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.
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.
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.
(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)
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.
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.
That's not a bad thing. Maybe through the 'net they'll learn.
Actually, Flash animations are remarkably small compared to gifs.
I think that they do, and their families and friends.
The net is a magnificent thing precisely because it allows the massess access to publish to something available instantly world-wide. That is a power undreamed of even ten years ago for the overwhelming majority of the worlds populace... and is rapidly becoming a reality.
I think your elitist vision of a net only accessible to the privileged educated few would be quite horrible
erroneous: look me up in a dictionary