RetiredBut

No matter what style of English one uses in discourse or writing (required of me to state that as I was informed there might be some problem with my English because of locale) - - - but no matter in what nation, when this: That only means that there is doubt in the author's mind about my honesty. That is an insult. And it is especially hard on the nerves when I think about the many memorial services I attended as a district officer for the VFW and attended RBL memorial events. In fact, I was once charged with holding the British/UK colours at a ceremony in Hodogaya. Then there was the timing of four posts by that individual where I was very quickly informed, in essence, that I was not welcome in this community. Hint taken. Sayonara!

I appreciate that, Arthur, but I am afraid that having been insulted by a staff member on this site requires that I completely withdraw from this Online Community. I have just sent a request for my activities here to be completely removed and I am afraid I will not be returning. Very sad for me. But insults just are not proper in any venue.

I used to fly for the military and I am sorry to be so rude, but that Top Gun movie nonsense about call signs is just - - - well, how to put this in non-military terms - - - it is bovine excrement. In fact, that Top Gun movie is really full of all kinds of total bovine excrement. I seem to remember that some smart gal or fella actually listed all the nonsense in that movie and I think that can be found on the Net. That Top Gun movie has been around for a bit, hasn't it? I get a tad forgetting about when this or that happened, but it seems to me that movie was a fair bit back when released, no? Or has there been some sort of number two made? Anyway, I guess it is an entertainment thing and so the true nature of flight line work and getting those birds in the air and doing your job with the equipment isn't such great entertainment. Quite frankly, there are few times when the actual flying is what could be called fun. It's a job and it is hard work and a whole lot of homework and paperwork. But, yes, once in a bit there can be that moment when something about being a few thousand feet up is neat, but those moments are far and few between the actual work. I still remember the first training flight I had under the hood. Bet nobody wants to put that into a movie. Or trying to pluck two humans off of some sort of a door (we never were sure what that was they were on) that is being raced down a flooded river. Absolutely no fun in that, especially as we were unsuccessful. That is mighty horrible. Nope, they don't make movies about that sort of stuff, do they?

I hope I'll be forgiven for halting after page 5 of this 13 page thread and using the thread search tool and entering these words; police, law enforcement, city hall, department. The reason for that was by the end of page 5 I was realizing that there seemed to be no reference to any sort of law enforcement agency or civil authority and I am wondering if there are bulletins published on a weekly or monthly basis by any of the civil authorities in your communities about any of these scams? I am also wondering what sort of law enforcement resources are any of you aware of that are devoted to any sort of phone scams such as are being posted here in this thread? Are there mechanisms in place at the law enforcement level to somewhat easily report these scams you are writing about? Bottom line for these questions is that I don't seem to be finding any references by any of you about what civil authorities are doing to help the vulnerable citizens of a given civil authority's area of responsibility. By "vulnerable" I think I am mostly thinking of elderly folks that are not too sharp about this sort of thing. I realize that is horrible stereotyping, but it might be close to correct. Yes, I am an elderly type, but then I have worked in security and am fully aware of these types of problems. But I think there might be a whole bunch of elderly folks, and non-elderly, that simply aren't up to snuff on such matters and so I ask about what civil authorities are doing about that. Interestingly, I would suspect everyone posting in this thread has pretty much briefed themselves and their family and friends about not falling for these types of scams, but have you ever reached out beyond your own kin and friends to help others? And I do ask a lot of questions, don't I? Please accept my apology for that.

I remember the first days of the punch cards when my wife was working in a U.S. Army finance company. But I am posting because I am very confused. You sincerely do not view any person walking through the doors of a store, be it a grocery store or a department store, as a customer, elsiegee40? I'll have to admit that I haven't lived in an English speaking environment for over 40 years, so I am very likely missing a change in some aspect of the culture of a city or town in such a land, but I do/did frequent military facilities and I only recall being referred to as a customer in any commercial facility on any number of those military bases/establishments. Of course, I may be misunderstanding your post, so please forgive me if I have the wrong read of that "... it is exactly that." Well, I guess, after I think about it, the only form of address directly to me is the basic question "May I help you?" and so no need for any such use of "customer" in a simple dialog between myself and staff. But I really wasn't aware of any sort of description other than customer for anyone that walked through the doors of such like the PX/BX, the commissary, and so on. Civilian type commercial establishments I have used in the past 40 something years have not been in an English-speaking nation, so maybe that thinking should not be included here. But this sure does have me wondering just how much has changed since the last time I was in North America above the border with Mexico, or other English-speaking areas of the planet.

I used to fly choppers many years ago when on active duty and have some fixed wing time and vertigo is not good vocabulary around a flight line or in the Officer's Club or I suppose anywhere aviator's hang out. I sincerely can't imagine any business wanting to use that as a name for their business. As for the topic here, about businesses in trouble, I have a bad gut feeling we are going to be seeing some even tougher times this year, and maybe next. Too many indicators pointing to the financial wizards being very worried and when they get worried those fancy banking places start to raise their rates, as we are seeing just recently (except in one powerful financial market). Is there another thread around here only for discussing banking policy? Or are we allowed to discuss interest rates in this thread?

