> I could see someone arguing you need a specially trained staff member or supervisor to verify your ID for anti-scalping
They can argue that all they like, but they'll stop pretty quickly when I ask why they can't just print out the same barcode as the smartphone user would use, and have the same person scan that using the same equipment so that they can enjoy the same anti-scalping protections (i.e if that barcode has already been scanned, you don't let them in).
Protip: always use plus aliases when signing up for things like this. Use a unique plus alias for everything you sign up for (the convention I use is e.g myemail+yourcompanyname@mydomain.com). This convention lets you be sure exactly who sold your info when the spam comes, based on the to address, and it also lets you easily block email from that source after you've got your tickets.
The only downsides are that sometimes it doesn't work if their shitty form verification insists that the plus character isn't valid in an email address. In those cases I tend to set up an actual mail alias (yourcompany@mydomain.com), but that's an annoying extra step - pluis aliasing is simple, requires no configuration, and works everywhere. But this is pretty rare. And if you're using it to sign in to things, you'll want a password manager so that you can remember what plus alias you used for each site.
Don't misunderstand me - I'm not defending the behaviour you're posting about - it's reprehensible and I wouldn't have bought tickets at all under such a system. What I'm offering is a way to make it more manageable for people who don't want to go without things that you can only buy under these user-hostile models.
>Protip: always use plus aliases when signing up for things like this. Use a unique plus alias for everything you sign up for (the convention I use is e.g myemail+yourcompanyname@mydomain.com). This convention lets you be sure exactly who sold your info when the spam comes, based on the to address, and it also lets you easily block email from that source after you've got your tickets.
I don't use "plus aliases." I don't need to. I've owned my own domains for just about 30 years, so I just use <whoeveritis>@mydomain.com and then block any emails that start spamming or are just annoying.
Protip: Host your own emails so those greedy scumbags can't cut you off whenever they please, leaving you unable to access all the crap you authenticate through your "plus aliases"
Edit: N.B., I appreciate that you brought that up. Some folks may find that useful even if I don't. That said, I still say folks should host their own email if they have the resources (minimal) and inclination (less so).
So in other words you could have easily blocked the spam emails you were complaining about after the first one arrived.
Regular aliases are fine, but they're more difficult to set up. And don't work everywhere.
I do host my own email. But not everybody has the knowledge/inclination to do so. Which is fine if that's their choice. Plus aliases work for those people too.
>So in other words you could have easily blocked the spam emails you were complaining about after the first one arrived.
That's not what I said at all[2]. In fact, I said[0]:
I was required to install a smartphone app when I purchased my tickets, keep
that app on my smartphone for before and during the actual game. In the
several months after buying a ticket and seeing the game, I received no less
that 100 spam email messages (I was required to provide an email address as
well) from the team's "partners."
I also said[1]:
IIRC, agreeing to receive marketing emails was one of the terms of installing
the app which was required to use the tickets.
[2] And yes, I know you're being a trollish jackass, but I have a little time to kill this morning, so lucky you. That's all the feeding you're gonna get. Now back under your bridge!
I'm being a trollish jackass?!? Fuck off. I posted a helpful tip - for you and for others - on how you can avoid the bullshit you were whinging about, and that you specifically claimed you couldn't block. You replied with condescending trolling pointing out how amazing you are and how you don't need my advice because you run your own email, as if that's some amazing achievement. What it does mean though is that, as I pointed out in my last message, you could have easily blocked the trash email you were whinging about once you had your ticket, making your whinging about it entirely redundant boo-hooing about nothing.
> I also said[1]: IIRC, agreeing to receive marketing emails was one of the terms of installing the app which was required to use the tickets.
Uh-huh, sure, you pointed out, after I had posted and in a different thread that I haven't looked at since, that you theoretically agreed to receive spam according to a shitty set of T&Cs. I'm not sure how this is relevant to managing/blocking said spam? Or your assholish response to my attempt to help you?
Oh noes! They might cancel your subscription to their shitty app that you have explicitly stated you don't want! Maybe they'll call the police! I mean, you have your tickets and have been to the game already and have said that you don't plan on going to another one, and there's no way they could detect that you'd blocked their mail, so the net effect on you for violating their T&C is vanishingly unlikely to ever be anything other than zero, but sure, whatever, keep receiving that ridiculous volume of spam because you theoretically agreed to it, I guess?
Then he can't buy the tickets. People aren't born with a god-given right to get seasons tickets to Dodger's games. There are businesses that choose not to handle cash and only accept credit or debit payments. I need to agree to a credit card companies terms and conditions for that too. Is that unreasonable?
