Re: CyberScam

At 09:03 PM 10/22/98 -0700, Kevlar wrote:
>And you were just kidding.....

I wasn't kidding.  I was absolutely sincere when I told him to shove
a bowling ball up his ass.

>http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/zdnn_smgraph_display/0,4436,2151220,00.html
>Or search zdnet's site for "scam" and choose "A Bull In Bull Market".

I read the article, and if that level of cluelessness is indicative of the
mentality of your typical online trader, then they deserve what they
get.  I found a couple of quotes especially amusing.  These are both
from John Reed Stark, another official-type thrown into the internet
without a fucking life preserver, it would seem.

    This lack of information gives rise to a situation "that ends up with
    victims not investing but gambling,"

Oh yeah, aside from these scammers, the stock market is otherwise
a really solid, robust investment scheme.  Playing the stock market
is a gamble, pure and simple, and anyone dumb enough to listen
to the likes of some random asshole touting his crappy stock deserves
what they get.  Darwinism as applied to capitalism.

    "Combine the Web's culture of trust, stir in the greatest bull market
    in history, add stocks that genuinely have had phenomenal growth,
    and you have victims who don't have any reason to disbelieve
    promises of guaranteed 20 percent returns."

The Web's culture of trust?  Oh good, another clueless idiot in charge
of managing internet services.  What culture of trust is it that I've
missed in my internet travels?  Is there some online place chock full
of trusted souls, some Cyber-commune, that I missed?

Oh well, like I said, any idiot that would buy into such an obviously
fraudulent solicitation deserves what they get.  Is it just working in a
new medium that makes people such blatant morons, or is it simply
indicative of the intelligence of your average American?  I'd have to
say that I'm inclined to believe the latter.

At 05:45 PM 10/23/98 +0200, you wrote:
>At 09:03 PM 10/22/98 -0700, Kevlar wrote:
>>And you were just kidding.....
>
>I wasn't kidding.  I was absolutely sincere when I told him to shove
>a bowling ball up his ass.

My bad. You were serious. But still...

>
>>http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/zdnn_smgraph_display/0,4436,2151220,00.h
tml
>>Or search zdnet's site for "scam" and choose "A Bull In Bull Market".
>
>I read the article, and if that level of cluelessness is indicative of the
>mentality of your typical online trader, then they deserve what they
>get.  I found a couple of quotes especially amusing.  These are both
>from John Reed Stark, another official-type thrown into the internet
>without a fucking life preserver, it would seem.
<snip>
>what they get.  Darwinism as applied to capitalism.
-----------------^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

Damn.

>
>    "Combine the Web's culture of trust, stir in the greatest bull market
>    in history, add stocks that genuinely have had phenomenal growth,
>    and you have victims who don't have any reason to disbelieve
>    promises of guaranteed 20 percent returns."

It accualy said that in the article? "CULTURE OF TRUST"? Not even our own
government trusts us enough to share enough information with people outside
the US so we can talk to them WITHOUT letting big brother watch. You hear
about all this scandal with the NSA/GOV and that swiss encryption company?
It says right in every piece i've seen that "this went on for many
years"... 5 or 6 I believe... 

Mozilla (NS), IE, and many other less well known (but certianly as popular)
WEB browsers have encryption built right into them, so you can do things
"Securely". Nobody uses their real name on the internet, unless it's for
buisness, and Login/Password lurks around the corner if you know where to
look for it. Is this indicative of a "culture of trust"? 

Naturally this is in compareison to the internet's predacessor (Not
ARPAnet, that was a government project. BBS's came first)
<grumblegrumbledamninternetstoleallthecallersfrommyboardafter5yearsofrunning
itgrumble>, which were mostly free to anyone who came and wanted to dl/ul a
file or post in the message base. And usally if it wasn't open you could
apply for access. 

