In the US, you make it a crime then agree not to prosecute so you have some leverage to get them to talk. If you don't have any leverage, the embarrassed mark has little incentive to talk. They're probably never going to see the money again, and there's nothing stopping them from keeping quiet. If you tell them they'll be prosecuted for the fraud they were trying to commit unless they help in the prosecution of the original scammer, they have incentive.
In Illinois it's 20 years, it has to be well known that you're doing so, and the land owner can't have given you permission to be there (because they could then revoke that permission and all of the time beforehand wouldn't be considered adverse). It's 7 years if the one in possession of the land pays the taxes the owner would have been responsible to pay.
Actually, the return to the public at a casino is very much higher than from a lottery. Slot machines are like video games you can actually sometimes win from.
I can take $20 to a casino, play the penny slots and nickel video poker and be entertained for between an hour and eight hours. I might even have some or all of the $20 left. Sometimes I leave with a bit more, and have left a few times with several hundred dollars. I'm sure overall the casino keeps more than I do, but I budgeted that money to go to them for entertainment so anything I keep is a bonus.
If you bet with part of your entertainment budget and don't go crazy, it's not more expensive than eating at a fancy restaurant or staying in a fancy hotel. A roof, four walls, a clean bed and bathroom, and a wake up call do not cost from $200 to $2,000 a night. Still, many people would rather stay in a fancy hotel than a Super 8 or La Quinta (which are two pretty affordable hotels which tend to have clean rooms).
The return at many casinos on the slot machines is between 90% and 98%. The table games tend to return in the same range. They make it up in volume, food, and drinks.
The lotteries, on the other hand, only entertain you for a few seconds and have a return at around 50%.
That's a sad story and your friend was a victim blinded by his loneliness and desperation. That's sad, but your friend isn't guilty of anything other than a (hopefully temporary) lack of judgment
That's not the same as the victims this guy wants jailed. Many of these scams involve attempts at fraud or theft, laundering money from fraud or theft, impersonating people, lying on official documents, complicity with those action, and other crimes by the mark. The mark then gets taken by the scammer, who the mark thought was going to be a partner in some other crime.
There's a world of difference. This is more like the "woman" your friend was conned by being conned into defrauding your friend by someone else. Given that scenario, she would be conned, but she was conned because she was willing to con your friend.
Actually, in the "take this money we stole during the civil war" and "take the money of this man who died before a real family member does" varieties, the scammers probably justify it to themselves that they are only scamming other scammers and not honest folk.
Close. Bose are both crappy and expensive. That's what makes it so easy to dress other crappy ones to look expensive -- just throw a Bose label on them.
Which is exactly the point. Why out of millions do they pick you, who they say is their only contact based on your upstanding reputation? Clearly they actually are contacting many more people, but to believe the scam you must believe they aren't.
fake crime he thinks is a real crime but really acts on != real crime he only thinks he's committing
One is not a crime, and therefore is not a crime to act on. The other is a crime and therefore is a crime to act on.
Conspiring to commit a crime is a crime. Conspiring to go to the cinema with your friends to watch a movie is not a crime (well, unless you live somewhere that watching a certain movie is a criminal act).
It's like agreeing to buy somebody a car bumper after an accident so they can put it on themselves and put in an accident claim but keep the money, which they will split with you. Only there's no car, no bumper, and they just keep your cash for the bumper instead of defrauding the insurance company.
If that's not close enough, how about this: You agree to buy your new "friend" a paint job for his putty-bodied car so he can sell it as good condition without disclosing the awful shape it's actually in. He in turn agrees to split the higher sales price with you. Instead, he takes the money for the "paint job" and keeps it, then goes down the street and uses the same story again.
Why aren't you reporting the attempted scams? If you count on people stupid enough to fall for them to be smart enough to report them, then you're helping the problem continue. If you are reporting them, then they're getting reported as attempts. What's the problem?
The difference is that fraud is inherently criminal and consumption of psychoactive substances by adults who are competent of thought is not.
No third party is hurt by a peaceful sale of a drug from one party to another. Acts surrounding the drug trade such as robbery, gang wars over sales areas, theft for purchasing the drugs, and selling contaminated drugs are separate issues and could still be prosecuted even if the purchase and sale of the drugs themselves was legal. Outlawing the possession, use, purchase, and sale of certain drugs based on what may happen is applying guilt by association. Overdoses are not something every user experiences, and it's in fact possible to overdose on most legal drugs. This includes most over-the-counter drugs. "Use only as directed" on the product's packaging can even be an issue in court. A legal, regulated market for drugs that are not inherently harmful could actually cut down on many of the associated crimes. Some drugs are inherently harmful, such as the backyard lab crystal meth that's such a bother. Most illicit drugs, though, are only unsafe above a particular dosage or if they are contaminated. The dosage and purity would be easier to control in a regulated and taxed legal pharmacy.