What part of this is an obvious lie and/or outlandish?
Kevin Mitnick was banned from using any computer for quite a while. This absolutely would have included smartphones if they'd been a thing at the time. People are banned from using computers and the Internet all the time.
If you're going to claim that the "national security risk" bit is outlandish, you might be interested to know that when Mitnick was in prison he was held in solitary because officials claimed he could dial NORAD, whistle modem noises into a phone, and start a nuclear war.
Is your point that because you can name one person who was banned from using a computer before the invention of the smart phone, a receptionist working at a hospital would therefore consider that a reasonable and common reason for someone to not possess a smart phone?
I could name a bunch if I spent 30 seconds looking. I could probably name half a dozen others - including names most people would recognise, e.g julian assange - who I think (but am not 100% sure from memory) suffered similar restrictions without even searching.
I happened to name Mitnick because of the "national security" example.
I noticed that you haven't given any reasoning as to why a receptionist working at a hospital would not consider "I'm banned from using smartphones by court order" reasonable, or why said receptionist would need to consider it common for it to be valid? Hospital receptionists deal with all kinds of edge cases all the time.
"I'm banned from using smartphones by court order" is perfectly reasonable and not at all outlandish if you're a sex offender.
"I'm banned from using smartphones because I'm a hazard to national security" is not reasonable. it's crazy. like, who the hell asked? are you saying that if you manage to get your hands on an iPhone the state would be in danger? are you bragging? trying to impress me? i've never heard anyone say this before, it doesn't make sense. are you court ordered to say this? why wouldn't you say that you just don't have one?
that's a more likely thought process than "oh yes, just another mean, lean walking threat to the security of the state. i hear this all the time when asking someone if they want a text message confirmation of their appointment" as the short, wimpy looking man wearing khaki trousers you're serving continues to grin at you disconcertingly.
Yes and yes! That is, indeed, exactly what a person who is part of that culture would likely do. For example Tsutomu Shimomura is hilariously famous for it - the book he wrote about capturing Mitnick is a great example. And part of the reason Mitnick's restrictions were so absurd was that he liked to make grandiose and outlandish claims, and they were believed. All those guys LOVED to toot their own horn, and never let the truth get in the way of a good story. I think it only really stopped being a thing because people started going to jail and their silly claims were used against them in that process.
I noticed that in your simulated internal monologue you didn't actually mention not believing that it was true at any point. It's certainly far more plausible than your "i don't have a phone because aliens took it".
I also noticed that you still haven't given any rationale as to why said receptionist would need to consider it common for it to be valid. Maybe you forgot.
I think that in reality, your internal monologue is incorrect. I think your average hospital receptionist would effectively stop listening/caring after "I don't have a smartphone", and just get on with her work without thinking about it much at all, because she's too busy to bother with it and doesn't actually care very much at all why you don't have a smartphone. Hospital receptionists are busy people and they deal with all kinds of crazy shit.
Not sure why you’re focusing too much on the hospital receptionist part - in reality they deal with crazy people all the time.
It’s ok to think that the average reaction to someone pronouncing that they are a ‘hazard to national security’ in otherwise normal interactions wouldn’t be ‘well that person is crazy’. You don’t need to take it so personally.
I just hope you don’t go around saying awkward outlandish grandiose lies to strangers thinking their reaction is anything other than “well you’re crazy”.
Interesting, I didn't know goalposts could move quite so fast or often.
Not sure why you made up a scenario involving a hospital receptionist, or why you chose to echo my point that they deal with all kinds of crazy shit.
I challenged your assertion that it was an 'outlandish and obvious lie' for one to state that they don't have a smartphone due to a court determining they're a threat to national security, and that 'He might as well say "i don't have a phone because aliens took it"'.
You chose to repeatedly fail, despite being prompted, to address even a single point I raised to counter your claims, instead shifting goalposts and making up invalid scenarios to try to prove some kind of point unrelated to your initial premise. It seems like you're the one taking things weirdly personally.
it's always good to ensure you read what you are replying to, just so everyone is on the same page.
