Slashdot Mirror
The Great Internet Con
Imagine a preacher-turned-conman starting a company that claims to have developed a new, high-compression method of delivering full-screen video over the Internet. Imagine mandatory 36 hour shifts and prayer meetings. Imagine investors pouring millions of dollars into this venture, and high-profile executives joining the company in hopes of getting rich when it goes public. This is an astounding story, told in great depth by The Standard. Pixelon, the company in the article, has been mentioned in Slashdot once before: when they sponsored The Who's live reunion concert and webcast last October.
If you read even the first page you will find out Fenne wasn't a preacher. But who needs editorial control anyway?
Lowmag.net
It is apparent that you have acquired all your "knowledge" of the subject from Snow Crash.
As for Western Christianity -- that's a common designation. It doesn't mean Catholicism. go do some research.
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the interesting thing about this con is how irresponsible the VC's were. They saw an opportunity to fleece some virginian rube, and they wanted to move so fast that they didn't perform the most basic due dilligence on either the technology or the management team. As near as I can tell, the VC's (and I guess the people that invested in them) were the only ones who got hurt.
I think the VC's got what they deserved, and I feel far worse for the victims of Stanley's original investment con.
Great example of the magic demanded from the
computer industry! Out of curiosity, when did this
professor make his statement? I'm interested in
how long the astute have been able to pinpoint
the problems this accurately, and not manage to
get anything done about it.
"People who do stupid things with hazardous materials often die." -- Jim Davidson on alt.folklore.urban
Do the math, Stanley. Let's assume the lowest acceptable resolution for a TV frame: 320*240 at 16 bits per pixel. That's 150K bytes per frame, and there's 30 frames per second. But let's be generous and drop it to 15 frames per second. That leaves us with 2.25 megabytes per second.
And you're telling me you can compress this down to 5.6K bytes (minus IP protocol overhead). While there's plenty of room for improvement in image compression technologies, no one with a brain in their head is talking about compression ratios of more than 50:1 without massive image quality loss. Yet you're claiming this con man would have achieved a near-lossless compression ratio of 400:1.
You, and your former employer, are full of sh*t, dude.
Schwab
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
There is a simple and well-known algorithm for compression of any amount of data into a single bit. The bits are added togeteher, repeatedly, until a single bit remains. There is an obvious shortcut, as all possible data combinations, save all 0's, map to 1.
:)
The catch is that there's no known way to decompress (except in the special case of 0 with a known data size
It's not surprising at all that this story is getting legs - after all, the news has been awash in stories of internet zillionairres and transformed industries for years now. It's only fitting that a cautionary tale of reckless avarice leading to ruin gets some run as well. The biggest fools in all of this were the VC bunch, who discarded every common-sense investing rule in their rush to profit from the IPO. Like the article mentioned, even a cursory background check of this guy (which a secretary could have performed in a day) would have sent up red flags.
Stop by my site where I write about ERP systems & more
A tax deduction means that you don't pay tax *on that money*, not that you save that ammount.
If you lose $1M and get to deduct it, it saves you taxrate * $1M, not $1M. Even at those silly canadian tax rates, you're *much* better off with the money than with the deduction.
On the othe rhand a tax *credit* is dollar for dollar: a $1 tax credit reduces your taxes by $1, and is essentially the government paying it. However, most tax credits are at less than 100% (but we have some popular 100% ones in the US for the middle and lower classes).
hawk
This man was merely providing a service, standardizing internet video into a single application, taking people's money and making a run for it. This action will ruin the tech industry, bring down the stock market and the commies will take over. He's being punished for being too successful and his freedom to innovate is being restricted.
Or something like that.......
That's not a bad thing. Maybe through the 'net they'll learn.
LOL! These are the kind of minimally educated apathetic peasents which would never have got onto the net unless "visionaries" like Steve Jobs hadn't come up with a way of making connecting to the net as idiot-proof as possible. And now thanks to AOL we've got millions of them, and how many of them have changed? None, they're all still using AOL.