Claiming to be the next of kin for Mr. Obalage Umundo (a name I actually received recently in a 419 scam) when you're not so that the abandoned property laws of some nation are broken is a crime. You're defrauding someone, and conspiring to do so. That you in turn get defrauded by the prime mover in the fraud is to be expected, because the original fraud wasn't real from the start. Even if the original fraud was real, why would anyone expect a fraudster to honestly split the money with them? There may be honor among some sorts of thieves, but you'll never find it among con artists.
So, is getting ripped off while trying to rip someone else off necessarily dishonest? Does it intentionally cause harm to the third party? Yes, if the original fraud is real and works.
Is smoking a joint, eating some twinkies, and going to sleep for 12 hours necessarily dishonest or harmful to some third party? No, not at all. Is smoking a joint that you stole money to buy harmful to a third party? No. The theft is what's harmful. Is having a drink at age 20 instead of 21 going to kill people? No. Could having some drinks then driving a car while drunk kill people no matter the age of the drinker? Yes.
That's the difference. Trying to defraud someone is inherently a crime. It's an attempt to hurt someone for your benefit.
Snorting a line of cocaine so you can work late tonight hurts nobody else. If there are illegal acts tied to the production, distribution, or sales activities of the drug other than the actual sale, those activities would be illegal anyway. Outlawing the possession, production, sale, and use of cocaine doesn't keep anyone from being hurt other than by their own use of the drug. It's supposed to cut down on the crimes associated with the drug use and distribution, but that appears not to be working so well.
Drugs are a fungible resource, like oil. By outlawing the sale of a drug people are taking, you're not stopping the flow. You're raising the price and therefore the reward for breaking the embargo. You're taking the supply chain out of the hands of law-abiding citizens and making it profitable enough that it's a strong lure for those willing to do illegal things to make a buck.
Hell, criminals themselves are a fungible resource. If cocaine, marijuana, hashish, and opium were legal tomorrow the criminal syndicates that smuggle them would find other crimes. They're not smuggling, killing, bribing, and shooting people because they have a vested interest in seeing people get high. They'll commit whichever crimes they are able to commit which give them the best return. If you want to cut down on crime, cut down on criminals and their motivations. Don't make users criminals so that they won't complain to the police when the dealers short them or give them poisonous product.
It's for the courts to decide whether you're competent to stand trial, at least in the US. Being charged is not the same as being convicted. Intent is also a factor in crimes in the US. Being stupid is often a possible defense if you can get a jury to believe it was stupidity and not willing participation in the crime. Some people would be too embarrassed to admit being duped, but that's their problem. Insanity or lack of intelligence is not generally a pass from being brought before a hearing.
Maybe locally. There's no way one fool could afford a national election in the US. That means one fool has to convince a bunch of other fools to part with their money to get him elected.
This appears to be a cultural difference. Many single-unit houses and small apartment buildings in the US have a receptacle at the curb or next to the front door that holds the mail. Some people have slots and big apartment complexes have locking boxes, but many people step outside and open an unlocked door to get their mail.
Let's be clear here. Most people wouldn't mind getting something for nothing if it happened. It's greedy people who actually seek getting something for nothing. Being happy with the amount of an inheritance or finding a Picasso in your attic don't imply greed. Being glad someone died to provide you the inheritance or stealing a painting does.
Yes, you're wrong. They're not being ignorant bigots on the basis of skin color and ethnicity. They're being ignorant bigots on the basis of nationality and class standing and thinking it makes them better than other ignorant bigots.
Let them have their superiority complex. You're just helping them flood the thread. It's like trying to have a reasonable discussion with the Ku Klux Klan about a dark-skinned Catholic who is ethnically half Jewish. They have their point of view about the people they hate and you're not going to change it.
Obvious is the point. It's part of the traditional rules for flying the flag that flying it or hanging it upside down is a distress signal. We probably got that tradition from your country, after all.
That it's obvious rather than discreet (not really completely covert if it's hanging there for all to see) means it can signal farther away but that enemies of the state might notice it more quickly as well. It's a trade off.
