This is true but, it also is a case where what works in one place may or may not work the same (or be implemented similarly) elsewhere. I have seen these exact same lanes turn into a nightmare. Not because they put traffic in the way but because they retained the left and right lanes, and just occasionally, turn the left lane into a turn only lane....so everyone who was traveling in that lane suddenly has to move over.....and few things slow drivers down like a lane merge.
> So my question is, without having man in the middled all the sessions, or had the decryption keys. > How are these researchers making this statement?
How do you know they didn't? Notice the keywords "large-scale". Their detector is likely some sort of honeypot in fact, from the article:
To detect Heartbleed scanning, we extended the Broâ(TM)s SSL/TLS analyzer to recognize Heartbeat messages [25,57]. Note that this approach parses the full TLS protocol data stream, including the TLS record layer which remains unencrypted throughout the ses- sion, and thus achieves an accuracy significantly better than that provided by simple byte pattern matching. We have released our Bro modifications along with our detection script via the Bro git repository
So I would assume they had keys and possibly were using a honeypot....a few paragraphs below that, they talk about getting full traces from a honeypot.
Right in the summary: "This provides strong evidence that at least for those time periods, no attacker with prior knowledge of Heartbleed conducted widespread scanning looking for vulnerable servers. "
So you are correct about what it doesn't prove, but, its also not really claimed to prove that either. Not even a little bit. What this does, is suggest strongly (not prove) that no criminal gangs (yes, yes, the NSA) were aware of it, or if they were, were not aware of it long enough to exploit it meaningfully.
If the vulnerability were available, if even one person bought it, they would have to use it. What I mean is, if you know this vulnerability can be bought (because you bought it) you know that its out there and its only a matter of time before it gets noticed and fixed.
The only person who has any reason to not use it or use it in a discriminating fashion, is someone who discovered it independently and wants to get maximum use out of it. Someone like the NSA.
This, in no way, proves that nobody knew about it. What I think it does prove is, whoever may have known about it, wasn't selling it and wasn't a memeber of one of the for-profit gangs. That is all.
So your idea....for him....is to make a game that conforms to your personal sensibilities. Interesting.
> Surely there is a whole market just waiting for a good FPS that doesn't rely on murdering people?
I find this quite unlikely. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of fun to be had in games without simulated violence and a few games do come to mind, but, I doubt there are that many people so put off by a little simulated violence that it consitutes a large market that are "waiting".
Perhaps you should stop waiting, and start working on games for this market and prove it exists?
That would make sense to me. Often times when you run into something that seems simple but nobody does it, turns out you missed something in your assessment about either how well it works or how much work is involved or even that it doesn't work.
It reminds me of one of the things I noticed in my own profession as a sysadmin. Generally, if I toss relevant facts into google, and it doesn't pop up that somebody else had the same problem, then I likely missed something right there in the documentation. Turns out to be the case more often than I ran into something truly novel.
It is hard to get past the feeling that "if it was that easy someone else would be doing it", and usually, its true....but sometimes it isn't and the only way you will know is to try. That is why research and development exist....to give it a try..... you know....before putting it in production.
Course, if this was a bunch of sysadmins the bet would be more implicit, and if phrased properly and explicitly might be "I bet our production environments stability that this is going to work...."
> they're using professional check-writing equipment plus U.S.-based accomplices to not raise suspicions among > their victims
Funny I was just posting my little anecdote about these groups on slashdo recently ( http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ), not only does this jive exactly with my limited exposure to these gangs, but, I even got them to try and recruit me to thelp them. Thing is.... this was a room in my house....I have not been a landlord in several years, and this was several years before I stopped so.... this was at least 5-7 years ago.
so while its true, its not new. In fact, I left this detail out of my previous tale but, after recieving the money orders that I knew were fake, I did look over them and attempt to verify that they were fakes, which the claimed issuer was happy to verify for me. That said, had I not known their source, they might have fooled me, they were decent fakes that were professionally printed, even then.
