If you failed to understand, don’t mis-understand this as a “magnificent” failure upon my part… (or others, who understood).
You simply just didn’t catch on as fast as others. Get over it.
It was more than just “enigmatic”, it was completely meaningless to someone outside the USA. I don’t particularly want to google something just to find out that it is irrelevant to me when the OP could so easily have added a couple of explanatory words. Even just adding “US Dopers” to the front of your question would have been helpful. It smacked of the kind of crap you see on Facebook like “… sigh… a bad day …” with no explanation.
Indeed.
BTW, it is easy to know a lot about what happens in America, particularly politics, without knowing specific details like emergency message tests.
Even your response is a magnificent failure of communication. I’d say you’re getting better but the level of idiocy is quite consistent.
Richard Pearse ,
Point taken.
In my defense, I’m used to corresponding with those in the USA on SD… It is the norm, sorry.
If points are proposed bilaterally, I’ll try to keep that in mind.
Regards,
Bob
Idiocy is a matter of conjecture. Apparently something I’ve said has upset you. Could you elaborate?
What Exit, I apologize for the misunderstanding. I wasn’t mad at you. I guess I should have made a new paragraph after thanking you to make that clearer.
Our circuits were overloaded after the big Nisqually earthquake, which also occurred in 2001. It took several hours to get hold of my family. Maybe technology is better now but I still wonder if it can handle all those calls at once.
Yay, excavating (for a mind)! Thank you for your post.
SD?
South Dakota?
South Detroit?
San Diego?
Social Democrats?
Straight Dope Message Board (SDMB)?
As far as I am aware, the SDMB, though based in Chicago, USA, is an international message board. In my experience here, using US-only references is not the norm; veteran American posters here generally make an attempt to distinguish US affairs and references from international affairs and references.
Those of us not in the US cannot be expected to know what such weird references as your OP mean. I’d suggest that next time, you lead your OP title with, “US cellphone owners, will anybody be turning off their cellphones on October 3, at 2:18 PM?” That way, us non-Americans can ignore it.
No. You’re wrong. Your OP was really spectacularly bad. You should know better.
This isn’t similar to phone calls or texting. Cell phone towers will be sending out a signal for approximately 30 minutes. If your phone is in range, it will pick it up. It doesn’t matter how many phones are within range as it’s one signal.
WEA is not capable of tracking anything and the towers don’t know or track any information based on WEA.
Ah, but we’re not misunderstanding. We are quite rightly understanding it as a magnificent failure. Hell, that’s being kind – I’d say it was a miserable, abject failure. You seem to labor under the delusion that everybody, or nearly everybody, should be familiar with what is known to you. Try as you might to justify it, it is not a justifiable assumption.
Ahh, the Straight Dope, its pedantic spirit remains strong.
Sure, the OP was a bit obscure but many people got it. Magnificent failure? Don’t be so dramatic.
Doesn’t that show that “The question says it all” is not true?
And follow-up question; why the hostility to people who pointed out the enigmatic nature of the OP, such as your reply to Colibri?
7
(the delete option on my cell)
The OP here was not “a bit obscure.” The only way to figure it out is if you already know about the topic. And, even then, it was still unclear if that was what they were talking about. Posts that are less obscure have been closed under the rules.
I will also wager that “many people” did not get it. They just read my guess or one of the others. And I’m pretty sure that’s the only reason the thread wasn’t actually closed.
What’s more, the OP claimed defiantly that their post was clear, and refuses to fix the problem. They still have not done what was asked, not even admitting that we are right about what they meant. They keep deliberately dancing around the point. It’s somewhere between extremely annoying and infuriating.
People aren’t being pedantic. They are being annoyed or frustrated at a poster who refuses to be clear.
Myself, I’m (mildly) annoyed and amused at a poster who writes an objectively terrible OP, and then fails to comprehend that other people coming in and explaining what he completely failed to explain doesn’t improve his objectively terrible OP after the fact.
Which is not to say this is a big deal or anything, but it becomes more of a production the more he attempts to defend that objectively terrible OP. Just accept your failure and shrug it off, dude.
Thanks lots for this explanation, x-ray vision. I should know know that by now. :rolleyes:
I do know, however, that when one starts a thread like this, one should provide a succinct explanation concerning their subject. It’s the SDMB way, after all. I was very grateful when others did that for him or her. Especially since I get my national news generally from NPR radio but all they’ve been talking about in the last few weeks is the Kavanaugh hearing and potential scandal. I don’t recall them ever mentioning anything about this new warning system.
In the future please provide some context to your OPs, beyond a single sentence referencing the thread title. The thread title isn’t particularly clear unless you already know what’s going on, so I’m going to edit it for clarity.
No warning issued.