Slashdot Mirror
Mafia Tech Support
Mzilikazi writes "A story from Wired about performing tech support for the mob, mainly focusing on gambling. Some interesting information is presented about P2P applications. Frankly it sounds like fiction to me (you can already imagine the movie being made -- 'I Was a Hacker for The Mob'), but the story is interesting nonetheless and shows that if you're skilled and determined but have a flexible moral compass, there's a lot of job opportunities out there." I started reading it for the mob references, but kept on reading for the details of how to run an illegal gambling organization.
Isn't the first rule, don't talk? This coder is going to get whacked! I would have kept my mouth shut if made a proggie for the mob. If I had a ham sandwich with Tony Soprano, I wouldn't talk about it for chrissakes.
The author Simson Garfinkel could also get whacked because he knows the guy who talked.
Maybe it's too Hollywood, but would you even risk it? Would you? So maybe they didn't pay the guy enough? He says he makes 1/3 of $150k, but he likes living under the radar. That makes sense for about two seconds. I'd rather make $150k and keep it in my shoebox.
They aren't paying the guy enough, so he bragged about it to Wired, who published it.
The chain of stupidity doesn't stop there. Now the IRS is after this guy for tax evasion, and they can connect him to the writer of the story and the mob itself, meaning some mob boss at the top is shitting his pants right now -- if this is isn't total BS.
"But in the fog of all those poker games, I had neglected to take the humanities classes required for graduation. So I left without a degree and moved to New York City. My plan was to become a professional card player."
And now the FBI knows you by name.
I dunno. If it didn't have Simson Garfinkle's byline, I'd think the whole thing was pure bullshit made up by a Bushie purely as propoganda to prove the need to use their patriot muscle to crack down on "regular" crime. It reads like a "what's what" list of things that probably kill the boner Ashcroft gets every time he thinks about how great it is to track people with their OnStar systems.
To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
You'd figure the average geek would make one too many Simpson's reference about "Fat Tony" and get his ass whacked before he could do anything useful.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Wasn't that what the baddie from Sneakers did?
But do they walk around in jackets with MAFIA written on their back in neon-green electropigment?
"Mafia, you've got a friend in the family."
Integrate Keynote and LaTeX
(you can already imagine the movie being made -- 'I Was a Hacker for The Mob')
I prefer the title "Sneakers".
"The worst tyrannies were the ones where a governance required its own logic on every embedded node." - Vernor Vinge
Mafia Don Announces New Anti-Spam Venture
As the NSA and FBI fear, traditional crime organizations have been incorporating high-tech communication into their organizations. Although Janet Reno was quoted stating "This is law enforcement's worst nightmare.", techies around the world are sure to be pleased with one New York Syndicate's new venture.
It all started when Don Dominiqi signed onto his AOL account last Monday morning. His inbox was filled with "Make Money Fast", "Viagra On-Line", and "Teenybopper Web Sex" ads. Lost amidst the drivel was an important note detailing a non-taxed shipment of Marlboros, which were later confiscated by the BATF. Little did he know, as he shouted "Bring me the left hand of this f*cking gutterslime!" what would become of it all.
Later that same day, Billy "Run!" Brutekowski and Larry "My Eyes!" Plucker cornered the pasty-faced offender of the Family in a small cyber cafe in Greenwich Village. "This was by far the creepiest place the Boss has ever sent us." stated Billy, who only spoke on condition of anonymity. "Everyone in this place looked pale and sickly, like they had already been 'spoken to'. We asked for this punk, and several people quickly pointed him out. Most of the scum we find in gin joints aren't so quick to finger one of their own," Billy continued.
"He must not watch much TV, because this sh*t didn't even flinch when we came to the corner he was hiding in," Larry proceeded to relate. "We dropped this sheet of paper the Boss had given us on his table and he says 'So you guys want to make money fast, eh?' He puts out his and says to give him $20. This scrawny little dirtball tells me to give him $20!" Larry was quite agitated at this part in his story, and his description of how Sammy Spammer's hand fell off was quite garbled.
Billy continued, "Up till now, this was a routine visit. We was just being playful. The weird sh*t began when we tried to leave." "This pimply faced kid blocks the door as we try to leave, and I'm thinking to myself 'Great, a f*cking Karate Kid hero. He just stand there, and then he hands me a $5 bill." Billy pulls out the $5, and holds it like it is his first quarter from his favorite grandmother. "They lined up after that, and we had $175 in 'tips' when we left the joint."