I think your elitist vision of a net only accessible to the privileged educated few would be quite horrible
Why? Because we can have quality websites filled with stuff that we can appreciate? Because rather than having to pander to corporate whims we can design the web to suit us? What about this fills you with such fear?
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
once they reach into the millions.
Heck, Royal Bank just admitted that some of its traders lied about stock values to manipulate peoples pension funds: Toront o Star
The rationale?
`Everybody does it,'' said one industry veteran.
Ah, so that makes it all better.
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
And when I see articles like this, like I said many years later, you can clearly see the need for information like that. People can be easily tricked when "new technology" is concerned.
But a question which I find more interesting is how situations like this can be put to a stop? The Internet is growing and accessing it becomes easier every week, figurly speaking offcourse. Which also means, to a certain extent, that people loose focus on how things really work. Which is essential when developments like this are concerned. I'm really interessted how those companies came to their decision to invest. Was it the cheap and slick speech of this gentlemen or did they really consult some experts on this subject?
Basicly this just shows us that it is oh so important to know what you are talking about when technology like this is concerned. When people want you to give them some money to allow them to develop great things (tm) be vary carefull and make sure you know whats really going on.
You seem to argue that that verse means that all Christians MUST drink poision, wrastle snakes, etc. Can you not follow how the phrase "these signs will accompany those who believe" allows for something other than a one-to-one relationship between Christians and snake handlers?
Incidentally, that particular verse is questioned by a lot of people because the earliest manuscripts of Mark simply don't have it. It is possible that the (few) early manuscripts we have could well be wrong, and that these verses might be part of THE manuscript that Mark wrote. But honestly I doubt it.
In any case: I am not an inerrantist. That is, while I will defend the reliability and usefulness of the Bible to the death, I feel no need to claim that "every word is the literal word of God". Literal inerrancy is a weak position because it ignores the fact that the step from language to meaning is a big one.
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Are you thinking of the sort of test that you needed to retake about 48 times before successfully posting to slashdot?
Thank God I live in Europe, where the kind of rampant capitalism the US practices is tempered with a more humane socialist brand of politics.
The kind of humane socialist politics which lets the people do what they want unless it offends their betters?
I find it interesting that these things have been going on for years, and it's only now that people are beginning to pay attention to them.
In bull markets, people ignore the bad news and pay attention to the good news. In bear markets, people pay attention to the bad news, and ignore the good news.
This is only the tip of the iceberg. There is much more to come.
No kidding, following this story I found a very funny/interesting site describing itself as "the dot-com deadpool" at FuckedCompany.com.
They have literally almost 300 *recent* stories about various dot-coms and how they fucked up in some way either screwing over their customers, employees, etc. or all of the above. The antics include Hollywood Video execs emailing their subsidiary Reel.com's CEO to fire all or most of the employees and the CEO simply forwards the e-mail to all in the company, Kozmo.com requiring almost every employee to submit to a detailed background check (and 50+ employees quitting or being fired), & copies of bad customer service feedbacks to Kozmo.com.
GEE, I'm glad I stayed with my solid "old economy", more traditional Silicon Valley electronics employer -- we've been among the fastest growing companies in the USA for several years (we're an ancient 9 years old), we're merging, acquiring, going IPO, making stock option money for employees and no B.S. even close to this stuff! I guess the dot-coms are finally realizing that even "new economy" companies need some kind of business-running know-how! It's a humbling time for all of us...
Around 1990, a friend of mine got excited about someone he'd met in San Diego who was developing a great new technology to tranfer movies over the phone line. It was supposed to put a full movie in 15 minutes at the same quality as a vcr.
I tried to explain about theoretical limits and the like to my friend (who was just short of brilliant), but he was convinced.
