Hello my name is scott summers and this is my first time on slashdot i am very new to whole this concept of digitally talking to people on binary planes and i am also looking forward to make as many digital textual virtual friends as i can..wish me luck because my journey to the top of the nerds list is about to begin.
Smart mobs? Fuhgeddaboutit. Not till they hired me. Now they're getting a secure P2P bet-processing system. A mafia hacker tells his story to Wired.
By Simson Garfinkel
On a traffic-clogged street in midtown Manhattan - sandwiched among the bars, massage parlors, and cheap diners - there's a small glass door that leads to my office. The building has no doorman, no front desk, and no video surveillance cameras. We don't go in for that type of security. I walk through the door, down a long corridor to an elevator. When I press the button, the elevator starts with a jump, and a bell on the third floor rings. Now the boys upstairs know that someone's coming.
The bell is a warning: It could be the police, so get ready to run. But even if the cops come, they'll be waylaid by an imposing lock - giving my friends time to scramble down the fire escape to the street below.
F. Scott Schafer
Of course, I've got a key. I unlock the door and enter another world. Inside is a small-scale gambling operation the likes of which you'll find scattered all over the city - if you know where to look. I scan the room to see who's there. Most days, there are three middle-aged men sitting at desks, talking on phones so old that they could have been used on the set of Lou Grant. We're talking first-generation touchtone sets with big square buttons that light up when a line is in use.
Today there's just Tony. He glances over his shoulder and nods at me. "Let me check," he mutters into the phone. He peers intently at the screen of a rather beat-up PC and eyeballs the odds for one of today's baseball games. We track four casinos in Las Vegas and set our odds by averaging theirs. The casinos might be offering a $150 return on a $100 wager if, say, the Red Sox beat the Yankees. Tony scrolls down and gives him the line. There's a pause. Then he smiles. The caller likes the odds. "OK, how much?" Tony scribbles a few numbers on an index card and hangs up. The tape recorder shuts off. Like a brokerage house, we record every conversation - just in case there's a dispute with one of our customers. Of course, you never hear about those disputes: The entire transaction between Tony and the caller is illegal. If he accepts four more bets today, he's in felony territory, an offense punishable by up to three years in prison.
Tony looks up. "That's the first call I had all morning," he says. A few more mouseclicks and he's back to solitaire.
Everyone thinks they know what the mob is like. It's something you learn from watching The Sopranos and GoodFellas, something that involves Joe Pesci, baked manicotti, and a dead guy in the trunk. But that's not what I've seen during my two years working for organized crime. My sense is that the mob works a lot like GE or Time Warner. It's more Jack Welch than John Gotti.
When a so-called mobster gets caught, the cops always lie, and the journalists believe what they're told. The cops will say that millions of dollars move through offices like mine, and that all of the money goes to some big crime family. It makes great headlines, but it's laughably untrue. Perhaps we move millions of dollars over the course of a year, but we keep only a small percentage of that - "the juice." The rest gets paid out as winnings, at better odds than you'll find in any legitimate game of chance.
Then there's the misconception that if you don't pay your debts, the mob will break your legs. I've seen that on TV but never in real life. Sure, some agents make their collection runs with a bodyguard, but wouldn't you want some muscle around if you were carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash? Breaking people's legs is bad business. If somebody doesn't pay their debts because they're broke, maiming them isn't going to put cash in your bank account. Still, the threat of pain remains a valuable deterrent. Tell your customers that you're breaking people's legs and there's no reason to actually do it. Truth is, when people don't cover their debts, we put
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1331169,00.as p
"Addressing several thousand attendees at the Worldwide Partner Conference, he took a swipe at Linux, open source and StarOffice, saying, "they simply accept the view that what they have is good enough. That view does not foster innovation. Being where we were with Office 1997 is not good enough for us," he said."
Microsoft admitting that OO is already equal to something they spent millions and millions on and also happens to be much more widely used than Office XP is the best thing they could have said.
I mean that. Office 97 is still very popular. One of the biggest challenges MS has is moving people off that since many businesses find that Office 97 is all they need. The fact they think OO has met the quality level that most of world thinks is "good enough" is excellent news.
Congrats to the OpenOffice.org team and thanks to Microsoft for the marketing material.
Slashdot Mirror
See me in my bra here!