People ran this software, and everyone knew it was full of holes, and
anyone could format all the hard drives in your box, but they trusted the
total strangers who were calling not to, and for the most part people
DIDN'T... simply because they liked it and didn't want to see it go away.
It used to be that identification was only required when it was necessary
to do something that REQUIRED identification, and half the time there was
an anonymous option hiding somewhere... Now if I want to download some
shareware of the "culture of trust", I gotta type in my name, vital
statics, SIN, rank, mothers maiden name, what I know about the plot to
assisinate Mr.Cigar, and a 3 page essay on why I deserve to use their
shareware that they worked long and hard to make and I'll never pay for.
It's enough to make you NOT want to do it. But we do. We keep comming back
for that thrill of watching the [Percent Complete] box stay at 97% for
hours on end until Windows plays a cheery little tune and pops up a box
telling us "It took to long, I'm not gonna wait for it any more." But I
digress.

>
>The Web's culture of trust?  Oh good, another clueless idiot in charge
>of managing internet services.  What culture of trust is it that I've
>missed in my internet travels?  Is there some online place chock full
>of trusted souls, some Cyber-commune, that I missed?
>
>Oh well, like I said, any idiot that would buy into such an obviously
>fraudulent solicitation deserves what they get.  Is it just working in a
>new medium that makes people such blatant morons, or is it simply
>indicative of the intelligence of your average American?  I'd have to
>say that I'm inclined to believe the latter.
>
-Kevlar
<Webmaster@max-web.com>

Does God know Peano Algebra? Or does she not care if strong atheists
couldnt reason their way out of a trap made of Boolean presumptions?

A little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, but zero knowlege is
absolutely subversive.

Overspecialization breeds in weakness. It's a slow death.

Beat your algorithms into swords, your dumb terminals into shields, and
turn virtual machines into battlefields... Let the weak say, "I am strong"
and question authority.

At 12:43 PM 12/16/98 -0800, Tim May wrote
>I wanted to see what other nonsense this nitwit has written, and found this:
>At 10:12 AM -0800 10/23/98, Kevlar wrote:
>>My bad. You were serious. But still...
>
>My bad _what_? The fragment "My bad" is nonsense.

Don't be an old fogey, Tim :-)  I've heard the phrase from
young and otherwise at least semi-educated people.
Like, language evolves, y'know -- it's far out that the
younger generation is participating in the literary process, man.
Donaldson's law suggests that Sturgeon was an optimist,
and one hopes that this phrase will soon be recognized for
its place in the 90+% and fall out of fashion,
rather than spurring a major industry like the annoying
"Successories" wall-plaques with MBA/salesdroid jargon on them.
At least its meaning is generally clear in context,
unlike some of the popular post-modernist drivel,
and its artificial stupidity is no more artificial than 
using "mea culpa" in modern English.

>>Mozilla (NS), IE, and many other less well known (but certianly as popular)
>>WEB browsers have encryption built right into them, so you can do things
>>"Securely". Nobody uses their real name on the internet, unless it's for
>>buisness,
>Nonsense. Many of us use our "real names" on the Internet, right here on
>this non-business list. In fact, real names outnumber nyms by probably
>10-1. Ditto for most of the Usenet and most mailing lists. Chat rooms may
>be a different story...I wouldn't know about them.

Similarly, IRC and CuSeeMe appear to be nym-oriented rather than
real-sounding-name-oriented.  AOL isn't exactly the internet,
but it tends to use screen names.  I'm not sure about ICQ, but 
I think it's also nym-oriented, and it's got 10 million or so users.

>>Naturally this is in compareison to the internet's predacessor (Not
>>ARPAnet, that was a government project. BBS's came first)
>><grumblegrumbledamninternetstoleallthecallersfrommyboardafter5yearsofrunning
>>itgrumble>, which were mostly free to anyone who came and wanted to dl/ul a
>>file or post in the message base. And usally if it wasn't open you could
>>apply for access.
>
>No, BBBs (not "BBS's") did _not_ come first. I had an ARPANet account in
>1973 or so, long before any meaningful BBSs were available. (And the
>ARPANet goes back to 1967-8 or so.)

The Better Business Bureau has been around much longer than that?

Ward Christiansen, inventor of XModem, also credits himself with
inventing the "first" BBS in 1978.  Perhaps it was the first for
cheap PCs, but I'd already been using the Plato Notesfile system 
for about 3 years by then, which was really just a better BBS 
running on a much more expensive computer and terminals
(plus it had multiplayer interactive Space War :-)
and it wasn't too new when I started using it.