A fem months (couple of years?) later, I read in the Las Vegas paper about the arrest of a con-man in San Diego, who had had a scheme to compress movies and . . .
SO couldn't this guy have come up with something original, instead of somethign that had already sent someone to prison???
hawk, esq., never ceasing to be amazed at the stupidty of criminals
This is what happens when you get people excited over the prospect of some "new technology" that will "revolutionize the Internet". It is happening all over the place, and the Venture Capitalists are pouring money into things they don't, won't and can't understand. The stock market finally shook itself up, I expect the VC market to do the same, as investors become increasingly wary on where their money is going and what is is doing while it is there.
Enigma
Enigma
Does anyone else find it amusing that stories of con artists that would ordinarily not be newsworthy, are treated differently because they are 'on the web'? As far as I can tell, this guy is just another conman who managed to sucker people into buying into his scheme and then running off with the money.
Any time there are gullible people looking to make fast money there will be people like this - the Internet hasn't changed that - it's just another area to exploit.
think about it, this guy got everything he ever wanted probably:
a respectable job at a startup
being the spiritual leader in a high pressure situation
hell, he got the WHO to give a reunion concert
and the only thing that was actually lost were sucker VC's money. Well, it serves the VC's wrong for not doing their homework. And I bet his employees were well compensated.
Well, it's not what the internet commerce business was built for, but I think the majority of the people here prospered.
I read that early this morning (about 4AM). Look at that guy. Pretty scary, especially that closeup photo. What a loon.
I think I would have been tipped off when he started dropping names like the CIA, the Saudi Royal family and whatnot. "Hi there, I live in my Hyundai, but I used to work for the CIA and now I have developed a new product and I would love to get you on the ground floor.." Bzzzt! Nut Alarm!
Who has worked for someone like this before? You know, the cult leader type who makes proclaimations, expects undying devotion from his staff, regularly promotes and fires arbitrarily and so on? I worked for someone like this for awhile. He used to get depressed and sulk whenever he suspected people did not like or trust him. Then he would suddenly get happy and start screwing people over; cutting back their salary, reading their email, finding reasons to fire people, etc.
I don't think it has anything to do with "The New Economy" or "The Internet" but rather the timeless wisdom of P.T. Barnum. Pretty good research by The Standard, I wish all news articles were that good.
Also, I don't think he did anything wrong. All he did, both in Tennesee and California, is take advantage of people's insatiable greed and their suceptibility for quick buck schemes. He should get paid for teaching people how to avoid conmen.
I have to agree. I don't think this is any worse than the latest ploys by MCI, AT&T, etc. for getting people to change their phone companies.
They send a check addressed to you. No paperwork included. On the check it has a disclaimer in small writing that says cashing this check amounts to giving AT&T the permission to switch your long-distance phone service.
I think that's more of an illegal scam than this one...
but my question about this scam is, where were all the technology guys that developed this supposed compression technology? Isn't it kind of weird if there weren't any?
The internet is a mass medium, and as such, will be the playground of con-artists, in the same way that con-artists have played in all the mediums of the past. That's an undisputed fact. It's especially vulnerable right now because there are many people that do not understand nor see the bigger picture. Society should try to prevent this stuff from happening, but at the same time, it's always 'caveat emptor'.
This is just a more obvious con. You need to look below the surface for the surreptitous con's that happen every day, yet are rarely questioned. Consider a lot of brand marketing and corporate activities that play upon individuals need to believe and belong, or other emotional issues. They play on people's confidence in another way. I could draw examples from corporate product marketing preying on teenagers need for belonging.
-- Matthew - matthew.gream@pobox.com, http://matthewgream.net
He has no official Gubmint ID and wants to be paid out of the company expenses fund instead of drawing a salary, you know, like REAL employees!
Pope
Freedom is Slavery! Ignorance is Strength! Monopolies offer Choice!