Hello my name is scott summers and this is my first time on slashdot i am very new to whole this concept of digitally talking to people on binary planes and i am also looking forward to make as many digital textual virtual friends as i can ..wish me luck because my journey to the top of the nerds list is about to begin.
See me in my bra HERE.
See me in my bra HERE.
Click here!
Put your tin foil hat back on, cutie! What are you wearing?
Copy more features from Windows. Nice tactic.
Fags.
CodeFellas
Smart mobs? Fuhgeddaboutit. Not till they hired me. Now they're getting a secure P2P bet-processing system. A mafia hacker tells his story to Wired.
By Simson Garfinkel
On a traffic-clogged street in midtown Manhattan - sandwiched among the bars, massage parlors, and cheap diners - there's a small glass door that leads to my office. The building has no doorman, no front desk, and no video surveillance cameras. We don't go in for that type of security. I walk through the door, down a long corridor to an elevator. When I press the button, the elevator starts with a jump, and a bell on the third floor rings. Now the boys upstairs know that someone's coming.
The bell is a warning: It could be the police, so get ready to run. But even if the cops come, they'll be waylaid by an imposing lock - giving my friends time to scramble down the fire escape to the street below.
F. Scott Schafer
Of course, I've got a key. I unlock the door and enter another world. Inside is a small-scale gambling operation the likes of which you'll find scattered all over the city - if you know where to look. I scan the room to see who's there. Most days, there are three middle-aged men sitting at desks, talking on phones so old that they could have been used on the set of Lou Grant. We're talking first-generation touchtone sets with big square buttons that light up when a line is in use.
Today there's just Tony. He glances over his shoulder and nods at me. "Let me check," he mutters into the phone. He peers intently at the screen of a rather beat-up PC and eyeballs the odds for one of today's baseball games. We track four casinos in Las Vegas and set our odds by averaging theirs. The casinos might be offering a $150 return on a $100 wager if, say, the Red Sox beat the Yankees. Tony scrolls down and gives him the line. There's a pause. Then he smiles. The caller likes the odds. "OK, how much?" Tony scribbles a few numbers on an index card and hangs up. The tape recorder shuts off. Like a brokerage house, we record every conversation - just in case there's a dispute with one of our customers. Of course, you never hear about those disputes: The entire transaction between Tony and the caller is illegal. If he accepts four more bets today, he's in felony territory, an offense punishable by up to three years in prison.
Tony looks up. "That's the first call I had all morning," he says. A few more mouseclicks and he's back to solitaire.
Everyone thinks they know what the mob is like. It's something you learn from watching The Sopranos and GoodFellas, something that involves Joe Pesci, baked manicotti, and a dead guy in the trunk. But that's not what I've seen during my two years working for organized crime. My sense is that the mob works a lot like GE or Time Warner. It's more Jack Welch than John Gotti.
When a so-called mobster gets caught, the cops always lie, and the journalists believe what they're told. The cops will say that millions of dollars move through offices like mine, and that all of the money goes to some big crime family. It makes great headlines, but it's laughably untrue. Perhaps we move millions of dollars over the course of a year, but we keep only a small percentage of that - "the juice." The rest gets paid out as winnings, at better odds than you'll find in any legitimate game of chance.
Then there's the misconception that if you don't pay your debts, the mob will break your legs. I've seen that on TV but never in real life. Sure, some agents make their collection runs with a bodyguard, but wouldn't you want some muscle around if you were carrying tens of thousands of dollars in cash? Breaking people's legs is bad business. If somebody doesn't pay their debts because they're broke, maiming them isn't going to put cash in your bank account. Still, the threat of pain remains a valuable deterrent. Tell your customers that you're breaking people's legs and there's no reason to actually do it. Truth is, when people don't cover their debts, we put
http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,4149,1331169,00.as p
"Addressing several thousand attendees at the Worldwide Partner Conference, he took a swipe at Linux, open source and StarOffice, saying, "they simply accept the view that what they have is good enough. That view does not foster innovation. Being where we were with Office 1997 is not good enough for us," he said."
Microsoft admitting that OO is already equal to something they spent millions and millions on and also happens to be much more widely used than Office XP is the best thing they could have said.
I mean that. Office 97 is still very popular. One of the biggest challenges MS has is moving people off that since many businesses find that Office 97 is all they need. The fact they think OO has met the quality level that most of world thinks is "good enough" is excellent news.
Congrats to the OpenOffice.org team and thanks to Microsoft for the marketing material.