, November 2006
Bob Allisat Memorial Hook, Line & Sinker, November 2006
Special Ops Cody Memorial Purple Heart, November 2006
Special Ops Cody Memorial Purple Heart, September 2007
Tony Sidaway Memorial "Drama Queen" Award, November 2006
Busted Urinal Award, April 2007
Order of the Holey Sockpuppet, September 2007
Barbara Woodhouse Memorial Dog Whistle, September 2006
Barbara Woodhouse Memorial Dog Whistle, April 2008
Tinfoil Sombrero, February 2007
AUK Mascot, September 2007
Putting the Awards Out of Order to Screw With the OCD ****heads, March 2016

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

however, 'every call is recorded' meaning 'only metadata is kept' is not
a question of sloppiness. it's simply wrong.
I guess you've never heard utterances like "Check the record of calls
made from that phone." Which results from "recording the calls".

correct. i have not.

also, 'check the record of calls' is not the same as 'every call is
recorded' or 'check the call recordings'.

as you say, usage is important.

what i have heard is 'check recent calls', 'check call logs', 'check
call history', etc.

the user interface buttons reflect that:
https://www.dummies.com/wp-content/uploads/452748.image0.jpg
https://cdn.techmesto.com/wp-content...-log-analytics.
jpg
https://lh3.ggpht.com/b1HYUoGPNFfQ4m...UMQ-mKV769Gusc
ffvtcq7ZsiZ7LMhbHQ=w2562-h1772
https://www.cisco.com/c/dam/en/us/su...oration-endpoi
nts/cisco-ip-phone-7800-series/images/ijgm-06202017-view-recent-calls-li
st-step3.png
https://www.att.com/support_media/im.../RIM/Devices/J
ennings/KB409542_Call_History/pic5.jpg

In article , Wolf K
wrote:


however, 'every call is recorded' meaning 'only metadata is kept' is
not a question of sloppiness. it's simply wrong.

In your corner of the universe, maybe.

in just about every corner, except yours.

As pointed out in another reply,
you seem never to have heard of "checking a record of calls."

'checking a record of calls' is not the same as 'every call is
recorded' or 'checking the recordings of calls'.

as you say, usage is important.

what you intended to say and what you actually said are not the same,
but what's really odd are the lengths to which you are going to justify
it.

just about everyone (except you) when hearing the phrase 'every call is
recorded' will think that the audio is being recorded, not just the
time, date and length.

if you call a bank and hear 'this call is recorded for quality
purposes' or similar, do you think they're just logging the time, or
that they're recording the actual call?

In article
Wolf K wrote:

On 2018-12-31 17:08, nospam wrote:
[...]
what you intended to say and what you actually said are not the same,
but what's really odd are the lengths to which you are going to justify
it.
[...]

I'm not justifying it. I don't have to. I said what I said, and I meant
what I meant. If I'd thought twice about whom I was talking to, I might
have rephrased it. But probably not.

What I'm trying to do is educate you about how language works. Which has
it backwards, because langauge is not an object. It's a behaviour that
people engage in. So I'll rephrase that:

I'm trying to educate you in how people actually use langauge. You seem
to believe that you know all there is to know about that. You don't.
Neither do I. But I know a hell of a lot more than you do.

You also hold a widespread conceptual error: that words "have" meanings.
Hence you believe that there are correct and incorrect words for things.
hence your comment that "recording calls is illegal", which it is, when
you intend "record the content of the call". But not in every
jurisdiction, so your "correct" meaning is limited by geography and
law. Hence my attempts to get you to understand that context prevented
the parsing you used, since for billing purposes the contents of the
call are irrelevant. Etc and so on ad tedium.

Words do not "have" meanings. What the dictionary describes is a summary
abstraction of all the usages the lexicographer could get hold of.
That's why so many dictionary entries have two or more definitions,
especially for the most commonly used words. (1) That is, most common
words are used in at least two (sometimes subtly) different ways. I know
this freaks out a certain kind of mentality, but there's nothing I can
do about that.

(1) E.g., how many meanings of "horse" do you know of? I have four
top-of-mind, three nouns and one verb, but the dictionary close to hand
gives six nouns and four verbs, and none of the verbs is the one I'm
thinking of, because it's part of a North American slang phrase, and the
dictionary is British. Total (so far): 11 usages. All determined by context.

You're welcome,

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

however, 'every call is recorded' meaning 'only metadata is kept' is not
a question of sloppiness. it's simply wrong.
I guess you've never heard utterances like "Check the record of calls
made from that phone." Which results from "recording the calls".
correct. i have not.

also, 'check the record of calls' is not the same as 'every call is
recorded' or 'check the call recordings'.

as you say, usage is important.

what i have heard is 'check recent calls', 'check call logs', 'check
call history', etc. [...]