Later that day the Don himself visited the caf, unwilling to believe the story. Although the details are unclear, sources at the caf indicate that the Don has hired them to build and host a new Anti-Spam site. Through a SSL transaction system, the site will accept spam complaints and credit card donations towards 'solutions to problems'. Multiple complaints against the same spammer are added to the total until an acceptable solution has been found.
Larry tells us that a typical $250 solution is a broken hand, and for $2000 all anyone ever sees again of 'the problem' are his shoes.
The URL is to be announced next week, and the cyber caf's phones have been jammed with requests for more information.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
...then he has a pretty overinflated opinion of himself. He's like, "oh, I took a bunch of math and physics courses, but I forgot to my humanities!" He tries to romanticize "the life of a mob hacker," but he fails it.
Look at it carefully, and it won't look like some stealthy hacker but some dropout loser nerd.
I had but a simple dream, to destroy all humans.
The guys farking with everyone on the net... what are they called already? The "MAFIAA" or something I think... I have a conscience, I'll never for for them !
This article is as fake as a letter to Miss Manners or a WWW match...
The fact remains that I could be pulling in $150,000 as a programmer on the open market. But I make a third of that. So why am I risking a prison sentence or the potential of a lifetime in witness protection for a job that doesn't make me all that rich? Simple: When you start making a lot of money, you get noticed by the biggest bullies on the block - the cops and the IRS - and I don't want that. I like living below the radar.
Ah if you are working in the "open market" than you do not have to worry about "living below the radar".
The next juicy part
I don't fork over any taxes. When you get right down to it, I'm an idealist. I don't condone the actions of the US government. By refusing to pay taxes, I withhold my financial support. And, truth be told, I like mobsters. They're more willing to accept you at face value.
There you have it a moral mobster. Someone who does not condone the actions of the US government but overlooks the actions of the mob.
tard, it's capo di tutti capi
Essentially, the system acts as a market maker, matching up people who want to take different sides of a sports bet.
He's got his terminology wrong. That's not a market maker, that's a *market*. A market maker is just someone who's required to offer a particular price on both sides of the book in return for some preferential treatment by the exchange.
A friend of mine ran deliveries for mobster types in college. It was contracts (the paper kind) and banking/financial crap for the most part.
--- Ban humanity.
From one of the BSD Games fortune cookies:
A gangster assembled an engineer, a chemist, and a physicist. He explained that he was entering a horse in a race the following week and the three assembled guys had the job of assuring that the gangster's horse would win. They were to reconvene the day before the race to tell the gangster how they each propose to ensure a win. When they reconvened the gangster started with the engineer:
Gangster: OK, Mr. engineer, what have you got?
Engineer: Well, I've invented a way to weave metallic threads into the saddle blanket so that they will act as the plates of a battery and provide electrical shock to the horse.
G: That's very good! But let's hear from the chemist.
Chemist: I've synthesized a powerful stimulant that dissolves into simple blood sugars after ten minutes and therefore cannot be detected in post-race tests.
G: Excellent, excellent! But I want to hear from the physicist before I decide what to do. Physicist?
Physicist: Well, first consider a spherical horse in simple harmonic motion...
I wonder what a computer scientist would be up to? ;)
Qu'on me donne six lignes écrites de la main du plus honnête homme, j'y trouverai de quoi le faire pendre.
"tech support for the mob" and "about P2P applications"
I thought organized crime on the internet has already hit the news...
extorting people for money, manipulating courts and laywers, going after people's teenage daughters.. (shoot, now I'm confused if I mean SCO or RIAA)
It gives a whole new meaning to the phrase googlewhack.
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
If you have a wayward moral compass, work for the mob. But for the trully evil there is the RIAA.
I agree with the latter 50% of your post. Take away the no computers part and the Michael Jackson part. Have you seen Michael Jackson? or even heard him speak? Come on you can't seriosuly think he's innocent.
1. Don't underestimate the other guy's greed
2. Don't get high on his own supply
3. First get the money, then get the power, then finally get the women.
4. Leave the gun, take the cannoli.
I started reading it for the mob references, but kept on reading for the details of how to run an illegal gambling organization."
you'll never be incognito
sorry....
;)
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
`The fact remains that I could be pulling in $150,000 as a programmer on the open market.' Yeah. Right. He must be a much better coder than he sounds if he could be making that right now with no college degree and no formal training. Maybe during the dotcoms, but now? And even if he could, I find it hard to imagine he'd give that all up because he `like[s] living below the radar.' Kudos to the poster for seeing through this self-aggrandizing fabrication.
I didnt know that, the last time I used it, I think 8.2 or something, it didnt. Anyone know how to get this functionality in Debian with apt-get (stable, testing or unstable doesnt matter) or something else that is fairly simple? I've never really looked into it, or would it be easier to just download the Mandrake ISO files?