> I find it a bit hard to believe that a guy who is able to get one of the largest black-market enterprises running on > a server/farm connected to an anonymous/decentralized network isn't smart enough to *not* give it a public IP > and/or put the equivalent to a home internet router in front of it.
as much as I would like to not believe it, this is one of those cases where, he has to be perfect every time, they have to catch him slipping up once.
I don't know what his stack was, but typically, there are a lot of places information can leak. Including in error messages.
The reality is, no hidden service (that isn't intentionally also a non-hidden one) should have a public IP where it can be reached. The last public endpoint should be its tor node, and the tor node itself should then only contact it via private IPs. It should then also only contact its backend databases by private IPs.
If that means you have to setup backend VPNs for the transport.... then guess what....that means you have to setup backend VPNs for the transport.
Frankly, what this guy did, overall, wasn't all that impressive. He put a bunch of tools together. He didn't develop tor, he just made the obvious leap. Being more willing to take the risk doesn't mean you are the best of the best, it just means you are confident enough to risk a fall on your face.
> Airlines are running into physical space issues. In their quest for ever more seats The airlines are > beginning to ignore basic human needs. People need to move around. The tighter and more closed > off you make people feel the more likely they are to get into arguments. This is not only true > physically, but mentally as well. Arguments lead to fighting.
But as long as there are not so many problems as to damage their bottom line, they can just blame the incidents on the passengers
So really, the best solution for passengers is to not hold back and start swinging until it really stands out that only one airline is having these problems.
In addition to the other comment, you also have to realize two other facts about Kerbal: it (currently, I believe its eventually planned) only adds re-rentry effects, there is no attempt to model the heat (without mods, there is "deadly re-entry" which I personally like to play with) so you can slam into the atmosphere at pretty much any velocity safely.
This is also good because, Kerbin's atmosphere (which I hope they fix) is rather odd, a little overly thin at the top, and a little overly thick at the bottom, and with a bad drag model (mods fix it, hopefully the base game will before release).
So in the stock game, it is a serious feat to hit the surface with significant speed.
It isn't so much a matter of n-body being too difficult, I don't think it would be that much fun to play. I mean, some people would love it sure but.... the unexpected effects on orbital stability would very likely be fun killing for a lot of the more casual players, which, lets face it.... is what is going to keep them in business.
Sure I would love some more lagrange points or to toss something into a low energy transfer path that has it being tossed from one celstial to another for no extra fuel, but, seriously, it would be a mistake to make a game that took a degree in astrophysics to play. Hell, I might rage quit after a while with n-body.
Also, they would have to totoally redo the solar system since the kerbol system wouldn't be stable off rails under nbody.
Admittedly I am still skeptical it wouldn't be gamed cheaper than actually prioducing the result intended, but I like where you are going with that idea, it reminds me alot of the xkcd commentary on automated spam: http://xkcd.com/810/
That said, I think I have more faith in people's ability to reverse engineer, and lose control of secrets than I do in the ability of a system to regulate. At the current technology level, I really do suspect that any patent system will be more hamper than helper, and giving people incentive to share their ideas is likely no longer necessary, because their consent to sharing is widely irrelevant.
I am normally against increasing the number of cameras around and being under surveillance all the time. That said, I think NYC needs this to finnally start putting nails in the coffin of their stop and frisk program. Finally either one of two things HAS to happen: Either they collect massive amounts of evidence about how they have been stopping random people and trumping up charges, or.... the number of incidents must go down. Either way, its progress.
Already done, a quick simulation clearly shows nothing to worry about, even if it hit the atmosphere straight on it would still be decelerated to a safe velocity before hit hit the gorund and would just bounce.
Interesting idea though could create situations where a potential licensee may come along and be faced with potentially bolstering a patent that could be free for them to use in a few months if they don't. Not sure how big an issue that really is, nor is it clear that it couldn't be trivially bypassed.
Several related companies could easily license each other's patents in exchange for licensing eachother's patents just to keep them current. Even if you tried to proect against that, it would always be a situation where a company with some money and a lack of scruples could make for a very expensive uphill battle to prove....and it would just end up being one more benefit large companies with deep pockets and lack of scruples have over independent inventors.
