LotR: The Fellowship of the Ring, and so on
Hmm, now which movie that comes from: Great lines, little else.
There was this guy, dubbed Prince Monolulu in the early 20th Century London, who, among his numerous other activities, was taking what was like a week’s work payment for predicting the gender of a baby with money back guarantee. It was all very impressive, he’d write the prediction, wax-seal it in an envelope and make the scamee sign over the seal.
The fun was, of course, when the most naive part of the unfortunate half of his customers (the others just got real and kept silent about getting scammed) went back to his “office” for refund, only to discover that the sealed and signed by their own hand envelope indeed contained the
The reason for this misunderstanding must surely be that the fortunate parrents have forgotten the prediction, and
A slightly modified version of this scam, boosted with some (unbiquitous nowadays) massmailing campain, is the
And what would a post about scams do without the broad topic of the Nigerian scam. If you’ve lived in a cave for the last 5 years, go create a free mail account and you’ll understand what it’s all about. Here’s a lengthy, but happy-ending story about a Nigerian scam that went wrong (for the scammer).
Cottleston, Cottleston, Cottleston Pie,
A Fly can’t bird, but a bird can fly
Ask me a riddle and I will reply:
For “A Busyness Proposal” - a “A Busyness Reply”
I am happy to announce that I’ve discovered another fine musician from Bretagne: Denez Prigent (the others are of course the brilliant Tri Yann, a band with 30+ years of history.)
Hear a live performance of Denez with three Bulgarian singers (yes, they sing in Bulgarian) here: Part 1, Part 2.
Hearing again how well the two vocal traditions suit each other, one cannot help but think we have a common ancestry. Hmm, maybe with the Japanese as well? (Ghost in the Shell, title theme)
Come to think of it, it doesn’t matter…
First it was Matt Blaze with his papers on physical securty, mainly how to crack master key locks and safecracking, looked upon from the perspective of software security.
Then it turned out that the pen is mightier than some of the Kryptonite bike locks, check for example one of the numerous articles on the subject (also has video links how to do it).
And now these dutch guys demonstrate manipulating (techie jargon for not using a key) several high-end locks with up to 15 pins in bloody seconds! Here’s papers and video. They also defeated an expensive electronical chip lock with 128bit encryption with … a magnet.
The most interesting part is the reaction of the manufacturers and the locksmith circles - they actually DO think that obscurity makes good security, and that disclosing these ’secrets’ is very damaging to their industry. How about those people whose bikes were stolen or houses broken into?
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