First, eliminate all those incriminating little pieces of paper.
... paper rules for this stuff
as opposed to an electronic transaction that can easily be snoop(1)'d by uncle sam. encrypted or not
karma whore. wired ain't going to get slashdotted. learn some tact, nube.
The author is Simson Garfinkel? Yes, Simson Garfinkel, who "holds three degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a masters of science degree from Columbia University," is a "doctorial candidate at MIT's Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory," and "still writes for Wired on an occasional basis."
The story is fiction. The author, Simson Garfinkel is a grad student at MIT. Do a search in slashdot's archives and you'll see him mentioned in the past on all sorts of stories. He's also written a bunch of O'Reilly books.
It's redundant because it's already been posted in the article summary. There's no reason to duplicate it again in the comments.
Supposed to be in bed?
It's not like if it was daylight for half of the world!
Oh! wait...
Seems a little beyond credibility that someone would tell this story to Wired. It looks like someone is trying to sell their movie script by creating a "buzz".
Worst. Mob. Tech. Support. Story. Ever.
Strange women lying in ponds distributing swords is no basis for a system of government.
I realize Wired has always run a fine line between journalism and fiction in the past, but in recent yeas the magazine has gotten so bad that I'm seriously thinking of not renewing my subscription. Also, I enjoy seeing the mac covered, which many other publications ignore, but Wired has gone insane with the mac-centric stories. Sorry but just because Apple is somehow involved does not make a story newsworthy.
I heard of 2 applications "for the mob". The most common code for the mafia is the usual "double book accounting" application. At midnight or from a hidden menu half the sales are erased, the tax to be sent adjusted and a number is shown to be removed, in cash of course. It never removes more than the cash in the register a lot easier in case of an audit.
The other application is the other way around. At 6AM, the application creates "fake sales" for the previous day; I heard this specifically for video stores (own by the Hells Angels). A bunch of tapes that really spent the night in the store, indicated as returned during the night, and compiled for the 6AM opening. Why you ask? Money laundering. These "fake sales" produces clean money at the cost of the tax. The stores accepted cash only, and the owner simply adds the indicated amount in the register.
I am always suspicious of stores that accept cash only! Or like that not too bright fellow who made 250K$ that year, with 4 peanuts distribution machines that takes only quarter, without ever bringing a single quarter to the bank, Only bills!
The IRS had a good case!
The whole article was posted in the article summary? Fuck you.
would you trust a guy who speaks like this:
Tito pass the tissue!
OH jermaineeee!
If you want to RTFA, click the link. I don't want to have to scroll past this long and pointless post.
I found the meaning of life the other day, but I had write-only access.
The hot topic of the day usually pays around $1500 a day for six months or so in Manhattan. This is entirely feasable, but most of the people pulling down that kind of cash have very good connections and plenty of experience.
I guess with guns so much smaller than in classic gangster movies, they can now vit them in laptop bags instead of violin cases.
There have been many of these stories in the past few years. Mostly out of Vegas, yes. Seems there is a rather 'quiet' tech revolution going on, driven by tons of money and 'out of the box' needs.
:)
As an example, the taxi companies monitor each other's phones and poach clients needing a cab. Sounds simple, but the timing involved would put a shuttle launch to shame
Don't get me wrong....there's nothing glam about it. The crime/drug/prostitution/money laundering that masks the real victimization has zero redeeming status.
This should be AC but WTF ....
Here is what I would like to get published in the next issue of Wired ...
To see a world in a grain of sand, and then to step back and see the beach where the sand lies
Th3 m0b 0wN3s J0o!
With the job shortages in the IT market I might just consider this / NOT. hmmmm
Nick Powers
Encryption: I may not agree with what you say, but I will defend your right to encrypt it...
CICILY, NEW WORK - A press release from the Recording Industry Artists of America indicates they have merged with the Mafia in a move to focus entirely on their core business, strong arm tactics and racketteering.
Well known inside man Simson Garfinkel wasn't availble for at the time of the interview. It is believe he is on vacation fishing with the swimmers in the East River. However, his musical partner Paul Art was available and made the comment "... with everybody downloading our music our careers were starting to suck even more, we needed protection. I mean, we couldn't have grandmothers downloading our music off KaZoom Light Extreme so contacting The Mob was the obvious choice. Plus now we have the inside track on our new musical winning a Fat Tony.".