Of course... a 1% yield of a nuclear weapon is still nothing to sneeze at. Hell, I bet they would make damned impressive dirty bombs.... admittedly its a "horrible waste" of a nuke from the rather twisted point of view required for talking about such things....but if your group didn't actually have to build it... its still a waste of someone else's resources....
Which really is all just a rehashing of the reasons that these systems are used where they are, and not used where they aren't.
The only way I could see this working would be a physical disablement. If you have a weapon, be it a nuke, conventional bomb, or tank, it has all the physical hardware and chemicals it needs to work. Disabling the control equipment is a setback but, will never fully prevent someone from repurposing the core equipment. If you can strip a nuclear bomb down to its core and firing mechanisms, you can make your own driver.... maybe that is a bad example because there is likely a lot of "secret sauce" in the actual sequence of making a plutonium core properly compress but... that is a rather specific issue to the specific type of device.
These sorts of safegaurds are really about defense in depth and decreasing the short term value of a resource to enemies. So even if you manage to get a group together that can infiltrate a launch site, its useless to you in the amount of time you will have while they muster a response and deal with you.
The only real long term solution is physical disablement which presents a whole host of serious issues including the potential of an enemy sending a disablement signal or something triggering such components accidentally through some other interaction or service error.
Such things certainly have their place, but, there are limits to how much of that is really effective before it becomes just a burden and a liability.
The proper term for something that you want to sell at an extraordinary price because it is meant to be used "at sea" is "Marine", it works similarly to the word "Bridal" in that adding it to a product instantly increases its salable value.
You are both right and wrong. The police yes....however the DA and Sheriff are often both elected positions, meaning that they do have certain "requirements" if they want to be re-elected, and often respecting civil rights is unpopular with the populace; and a LOT of people are willing to give them a pass for violating rights if they come up with even a flimsy excuse.
No actually your moralizing is irrelevant, because the reality is the same no matter how you feel about it. Its been shown in the studies I have run into on the subject that piracy rates drop off with income level. Those with money pay for it.
This lines up perfectly with my own experience, the people who pirate the most tend to make the least amount of money and have the most amount of free time to consume huge amounts of media.
I don't see how your feelings on the topic, which seems to be your only point, makes a difference here. Your argument doesn't even make sense. Content easily can cost many times the initial investment, especially an initial investment for a pc or console setup, and many people's finances fluxuate over time.
In any case, I don't see how that is relevant, point is, the loss of money is money that they were never likely going to get the vast majority of, so why is your moral outrage the only effect that matters or is worth talking about? IS it worth more than any potential side benefits?
Actually I had a bad experience with caffiene withdrawl years ago, high school actually. I had managed quite a habbit of hitting the vending machine for iced tea. Two in the morning before class, two at lunch, then of course there was either wrestling practice or the ride home. After doing this a while, I forgot my wallet at home in a rush one day.....ouch.
Ever since, I watched for the morning headaches, if I get them, I immediately detox off caffiene for two weeks, never had such a bad reaction since.
Though, the last time I got caffiene headaches was a few years back, when I was in a cubicle practically next to a break room stocked with decent coffee. Now I work in an office that is a bit of a walk, and well.... I can't drink the stuff they make....I may be an addict but, I have standards. I just can't drink that swill.
While true, I have trouble imagining anyone who can afford games does this. There are so many cheap games out there it seems like a silly bother and... a lot to go through to screw the publisher out of a few bucks.
That said, since the majority of people who do this likely are attemtping to cheat because they couldn't afford many games anyway, the loss of money is likely actually very small since the alternative would be, they don't play the game or download it some other way.
However, they likely tell all their friends about any game so, in a way its free advertising. Hell LL Bean has a return policy that almost screams "come take advantage of us" but, they claim very few people do, and that it works out for them in the long run with loyal customers.