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
On freshmeat yesterday, a GPL compressor for still and moving images that does Low Bit-Rate Image and Video Coding with Weighted Finite Automata, outperforming JPEG and is competitive with fractal and wavelet compression. Efficient enough to decode movies in software. I grabbed the code and checked out the demo images: it does seem to work.
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Life's a bitch but somebody's gotta do it.
Not to slam religious people, but Stanley/Fenne/Whatshisface preyed upon quite a few older folks, country folks, naive investors.. people who felt a compulsion to believe.. usually in some larger benificence.
Again, I'm not saying that the set of religious people equals the set of suckers -- I know far too many beings who are both intellectual and spiritual -- but would I be wrong in assuming that the latter is certainly a more viable subset for this kind of idiocy? Is there some tendency for those who need a Good Guy for codifying their morals, ethics, cosmology, etc. to also fall prey to a "gold-tounged salesman" .. who sells himself as a reasonable facsimile?
There seems to be more than mere gullibility here; it's as if the main character of this sordid little adventure targetted people who would not only believe, but who had an inner desire or need to believe.
Asbestos suit activated,
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"O Lord, grant me the courage to change the things I can,
the serenity to accept those I cannot, and a big pile of money."
".sig,
and the only thing that was actually lost were sucker VC's money. Well, it serves the VC's wrong for not doing their homework. And I bet his employees were well compensated.
The employees may or may not have been well paid. I bet they were very underpaid their last couple of weeks (read: they probably didn't get their last paychecks). The stock options obviously didn't pan out either.
Even if what you say were true, and everyone except the VC's (who got defrauded out of their investemnts) prospered, this is very short term prosperity indeed. Now the money has run out, the people are unemployed, and the VCs in question may well never invest in another internet startup again.
This kind of thing makes it more difficult for legitimate small-time startups to get off the ground, and as a result leads to less, not more, prosperity.
It isn't easy having much sympathy for wealthy VCs who throw their money around, particularly when we see really inane startups being so funded, but relishing their being defrauded is highly counterproductive IMHO. Far better to relish this priest finally getting sex the way he wants it for, the next twenty years, from his cell mate, forcefully, from behind.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
(Beginning rant now ...)
When I was a wee young lad, a professor sighed and told me "The difference between computer science and other forms of engineering is that if someone wanted a bridge built over the Chicago River, for example, and one bid said the work could be done in 8 months and cost $100K and another bid said 1 month and cost $10K, the person would choose the first bid, because the first bid seems practical and reasonable while the second bid seems unrealistic. Now if that person wanted a computer project done, no matter how improbable the smaller bid was, the person would choose that bid!" Now, many years later, I have witnessed the truth to that story that people always want miracles out of programmers no matter what we know can be done.
Until people learn that computers is a science and not magic, I think cons like this will continue. Perhaps some will be smaller (stretching the truth of how successful a start up will be) and not as large as this con, but they will continue until people learn.
(...ending rant now)
Or you could just be working in Beverly Hills. (Please don't let there be any moderators from there reading this.)
kwsNI
You know, that was the first thing that occurred to me, too. Except that maybe being a con-man is a step up from being a preacher.
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
The VCs were stupid for forgetting the first law of business: Assume everyone is a lying bastard until they prove beyond a reasonable doubt otherwise.
The employees were stupid for forgetting the first law of the job market: Keep your resume up to date.
It's taken me a long time to get to the cynical point that I'm at now, but I no longer put any loyalty into my job (I'm only here for the paycheck) and I always assume salesmen are hiding something (the first question I ask them is, "So, how do you make your money?").
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
which would mean it wouldn't create unique integers.
.]).
Aleph-naught is the measure of infinity for the integers and rationals, while Aleph-1 is the measure for the reals. In general, 2^Aleph-n = Aleph n+1
I *think* that in using all patterns for all pseudo-random number generators, you have 2^Aleph-0 possibilities, meaning that you cannot store the result in an integer (or any finite number of integers).