In a related story it was revealted today the Mafia has connections to news site Slashdot and network provider Akamai. By threatening to submitting to story to Slashdot containing the phrases "Linus, hot grits, Natalie Portman, and homemade p0rn" with a link to the company website victims had little choice but to subscribe to Akamai services. It is rumoured the RIAA is attempting to partner with the mob to use this technique to boost diminishing traffic to the N' Sync web site.
What price the heads of the world's top 200 spammers (as rated by spamhaus), and how many of us would be willing to chip in $5/head towards collecting them?
>I used to do something that was both illegal and
>geeky at the same time!
I modified a soda machine to dispense beer bottles. It was a coke machine from the late 70's, the kind where bottles roll laterally, and you pull one out from the front. With a little help from the on-campus machine shop, our house had a quite illegal, 24 hour beer machine. Imports at 75 cents a pop.
The beer machine and the joust game helped pay the rent.
Did you see the history channel special on JFK's assasination? Oswald was a patsy. There was a gunman on the grassy knoll and image enhancements of photos taken of the shooting prove it. The Warren Commission was a giant government orchestrated cover up.
Viral software licensing is not freedom, it is in fact GNU/Socialism.
Wired is famous for posting wildy exagerated fictional stories. It started with MicroSerfs in 1994(-5). They published this whole account of 8 Microsoft employees and their wild lives, and a few months later announced it was all a fictional story. Ever since then, I take everything they say with about 12 grains of salt.
Not to say that there *arent* computer geeks working for the mob, but this particular is probably pure fiction and completely exagerated.
I'm not going to nag you about morals; I'd just like to point out that stealing calculators isn't all that geeky. It's merely illegal. But anyone can steal stuff from someone's backpack. In fact, students make better targets than most.
No, a *genuinely* illegal geeky thing to do would be to make peoples' calculators appear broken, and offer to buy the "broken" calcs from them. Then take the calcs to another school to sell them. Maybe find a combination of buttons, or a weakness in the design that was easy to break and easy to repair.
I think that a reporter and Wired editor were fooled big time.
I read the article in Wired, I put it down and said 'amusing, but total BS.'.
here come the black helicopters, only now they are coming for the lefties. I guess every group has their raving mad paranoid lunatics.
despite the fact that this was written with such a fictionnal (and thus amusing) tone, and point of view (don't you think that it could have been a good introduction to a Casino-like movie ?), I have another concern about that kind of press release.
Such statements as "I'm a hacker for the mob and I'm proud of it" mix two differents things, that, even if they are well distinguished by the average geek population, might seem confusing, and maybe upseting, for the average non-geek population.
In a nutshell, this article will probably provide some more exposure for the 'bad, immoral, nasty hacker' character that is already wide-spread worldwide. If I'm not a /. reader and a willing-to-learn guy/girl (which is the case of many, many, many people around the globe), my first reaction will be to say : 'damn, those motherfuckers already put some viruses on my computer, now they're getting with the mob, ; kill'em'all, buddy, kill that fucking hacker'
By writing this, this guy wants to sail away from the hacker community ('yep guys, I fuck you deep, I earn 50000$ with my hacking skills'), AND from the whole mob, the true one. And this kind of behaviour had never resulted in something else that despise, anger, and fear from the uninformed people. Many people remain well uninformed about hackers at this time ; in my opinion, the hacker community shouldn't be labelled that way.
Because maybe at some point hackers will be hanged by the mob...
Regards,
Jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
God I hope they read my monster.com resume soon. I'll make sure to amend my resume with 'low moral compass'.
members are seeing something, your seeing an ad
please forgive me the flaming, but this is one of the silliest articles i've ever seen. Nor does he have any real information, neither is it funny. Instead of an insight we're given poor excuses for crime (don't want to support the goverment; we don't break legs, we just threaten to). Every drug adict has ten times better reasons. Please be aware that SPAM is related to the organized crime as well. If that guy had confesssed working for the MPAA or the RIAA to catch file swappers, the moral outrage on /. would be greater than working for the mobsters. Strange world...
Regards, Martin
Stop by casino, quarters in, dollars out. They dump them in by weight, and then it figures out what they owe you in larger denominations.
At least that's the way it works around here...
In Cock? Neato!
Considering how tech support is for the normal clueless users - who demand this and that - I can hardly think that doing tech support for the MOB would be very healthy!
"I did'nt do anything on my computer! What the f*ck are you trying to sayn - i did'nt install any spyware - why would I want people spying on me! I'll break your legs unless you fix this right now!"
// instant - "I for one welcome our new Decaff Coffee-Flavoured-Coffee Overlords"
!!! Nobster !!!
Shake downs were never this easy!!!
Collect those handy creditcard numbers
Share fake ID's at the push of a button.