In fact, I bet the people who suffer the most from this sort of trick are the people who make shitty games, because not only will they not get paid by the people who use this trick, they might also lose out on other sales as people warn their friend's away from wasting their money.
lol funny as it is, I heard a great commentary a while back by a woman who went to college and spent years studying feminist theory and all this, who went and interviewed a woman who was a ceo of some decently sized company and came to the realization that it wasn't the academics where were making strides for the acceptance of women in the workforce, it was the ones actually working who were doing it.
I had a forehead smacking moment last year when I mentioned this jokingly last year while camping at a friend's event. I said "They were basically selling dowsing rods for explosives" and one of my friend's pipes in, with all seriousness: "Oh that is fine, dowsing works!".....sigh.....
A while back I tried to turn the tables on a scammer who royally pissed me off.
I posted an ad looking for a roomate and I got interest from someone claiming to be relocating from spain with moving costs paid by her company. Sounded good to me....after a quick exchange I took down my ad and a day later got the bad news "I will be sending a money order, can you cash it and forward on the difference too...."
I immediately recognized the scam and put my ad back up, but I was mad.
So I said "Sure sounds good".... the money order came, I said "never got it, when is it coming?"....got another one.... then I decided to have fun with it.... I sent a url for some pictures on my webserver and asked questions that would requiore looking at them to answer...about the room of course.... soon as I had an IP, I looked it up and told "her"
"I have seen better fakes, you wont fool me" I told "her" and that I knew she was somewhere outside Lagos Nigeria. Suddenly she admitted to being a he, and had a new tune.... he was trying to recruit me. Too easy.
Pretty quickly it shaped up what he wanted...someone with a US addrss to remail packages. I would get a package of papers to send out, all I had to do was put them in envelopes, slap postage on, and that would be $500 for me, each time.
So I figured....no way I am helping this scammer who tried to scam me, but, lets see if I can scam him out of $500 by getting him to pay up front. He mentioned counterfit bills, so I was like yes, cool, I will take counterfit bills, then I can report you directly to the Secret Service oooh fun.....
in the end we could never work out a deal that sounded good to him and I was willing to burn him on so, it never happened. Oh well.....
Slashdot Mirror
This is true but, it also is a case where what works in one place may or may not work the same (or be implemented similarly) elsewhere. I have seen these exact same lanes turn into a nightmare. Not because they put traffic in the way but because they retained the left and right lanes, and just occasionally, turn the left lane into a turn only lane....so everyone who was traveling in that lane suddenly has to move over.....and few things slow drivers down like a lane merge.
> So my question is, without having man in the middled all the sessions, or had the decryption keys.
> How are these researchers making this statement?
How do you know they didn't? Notice the keywords "large-scale". Their detector is likely some sort of honeypot in fact, from the article:
So I would assume they had keys and possibly were using a honeypot....a few paragraphs below that, they talk about getting full traces from a honeypot.
Right in the summary: "This provides strong evidence that at least for those time periods, no attacker with prior knowledge of Heartbleed conducted widespread scanning looking for vulnerable servers. "
So you are correct about what it doesn't prove, but, its also not really claimed to prove that either. Not even a little bit. What this does, is suggest strongly (not prove) that no criminal gangs (yes, yes, the NSA) were aware of it, or if they were, were not aware of it long enough to exploit it meaningfully.
If the vulnerability were available, if even one person bought it, they would have to use it. What I mean is, if you know this vulnerability can be bought (because you bought it) you know that its out there and its only a matter of time before it gets noticed and fixed.
The only person who has any reason to not use it or use it in a discriminating fashion, is someone who discovered it independently and wants to get maximum use out of it. Someone like the NSA.
This, in no way, proves that nobody knew about it. What I think it does prove is, whoever may have known about it, wasn't selling it and wasn't a memeber of one of the for-profit gangs. That is all.
So your idea....for him....is to make a game that conforms to your personal sensibilities. Interesting.
> Surely there is a whole market just waiting for a good FPS that doesn't rely on murdering people?