If all you have left for signaling is a flag rather than an encrypted radio, clear signal radio, flare, spray paint, air horn, or signal mirror then you're probably needing help pretty quickly. You'll use the flag you have, even if it's not ideal for your situation. Using a GB flag in that way might get an American soldier's attention, but probably not an American civilian's. An American is much more likely to be carrying an American flag than the Union Jack, anyway.
So yeah, if discretion is called for then you're lucky to be a Brit. If a clear signal from farther away is called for, then the US or Australian flags work better. Russia and Germany would be in the same boat as the US if they use the same symbol (do they? how universal is this?). If you're French or Italian I guess you find a different way to signal distress.
I didn't say it was the only point you made. It's one that you kept repeating, so it appeared pretty important to you. I also didn't say you had to change languages. I just said that if that's really important to you that you might want to investigate a language which is stronger in that area (and which is, other than syntax, pretty similar to Python in most other ways anyway).
You keep talking past people in the whole thread. You keep assuming things, such as that addressing one point without a bullet list of your other points means I'm not aware that you had other points. These are the signs of an angry zealot or a sloppy reader.
BTW, most of your points apply to Perl, Ruby, Rexx, C#, and even VB. Some of them apply more to certain other languages than to Python.
IF you like Python, then bully for you. If you're actually following your points rather than just justifying your decision, you might want to consider other languages as well, because having one language in which to do things is pretty shitty in the long run.
Go ahead and assume that everyone who points you to new information misunderstands you. It must feel good to your ego to be by far the smartest man on thar inturwebz. I wasn't even disagreeing with you that Python is a nice language. I was just saying there are other options you might want to check out.
Sorry that pissed you off so much, but I'm not a shrink so I'm not here to help you with rage or insecurity.
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Having the intent is not criminal, but acting with the intent is even if the act is unsuccessful.
In the US, you make it a crime then agree not to prosecute so you have some leverage to get them to talk. If you don't have any leverage, the embarrassed mark has little incentive to talk. They're probably never going to see the money again, and there's nothing stopping them from keeping quiet. If you tell them they'll be prosecuted for the fraud they were trying to commit unless they help in the prosecution of the original scammer, they have incentive.
In Illinois it's 20 years, it has to be well known that you're doing so, and the land owner can't have given you permission to be there (because they could then revoke that permission and all of the time beforehand wouldn't be considered adverse). It's 7 years if the one in possession of the land pays the taxes the owner would have been responsible to pay.
Those people are the ones who earned it the nickname "a tax on the stupid".
Actually, the return to the public at a casino is very much higher than from a lottery. Slot machines are like video games you can actually sometimes win from.
I can take $20 to a casino, play the penny slots and nickel video poker and be entertained for between an hour and eight hours. I might even have some or all of the $20 left. Sometimes I leave with a bit more, and have left a few times with several hundred dollars. I'm sure overall the casino keeps more than I do, but I budgeted that money to go to them for entertainment so anything I keep is a bonus.
If you bet with part of your entertainment budget and don't go crazy, it's not more expensive than eating at a fancy restaurant or staying in a fancy hotel. A roof, four walls, a clean bed and bathroom, and a wake up call do not cost from $200 to $2,000 a night. Still, many people would rather stay in a fancy hotel than a Super 8 or La Quinta (which are two pretty affordable hotels which tend to have clean rooms).
The return at many casinos on the slot machines is between 90% and 98%. The table games tend to return in the same range. They make it up in volume, food, and drinks.
The lotteries, on the other hand, only entertain you for a few seconds and have a return at around 50%.
That's a sad story and your friend was a victim blinded by his loneliness and desperation. That's sad, but your friend isn't guilty of anything other than a (hopefully temporary) lack of judgment
That's not the same as the victims this guy wants jailed. Many of these scams involve attempts at fraud or theft, laundering money from fraud or theft, impersonating people, lying on official documents, complicity with those action, and other crimes by the mark. The mark then gets taken by the scammer, who the mark thought was going to be a partner in some other crime.
There's a world of difference. This is more like the "woman" your friend was conned by being conned into defrauding your friend by someone else. Given that scenario, she would be conned, but she was conned because she was willing to con your friend.
Actually, in the "take this money we stole during the civil war" and "take the money of this man who died before a real family member does" varieties, the scammers probably justify it to themselves that they are only scamming other scammers and not honest folk.