All that and more for a mere C$20.000,- kickback Just plugin and watch the cash roll-in
Ironically enough, just a day or two ago, a trailer for the Movie This Thing Of Ours came out, and it's about a bunch of mobsters who move into computer crime.
Small world
"Reality is merely an illusion, albeit a very persistent one " -Albert Einstein
The fact remains that I could be pulling in $150,000 as a programmer on the open market. But I make a third of that. So why am I risking a prison sentence or the potential of a lifetime in witness protection for a job that doesn't make me all that rich? Simple: When you start making a lot of money, you get noticed by the biggest bullies on the block - the cops and the IRS - and I don't want that. I like living below the radar. I sublet a friend's apartment and pay his utility bills with money orders that I purchase at the post office or at one of those check-cashing storefronts. Because I get paid entirely in cash, I don't fork over any taxes. When you get right down to it, I'm an idealist. I don't condone the actions of the US government. By refusing to pay taxes, I withhold my financial support. And, truth be told, I like mobsters. They're more willing to accept you at face value. They aren't hung up on college degrees, or where you live, or how many criminal convictions you have.
/. bit.
So if we buy the subtext, he's your typical, semi-educated loser (precisely the profile of mob eggheads and enemy moles throughout history), who wouldn't be making $50k/year in a legit job, much less $50K take-home, justifying his criminal activity (and his inability to make any money at it) by saying he doesn't approve of the people who would--gladly and by all that is legally and morally right--put him in orange jumpsuits for the rest of his life.
Or, as I suspect, he's an invention of some half-inventive writer who's looking to run a nice Internet troll, maybe get a little play in the major news media.
I'm sure he's thrilled that
No, fuck YOU, loser.
I think the word you're looking for is "lame".
Lamer.
I concur
The only reason I'm posting this is becacuse I am absolutely hammered. This is 100% fiction, asboluty none of it is accurate. Don't believe me, ask me questions, I'll answer.
What great timing! If you liked this article, you might also enjoy "Shattered Glass", in theaters now...
Name me one person involved in making the film 'Donnie Brasco' who has got 'whacked'...
The first link is rather disgusting. Don't click (especially if your boss is standing behind you). Mod accordingly.
I did a Lotus Notes job for a group of Italian Citizens, a club really.... encrypton seems to have been a HUGE concern. First ever PGP server. Do you know what 18,000USD looks like in paperbags?
This
Anyone else feel like they were reading an excerpt from one of the fine M.Y.T.H novels by Robert Aspirin...
Don't click.
for punters just to go to a licenced turf accountant if they wanted to place a bet? I know I'm lucky having a bookie's right at the end of my street {it's where next door's kids can usually find their dad if he's not home!} but surely licenced betting shops can't be so thin on the ground, or have so much else wrong with them, that people actually prefer to use the unlicenced ones? After all, you wouldn't expect criminal gangs to tax bookies' profits any less heavily than the Government does .....
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
contains a goatse link (simson).
I think that's the guy. He has mafia/card shark/donnie brasco admirer written all over him. In think he should be a writer. Make a "Catch me if you can" style movie with a Donnie Brasco type hacker. "..He started out doing mob steak outs..then he got cosy..eventually, he provided a multi-source secure voip and database solution for them, then he got a taste for all things Mafia.." Mandrake though good choice, I'm using Mndrk. 92 at the mo and I love it so far. However, for this kind of job I think I would use even more paranoid security, OpenBSD aughta do!! Anyways, the story is clearly false. No codenames, and too many clues - way too many. If it were true there would be some guy in the FBI raiding their joint right now.. ..Oh, maybe thats his plan: If he makes it seem unrealistic, the Feds would ignore the operation!!!
In any case it would be sloppy work, I don't believe it. Intersting read though. Thanks Wired!!
Though rot's point of view may be a little unpopular, I don't think it's fair to silence him by modding down. He's entirely on-topic, but brings up a point that many folks find laughable.
/., myself. It seems that any post making light of a Republican gets modded as a troll/off topic. Perhaps Ashcroft has penetrated /. with thousands of mod points? jk
Think about it for a few minutes.. Why is it so laughable? Oh yes, the government and media has made people who disagree with them, or question them directly, appear more as kooks than folks with real questions or tangible ideas.
Go learn about the media, kids. You'd be suprised at where a lot of news stories come from.
Hell, I get paranoid enough on
Not the first time i hear this, but i think you shold get a woman first. Then you know she's with you because she wants to, and not for the power and money.
rm -rf /home/leia
I meet all the qualifications.
Vote Quimby!
Maybe interesting for perverts, but all others should mod it down as troll.
