phone calls

[rrich]

If any of you remember the first AI attempt which was the game 'Adventure'. "You're standing in front . . . " The program was part of a PhD Thesis.


Anyway there was a magic word, xyzzy. I changed my name on the phone company listing to Noné Xyzzy. I pronounce it as non E ciz zE. I'll get a call asking for my correct name and I'll say this is Noné Xyzzy. They leave quickly. When they actually do try to pronounce the name in the listing it is hysterical. Then I'll tell them that I am a renter and that the landlord will not allow us to do the needed work.

[AlexS]

If any of you remember the first AI attempt which was the game 'Adventure'. "You're standing in front . . . " The program was part of a PhD Thesis.

I thought that was the start of 'Larry the Lounge Lizard'.

[Fuzzie]

"Leisure Suit Larry"?

[Arron]

What's a landline?

It’s a thing that many of us need to maintain because we can’t rely on our elderly parents breaking with the habit of a lifetime and using their mobiles in an emergency.

No other purpose as far as I know.

[crowie]

I always answer the morning no mater what time of day...that troughs many folk especially if it's afternoon or evening....

I had a stint of nuisance calls a number of months ago and started answering in what I could remember of school boys German and was greeted back with a pause then "hello mr gootten"...

Strange one, the other day I had a Melbourne number come up on the mobile, when I answered they said they were the Chinese embassy; I hung up immediately...

[KBs PensNmore]

If the number that comes up is one I know, I usually answer "City Morgue, you kill'em we chill'em"!! Unfortunately the one time that I didn't look as to who rang, was the local Sergeant, to say that a recent item that was stolen had turned up.
His comment was "that's not funny".

[AlexS]

"Leisure Suit Larry"?

That's the one.

[Treecycle]

I used to try and mess with scam callers but I just apply the one strike rule now that we are on NBN. Just hangup and add the number to the growing list of do not answers in the voip router.

How are numbers added to the router and what happens when they are?

[bookleaf]

I do the same.
It will depend on the manufacturer of the VOIP router as to how it is done.
I have a Fritz-box router. Add phone number to special caller phone book list. Set a rule to ignore all numbers in that phone book. Our phone never rings. I believe the caller just gets an instant hang-up.
Consult the manual for your router.
Read/ask in the "Whirlpool Forums" section for your router (If there is a section for your router)

[Fuzzie]

I happen to use a Fritz as my voip gateway as well, but there are other routers and ATA's (Analogue Telephone Adapters) that do the same. I'm not sure customers have access to those configuration options on the Telstra modems.

Some cordless phone base stations also offer similar call handling options.

[rrich]

I thought that was the start of 'Larry the Lounge Lizard'.

OK, Adventure was a program written in Fortran and intended to run on a Digital Equipment Corporation (DEC) PDP-10. Six or eight users running Adventure simultaneously could bring the system to its knees. I think that Adventure was written about 1970 or so. It was written for a PhD thesis by a student at MIT or Dartmouth. I have the source code on Hollerith code cards and a 7 track magnetic tape. With my knee I'm not about to climb up into the storage over the garage/shop to get the cards and read them by eye.

However, if someone really wants the source code, send me an e-mail and I'll have my son crawl around up there and I'll send them to you.

The 'Larry the Lounge Lizard' really made me laugh! Remember the big secret is that you have to get the bra.

Larry the Lounge Lizard was the main character in the DOS based game, 'Leisure Suit Larry' by Sierra Games in Oakhurst, California. By coincidence, Sierra Games spin off The Sierra Network was a customer of mine in the pre-Internet days.

They built a gaming network on a bunch of DOS based 80486 machines. Depending upon the game, each DOS PC could support as many as 125 simultaneous users. The trick was that the user's PC supported almost all of the processing and the host PC just did the game management. Users would connect at 2400 Bits Per Second to the Telenet VAN asynchronously. The host PC were connected via an add in X.25 board. It was truly a distributed computing network. I think that Microsoft uses a similar concept with their gaming network.

IIRC Telstra had an X.25 VAN also. Telenet sold the switches to Telstra. I don't remember the network name. All of these networks were connected world wide. I had support one of your service providers demonstrating their service through these X.25 or packet switched networks. This was for a trade show (DEXPO) in Anaheim. I don't remember the year.



For support, I would spend 3 days a week and three weeks per month in Oakhurst.

[AlexS]

An acquaintance with a background in computer security managed to con one of these scammers into downloading a virus onto his computer. He pretended to be an old Polish guy who had trouble following the instructions, then had trouble explaining what was on the screen, then finally offered to send a screen shot...which contained a virus that locked their computer. They were stupid enough to give him an email address to send the screen shot to, and clicked on the attachment.
He copped a few abusive phone calls until he blocked them.