Thinking about it and attempting to do it are two very different things. One is a thought, as you say. An attempt is an actual act that failed.
Close. Bose are both crappy and expensive. That's what makes it so easy to dress other crappy ones to look expensive -- just throw a Bose label on them.
Which is exactly the point. Why out of millions do they pick you, who they say is their only contact based on your upstanding reputation? Clearly they actually are contacting many more people, but to believe the scam you must believe they aren't.
You, sir, are an idiot. Trying to rape a child is trying to rape a child. It's a real child the human failure is trying to rape, not the FBI agent.
fake crime he thinks is a real crime but really acts on != real crime he only thinks he's committing
One is not a crime, and therefore is not a crime to act on. The other is a crime and therefore is a crime to act on.
Conspiring to commit a crime is a crime. Conspiring to go to the cinema with your friends to watch a movie is not a crime (well, unless you live somewhere that watching a certain movie is a criminal act).
Okay. Is a car insurance analogy close enough?
It's like agreeing to buy somebody a car bumper after an accident so they can put it on themselves and put in an accident claim but keep the money, which they will split with you. Only there's no car, no bumper, and they just keep your cash for the bumper instead of defrauding the insurance company.
If that's not close enough, how about this: You agree to buy your new "friend" a paint job for his putty-bodied car so he can sell it as good condition without disclosing the awful shape it's actually in. He in turn agrees to split the higher sales price with you. Instead, he takes the money for the "paint job" and keeps it, then goes down the street and uses the same story again.
Why aren't you reporting the attempted scams? If you count on people stupid enough to fall for them to be smart enough to report them, then you're helping the problem continue. If you are reporting them, then they're getting reported as attempts. What's the problem?
The difference is that fraud is inherently criminal and consumption of psychoactive substances by adults who are competent of thought is not.
No third party is hurt by a peaceful sale of a drug from one party to another. Acts surrounding the drug trade such as robbery, gang wars over sales areas, theft for purchasing the drugs, and selling contaminated drugs are separate issues and could still be prosecuted even if the purchase and sale of the drugs themselves was legal. Outlawing the possession, use, purchase, and sale of certain drugs based on what may happen is applying guilt by association. Overdoses are not something every user experiences, and it's in fact possible to overdose on most legal drugs. This includes most over-the-counter drugs. "Use only as directed" on the product's packaging can even be an issue in court. A legal, regulated market for drugs that are not inherently harmful could actually cut down on many of the associated crimes. Some drugs are inherently harmful, such as the backyard lab crystal meth that's such a bother. Most illicit drugs, though, are only unsafe above a particular dosage or if they are contaminated. The dosage and purity would be easier to control in a regulated and taxed legal pharmacy.
Claiming to be the next of kin for Mr. Obalage Umundo (a name I actually received recently in a 419 scam) when you're not so that the abandoned property laws of some nation are broken is a crime. You're defrauding someone, and conspiring to do so. That you in turn get defrauded by the prime mover in the fraud is to be expected, because the original fraud wasn't real from the start. Even if the original fraud was real, why would anyone expect a fraudster to honestly split the money with them? There may be honor among some sorts of thieves, but you'll never find it among con artists.
So, is getting ripped off while trying to rip someone else off necessarily dishonest? Does it intentionally cause harm to the third party? Yes, if the original fraud is real and works.
Is smoking a joint, eating some twinkies, and going to sleep for 12 hours necessarily dishonest or harmful to some third party? No, not at all. Is smoking a joint that you stole money to buy harmful to a third party? No. The theft is what's harmful. Is having a drink at age 20 instead of 21 going to kill people? No. Could having some drinks then driving a car while drunk kill people no matter the age of the drinker? Yes.
That's the difference. Trying to defraud someone is inherently a crime. It's an attempt to hurt someone for your benefit.
Snorting a line of cocaine so you can work late tonight hurts nobody else. If there are illegal acts tied to the production, distribution, or sales activities of the drug other than the actual sale, those activities would be illegal anyway. Outlawing the possession, production, sale, and use of cocaine doesn't keep anyone from being hurt other than by their own use of the drug. It's supposed to cut down on the crimes associated with the drug use and distribution, but that appears not to be working so well.
Drugs are a fungible resource, like oil. By outlawing the sale of a drug people are taking, you're not stopping the flow. You're raising the price and therefore the reward for breaking the embargo. You're taking the supply chain out of the hands of law-abiding citizens and making it profitable enough that it's a strong lure for those willing to do illegal things to make a buck.