I find this quite unlikely. Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of fun to be had in games without simulated violence and a few games do come to mind, but, I doubt there are that many people so put off by a little simulated violence that it consitutes a large market that are "waiting".
Perhaps you should stop waiting, and start working on games for this market and prove it exists?
That would make sense to me. Often times when you run into something that seems simple but nobody does it, turns out you missed something in your assessment about either how well it works or how much work is involved or even that it doesn't work.
It reminds me of one of the things I noticed in my own profession as a sysadmin. Generally, if I toss relevant facts into google, and it doesn't pop up that somebody else had the same problem, then I likely missed something right there in the documentation. Turns out to be the case more often than I ran into something truly novel.
It is hard to get past the feeling that "if it was that easy someone else would be doing it", and usually, its true....but sometimes it isn't and the only way you will know is to try. That is why research and development exist....to give it a try..... you know....before putting it in production.
Course, if this was a bunch of sysadmins the bet would be more implicit, and if phrased properly and explicitly might be "I bet our production environments stability that this is going to work...."
> they're using professional check-writing equipment plus U.S.-based accomplices to not raise suspicions among
> their victims
Funny I was just posting my little anecdote about these groups on slashdo recently ( http://slashdot.org/comments.p... ), not only does this jive exactly with my limited exposure to these gangs, but, I even got them to try and recruit me to thelp them. Thing is.... this was a room in my house....I have not been a landlord in several years, and this was several years before I stopped so.... this was at least 5-7 years ago.
so while its true, its not new. In fact, I left this detail out of my previous tale but, after recieving the money orders that I knew were fake, I did look over them and attempt to verify that they were fakes, which the claimed issuer was happy to verify for me. That said, had I not known their source, they might have fooled me, they were decent fakes that were professionally printed, even then.
> I find it a bit hard to believe that a guy who is able to get one of the largest black-market enterprises running on
> a server/farm connected to an anonymous/decentralized network isn't smart enough to *not* give it a public IP
> and/or put the equivalent to a home internet router in front of it.
as much as I would like to not believe it, this is one of those cases where, he has to be perfect every time, they have to catch him slipping up once.
I don't know what his stack was, but typically, there are a lot of places information can leak. Including in error messages.
The reality is, no hidden service (that isn't intentionally also a non-hidden one) should have a public IP where it can be reached. The last public endpoint should be its tor node, and the tor node itself should then only contact it via private IPs. It should then also only contact its backend databases by private IPs.
If that means you have to setup backend VPNs for the transport.... then guess what....that means you have to setup backend VPNs for the transport.
Frankly, what this guy did, overall, wasn't all that impressive. He put a bunch of tools together. He didn't develop tor, he just made the obvious leap. Being more willing to take the risk doesn't mean you are the best of the best, it just means you are confident enough to risk a fall on your face.
> Airlines are running into physical space issues. In their quest for ever more seats The airlines are
> beginning to ignore basic human needs. People need to move around. The tighter and more closed
> off you make people feel the more likely they are to get into arguments. This is not only true
> physically, but mentally as well. Arguments lead to fighting.
But as long as there are not so many problems as to damage their bottom line, they can just blame the incidents on the passengers
So really, the best solution for passengers is to not hold back and start swinging until it really stands out that only one airline is having these problems.
In addition to the other comment, you also have to realize two other facts about Kerbal:
it (currently, I believe its eventually planned) only adds re-rentry effects, there is no attempt to model the heat (without mods, there is "deadly re-entry" which I personally like to play with) so you can slam into the atmosphere at pretty much any velocity safely.
This is also good because, Kerbin's atmosphere (which I hope they fix) is rather odd, a little overly thin at the top, and a little overly thick at the bottom, and with a bad drag model (mods fix it, hopefully the base game will before release).
So in the stock game, it is a serious feat to hit the surface with significant speed.
It isn't so much a matter of n-body being too difficult, I don't think it would be that much fun to play. I mean, some people would love it sure but.... the unexpected effects on orbital stability would very likely be fun killing for a lot of the more casual players, which, lets face it.... is what is going to keep them in business.