..but have a flexible moral compass
Wouldn't a lot of jobs these day require a flexible moral compass?? Just read the story below this one.
but the story is interesting nonetheless and shows that if you're skilled and determined but have a flexible moral compass, there's a lot of job opportunities out there.
"Flexible moral compass"? Sounds like just about every Slashdot geek.
"I started reading it for the mob references, but kept on reading for the details of how to run an illegal gambling organization."
The submitter and mr. Columbine could join forces and see if tldp.org would accept an Illegal-gambling-admin HOWTO seeing there already is a Linux consultancy HOWTO and similar bits.
I'm sorry if I haven't offended anyone
You get nothing bud adds when you go look at the article now, it's gone. Anyone got a mirror of it somewhere?
...technology is pervasive and has applications in almost every area.
I work for a 'company' that imports 'goods' from Europe to the US. We sell our goods online. I program the backend, data mining tools, money routing apps, etc. I pay no tax. I doubt my boss pays tax. I work whatever hours I like, stoned off the bosses weed most of the time.
We shouldn't be importing what we sell, but we do and we make a shitload of money. If white hats have a problem with that, it's because they're white hats and they'll never understand that rules are for the sheep.
It's amazing what you can do with loose morals and linux.
the leader of the democratic fundraising campaign in my state, eventhough he has more Macs than any single college or school contract and it would mean a lot to my bottom line.
what tossers modded it offtopic??? It is directly relevant to the article. Or have we got some wintrolls with mod points running around and they don't like the insecurities of their favourite platform being dragged through the dirt???
the parent post has the famous ass picture
?working? for any softwar gangster corepirate nazi ?pr? ?firm? payper liesense stock markup execrable, or the felonious georgewellian fuddite walking dead, could be hazardous to yOUR spiritual health.
of course, if you think that all you need is some/more monIE, FUDge on.
"He's been formatted."
"I clocked him all the way back to a C prompt.""I gave him a dll error he'll never forget."
Sorry, I just had to get those off my chest.......we are from the government - we are here to help...
A lot of people who used to "run numbers" for the mob go into stocks- they get licenses to trade securities. Whats great is that even if they screw up, they don't get their legs broken by Morgan Stanley! (or insert big wall street firm here)
P.S.- don't knock mutual funds- market timing is NOT a big deal (Though late day trading is cheating)
In the future, I would want to not be isolated from my friends in the Space Station.
Perhaps Stephen Glass has returned to journalism? On a more serious note, the most disturbing part of that Wired story is how the guy downplays how dangerous these guys are. If there is any threat, real or perceived, to their business, they will eliminate that threat - quickly and with no hesitation.
5. PROFIT!!!
You crosstalkin' to me? You crosstalkin' to me?
bad ac no sig for you
The company I came from before I came to work where I am now was owned by a mob family. They didn't have to do anything illegal due to a fairly lucrative government contract on which they were the only bidders. Think billions, folx. I for one don't buy into the whole 'the mob's not high tech' bit at all. I can tell you from first hand experience that we had 150 IT workers, a third of which were programmers, and ran a major ERP system to keep track of it all. In my time with said company, I never saw or heard of anything illegal happening EXCEPT that the two brothers who ran the business got into an insurance scam problem of some sort or another that quietly went away.
Most remarkably though, it was just a job pplz. We did exactly what I still do today, worked on computers. Everyone quietly knew and understood that there was a murky history to the family that ran the place, but that for some prolonged period of time that at least this functional arm of their business was legit. Again, we're talking about a nationwide company here with > 1000 employees, not some closet apartment in Jersey...
Why on earth would the mafia be interested in onshore bookmaking still, when its simple to setup offshore or internet based systems anyway? These people aren't dumb, and don't really remind me at all of the Sopranos. The one part of that article that made sense is that they really are very much like Jack Welch anymore.
My personal pet peeve: Why can't banks get these coin counters? Are they reluctant to invest in "them thar newfangled coin counter thingies"? Why do I have to spend an hour rolling 33.75 in coins? Why Every casino I've been in has at least a dozen [which I belive actually count each coin, rather than relying on the weight].
ACHTUNG! Das computermachine ist nicht fuer gefingerpoken und mittengrabben. Ist nicht fuer gewerken bei das dumpkopfen.
I was relieved that the guy was only involved in illegal gambling and not something truly despicable like spam or, god forbid, working for the RIAA or enforcing the DMCA. At least he has SOME morals!
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
Just mentioning cause there is alot more money to be made in drugs rather than the mob.
