Month: July 2011

Categories
Humour

Trickster Idiots

Slotted Spoon
A Complicated Spoon

Some email scamming attempts are so idiotic, you wonder who is ever taken in by them. And then a rather sad vision appears, of the Internet as a place where even a scammer who is no mental marvel can succeed, because they find victims who are well into needs-spoons-explained territory. You want to go out and find the dumb people who are taking advantage of the even-dumber, and mete out terrible if partially mitigated punishment.

But all you can do is make fun of them. Here then, straight  from my personal in-box, are some Stupid Scammers:

“I have been diagnosed with esophageal cancer. It has defiled all forms of medical treatment”

That is some mean disease.

Subject line: “Your Email Please.”

I could have sworn I gave it to you.

A file attachment named “Please kindly open this file attachment”.

I admit, I was tempted by the Alice in Wonderland approach. But is was an odd file type so I couldn’t.

More inches in your pants, less steps to success.

Leg-extension spam, I hate it.

We produce the cheapest and the best watches

Best, cheap, and watch. Choose two.

Add Bahcelors, Masetrs or Dcotorate Dergees to your resume

You think that’s just to get around spam filters, but I ended up with a degree from TIM.

Dear Friend, I’ve teamed up with Citizens United, Newt Gingrich, Ann Coulter, Fred Barnes and a bunch of other good people to do a film entitled Battle for America.

I don’t know you anymore.

By having a beautiful luxury designer replica watch, your girlfriend will be surely inclined towards you at once. All of a sudden, natural feelings of love, peace, comfort, romance, and sex will be restored again between you and your girlfriend for long time

You seem to be confusing my girlfriend with some sort of hooker.

“i am far from attributing any part of mr. bingley’s conduct to design,” said elizabeth; “but conclude will be the case, you send me full powers to act in your name throughout the whole of this

The classic “Jane Austen hustle”.

This is my new address. Here you may email me about what food I am going to have later that day. I can also give you updates on senior staff meetings and let you know what is getting in the way of my sleep routine. Thank you for cleaning out my poohouse today – I am very grateful to have clean gravel. Yowl, Mrs S

I’m really not sure if this is a scam at all, or just an email I got by mistake. From a cat with a job.

When was the last time you were abel to discover a High Profile Hollywood production company on the ground floor?

One day it might be as big as Univresal or Wanrer.

Are you currently paying too much on your monthly payments?

No actually. Quite the opposite problem.

Please, I urge you to make this transaction confidentiality within your mind for security purposes.

How do you know my mind is secure?

Categories
Humour

Pedantry Corner

Hamlet, Act II, scene 2. Hamlet mocks the peda...
I may be a pedant, Hamlet, but at least I decided to be one.

Is there any joy greater than pedantry? To be pedantic, you have to know something that  someone else doesn’t. Then you tell them. That’s hard to beat.

Someone called me a pedant once, but she pronounced it wrong.

Here are some people having fun with pedantry:

The best obnoxious responses to misspellings on Facebook

Categories
Politics

They Really Are Out To Get You

©Crookedtimber.org
Goalposts In Motion (click to enlarge) ©Crookedtimber.org

Many have asked recently whether ratings agencies like Moody’s, Fitch, or Standard & Poor’s really are the neutral commentators they claim to be. Do they provide advice to investors without fear or favour, merely giving their assessment in a disinterested way? Or are they out to get us?

To think the latter would seem just downright paranoid. And yet… This post on well-respected politics blog Crooked Timber suggests that there is something rather difficult to explain going on with the agencies’ assessments of the Irish economy. Every time Ireland complies with the conditions of the EU-IMF deal by cutting spending, the agencies downgrade it further. This downgrade means that the goal of raising money on the markets moves still further away.

Let’s just repeat that – the more we cut our budget spending, the less likely it is we’ll be able to borrow the money we need to pay for our budget.

It really does seem they’re out to get us.

Why would they be? They’re not there to frustrate our economic recovery or undermine the EU’s plan. They’re there to give the best advice to investors. That’s how they make their living.

But wait – Can’t it be both? The thing is, the ratings agencies do not – cannot – issue predictions while pretending the prediction itself is not going to influence the market. If they did, the predictions would be wrong. They must have long accepted that they help shape the market they pronounce on. Yes, they are there to give good advice to their clients. But that can mean giving advice that is good for their clients.

They also know that when a currency collapses, there’s a killing to be made. The Euro’s fall could be the biggest free money explosion in history, and what easier way to cause that fall than to bring down one of its more vulnerable economies?