Sure I would love some more lagrange points or to toss something into a low energy transfer path that has it being tossed from one celstial to another for no extra fuel, but, seriously, it would be a mistake to make a game that took a degree in astrophysics to play. Hell, I might rage quit after a while with n-body.
Also, they would have to totoally redo the solar system since the kerbol system wouldn't be stable off rails under nbody.
Admittedly I am still skeptical it wouldn't be gamed cheaper than actually prioducing the result intended, but I like where you are going with that idea, it reminds me alot of the xkcd commentary on automated spam: http://xkcd.com/810/
That said, I think I have more faith in people's ability to reverse engineer, and lose control of secrets than I do in the ability of a system to regulate. At the current technology level, I really do suspect that any patent system will be more hamper than helper, and giving people incentive to share their ideas is likely no longer necessary, because their consent to sharing is widely irrelevant.
I am normally against increasing the number of cameras around and being under surveillance all the time. That said, I think NYC needs this to finnally start putting nails in the coffin of their stop and frisk program. Finally either one of two things HAS to happen: Either they collect massive amounts of evidence about how they have been stopping random people and trumping up charges, or.... the number of incidents must go down. Either way, its progress.
Already done, a quick simulation clearly shows nothing to worry about, even if it hit the atmosphere straight on it would still be decelerated to a safe velocity before hit hit the gorund and would just bounce.
That is a load off my mind.
Interesting idea though could create situations where a potential licensee may come along and be faced with potentially bolstering a patent that could be free for them to use in a few months if they don't. Not sure how big an issue that really is, nor is it clear that it couldn't be trivially bypassed.
Several related companies could easily license each other's patents in exchange for licensing eachother's patents just to keep them current. Even if you tried to proect against that, it would always be a situation where a company with some money and a lack of scruples could make for a very expensive uphill battle to prove....and it would just end up being one more benefit large companies with deep pockets and lack of scruples have over independent inventors.
Of course... a 1% yield of a nuclear weapon is still nothing to sneeze at. Hell, I bet they would make damned impressive dirty bombs.... admittedly its a "horrible waste" of a nuke from the rather twisted point of view required for talking about such things....but if your group didn't actually have to build it... its still a waste of someone else's resources....
Which really is all just a rehashing of the reasons that these systems are used where they are, and not used where they aren't.
The only way I could see this working would be a physical disablement. If you have a weapon, be it a nuke, conventional bomb, or tank, it has all the physical hardware and chemicals it needs to work. Disabling the control equipment is a setback but, will never fully prevent someone from repurposing the core equipment. If you can strip a nuclear bomb down to its core and firing mechanisms, you can make your own driver.... maybe that is a bad example because there is likely a lot of "secret sauce" in the actual sequence of making a plutonium core properly compress but... that is a rather specific issue to the specific type of device.
These sorts of safegaurds are really about defense in depth and decreasing the short term value of a resource to enemies. So even if you manage to get a group together that can infiltrate a launch site, its useless to you in the amount of time you will have while they muster a response and deal with you.
The only real long term solution is physical disablement which presents a whole host of serious issues including the potential of an enemy sending a disablement signal or something triggering such components accidentally through some other interaction or service error.
Such things certainly have their place, but, there are limits to how much of that is really effective before it becomes just a burden and a liability.
The proper term for something that you want to sell at an extraordinary price because it is meant to be used "at sea" is "Marine", it works similarly to the word "Bridal" in that adding it to a product instantly increases its salable value.
You are both right and wrong. The police yes....however the DA and Sheriff are often both elected positions, meaning that they do have certain "requirements" if they want to be re-elected, and often respecting civil rights is unpopular with the populace; and a LOT of people are willing to give them a pass for violating rights if they come up with even a flimsy excuse.
No actually your moralizing is irrelevant, because the reality is the same no matter how you feel about it. Its been shown in the studies I have run into on the subject that piracy rates drop off with income level. Those with money pay for it.
