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An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

oxfordamerican.org

91–100 of 113 posts

Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

#91
post #75

Got accosted by a popup when I entered the site so I bounced. Tip: If you want users to read your content, don't cover it up. https://i.imgur.com/uTmqaox.png

Your loss.

Not really. I bounce from almost every website that gives me some GDPR, newsletter, or whatever popup. "Click to read full article?" F that, you should have pre-expanded it for me.

I'm doing fine, I already have enough information overload from places that are willing to distribute it to me.

Goddamn, arXiv is my favorite website now, PDFs don't pop up any of that shit.

Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

#92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google has squandered so much good will over the years. This is a good example: expenses wouldn't even be a rounding error, and it could have given so many average folks a positive experience with the company.

It probably would have turned into a customer service line for all of their products they notoriously fail to adequately support.

Would that have been so terrible?

Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

#93
post #34
post #2

It's probably voip :/

So what? Do you mean it is not analog and latency is higher as a result? Then yes, it matters. I hate latency in voice calls, I already went into arguments because of that. I remember in a remote work meeting, we had a frantic discussion, with some disagreements and strong opinions, but it was productive and purely technical, nothing personal. But then someone angrily told me "stop interrupting me!", the thing is, I…

> So what?

It's not a microphone in a reciever oscillating a copper line. In my opinion, if it's voip it's not a "landline".

Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

#94
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elevator operators are pretty common at arena events. I think to help ensure the elevators aren't under or overloaded. Of course, observation towers tend to have elevator operators too.

I think the GP is referring to manually operated elevators, in which a human inside the elevator pulls a lever to tell the elevator when to move. When I was a kid, my dad worked in a building with a semi-automated elevator that had floor buttons and an automatic return to the ground floor, but still had the lever. There was an operator inside on weekdays, but if you came in on the weekend you had to operate the eleva…

Still quite common in NYC. There’s a bit of a social distinction between doorman buildings and elevator-man buildings, and some people prefer the latter.

Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

#96

Somewhere someone is probably still working as an elevator operator too. Like when I was a kid I had a job shoveling coal into a boiler. And someone is still manufacturing buggy whips. The future is unevenly distributed. Call Bunny Watson and ask her, she'll confirm.

[dead]

Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

#97

What a fun surprise to see this on HN! I had the opportunity to work the Foy Desk a few times during my undergrad at Auburn in the early 2000s - mostly as a volunteer while the regular workers would be in meetings. At the time we had a multi-page list of common questions and answers, the Internet (as it was then), as well as access to university computer systems for things like class schedule lookups. The most common…

WDE! I remember calling the Foy desk one night (this would have been late 80’s) because someone at a party said “It says Crun-chy” in a Paul Lynde voice and we couldn’t remember the name of the rat from Charlotte’s Web (Templeton).

Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

#98
post #34
post #2

It's probably voip :/

So what? Do you mean it is not analog and latency is higher as a result? Then yes, it matters. I hate latency in voice calls, I already went into arguments because of that. I remember in a remote work meeting, we had a frantic discussion, with some disagreements and strong opinions, but it was productive and purely technical, nothing personal. But then someone angrily told me "stop interrupting me!", the thing is, I…

Ye latency is a major headache. You can't gave normal conversations. I think it is mainly a property of overloaded servers and background noise cancelling etc.

I didn't have these problens when running Ventrilo or old p2p Skype.

Re: An Alabama landline that keeps ringing

#100
post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Elevator operators are pretty common at arena events. I think to help ensure the elevators aren't under or overloaded. Of course, observation towers tend to have elevator operators too.

I think the GP is referring to manually operated elevators, in which a human inside the elevator pulls a lever to tell the elevator when to move. When I was a kid, my dad worked in a building with a semi-automated elevator that had floor buttons and an automatic return to the ground floor, but still had the lever. There was an operator inside on weekdays, but if you came in on the weekend you had to operate the eleva…

I worked at a building in San Francisco (589 Howard St) that still was fully manual. You controlled when the elevator stopped, lifted the gate by yourself to get out, the whole works.

There was a safety mechanism where, IIRC, the gate on one of the floors wasn't closed, none of the other floors could call the elevator, so it was a bit of a pain. Even though we were on the top floor, it was pretty rare for anyone to use it.

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