Why would a company like Microsoft not be doing all they could be doing to make sure that these guys are not pretending to be Microsoft and/or employed by Microsoft and make its sound like Microsoft is collecting the fees? I almost feels like Microsoft does not care as they are too busy with 'bigger' things then to worry about some scammer pretending that they are Microsoft. It certainly would explain of so many fo the tech nightmares stories you hear about where "I paid Microsoft a lot of money to fix my computer..." ....and they did nothing on my computer" or "...and they made it worse." Microsoft could make it very hard on these guys to claim they were Microsoft if MS just got a easy to remember tech support number and then published it all over making sure to say that that is the ONLY number where you could get real MS support perhaps people would start asking why they are not told to call real MS support number. I know it does not matter to these guys that they are lying about who they are since what they are doing is illegal anyway. Then again there are some of these that answer the phones really believe they have been hired by MS and are employed by them and so unqualified that they believe they are MS tech support and are thrilled to have landed such a prestigious job. I know we all ask why these guys sound so defensive about being called hackers but in India there are those that know they are scammers and there are those hired by a scammer call center that never see what the "senior support techs" do and actually believe that they were hired by Microsoft and work at a Microsoft call center and they are doing a great service by getting the caller lined up for help.
These call centers actually look for the most uneducated from the masses and have some convincing reason to do things like run a tree command and type in a diagnosis and they have no more idea that event viewer is showing normal things when it shows warnings and error and have no clue, other then what they have been told, that they are telling you truly what netstat is showing. Many of the people that answer the calls are from the lowest and most uneducated of the population and they think they are getting a wonderful chance to work and learn. many are promised that the call center experience will lead them to being a MCE or that they got the MCE just by taking the job. I was in India a couple years ago on vacation and met one of these "Microsoft Support Technicians" who was the son of the tour guide we had. He actually ended up in tears to learn that not only was the call center he worked for neither Microsoft itself nor contracted by Microsoft (he was a bit confused on that because his 'bosses' had said it both ways at different times but he had always been assure that he was a MS employee) but that he was not in anyway employed by Microsoft. Server people on our tour were, in fact MS employees and were able to convince him that while he was talking to real MS employees and they were sorry to tell him he was not. He had actually been saving money up to go to Seattle so he could work at the Microsoft main office, and he quite believed that he could arrive in Redmond and walk in the from door with his (fake) MS Id card and be put to work. He also though that after another 6 months at the call center he would be awarded his MCE. The top of the scammer pyramid is not only scamming by charging lots of money for doing nothing but they are scamming many of their own countrymen into thinking that have landed a prestigious job that might either change their caste in life or else get them into a job in the US. Not all are getting pain much either for answering phones but they are jumping on the chance of being able to claim they have a prestigious job at MS.
That is not true of all, there are just as many that are educated and know darn well they are commiting a scam and they are getting paid well to lie but not all call center employee's over there are in on the scam. It seems like any software company that creates a tool that could be used by a scammer for a purpose other then it is meant for certainly, with a few easy additions to their software make in unusable by scammers. Teamviewer has certainly tried by making an announcement that their software could be used in a scam, and so should other remote apps. If Microsoft did something like add some verbiage to things like netstate that gave a brief description of what it was showing so that a scammer could not lie about what it says. Even the Tree or directory command could print a line as it finishes that says "The directory command has finished running, The above is a list of all directories and files on your computer. This is not a diagnostic tool," so that anything a scammer would type in then would look silly. I actually think developers of tools that are then abused by scammers ha s small bit of responsibility to do what they can to make sure a person knows what has just been run on their computer and make its impractical for a scammer to use it.
December 1, 2018
The radical left has an incentive to never accept that things are getting better
By radical left I'm referring to people who run with what Karl Marx or any of his followers preached.
To these people, the only struggle that matters is the one between the rich and the non-rich. Regardless of how well the non-rich are doing, regardless of how much class mobility there is, regardless of how quickly global poverty is being eliminated, the radical left considers the world to be utterly immoral and evil while there is a "bourgeoisie" and a "proletariat."
So no matter how things improve over time in terms of education, life span, earnings, mobility, happiness, etc...the far left is entirely committed to this root principle of "there can't be peace until there is no bourgeoisie." You can look at the last 150 years of progress on all of these fronts across the entire planet but the mountains of evidence will be lost on the radical left.
The people on the far left are always finding ways to spin how things are "worse than ever" or how things are "falling apart" or how things are in dire straits. But they don't actually care about whether or not things are bad and figuring out how we can actually improve things. That is why the radical left looks at millennial earning power compared with housing costs and immediately jumps to whining about "systemic" issues even though they never bother to compare how many square feet of housing people used to live in when you could afford a house on a single salary quite easily. Etc.