So you have limited language experience. So what? It's perfectly normal.
It's not a sin. Accept the fact that with about half a billion native
English speakers world wide, segregated into two main linguistic
traditions, plus at least twice that number fluent in English as a
second language, your experience of usage will be limited. Add in the
constant flux in usage as people adapt their lexicon to express new or
varied meanings, and you're certain to hear and read what to you seem
wrong usages. So when someone offers up a usage you haven't encountered,
first try to parse it, and if you can't, ask for help.

But never, never assume that your usage is the only one, or worse, the
only correct one.

i'm not doing any such thing.

it is, however, what *you* are doing, along with more ad hominem
attacks.

what's limited is *your* language experience. you continue to insist
that your definition is the only valid one, and it isn't.

you cannot accept that 'every call is recorded' means something other
than what you think it does, which is making an audio recording of
every call, not a log of who called whom and when.

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

what you intended to say and what you actually said are not the same,
but what's really odd are the lengths to which you are going to justify
it.
[...]

I'm not justifying it. I don't have to. I said what I said, and I meant
what I meant. If I'd thought twice about whom I was talking to, I might
have rephrased it. But probably not.

what you said was ambiguous, and that's being generous and polite.

the meaning that the vast majority of people will think when hearing
the phrase 'every call is recorded' is *not* what you want it to be.

What I'm trying to do is educate you about how language works. Which has
it backwards, because langauge is not an object. It's a behaviour that
people engage in. So I'll rephrase that:

no. what you're trying to do is not admit that it means something other
than what you want it to mean.

I'm trying to educate you in how people actually use langauge. You seem
to believe that you know all there is to know about that. You don't.
Neither do I. But I know a hell of a lot more than you do.

straw man.

You also hold a widespread conceptual error: that words "have" meanings.

they do. sometimes more than one.

Hence you believe that there are correct and incorrect words for things.

there are. sometimes more than one.

if the meanings of words were arbitrary, as you want them to be, then
it would be impossible to communicate.

we rely on specific meanings and choose words accordingly to
communicate with each other.

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/abraham_lincoln_107482
How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four.
Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.

hence your comment that "recording calls is illegal", which it is, when
you intend "record the content of the call". But not in every
jurisdiction, so your "correct" meaning is limited by geography and
law.

recording a phone call without consent of at least one party, which
would be the case if the phone company is doing the recording and not
either participant, is illegal just about everywhere (there could be an
exception, but it's extremely unlikely).

what you're thinking of is one-party versus two-party consent, which
does not apply given that it's an unrelated third party, the phone
carrier, who would be doing the recording.

further, since calls can originate and terminate from anywhere, it
cannot be assumed that *both* ends will *always* be in a jurisdiction
where it's legal, or that the parties are even where their respective
npas are located, and if they are in a legal jurisdiction, that they
*both* remain there for the *entire* duration of the call (mobile
phones move).

therefore, one *must* assume the most restrictive laws, because
anything else is guaranteed to be illegal at *some* point.

Hence my attempts to get you to understand that context prevented
the parsing you used, since for billing purposes the contents of the
call are irrelevant. Etc and so on ad tedium.

your still trying to justify your incorrect usage. crazy.

recording a phone call without consent of at least one party, which
would be the case if the phone company is doing the recording and not
either participant, is illegal just about everywhere (there could be an
exception, but it's extremely unlikely).

Nope. For example if the police have a warrent they can force the phone
company to record the content of the call and it is legal. And in some
places even without a warrent the police can force the phone company to
record the call without either participant knowing abou it. etc.


what you're thinking of is one-party versus two-party consent, which
does not apply given that it's an unrelated third party, the phone
carrier, who would be doing the recording.

further, since calls can originate and terminate from anywhere, it
cannot be assumed that *both* ends will *always* be in a jurisdiction
where it's legal, or that the parties are even where their respective
npas are located, and if they are in a legal jurisdiction, that they
*both* remain there for the *entire* duration of the call (mobile
phones move).

And if one of the people is in the jurisdiction, then that can be a
reason for legally recording, or if none of them are and the call simply
happens to pass through the country, that country can sometimes legally
record the call. And if the call is entirely within another country an
entity in another country can legally, as determined by that other
country, record the contents of the call, and.....


therefore, one *must* assume the most restrictive laws, because
anything else is guaranteed to be illegal at *some* point.

No one must not.


Hence my attempts to get you to understand that context prevented
the parsing you used, since for billing purposes the contents of the
call are irrelevant. Etc and so on ad tedium.

your still trying to justify your incorrect usage. crazy.

But to get back to the original dispute, record a call could refer to
the contents of the call or to the fact that the call occured, or many
other situations. Certainly talking about two people, if I hear that one
has recorded the call, then I would assume that it meant he recorded the
contents of the call. But if I hear the phone company did, I it would be
more ambiguous and I would certainly not be surprized if I discovered
what was meant was that what was recorded was the time, duration, and
numbers associated with the call. As Wittgenstein spent a whole book
explaining, (after having written a book saying each word had a specific
meaning) that words are like games, with rules that are fluid and can
change from time to time and place to place.