Categories
Politics Technology

Don’t Trust The Data Protection Commission

A printed circuit board inside a mobile phone
Can't find any messages here

It’s extremely worrying when the national Data Protection Commission doesn’t seem to understand the basics of phone security. Moving swiftly to unbolt a horse, they have found a way to protect us against the News Of The World: Asking phone networks to turn off remote access to voice messages.

But remote access itself was never the problem, it was access using a default PIN such as 1234. The existence of this useless PIN gave an impression of security, while providing absolutely none – surely the worst possible combination.

And the misunderstanding goes even deeper than that. To quote from the above article:

Deputy Commissioner Gary Davis confirmed his office had been in touch with the providers since the details emerged last week.

“Who does it serve to be able to access the messages left on your mobile phone?” he asked.

The messages are not on your phone. They are held by the network. So this service is useful when your phone is lost, stolen, left behind or simply turned off. You can use another phone to access the messages left by people trying to call you. It’s the kind of service that will not come in useful very often, but once in a while could be a complete life-saver.

The obvious solution, and the one the Data Protection Commission possibly should consider, is to not allow remote access unless a real PIN has been set, so that strangers can’t access it but you can. That would be all you needed to do to allow us to enjoy the service while protecting everyone against the predations of tabloid journalists.

But that’s the thing. Do we all need protection against the predations of tabloid journalists? I don’t really think we want to start living our lives as if we do. I haven’t set a PIN on my voicemail. You can access my voice messages any time you like. You will find that they are so boring that, frankly, I never listen to them myself. (Really, it’s much better to call me back.)

Don’t turn remote access off by default. I am never going to think to turn it on just in case. So when the day comes that I do need it urgently, I’ll have to call up the phone company to request the service using someone else’s number, and they’ll have to establish my identity over the phone, which will mean they’ll have to ask me for another PIN, which I also haven’t set up…

And all this to prevent papers doing something that’s illegal anyway? Fine them, jail them. Don’t protect me with bars.

Categories
Cosmography Humour

Your Morning Monkey

Me, ©Me
Everyone's got something to hide except me and this monkey.

Perhaps I should have saved this until Monday. “Your Monday Monkey” really has a ring to it. But then I’d sort of be committing to coming up with a picture of myself holding a monkey every Monday, and that could get pretty expensive.

Yes! That’s me! Holding a monkey! I’m on the left. Guess I should say, that’s me at the age of ten. Yeah I had blond hair once. OK yeah, I had hair once. First it turned brown, then it curled up, then it started to fall off. The autumn of my life happened in my teens.

Ah, but I was beautiful then. *Sigh*

That is, I think I was ten. I really don’t remember this photo being taken. Well I kind of do. I remember the event. When I look at the expression on my face, I think I remember being too excited and too self-conscious and too worried about doing what I was told and smiling right to really make the most of the fact that a small primate had its furry arms around my neck. I remember it being over too soon. I just don’t remember where it happened. Or why. Why!? 

I actually think someone just came to our school with a camera and a monkey and offered to take pictures. It was a simpler world then. With more monkeys.

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Categories
Humour Technology

Shop Talk

The logo of the blogging software WordPress.
You're On It

One of the sweet things about the blogging software I use here is that it searches the WordPress community and offers you links to other posts on the subject you’re (apparently) writing about. I used to reject those auto-links out of hand, but I’m feeling a little more communautaire these days and try to stick a couple in.

However the fact that it’s an automatic search leads to some… odd results. My post “First Impressions of Google+” was auto-linked by another – called “Google+ First Impression“. Which in turn links to…

Damn it, could none of us think of an interesting title?

And for no apparent reason better than that it mentions the same city, a site pushing a restaurant voucher deal in Galway links to one of my recent posts.

The one called “Who Deserves To Die?” Can’t see that selling a lot of two-course meals for two with glass of wine or beer each.

This reminds me, I entirely forgot to mention that I’ve opened a link section here now – or “Blogroll” as WordPress likes to call it for some misguided reason. Here I link to some blogs I occasionally read myself. It should be over to the right there somewhere. So if you have a blog you think I might like, why not send me a link?

Let’s be all sharing-y and cute.

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Categories
Politics

Murdoch’s Apology

Here, according to sources, is the full-page advert that will be carried by all UK daily papers tomorrow.

Was the News Of The World “in the business of holding others to account”? I didn’t realise. I thought you bought it if you wanted to read about famous people having sex.