But then, I don't use this math all that often (but we actually had to take such things into account in my dissertation while designing the algorithm [what do I mean, "we"??? I bounced things off of the committte members, but the designe is purely mine . .
hawk
You can't keep anything hidden from top CEOs these days...
--- Hot Shot City is particularly good.
But especially on the field of data compression, there /are/ tons of people coming up with record-breaking, never-before-seen compression rates. Of course they can't say anything specific because they're trying to get a patent on it... And money. Some of the claims for lossless compression ('infinite compression schemes') even are proven to be false (counting argument) and get on the nerves of comp.compression regulars. The FAQ for that newsgroup sums up some of the cases (see items [9] and [10]).
If you want live news and TV like Video? Doing it over the Internet and by passing the Cable companies deterministic network is not an option at this time.
I don't see why not. For the news, at least, a 10-second delay for buffering (or even a couple of minutes delay, if you have the buffer capacity) is perfectly acceptable.
As the previous poster pointed out, buffering is only *not* a viable option when you need interactivity.
I think you are entirely correct with this assessment of the average Joe Sixpack internet user. There used to be a time when search engines were flooded with hundreds of links to pr0n sites. Nowadays, although the pr0n sites are still present, there is also a deluge of the aforementioned personal homepages. These homepages lack any worthwhile content and thus spoil the signal to noise ratio of the internet, making it almost impossible to use a search engine to track down useful information.
In order for people to gain an amateur radio license, it is first necessary for them to pass an examination. This certification process helps to teach prospective radio amateurs about good telecommunications practice and also tends to weed out people with a Geocities homepage mentality. Therefore, the (metaphorical) signal-to-noise ratio of amateur radio is far greater than that of the internet.
Although this sounds drastic and is completely unfeasible, it would be nice if there was some sort of mandatory certification process before people are allowed to publish on the internet. The signal-to-noise ratio of the internet would improve greatly, and the interent would be easier to search and index. This would allow the internet to realise its potential as the greatest stockpile of mankind's knowledge, and this would be of benefit to everyone (including Joe Sixpack).
need some tech people. If they sent in any video person, they would have seen right away the whole thing is a joke.
This is not an internet con, but a con that happened on the internet. People get conned all the time, mostly older or gullible poor people ("lotteries are a tax on people with bad math skills" was a .sig I recently saw here), but also on the eager, greedy, and trusting.
That this happened on the internet is simply because the opprotunity was there, much like the telephone/mail scam artists that prey on the elderly all over the USA. More and more hoaxes, scams, and chain letters appear on the internet every day because of the speed and anonymity inherent in the tool. I think that the most important point of this story was that the man got caught, despite all of the advantages that an "internet con" has.
Computers can only simulate determinism. ~Hermetic.
The following excerpt of the article explains where the technology came from.
The magician who performed this feat was Digital Motion cofounder and president Robert Dunning, a former marketing manager at high-end computer manufacturer GST-Micro City in Southern California. Dunning used highly specialized hardware and software, much of it still in the testing phase, designed by Sunnyvale, Calif.-based FutureTel and other niche companies in the graphics and publishing industries. Dunning's achievement, according to Dunning, Hauswirth and the third Digital Motion partner, was in assembling off-the-shelf components in a way no one else had done before to produce high-quality video. Soon enough, Stanley would hijack Dunning's work, wrongly calling it proprietary technology that Stanley himself had developed.
I'm just wondering which "off-the-shelf" components these are.
