Category Archives: Uncategorized

Ringless Voicemails

This shitty Republican Senator wants to make sure people can leave robocall voicemails directly on your phone without being subject to anti-robocall rules.

TCPAWorld has previously reported on judicial perspectives of ringless voicemail and the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (“TCPA”).

Now the campaign of former Georgia Senator David Perdue has asked the Federal Communications Commission (“FCC”) to “clarify that delivery of a voice message directly to a voicemail box through ringless voicemail (‘RVM’) technology does not constitute a ‘call’ subject to prohibitions on the use of an automatic telephone dialing system (‘ATDS’) or an artificial or prerecorded voice under Section 227(b)(1)(A(iii) of the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (‘TCPA’) or Section 64.1200(a)(1)(iii) of the FCC’s rules.”

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More specifically, the Campaign asserts “RVM technology establishes a direct server-to-server connection between the RVM vendor and the voicemail system that bypasses wireless networks.” Further, the technology does not “result in the same ‘annoyance to consumers’ as traditional phone calls…” because “[w]hen a voicemail is delivered… the phone does not ring.” Finally, “[w]ith RVM technology, no call appears on the recipient’s phone bill and no charge is assessed for delivery of the message.”

The FCC has yet to rule on the petition.

Mafaldine


Wiki

There's a fun pasta shape called "mafaldine". Imagine a very narrow lasagna, or a fettuccine with ruffled edges.

It was named after the early 20th C Italian Princess, Mafalda of Savoy. In 1925, she married a German Prince, Phillip. And that marriage made them formal intermediaries between the governments of Nazi Germany and fascist Italy.

Unfortunately, Hilter and Goebbles never liked her; and even worse, they distrusted her and thought she was working against the war effort. So after Italy surrendered to the Allies in 1943, Mafalda and Phillip were in trouble. The Nazis arrested Phillip, and ordered Mafalda's arrest (78 years ago today). They picked her up shortly thereafter and sent her to the Buchenwald concentration camp. Her children took refuge in the Vatican. After about a year, in August 1944, she was injured when the Allies bombed a munitions factory at the Buchenwald camp; and not too long after, she died of those injuries.

Mafaldine!

[Incredulity Rising]

Let us pause to remember all the angsty white men who invented rock and roll, like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, Fats Domino and Bo Diddley.

Class Act

Remington Death Machines, Inc, takes blaming the victim to a new low.

Gun company Remington has subpoenaed the report cards, attendance records, and disciplinary records of five kindergarten and first grade students murdered in the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, according to new court filings in a civil lawsuit filed against the company.

“In mid-July, the defense served a subpoena on the Newtown Public School District seeking: ‘Any and all educational records in your possession including but not limited to, application and admission paperwork, attendance records, transcripts, report cards, disciplinary records, correspondence and any and all other educational information and records pertaining to’ each of the five first-graders whose Estates are plaintiffs in this case,” according to the motion filed today that sought to protect the victims’ families from further subpoenas.

It's so heinous, I can't even make the obvious jokes about it.

The Ides of August

Two decades ago, young people in Kandahar were telling me how the proxy militias American forces had armed and provided with U.S. fatigues were shaking them down at checkpoints. By 2007, delegations of elders would visit me — the only American whose door was open and who spoke Pashtu so there would be no intermediaries to distort or report their words. Over candied almonds and glasses of green tea, they would get to some version of this: “The Taliban hit us on this cheek, and the government hits us on that cheek.” The old man serving as the group’s spokesman would physically smack himself in the face.

I and too many other people to count spent years of our lives trying to convince U.S. decision-makers that Afghans could not be expected to take risks on behalf of a government that was as hostile to their interests as the Taliban were. Note: it took me a while, and plenty of my own mistakes, to come to that realization. But I did.

For two decades, American leadership on the ground and in Washington proved unable to take in this simple message. I finally stopped trying to get it across when, in 2011, an interagency process reached the decision that the U.S. would not address corruption in Afghanistan. It was now explicit policy to ignore one of the two factors that would determine the fate of all our efforts. That’s when I knew today was inevitable.