Categories
Politics

Expel The Papal Nuncio

Ireland
Get The Snakes Out

Here’s one aimed at the Irish readers, though everyone else’s moral support would be welcome of course. It may be based on a Facebook group, but it’s no slacktivism. It’s a good old-fashioned letter writing campaign.

The object is to request, politely but with brio, that the Vatican’s representative in Ireland should be sent home – just as would the diplomats of any state that instructed its agents to break domestic law and to conceal acts that broke domestic law. The analogy with a country caught spying is a strong one; by any standard these are the actions of an unfriendly power. The Vatican must accept that it cannot put its own interests above those of a nation’s children without gaining the enmity of that nation.

You can write to your TD, Senator and/or directly to the Minister for Foreign Affairs (Eamon Gilmore). There’s a letter template, but of course you can use your own words.

Try not to swear too much.

Categories
Politics

Rebekah Gone. Rupert Going?

Rupert Murdoch, Chairman and Chief Executive
Hello World

In an inadvertent blasphemy this morning, a BBC news anchor described the leadership of the Murdoch empire as “The father, son, and Rebekah Brooks”. The unholy trinity has been broken now it seems.

I am not surprised that Brooks resigned, but I am surprised she went today. This morning the Guardian was forced to apologise for saying that the Sun had gained illegal access to medical records. There was a chance then to make it look as if all the allegations relating to Murdoch’s other UK titles, the Sun, Times, and Sunday Times, were nothing but the personal vitriol of failed PM Gordon Brown, and that therefore the problem was confined to – and died with – the News Of The World.

Today would have been the day to fight back, but instead she surrenders. It leads one to speculate that scapegoating the NOTW is a tactic they know is going to fail, that it will soon become obvious that the rot spreads further through News International.

And into its parent News Corp, owner of Fox and Dow Jones? What we need to know now is whether her journalistic methods were condoned by the father himself – and it’s hard to imagine it being otherwise. Even if he somehow managed to remain carefully uninformed about the details of practices at News International, it beggars belief to think that someone with his experience couldn’t tell.

It will be made out that he was too busy with his American and other enterprises to pay any real attention to his UK holdings. But just as questions of illegal actions by other UK Murdoch titles make it look like Brooks was the rogue element, comparable practices in the US or Australia would make it inescapable that Murdoch himself is the common factor.

We await the conclusions of the FBI with interest.

Categories
Politics

Confession Under Pressure

priest

Is the seal of confession above the law? It’s a question that’s been asked over and over again, in one crappy TV movie after another. The answer – if any final answer there can be – is no of course not, don’t be stupid.

Characterizing this as some sort of revolutionary break with church domination is the sort of nonsense we can leave to others. A priest who, to take a fiction-friendly example, knows that a murder has been committed cannot escape criminal charges by saying he was told about it in confession. He escapes criminal charges because failing to volunteer information is not a crime. It’s up to his own sense of right and wrong. That’s why you can get a good hour and a half out of it.

So this measure is revolutionary, but its effect on the lives of priests is of trifling importance compared to how it affects all of us. It creates a new crime of not telling what you know – something that does not fit at all well with basic ideas of a free society. To commit a crime you have to actually do something wrong. It is not a crime merely to know something, and it is not a crime not to do something. Exceptions are specific – you can commit a crime by omission only if you have a specific duty of care. If you don’t feed your horse it’s a crime. It’s not a crime if I don’t feed it.

Professionals have specific duties of care that come with the job. A doctor has to act if they believe someone is endangered for example. Under common law principles, the rest of us don’t. You would think that a priest or bishop could be said to have a professional duty of care over the children of their parish or diocese, and I don’t know why this legal route was not taken. Perhaps it would involve the state in the professional regulation of clerics, something it feels it’s better well out of.

Instead, this proposed law would seem to create a universal duty of care towards children, incumbent on all adults. Your kids actually will be my responsibility. I think this is actually civilizing and might be a good idea anyway, but I can see big objections and big potential problems.

It may simply be unworkable. If it is a crime to not report suspected sexual abuse of children, how can you ever convict someone? You’ve got to establish, beyond reasonable doubt, that they had reason to suspect abuse which was specifically sexual. What’s more, in the one situation that everyone is assuming this applies to – the sacrament of confession – you will never get a conviction anyway because it will always be one person’s word against another’s.

So if a law is both useless in practice, and breaches a fundamental principle of the common law tradition, I’m very much afraid it will either never happen, or actually be worse than nothing. We will need to think hard about this.

Wouldn’t it be simpler to just ban priests?

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