I actually had to work with that guy at one point. At my last job we started using Pixelon's services for streaming movie trailers over the internet. Our first webmaster chose them because they broadcasted the Anaheim Ducks games. Their software was alright, but it was still only for broadband use. Anyway, I was wierded out by that guy's name, because I worked with a guy named Michael Fenne. And I remember him saying something about how his name was unique, and nobody else's in the world was spelled that way. Then we stopped using their services all of the sudden, and I wondered what the Hell was going on. So I ask my coworker Mike Fenne what happened, and he says that the feds think that he's the one that ran Pixelon. He didn't even know about the company, so obviously he was a little confused. Guess the FBI was confused too, because the names, and places of business were a little too similar to be coincidental. I guess it's a good thing that they found the impostor. He was a whack job anyway, and the company was like a rabid dog. They used to call all the time after the scandal first broke because they still needed clients. A very strange situation indeed. Sharkey
www.badassmofo.com
Sounds more like a Coen Bros. movie, like Fargo or the Big Lebowski. It's so wild and improbable--with bizarre details like the exec jumping out of a moving cab, and another returning in the nick of time from a horse riding trip with mud-caked cowboy boots--yet it really happened.
This would make a hilarious movie.
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Zardoz has spoken!
Oper on the Nightstar
Hmmmm....preacher versus con-man...hmmmm... Whats the difference? ;)
If you want video, you want multicasting. Not some new-fangled compression system, that's so much snake-oil.
IMHO, the idea of everyone getting full-screen video to their homes is one that CAN be realised today, with NO new code, just a lot of heckling of ISPs. The ISPs are the reason confidence tricks of this kind are even possible. If they gave the full potential of the Internet to their customers, then there'd be far less demand for more.
The ISPs are therefore as guilty as the con artists for stunts like this. If you artificially create a demand, by blocking supply, then you will create a market for people who claim to be able to beat the blocks.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
It WILL work under Winblowze with Netscape 4.7 too. Of course, it had to buffer several megabytes (!) before it would play. Not quite ready for the 56K modems, ISDN or frankly anything less than 1 Mbps. The resulting image quality looks like a 10 year old GE with a misaligned yoke.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
It seems that more and more people want full screen Video over the internet. Well I truly think it will be a while before this happens. The problem is not bandwidth but the undeterministic nature of Internet traffic (what some venders like to call the Quality of service.) I maintained a distance learning classroom for a University that had two full screen connection (one each way) on a signal T1 1.5 MB using H320. It ran as smooth and was a clear as any cable TV connection. I tried to do the same with H323 on a 100TX connection over IP using 350MHZ P2 and software compression and we are back to very small unclear picture. Add just a small amount of competing traffic and things went south quick. The H232 connection was good with hardware compression if there was no competing traffic but was never as good as H320 over a T1 at 100mb!! Forget doing this on the Internet. This problem is well understood. I wish I knew how he was able to get as fare as he did with out some one like me asking OK where is the magic and how do get around the deterministic problem.
Not many people have had the experience of meeting a conman like this. I have. Twice. They have an almost supernatural force of personality and charm. They can make the most baldfaced lies and outrageous claims, like they were in the CIA and sold computers to Saudi oil barons, and they seem reasonable.
For any normal person such claims would fall flat on the ground, but people like this are not normal. They hack people the way that many of us hack computers. They know all the little ins and outs that let them get root on people's personalities.
If you find yourself entangled with a person like this it seems like there's no escape. They have a magnetism that draws people in and holds them there. You work the 36 hours and do the prayer meeting because all of your coworkers are. Because it seems like there's no way out.
If anyone finds themselves in a situation like this. Like I once did. You run. You cut your losses, no matter how big they may seem at the time. You cut all your losses and get the hell out.
A few pointers on guys like this:
I hope this helps!
PS: If you're feeling brave you can attempt retribution for your losses. But these folks believe in an eye-for-an-eye with interest.
- VC's have too much cash, and are too quick to throw it away at any old IT startup.
- People have become so excited by the whole Internet and dotcom "bubble economy" that they will risk a whole lotta cash on the slim chance of making a quick buck.
- People are easily fooled by technology (As an example, one of the coders who worked at Pixelon said "They took an existing Windows player and modified it slightly, then called it our own", and the computer they "desgined" to encode the video was built from off the shelf components)
Now the scary thing is, this man can't be the only one to have the idea. How many more of these con-artists are there now on the internet?Syllable : It's an Operating System
Preacher-turned-conman is a redundant term, at least if you judge by the crop of televangelists in the US...