Hell, criminals themselves are a fungible resource. If cocaine, marijuana, hashish, and opium were legal tomorrow the criminal syndicates that smuggle them would find other crimes. They're not smuggling, killing, bribing, and shooting people because they have a vested interest in seeing people get high. They'll commit whichever crimes they are able to commit which give them the best return. If you want to cut down on crime, cut down on criminals and their motivations. Don't make users criminals so that they won't complain to the police when the dealers short them or give them poisonous product.
Is that a big enough difference for you?
It's for the courts to decide whether you're competent to stand trial, at least in the US. Being charged is not the same as being convicted. Intent is also a factor in crimes in the US. Being stupid is often a possible defense if you can get a jury to believe it was stupidity and not willing participation in the crime. Some people would be too embarrassed to admit being duped, but that's their problem. Insanity or lack of intelligence is not generally a pass from being brought before a hearing.
Maybe locally. There's no way one fool could afford a national election in the US. That means one fool has to convince a bunch of other fools to part with their money to get him elected.
Congress?
This appears to be a cultural difference. Many single-unit houses and small apartment buildings in the US have a receptacle at the curb or next to the front door that holds the mail. Some people have slots and big apartment complexes have locking boxes, but many people step outside and open an unlocked door to get their mail.
Let's be clear here. Most people wouldn't mind getting something for nothing if it happened. It's greedy people who actually seek getting something for nothing. Being happy with the amount of an inheritance or finding a Picasso in your attic don't imply greed. Being glad someone died to provide you the inheritance or stealing a painting does.
Yes, you're wrong. They're not being ignorant bigots on the basis of skin color and ethnicity. They're being ignorant bigots on the basis of nationality and class standing and thinking it makes them better than other ignorant bigots.
Let them have their superiority complex. You're just helping them flood the thread. It's like trying to have a reasonable discussion with the Ku Klux Klan about a dark-skinned Catholic who is ethnically half Jewish. They have their point of view about the people they hate and you're not going to change it.
Obvious is the point. It's part of the traditional rules for flying the flag that flying it or hanging it upside down is a distress signal. We probably got that tradition from your country, after all.
That it's obvious rather than discreet (not really completely covert if it's hanging there for all to see) means it can signal farther away but that enemies of the state might notice it more quickly as well. It's a trade off.
If all you have left for signaling is a flag rather than an encrypted radio, clear signal radio, flare, spray paint, air horn, or signal mirror then you're probably needing help pretty quickly. You'll use the flag you have, even if it's not ideal for your situation. Using a GB flag in that way might get an American soldier's attention, but probably not an American civilian's. An American is much more likely to be carrying an American flag than the Union Jack, anyway.
So yeah, if discretion is called for then you're lucky to be a Brit. If a clear signal from farther away is called for, then the US or Australian flags work better. Russia and Germany would be in the same boat as the US if they use the same symbol (do they? how universal is this?). If you're French or Italian I guess you find a different way to signal distress.
It won't happen. They seem to want to compete with /b/ for that audience.
Most of the advance fee scams are asking the victim to be party to a fraud themselves.
"This money doesn't belong to you and we both know it. If you give me a way to launder it out of the country I'll split it with you."
Sound familiar? That's the 419 scam I've been receiving for the last ten years. If you're burned by your partner in crime, you're still a criminal.
I didn't say it was the only point you made. It's one that you kept repeating, so it appeared pretty important to you. I also didn't say you had to change languages. I just said that if that's really important to you that you might want to investigate a language which is stronger in that area (and which is, other than syntax, pretty similar to Python in most other ways anyway).
You keep talking past people in the whole thread. You keep assuming things, such as that addressing one point without a bullet list of your other points means I'm not aware that you had other points. These are the signs of an angry zealot or a sloppy reader.
BTW, most of your points apply to Perl, Ruby, Rexx, C#, and even VB. Some of them apply more to certain other languages than to Python.
IF you like Python, then bully for you. If you're actually following your points rather than just justifying your decision, you might want to consider other languages as well, because having one language in which to do things is pretty shitty in the long run.
Go ahead and assume that everyone who points you to new information misunderstands you. It must feel good to your ego to be by far the smartest man on thar inturwebz. I wasn't even disagreeing with you that Python is a nice language. I was just saying there are other options you might want to check out.
Sorry that pissed you off so much, but I'm not a shrink so I'm not here to help you with rage or insecurity.