BEEP BEEP BEEP. Ok, so this guy works for an illegal betting operation that could land him in jail in order to avoid paying taxes, but even after taxes he would make more money in the private sector (50k vs 150K = 75k after all taxes) and not having to worry about bending over to pickup the soap. Yeah, i am sure that is really happening. However, it make a good story.
----- There are two kinds of people in this world, my friend; those with loaded guns, and those who dig.
"Flexible moral compass"--what a dishonest euphemism. What is a flexible moral compass? One that can be made to say that NNW is really North? Or is saying that NW is North still acceptable? Do we cross the threshold from "flexibility" into "wrong" when we point West and claim it is North? If one is going to talk about morality, one ought at least to be honest and clear-headed enough not to obscure one's intentions with euphemisms.
Just drop the damn name and pick up "geek" or "wizard" or "opensourcester" or "sourceforger" or whatever. The whole problem disappears. Everyone realizes there are good people with magic-like computer skills - you don't need to waste time by calling yourself a 'hacker' and explaining the whole semantics of the thing.
Just imagine if the now-called libertarians would bitch that much about the world "liberal" (which anywhere else in the world means "libertarian"). They don't.
"...if you're skilled and determined but have a flexible moral compass, there's a lot of job opportunities out there."
/. should be vanishingly close to zero.
So unemployment on
Any technology distinguishable from magic is not suficiently advanced.
Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced. - Geek's corollary to Clarke's law
The "mob" definition comes from what? The small fraction of papers to break people's faces before murdering them? Drug sales? Shaking down 12 and 15 year old girls? - oops! sorry for the RIAA reference, the "mob" would never sink so low.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
If I had a flexible moral compass then I'd be a manager ... or maybe even a CEO by now.
"Glory is fleeting, but obscurity is forever." --Napoleon Bonaparte
I remember the TI-85s had a key sequence that would put them into rom diagnostic mode, and start an endless loop that was impossible to exit w/o taking out batteries (or hitting reset pin)
Did you mount a military-grade, variable-focus MASER on an unlicensed artificial intelligence?
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I thought SCO was having hiring problems these days in the tech sector? I mean, I know I wouldn't want to do tech support for SCO...
C'mon. No one uses Mandrake in business!
Webhosting.
Think about it. You charge based on traffic, and just inflate the numbers. If a site gets 300 KB of traffic one month, you bill them for 300 GB. As long as you have all-you-can-eat peering arrangements, noone's ever gonna know. On top of this, you can run the actual hosting in some other country, with tighter controls on who can ask whom what (like, say, the Caymans).
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
online crack
funny stuff.
The point of the quote is if you go for the woman / women first, you won't have the motivation to get the money and power.
PS. You're a dork.
It depends on what you mean by 'talk'. If he simply claims to work for the mafia legally, they couldn't care less. For instance, my step-father worked as one of the IT department managers directly below an exec who was a member of a mafia family (over at Waste Management, a fortune 500 company). These people don't exactly hide the fact that they are in the mafia (that, by itself, isn't illegal)--the local police already know who's in the mafia as do the FBI, so it isn't like you're spilling the beans (unless you describe some illegal activities, which I would HIGHLY recommend not doing).
I think we've found our magic bullet. The racket will work even better if two kids cooperate; one is the "breaker" and the other is the "seller."
:)
Feel like going back to high school, WhiteDragon?
You *might* have heard it in Scarface...
You people are pathetic.
Go back to your little, lonely lives.
"Mafia," my ass.
At least that's the theory.
Various news reports regularly pop up about these machines beng used for full-blown casino-like gambling in bars. A common scheme works like that: Legal no-pay machines are bought wholesale from factories. Then the ROMs are changed. When the machine is installed in a bar, it is also wired to a switch located behind the counter.
Customers "in the know" can ask the barkeeper to flip the switch. This changes the operation of the machine to a different game. The customer is credited a certain amount (e.g. $50). When he leaves, he pays or gets the game's balance at the counter.
This is such a profitable business that a full-fledge gang war was raging last year in Southern France and Italy. At least one programmer was shot because he worked for the wrong people.
Friendly betting my ass.
--
Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
...until I figured it out.
...moron.
No kidding. I worked in the "Corporate Office" for a chain of companies that stretches across North American, some in Latin America. I was IT, coding, QA, all that...Figured it was just another hourly job, normal company...
Then people started vanishing.
Apparently this was "normal".
I'm not even joking.
I didn't leave until the day I ran cable through the ammo room. THEN I figured it out.
This is not genuine, just some wet dream a loser geek has come up with based on 3rd hand knowledge.
This guys doesn't know jack about how really design systems to avoid the law.
That old Lou Grant phone the bookie talks on? Easily tapped. Game over. Doesn't matter if you encrypt everything else.
