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"Time-Traveler" Busted For Insider Trading

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the making-the-rounds dept.

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!"

11 of 534 comments (clear)

  1. is it me... by Recoil_42 · · Score: 1, Interesting

    or is slashdot getting really slow at the news these days? Lockergnome had this bit last month

    --


    Newsie, Moderator, www.tauniverse.com
  2. Validity of Internet news stories by GregGardner · · Score: 2, Interesting

    If you read carefully you see that the source is the "Weekly World News." You know that trashy tabloid newspaper at the grocery store right next to the National Enquirer? If you saw this story on the front cover of the tabloid while picking up some Doritos, you would chuckle and move on. But in the world of the Internet, it's posted on Yahoo and looks just like every other Yahoo news article, except for the fact that it's on tv.yahoo.com instead of news.yahoo.com. Even Slashdot picks it up (in jest, right guys?) and it looks even more legit.

    So it just goes to show you that on the Internet, you need to check the source of news a little more carefully since tabloid news can have the same exact "look" as the real news.

  3. Two minutes Googling reveals the truth by descubes · · Score: 2, Interesting
    From http://www.theanomaly.net/blog


    Updated: See what happens when you donâ(TM)t pay attention to the big picture? Eric Bogs was kind enough to tell me Iâ(TM)m an idiot and a gullible fool for not realizing this was Yahooâ(TM)s Weekly World News, which is akin to The Onion. Hey, itâ(TM)s still a fun article.


    The rest of the Yahoo web site is also funny, though. I did not know about it.

    Time travel into the future of programming: http://mozart-dev.sf.net

    --
    -- Did you try Tao3D? http://tao3d.sourceforge.net
  4. Re:What's his address? by On+Lawn · · Score: 3, Interesting


    Hey good idea for a slashdot poll,

    What would you like to find out from the future?
    When I will die?
    Should I invest in RedHat and OSDN?
    Will JLo's marraige last?
    Do you know Cowboy Neal?
    Will they ever make Survivor Redmond?

  5. Time travel by pmz · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Regardless of the fictional aspect of this story, it made me think of an interesting question:

    If a person devises a time machine, how can they both (1) travel back in time and (2) account for the displacement of the Solar System and its planets in that time?

    For example, if he traveled back 200 years but remained in the same position, he would have appeared not in Wall Street but in space to quickly die in a vaccuum. The comfort of Earth would literally be billions of miles away.

    --
    Healthcare article at Kuro5hin
    1. Re:Time travel by BoneFlower · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Good point. There are many ways a simple position drift of Earth could be compensated for. That is the most trivial of the issues involved.

      More serious is possible disruptions to the time stream and what could occur to correct them.

      Most significant is his new found wealth could ripple through and prevent him from being born, or affect society in such a way that he would have no need to make the journey in the first place. Thus he doesn't come back- But, he did come back or else he wouldn't have not come back... thus all hell breaks loose and the fabric of our collective perception of time unravels and the universe is destroyed.

      Another possibility is the "everything that can happen does happen in an alternate universe". Problem with this is, ok, yeah he gets filthy rich here, but since it simply creates a new reality that by the theory would have been created anyways, he really hasn't accomplished anything.

      Now, the time machine could have seperated him sufficiently from the space time contimuum that he is capable of changing past events without harming his own "past". But I don't expect to see that untill around 2885, according to my friend whose from 2886 and the Cartman TimeCo brochures he showed me. But then again I haven't seen that friend since Cartman called his future self an asshole.

  6. Seems to be from the StarTrek Universe. by GrimReality · · Score: 2, Interesting
    ...from year 2256!

    Isn't this about the time the events in the StarTrek universe takes place?

    GrimReality
    2003-04-17 19:06:47 UTC (2003-04-17 15:06:47-0400)

  7. Re:HOAX REVEALED! by wolf- · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I would agree with you, except, I'm not laughing.
    The dupes are getting worse.
    The content is becoming hum drum.

    Apparently so many are paying now, that there is no concern about losing readership now.

    --
    ----- LoboSoft specializes in Digital Language Lab
  8. Weekly World News: not all of it made up! by coult · · Score: 5, Interesting

    You know, sometimes they actually print things that are true. When I was in high school in the 80's, someone at my school got really drunk at a party and was dropped off at 2 a.m. by his "friends" in a snowbank near his house. He nearly froze to death - his body temperature got well below the level where normally you would die. His feet and hands were ice chunks, but he miraculously survived. The Weekly World News picked up the story, and reported it very accurately.

    --

    All is Number -Pythagoras.

  9. Occam's razor by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

    Applying Occam's razor to the known facts, I'd say the simplest, most likely explanation is that he is indeed a time traveler.

  10. Actually, no. by AzrealAO · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I submitted a PCWorld story on the 10th and 11th about AOL applying to the FCC for release from the requirement to make AOL Instant Messener interoperable with other provider's services.

    The story that was posted on the 12th was about tests of Video Messaging.

    http://www.pcworld.com/news/article/0,aid,110158,t k,dn040703X,00.asp