Information wants to be beer, or something like that.
Investing in internet startups is such a risky thing that you expect to be coned sometimes. You assume that most of the ventures you put money into will go nowhere. To the goy who has dumped $x million into a venture lousing your shirt because the market isn't ripe for your product, the product comes out after a superior competitor or doesn't work at all is irrelevant. You sometimes louse all your money.
Venture capitalists survive by NOT putting all the eggs into one basket. The only thing special about being taken by a conman is that you will never deal with that person again. Other failed ventures are water under the bridge.
Look at it this way: If someone came to you 5 years ago and said he was going to build a 128 bit CPU that would run x86 instructions in software at native speeds with less than 1 watt of power would you buy in ? The truth is all the really cool investments look far fetched on the surface and you would need months of study before you can make an educated guess as to weather it's flatly impossible.
VCs don't have the time or the inclination so they spread the risk around and louse a little on things like this. If you invest in 5 pixelons it only takes 1 transmeta to wash away all your pain.
--= Isn't it surprising how badly I spell ?
So? People get what they deserve and if this helps get rid of some people too stupid to know better then it has only done the Internet a service. Since the rise of services like AOL there have been far too many people on the net who don't have a fucking clue about anything, and all they do is take up bandwidth by downloading huge fuck-off Flash animations and waste server space with crappy Geocities home pages that have pictures of themselves and their dogs - who gives a rat's arse about them?
In fact, I think the way foward here is for the Internet to be restricted to those who have the brains to pass a test on basic technical skills (such as what is UDP or what port does HTTP use) and general net etiqutte. At least this way we'd only get people who would use the net for something good and maybe the corporate dominance of the net would be stymied.
Unfortunately the US, which still seems to think that the net is their private playground (not suprising since the average USian thinks the US is the entire world) and refuses to accept a global controlling body, is so subservient to corporate interests and their well-paid lobbyists that getting this kind of legislation in is next to impossible. Thank God I live in Europe, where the kind of rampant capitalism the US practices is tempered with a more humane socialist brand of politics.
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Jon E. Erikson
Jon Erikson, IT guru
Praise be to the Lord, I've been trying to find the URL for Slashdot everywhere!
Boffoonery - downloadable Comedy Benefit for Bletchley Park
In general, people call things "brands" which aren't brands. The classic example of a brand is Harley-Davidson -- people are prepared to pay extra for what is, objectively considered, an inferior motorcycle, because it is a Harley Davidson.
Are people prepared to pay more for books, because they come from Amazon? If not, then how can they justify capitalising marketing expenditure? Marketing a "brand" which does not command a brand premium may be a sensible thing to do, but it's not creating anything which is separable from the business as a whole; ie, I believe that Amazon are misleadingly flattering the P&L by bringing internally created goodwill onto the balance sheet.
-- the most controversial site on the Web
That article sounds like a storyboard for a Dilbert strip.
This is another view of the world.
I sometimes cannot tell the difference anymore. I guess if a company that gets a ton of VC money fails, then it is a con. If the company manages to do something with the VC money then it is a entrepreneral success-story, right? Well, that is the name of the game, isn't it?
My question is how legit is this news lead anyway? I ask because the reporting looks suspect.
My first big web job was building a site for a pyramid scheme company...we put up dozens of pages literally overnight at this guy's request, and it took us MONTHS to finally get paid.
I felt slimy writing code for that man. (Shudder)
These cons are all over the net, you're right, but judging from the number of 'read this email! it's true!' notes I get forwarded to me by clueless coworkers and family, the fact that this guy got caught is pretty amazing. Stupidity, and more importantly ignorance, go unchecked online. "If it's on the computer it must be true." Ack.
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series