GrumbleDook, please forgive my being so late with this question and also please do not get upset, if possible, because I am sort of asking for educational purposes; in that I am very interested in the difference in attitudes related to human activity on the surface of the planet and human activity on the Internet. Do you view a human that walks into a grocery store as not being a customer until they place something into their shopping cart? I suppose the same question applies to a human that walks into a department store where there is less likelihood of them pushing around a shopping cart. In fact, let us consider how we view humans here in this Online Community. We have members and we have guests, if we are giving consideration to the humans wandering around here with those "bot" things. But the vocabulary "member" and the vocabulary "guest" are very human and very polite. But to be referred to as a "user" reminds me of back in the 60s and 70s when a "user" was somebody doing that needle-using drug stuff and was a very bad way to refer to a human being. I'm just explaining the 'why' of my post before yours, GrumbleDook, when I stated I thought it was impolite to refer to us as users. Actually, since the days of radio there has been this weird sort of taking the human element out of those that use these new communications tools. It was "listener" when radio came out. Then that became "viewer" when television became affordable to the average household, and now it is "user" that is in fashion. Yes, it could be stated that "listener" and "viewer" were very useful and appropriate, but when we shop online and are referred to as a "user" before we have made up our minds as to whether to buy something or not, ... - - - Okay, I'll stop before simply repeating myself.

I suspect this trouble will be resolved rather soon and that is because it is likely related to some changes in what browsers are being allowed on YouTube. For many parts of the globe the IE11 browser has just recently been shut down on YouTube and when the tech folks do that sort of work these sorts of glitches will sometimes happen. That is a mighty complicated bit of tech work to stop IE11 from being used on a site like YouTube.

The way my old brain is processing that information you provided the link for, GrumbleDook (and thank you for that link), is that under the first of the two exemptions: #1: My fogged up brain is seeing the two keys words as "impossible" and "assist" and I would then describe that as: It is impossible for me to assist you without this cookie, so sorry, me use with or without your consent. In fact, you don't even know me using it, does you? Then we move to #2, which has this very cute example: The cuteness I find is that the 'customer' ("user" is so frigging impolite) - - - the customer must have already agreed to the cookies to be at that stage of being able to purchase something, or so my feeble brain would be guessing.

I think I better do a second post now, instead of an edit. Seems some government official or officials feel that maybe something is not all above board on some of Google's boards: France fines Google a record $170 million for making it too difficult to opt out of cookies

If you will forgive an elderly style of thinking, why isn't there a 'Yes' or 'No' answer to the question of whether ANY Net entity must allow us to opt out of cookies? I actually thought that was pretty much the law all over the planet, except in some nations where the law is super loose, or not at all. I read something up above about essential cookies and must allow without choice (sorry for phrasing in my elderly style) but that seems to indicate that some company can refuse the option to not allow cookies. Frankly, I thought that "You Must Allow' cookies stuff had been resolved a long time ago to the side that we had control over that one. Is somebody indicating here that we don't have that sort of control in some sort of special situation? Again, I apologize for my blunt elderly human style of asking questions. EDIT: And this edit is soon 3 hours and about 30 minutes later. Used the Google search engine and they seem to be stating the answer is "Yes" but it just hit me that might be only on their pages. But I'll still post the image:

It sort of surprised me that I didn't spot that "General" sub-forum title/heading up at the top of the page when I was looking for where to post an introduction. I think I made the point in one of my posts that I didn't see the location for introductions when I was scrolling down the list of categories of the Technical sub-forum. (Yes, I know most don't like that vocabulary sub-forum.) The thing is, I have been messing about with forums such like this for a fair number of years and so my not spotting that horizontal row of titles/headings might be something that could happen to others who are less experienced with forum platforms. True, I might have just been plain careless. Or tired. Or ... well, just my fault. But a menu that runs in a horizontal way isn't something I was familiar with and even after a few days that has sort of stuck in my brain as something that maybe could be tweaked a bit. It is the same shade of blue right across from the white of the title/heading "Technical" and maybe not so difficult for the eyes to miss that there are other titles there, especially as I think we are more prone to recognize a vertical list than one that is horizontal. I mean, it is a list. Just that it runs off to the right, rather than down. Would a slight change of the shade of blue help those that might be like me and careless or tired or ... --- Would that slight change in shade of blue help avoid that sort of error when a new person is looking for a place to do an intro and misses that title/heading "General" like I did? Maybe from a lighter to darker shade, in stages for each title/heading? Just a thought.

I am wondering if anyone in this community has ever run across a manual for any Windows OS that is understandable to a person who might have never used a computer? For example, when something is highlighted in blue in the address bar that is noted in the manual. That is just an example. Another point would be that if it is a manual for a novice, in the very true sense of that word, then that manual would require about twice as many images than any I have been able to find so far. I suppose I could go on and on with examples, but that would be insulting everyone here, because I think you now grasp that I am looking for something even more basic than that "For Dummies" series. Great use in a title, but the truth of the matter is those manuals are not good enough for a novice. Okay, I'll admit that my "might have never used a computer" description could be going a tad too far in describing my idea of a novice, but ... Thank you for your attention.

Okey-dokey. Sure appreciate the assistance and I apologize to management for taking this off-topic. By the way, it feels kind of neat to be a newbie on a site.

Okey-dokey, that sure makes sense, but then the question would be how the documentation at the Help Desk and the work station of the employee handling a given customer order would allow for a quick reference to the location of a given unit or part in the storage area, maybe? Rack numbers used? Shelf numbers? Numbers for racks and letters for shelves? Would you have both hard copy and digital copy? Just sort of curious, that's all. Ignore me if I'm off the main road on a dirt track nobody wants to be on.