Another example: Marxists have been in favor of open borders since Marx's time. This was before global warming was even a blip on anyone's radar. So the narrative today about how climate change necessitates we completely open borders in order to welcome in the impending tide of "climate refugees" is dishonest. (You can find people making this argument here and elsewhere on the internet). It's dishonest because the amount of progress we are making in the fight against climate change will end climate change before it ever gets that bad. Regardless of how much people lie about us being screwed, we will resolve climate change within the next 15-20 years.
The real reason the radical left wants open borders has nothing to do with climate change. They want it because they believe it will destabilize the west and alter the "status quo" away from the "bourgeoisie" and in favor of the "proletariat." The radical leftist will never even consider that we are making progress against climate change and that we will resolve it, because that reality would completely dismantle their previous justification for why we should have open borders. Their intellectual commitment isn't to truth, but to whatever it takes to force us to go down the Marxian rabbit hole. "We have to do this thing because soon the world will end!"
The far left fundamentally chooses its positions based on "does this hurt who I perceive to be the bourgeoisie" in the same way that the alt right chooses its positions based on the equally delusional "does this hurt who I perceive to be of an inferior ethnicity." That's their only heuristic in their decision making process. Neither of them cares about data or evidence. They care about their narrative first and foremost.
If they can weaponize fears about climate change or immigration in order to push people towards communism or fascism, they will. And they must be called out. Neither of these sides is okay with a status quo that isn't their extreme. Even if we were living in a utopia, people indoctrinated into one of these two religions would feel that the world is a terrible place and that they have a mandate to change things. Even if it means being violent.
Be on the look-out for weaponized pessimism.
Mandatory reading: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker.
FLUFFYGERM
To these people, the only struggle that matters is the one between the rich and the non-rich. Regardless of how well the non-rich are doing, regardless of how much class mobility there is, regardless of how quickly global poverty is being eliminated, the radical left considers the world to be utterly immoral and evil while there is a "bourgeoisie" and a "proletariat."
So no matter how things improve over time in terms of education, life span, earnings, mobility, happiness, etc...the far left is entirely committed to this root principle of "there can't be peace until there is no bourgeoisie." You can look at the last 150 years of progress on all of these fronts across the entire planet but the mountains of evidence will be lost on the radical left.
The people on the far left are always finding ways to spin how things are "worse than ever" or how things are "falling apart" or how things are in dire straits. But they don't actually care about whether or not things are bad and figuring out how we can actually improve things. That is why the radical left looks at millennial earning power compared with housing costs and immediately jumps to whining about "systemic" issues even though they never bother to compare how many square feet of housing people used to live in when you could afford a house on a single salary quite easily. Etc.
Another example: Marxists have been in favor of open borders since Marx's time. This was before global warming was even a blip on anyone's radar. So the narrative today about how climate change necessitates we completely open borders in order to welcome in the impending tide of "climate refugees" is dishonest. (You can find people making this argument here and elsewhere on the internet). It's dishonest because the amount of progress we are making in the fight against climate change will end climate change before it ever gets that bad. Regardless of how much people lie about us being screwed, we will resolve climate change within the next 15-20 years.
The real reason the radical left wants open borders has nothing to do with climate change. They want it because they believe it will destabilize the west and alter the "status quo" away from the "bourgeoisie" and in favor of the "proletariat." The radical leftist will never even consider that we are making progress against climate change and that we will resolve it, because that reality would completely dismantle their previous justification for why we should have open borders. Their intellectual commitment isn't to truth, but to whatever it takes to force us to go down the Marxian rabbit hole. "We have to do this thing because soon the world will end!"
The far left fundamentally chooses its positions based on "does this hurt who I perceive to be the bourgeoisie" in the same way that the alt right chooses its positions based on the equally delusional "does this hurt who I perceive to be of an inferior ethnicity." That's their only heuristic in their decision making process. Neither of them cares about data or evidence. They care about their narrative first and foremost.
If they can weaponize fears about climate change or immigration in order to push people towards communism or fascism, they will. And they must be called out. Neither of these sides is okay with a status quo that isn't their extreme. Even if we were living in a utopia, people indoctrinated into one of these two religions would feel that the world is a terrible place and that they have a mandate to change things. Even if it means being violent.
Be on the look-out for weaponized pessimism.
Mandatory reading: Enlightenment Now by Steven Pinker.
FLUFFYGERM
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