I just finished pranking some Indian ComputerJackers. You know, the guys who claim to be from "Microsoft Windows"? I let them talk and told them that I would have to take down all their instructions so that I could follow them after I hung up. Why's that? Because I only have one telephone line and I use dial-up for Internet. They believed me for a bit and passed me on to three or four other people before they gave up. Saying that I use the Opera browser was the last straw. How many little untruths passed my lips in the space of 10 minutes -- that's 10 minutes of international telephone time they got no return on, 10 minutes reprieve to some other poor victim. 10 minutes in which my sons, admiringly, called me crazy. To which I replied, but you put me up to it. Maniacal laughter ensued.
For the record, their first step was to send me to double-u double-u double-u dot A em why why . com (why should I give them a click-through?) and they claimed to be in Sacramento. AMYY is, of course, based in Moscow, with a local dial-in in Virginia's DC suburbs (I visited them with a text browser, in case the site itself was a 0-day-sploit source and checked the Contact Us page). I was waiting for them to give me the temperature in Sacramento in Celsius (it's 16 there, right now), so I could nail them to the wall over units of measure. No typical 'marican uses SI units (they'd say it was 61) and I was relishing that last skewering step.
At this conference, Richard Mouw talked about "Just Adultery", as a side-handed critique of "Just War" theory. I think I could add a five minute talk-a-roo on "Just Prevarication".
I wonder how many times I'll have to lie like that before they stop calling this number? The story will be different next time. Maybe I'll claim to be running Lindows.