> Not sure why you made up a scenario involving a hospital receptionist
from: "When I run into this (most recently at a hospital)"
> I challenged your assertion that it was an 'outlandish and obvious lie' for one to state that they don't have a smartphone due to a court determining they're a threat to national security
and we're back to "Is your point that because you can name one person who was banned from using a computer before the invention of the smart phone, a receptionist working at a hospital would therefore consider that a reasonable and common reason for someone to not possess a smart phone?"
i guess your long winded answer to that is "yes", and i guess we'll just leave this discussion at that because i don't believe there is much to add to that.
in the future, you could have just replied "yes" to that comment and saved us all some time. instead you derailed the discussion because you couldn't identify the outlandish part in the sentence "i'm banned from using a phone by court order because i'm a threat to national security", then continued to focus on what a specific receptionist might think rather than see that it's obviously a stand-in for someone else you're interacting with.
to summarise for you in clear language, because i think you perhaps you need to hear this:
- telling someone else that you are a threat to national security when you are, in fact, not a threat to national security is a strange, outlandish lie
- it is very obvious to people if you tell them strange, outlandish lies during a conversation
- the general reaction to you doing something abnormal like that during a otherwise normal situation is for the other person to consider you abnormal
- the colloquial, catch-all term for this is "crazy"
Yeah. And every time I see a new "cloud provider banned me and I lost everything" article (i.e: every few days), I always just want to ask the same question(s):
"I'm sure it's very sad that you've lost all your [email|calendar|photos|whatever]... but, were you, a person who has chosen to rely on a service provided by a cloud provider with a track record which goes back well over 15 years of locking people out of their accounts with no recourse for the user, not aware that said provider has a track record of doing so, in some cases without even giving an explanation why?
Were you not aware that the service you were relying on them for was critically important to you? Or were you unaware that the provider of this service has the capability to completely disable the service you're relying on with the simple flip of a switch?
I'm fascinated by this decision you've made - could you please explain the thought process by which you chose to use this service which you have no control over for critical things?"
Come now, are those really the rhetorical questions you'd fling at your Aunt Tillie panicking on the phone, because she can't email anybody or renew her important drug prescriptions or whatever?
Most people expect better because in most other walks of life it is better with some kind of plausible appeal route, and the deficiencies we're discussing don't really get publicized. These service-outcomes are the outliers in need of repair, not the consumers.
> are those *really* the rhetorical questions you'd fling at your Aunt Tillie panicking on the phone, because she can't email anybody or renew her important drug
No - I'd be much less sympathetic to my aunt, because if she's panicking on the phone about not being able to email anyone, that means she's a) ignored my advice and rants for 20+ years and then b) had the gall to call me up to try to have me fix the problem that she created by ignoring me for 20+ years.
But I'm not actually really talking about regular people losing their personal email where they happen to keep a few sort-of important things that are relatively-easily replaced/transferred into a safer system. Those people I can sort-of understand, and don't really need to ask my questions - the answer is simple: "I never thought about it until now".
But aunt Tillie doesn't call herself an "entrepreneur" and doesn't rely on the existence of her gmail account for the survival of a business, and she especially doesn't have a blog where she whinges about the fact she did that.
I'm talking about people who should know better, who should be smart and considering things like "what are the existential threats to this business I'm trying to run?", who use gmail for vital business functions like payroll, and who tie their auth for everything else to their google (or whatever other shitty cloud service) accounts.
> the deficiencies we're discussing don't really get publicized
Yeah I'm afraid I'm going to have to challenge this assertion - I've seen variations on this article about ten thousand times. The post I was replying to was pointing out that they've also seen this article about ten thousand times. The vast majority of people that I have mentioned this problem to (and I do that a lot!) have responded with "oh, yeah, I've heard about that happening to people".
And another thing: my questions are not rhetorical. I am genuinely curious about the thought process that leads to these decisions. See, I didn't actually have to see this article even once - what I did was I gave it about 10 seconds thought, and came to the conclusion that relying on unaccountable third parties for mission-critical business infrastructure is an existential risk. This all seems very obvious and straightforward to me. Perhaps I'm some kind of super genius? I'm doubtful about that.
> These service-outcomes are the outliers in need of repair, not the consumers.
It's both. I agree that there should be some recourse. Show me a thing I can sign to bring in a law requiring all companies to post a phone number where a user can speak to a human and I'll sign it and have everybody I know sign it too.
But if you're not giving any thought to who controls your vital data and you lose it as a result of that, that's at least 50% your fault.
Pity it's not playable in even mildly current versions of love because being backwards compatible takes some slight effort on behalf of framework maintainers.
Suggestion: I'd like to have an option to exclude fonts without ligatures from the game. And it seems there are others who don't like ligatures who would probably like to be able to exclude fonts with ligatures. You could also do this for other features like serifs.
They can argue that all they like, but they'll stop pretty quickly when I ask why they can't just print out the same barcode as the smartphone user would use, and have the same person scan that using the same equipment so that they can enjoy the same anti-scalping protections (i.e if that barcode has already been scanned, you don't let them in).
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