This lines up perfectly with my own experience, the people who pirate the most tend to make the least amount of money and have the most amount of free time to consume huge amounts of media.
I don't see how your feelings on the topic, which seems to be your only point, makes a difference here. Your argument doesn't even make sense. Content easily can cost many times the initial investment, especially an initial investment for a pc or console setup, and many people's finances fluxuate over time.
In any case, I don't see how that is relevant, point is, the loss of money is money that they were never likely going to get the vast majority of, so why is your moral outrage the only effect that matters or is worth talking about? IS it worth more than any potential side benefits?
Actually I had a bad experience with caffiene withdrawl years ago, high school actually. I had managed quite a habbit of hitting the vending machine for iced tea. Two in the morning before class, two at lunch, then of course there was either wrestling practice or the ride home. After doing this a while, I forgot my wallet at home in a rush one day.....ouch.
Ever since, I watched for the morning headaches, if I get them, I immediately detox off caffiene for two weeks, never had such a bad reaction since.
Though, the last time I got caffiene headaches was a few years back, when I was in a cubicle practically next to a break room stocked with decent coffee. Now I work in an office that is a bit of a walk, and well.... I can't drink the stuff they make....I may be an addict but, I have standards. I just can't drink that swill.
They have decent tea though....
While true, I have trouble imagining anyone who can afford games does this. There are so many cheap games out there it seems like a silly bother and... a lot to go through to screw the publisher out of a few bucks.
That said, since the majority of people who do this likely are attemtping to cheat because they couldn't afford many games anyway, the loss of money is likely actually very small since the alternative would be, they don't play the game or download it some other way.
However, they likely tell all their friends about any game so, in a way its free advertising. Hell LL Bean has a return policy that almost screams "come take advantage of us" but, they claim very few people do, and that it works out for them in the long run with loyal customers.
In fact, I bet the people who suffer the most from this sort of trick are the people who make shitty games, because not only will they not get paid by the people who use this trick, they might also lose out on other sales as people warn their friend's away from wasting their money.
lol funny as it is, I heard a great commentary a while back by a woman who went to college and spent years studying feminist theory and all this, who went and interviewed a woman who was a ceo of some decently sized company and came to the realization that it wasn't the academics where were making strides for the acceptance of women in the workforce, it was the ones actually working who were doing it.
I had a forehead smacking moment last year when I mentioned this jokingly last year while camping at a friend's event. I said "They were basically selling dowsing rods for explosives" and one of my friend's pipes in, with all seriousness: "Oh that is fine, dowsing works!".....sigh.....
That is absolutely preposterous. However, if you model the stone blocks as frictionless point masses.....
A while back I tried to turn the tables on a scammer who royally pissed me off.
I posted an ad looking for a roomate and I got interest from someone claiming to be relocating from spain with moving costs paid by her company. Sounded good to me....after a quick exchange I took down my ad and a day later got the bad news "I will be sending a money order, can you cash it and forward on the difference too...."
I immediately recognized the scam and put my ad back up, but I was mad.
So I said "Sure sounds good".... the money order came, I said "never got it, when is it coming?"....got another one.... then I decided to have fun with it.... I sent a url for some pictures on my webserver and asked questions that would requiore looking at them to answer...about the room of course.... soon as I had an IP, I looked it up and told "her"
"I have seen better fakes, you wont fool me" I told "her" and that I knew she was somewhere outside Lagos Nigeria. Suddenly she admitted to being a he, and had a new tune.... he was trying to recruit me. Too easy.
Pretty quickly it shaped up what he wanted...someone with a US addrss to remail packages. I would get a package of papers to send out, all I had to do was put them in envelopes, slap postage on, and that would be $500 for me, each time.
So I figured....no way I am helping this scammer who tried to scam me, but, lets see if I can scam him out of $500 by getting him to pay up front. He mentioned counterfit bills, so I was like yes, cool, I will take counterfit bills, then I can report you directly to the Secret Service oooh fun.....
in the end we could never work out a deal that sounded good to him and I was willing to burn him on so, it never happened. Oh well.....