And ARPAnet mailing lists had been around for quite a while before 78,
as well as mailing lists in the BITnet/CSnet/Phonenet environments.
Usenet emerged around 1981, and for the first few years was
primarily running on dialup UUCP as well as higher-speed LANs
of various sorts.
				Thanks! 
					Bill
Bill Stewart, bill.stewart@pobox.com
PGP Fingerprint D454 E202 CBC8 40BF  3C85 B884 0ABE 4639

Actually ward doesnt claim to have invented the first BBS
he used to claim he had invented the first microcomputer based BBS(
And that he did I used to run his software in chicago about a week after its 
initial releas on a pmmi-103?? modem(300 baud)....I wondered what ever
happened to ward... Modem7 was a GOOD protocol at the time ...
aonly to be supplanted by first ymodem then zmodem from chuck forsberg...
P.s. I used to play on the plato system also(its official charter at the
time was limited to educators and Comp-sci typs (of which I was the later)
Plato was GREAT for multiplayer games like "intergalactic conflict",(memory is
poor here)... BTW why Plato had  a messaging system of sorts it is
GREATLY stretching it to call it a BBS...


      cheers
      n OLD fart

I wanted to see what other nonsense this nitwit has written, and found this:

At 10:12 AM -0800 10/23/98, Kevlar wrote:

>
>My bad. You were serious. But still...
>

My bad _what_? The fragment "My bad" is nonsense.


>Mozilla (NS), IE, and many other less well known (but certianly as popular)
>WEB browsers have encryption built right into them, so you can do things
>"Securely". Nobody uses their real name on the internet, unless it's for
>buisness,

Nonsense. Many of us use our "real names" on the Internet, right here on
this non-business list. In fact, real names outnumber nyms by probably
10-1. Ditto for most of the Usenet and most mailing lists. Chat rooms may
be a different story...I wouldn't know about them.

>Naturally this is in compareison to the internet's predacessor (Not
>ARPAnet, that was a government project. BBS's came first)
><grumblegrumbledamninternetstoleallthecallersfrommyboardafter5yearsofrunning
>itgrumble>, which were mostly free to anyone who came and wanted to dl/ul a
>file or post in the message base. And usally if it wasn't open you could
>apply for access.

No, BBBs (not "BBS's") did _not_ come first. I had an ARPANet account in
1973 or so, long before any meaningful BBSs were available. (And the
ARPANet goes back to 1967-8 or so.)

Nitwit.

--Tim May


Y2K -- LMGALMAO -- Loading my guns and laughing my ass off
---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:----
Timothy C. May              | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money,
ComSec 3DES:   831-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero
W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA  | knowledge, reputations, information markets,
Licensed Ontologist         | black markets, collapse of governments.

At 10:28 PM -0700 12/19/98, Bill Stewart wrote:
>At 12:43 PM 12/16/98 -0800, Tim May wrote
>>Nonsense. Many of us use our "real names" on the Internet, right here on
>>this non-business list. In fact, real names outnumber nyms by probably
>>10-1. Ditto for most of the Usenet and most mailing lists. Chat rooms may
>>be a different story...I wouldn't know about them.
>
>Similarly, IRC and CuSeeMe appear to be nym-oriented rather than
>real-sounding-name-oriented.  AOL isn't exactly the internet,
>but it tends to use screen names.  I'm not sure about ICQ, but
>I think it's also nym-oriented, and it's got 10 million or so users.

The Palace (http://www.thepalace.com) is mostly nym oriented.


-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bill Frantz       | Macintosh: Didn't do every-| Periwinkle -- Consulting
(408)356-8506     | thing right, but did know  | 16345 Englewood Ave.
frantz@netcom.com | the century would end.     | Los Gatos, CA 95032, USA

On Wed, Dec 16, 1998 at 12:43:07PM -0800, Tim May wrote:
> I wanted to see what other nonsense this nitwit has written, and found this:
>
> At 10:12 AM -0800 10/23/98, Kevlar wrote:
> >My bad. You were serious. But still...
>
> My bad _what_? The fragment "My bad" is nonsense.

His homies in da hood are down wit it.

- d.