VOIP? Yea, your customer have that at the payphone and work phones they call from (not). The guys at home have by-passed the mob, straight off-shore. Pluuuuuuuuuuuuleeze.
And the jurisdiction thing doesn't mean squat to the Feds. Better be off shore, not within the state.
Nice piece of fiction, but real? Fuggetaboudit.
fiction?
Way back when, when most /.'er were still in short pants, I went to a programming conference. Up in the lobby of the conference hotel was an ad for "Programmers wanted", come to room XXXX. I went up, and it was two guys in very nice suits, a lot of gold, discussing the plans they had for a computer system - in fact, it was the first time I had heard of the idea of off shore betting. Mind you, this is pre internet boom. They were planning on modem pools and dial up at that time.
It was fairly obvious from the job description, the fact that only first names were used, and the questions that were asked that the folks were the mob. I gave it a thought, and said, "Sir, it's an interesting concept, but I really have no interest in traveling off shore as the job would require. I wish you luck." Shook hands, and left. That was the last I heard of it, except to see what looked like one of the guys in the room doing the perp walk about 15 years later - Something about stolen cars
These guys were a bit higher tech than the folks in the wired article - they were talking N tier distributed architectues in the VERY early 80s
-- 73 de KG2V For the Children - RKBA! "You are what you do when it counts" - the Masso
You can hang a few of the old casio scientific calculators. Many people won't know there's a reset button you can press with a pin.
It should be heavily regulated. My dad has lost $450,000 of desperately needed money over the last 10 years gambling without having worked a day in his lazy-assed life. He beat my mom and took her money, my grandma's SS money and has used my name and several of my sibling's names to get credit cards so he could continue to gamble. It just doesn't hurt the loser who 'chooses' to gamble and the idiot that married him. I didn't have any say in the matter. I got out of the situation as soon as I went to college but my life and my younger sibling's lives was a living hell in the interim.
And 300 hundred years ago, the situation wouldn't have been any better. The only advantage I can think of is that my a-hole dad could've been killed much more easily by me or his debtors.
Our backend servers will all be based on Mandrake Linux
Just what Microsoft want ppl to hear..
STFU!
unrepentant convicted criminals, Microsoft
Neither the Microsoft corporation, nor its directors, nor its executives have any criminal convictions that I've heard of. I would love to spread such criminal news if it was true. What are you referring to? If you're referring to an anti-trust judgement, then you're misusing the terms criminal and conviction.
Simson has been a friend of mine for many years; after graduating, he went to the Columbia School of Journalism, and while still doing a lot of fun programming make a respectable career in science writing. (rough quote in late '80s, much more modest when he said it (not that he's very modest :-) "I knew I had 'arrived' when I called the President of the AMA and he recognized me by name").
So you can trust him and the article as much as you'd trust any honest journalist (and his editor(s); Simson does not have the final say on what's under his byline).
And he has the tech to back it; e.g. he mastered the 2-4th CD-ROMs in the US (two tests, and then all surviving Ancient Greek, using his own file system, which is *major* prior art in the area). He walks the walk, at a very high level. (If the ISO guys had listened to him, we wouldn't have suffered the horror of the multi-session CD-R transition....)
(Maybe this time I can convince him to buy a home defense firearm, but I doubt he's in much danger, unless "the mob" wants to find his source, and even then they'd ask "politely" before making him an offer he couldn't refuse....)
Where can i aply for the mob-job?
The guy that used the "wanna be" was right on the money. The fact is that there are lots of folks who think the mob guys are a bunch of pussycats. Of course they don't break your kneecaps. They kill your girlfriend or something else truly frightening. If that doesn't do it, things get worse. Does he honestly think that the bad guys are going to frighten him till the work is done? Common, the Slashdotters have certainly had plenty of experiences with the small but evil of the world. Banks anyone?
Any preoccupation with ideas of what is right or wrong in conduct shows an arrested intellectual development. (Wilde)
Dear Anonymous Microsoft apologist,
Quoting the Concise OED:
crime n. & v. 1 a an offense punishable by law b illegal acts as a whole
conviction v.tr. 1 a the act or process of proving or finding guilty
Microsoft committed numerous offenses punishable under the Sherman Antitrust Act, i.e. "crimes". They were proven guilty of committing those illegal acts in a court of law, i.e. "convicted". Therefore Microsoft are collectively, by definition, convicted criminals.
If you have some alternative Humpty-Dumpty definitions of 'crime' and 'convicted', perhaps you could share them with us.
GCHQ Quantum Insert installed. If only our tongues were made of glass, how much more careful we would be when we speak