In article , William Unruh
wrote:


recording a phone call without consent of at least one party, which
would be the case if the phone company is doing the recording and not
either participant, is illegal just about everywhere (there could be an
exception, but it's extremely unlikely).

Nope. For example if the police have a warrent they can force the phone
company to record the content of the call and it is legal. And in some
places even without a warrent the police can force the phone company to
record the call without either participant knowing abou it. etc.

there won't be a warrant 'for billing purposes'.



therefore, one *must* assume the most restrictive laws, because
anything else is guaranteed to be illegal at *some* point.

No one must not.

yes, one must, because there's no way to guarantee it won't violate a
law somewhere, which is a risk no company would even consider taking.

"Wolf K" wrote

| The plastic wasn't the problem. The
| problem was the state of mind that produced the plastic
| and then tried to "elegantize" it with wood grain contact
| paper.
|
| Someone was listening. You now can get plastic (MDF-cored) cabinetry
| that's unashamedly synthetic: colours and textures that can be achieved
| only with plastics.
|

Melamine?
I actually did a job a couple of years ago
in a very posh condo where they wanted to repair
the kitchen cabinets. They were surprised that I had
never heard of the very posh brand: Poggenpohl, which
has a designer store on the main fashion street in Boston.

The customer figured they'd need to order new doors
through the Poggenpohl dealer. The cabinets were too
fancy for a mere carpenter to handle. Rosewood, or some
such.
I took off a hinge to see. It was plastic laminate made to
look like a "generic" exotic wood. Rosewood. Bubinga.
Whatever. The core was particle board. But not even
good particle board. It was the low density stuff made
of chips with a lot of air in between. Only the best fake
exotic wood laminate for such expensive condos.

More recently I was in a new hospice building. There
was something that looked like a hand-carved cherry
"screen", about 3'x8'. It looked very real. But on closer
inspection I could see it was plastic. Part of what gave it
away was the excessively rough, and regularly patterned,
carving marks.
That happens so often. It's the same with fake plastic
panel doors. They'd look OK if they were smooth. But the
manufacturers overcompensate, making them with such
rough fake grain that they look sandblasted. If it were
a real wood door then it would be thrown away: A pity
they ruined it with the sandblasting.

In article
nospam wrote:

In article , Wolf K
wrote:

what you intended to say and what you actually said are not the same,
but what's really odd are the lengths to which you are going to justify
it.
[...]

I'm not justifying it. I don't have to. I said what I said, and I meant
what I meant. If I'd thought twice about whom I was talking to, I might
have rephrased it. But probably not.

what you said was ambiguous, and that's being generous and polite.

the meaning that the vast majority of people will think when hearing
the phrase 'every call is recorded' is *not* what you want it to be.

What I'm trying to do is educate you about how language works. Which has
it backwards, because langauge is not an object. It's a behaviour that
people engage in. So I'll rephrase that:

no. what you're trying to do is not admit that it means something other
than what you want it to mean.

I'm trying to educate you in how people actually use langauge. You seem
to believe that you know all there is to know about that. You don't.
Neither do I. But I know a hell of a lot more than you do.

straw man.

You also hold a widespread conceptual error: that words "have" meanings.

they do. sometimes more than one.

Hence you believe that there are correct and incorrect words for things.

there are. sometimes more than one.

if the meanings of words were arbitrary, as you want them to be, then
it would be impossible to communicate.

we rely on specific meanings and choose words accordingly to
communicate with each other.

https://www.brainyquote.com/quotes/abraham_lincoln_107482
How many legs does a dog have if you call his tail a leg? Four.
Saying that a tail is a leg doesn't make it a leg.

hence your comment that "recording calls is illegal", which it is, when
you intend "record the content of the call". But not in every
jurisdiction, so your "correct" meaning is limited by geography and
law.

recording a phone call without consent of at least one party, which
would be the case if the phone company is doing the recording and not
either participant, is illegal just about everywhere (there could be an
exception, but it's extremely unlikely).

what you're thinking of is one-party versus two-party consent, which
does not apply given that it's an unrelated third party, the phone
carrier, who would be doing the recording.

further, since calls can originate and terminate from anywhere, it
cannot be assumed that *both* ends will *always* be in a jurisdiction
where it's legal, or that the parties are even where their respective
npas are located, and if they are in a legal jurisdiction, that they
*both* remain there for the *entire* duration of the call (mobile
phones move).

therefore, one *must* assume the most restrictive laws, because
anything else is guaranteed to be illegal at *some* point.

Hence my attempts to get you to understand that context prevented
the parsing you used, since for billing purposes the contents of the
call are irrelevant. Etc and so on ad tedium.

your still trying to justify your incorrect usage. crazy.

On 01/01/2019 01:15, Wolf K wrote:
And pronouncing "herb" as "erb" is a solecism.

or affectation to speak french.

Where it emans 'grass' IIRC.

--
When plunder becomes a way of life for a group of men in a society, over
the course of time they create for themselves a legal system that
authorizes it and a moral code that glorifies it.

Frédéric Bastiat