Slashdot Mirror
"Time-Traveler" Busted For Insider Trading
Chester sent in a story that has been making the rounds for a bit, but if you haven't bumped into it, "Yahoo! TV came up with this weird story about a guy who caught police's attention by gaining $350 million from mere $800 in two weeks. The twisted part is that he justifies his knowledge about stocks by saying he is a time-traveler from year 2256!"
Even if he wasn't lying, even if this wasn't the Weekly World News...
He should still be busted. Stock gains through timetravel would be unethical for the same reason insider trading is illegal.
It's funny, this get's posted, but my news submissions about AOL/Time Warner trying to weasel out of the IM Interoperability order that was a condition of their merger, was rejected twice.
Relative to him the knowledge of the stock's going through the roof is common knowledge so is it still insider trading? Did he break any laws in obtaining the knowledge? NO! I say let the man have is 350 million dollars :) Food for thought....
Thanks to who ever submitted this story cause it made me laugh right before I left work. It's a funny piece.
"I believe in everything in moderation. Including moderation." -Dean DeLeo, Stone Temple Pilots
just note, at least it's in the 'It's funny, laugh' column of slashdot... so it's a joke of course, or just something funny or silly. It's not news for nerds, it's not stuff that matters, but it's still funny... and even funnier if you can get someone to believe it's true.
Uhhh....it's...HUMOUR? You know... funny?
Uhhh...never mind.
I didn't realize that stuff from the World Weekly News was /. worthy...
A new feature is just a bug waiting to happen. And vice versa.
You had to check Snopes for this? The URL has wwn in it, the page has the Weekly World News logo in the upper right side. I figured all that was certainly enough to show that this story was bunk.
Unless of course you are one of those people that believes everything wwn publishes.
You do know this was posted under the HUMOR section, right?
/course/ it's fake. We all know that. But it's still damn funny!
Of
Some people take life too seriously.
Colin
Colin Davis
If someone was *really* from 250 years in the future, would it be obvious just by talking to them? Would it be easy to distinguish between a real time traveller and some delusional person who thinks they are from the future or a deliberate fake?
On one hand they probably speak very strangely, using words, grammar and ideas that have not been developed yet but are consistent. They would also have a very detailed and consistent knowledge of a future world way past the ability of the average person to make up. They probably would also have knowledge of future technologies and so forth and be able to describe them in the detail. But none of this would be verifiable, and most of it would probably sound outlandish. If you were zapped back to 1750 you'd probably be able to tell people about aeroplanes, tungsten light bulbs, telephones, computers etc. but you would be hard to build any of them from scratch. Would anyone believe you?
A couple possibilities-
.5C or so should be enough to get you to Earth in a couple of years after only a 200 year drift. I mean, I don't think the earth moves nearly that fast relative to the universal center, probably only a few tens of thousands of MPH. You'd still be deposted in the mily way, probably closer to Earth than Proxima Centauri...
One, remember, all position and velocity is relative to your point of reference. If the time machine is designed such that it considers Earth a still point of reference, with the right equations to account for movement of everything else around it(hey, in 200 years you could come up with that math), then he wouldn't have to do anything. Just punch in the time and he would show up at the same spot he left earth from.
Also, assuming he had access to a time machine, he surely had access to the computing power needed to easily calculate the position of Earth based on the center of the universe frame of reference.
Also, more esoteric methods could have been used. Perhaps psychic energies are better understood in his time, and he homed in on the psycic signature of the Earth to ensure arrival at the proper location. Maybe the Earths gravity well ensured he arrived at the proper planet by providing an anchor.
And of course the simple thing- He may have targeted 1995 or so, and simply kicked in his crafts engines to travel to the Earth. It would be trivial to figure out the general direction the Earths system would be in relative to where it was when you left. Then just compare some star charts with what you see ahead of you, narrow down which star is Sol, and rocket off.
would they even have current financial records in 2256, I mean wouldn't the great robot wars have wiped most of that stuff out?
and doesn't it make more sense to only go back 2 weeks? that way you can set up your other self to take the fall while you get plastic surgery and mosey off with the cash.
If you mod me down the terrorists will have won
If it is true we should take the deal he offered, Give us Osama, Cure AIDS, and let him walk.
Now if it is really true the guy would be an idiotic PHB. After all, He could claim the $25 million reward from the FBI, use the money to develop a cure for AIDS and make billions selling the drugs he developed. No one would ever know he is from the future or arrest him for insider trading.
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If I were coming back from the future in a time machine to score a little cash off of the stock market, 2003 is not the time I'd come back. I'd come back in 1998 or so, start buying like crazy on the leading edge of the bubble, then dump everything in March 2000. And follow it up by a bunch of short trades. Or, without enough appropriately dated seed money, just skip the bubble's rise and go straight for the short trades.
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