Ramblings & ephemera

Matthew, the blind phone phreaker

From Kevin Poulsen’s “Teenage Hacker Is Blind, Brash and in the Crosshairs of the FBI” (Wired: 29 February 2008):
At 4 in the morning of May 1, 2005, deputies from the El Paso County Sheriff’s Office converged on the suburban Colorado Springs home of Richard Gasper, a TSA screener at the local Colorado Springs Municipal Airport. [...]

How con artists use psychology to work

From Paul J. Zak’s “How to Run a Con” (Psychology Today: 13 November 2008):
When I was in high school, I took a job at an ARCO gas station on the outskirts of Santa Barbara, California. At the time, I drove a 1967 Mustang hotrod and thought I might pick up some tips and cheap parts [...]

The purpose of the Storm botnet? To send spam

From Tim Wilson’s “Researchers Link Storm Botnet to Illegal Pharmaceutical Sales” (DarkReading: 11 June 2008):
“Our previous research revealed an extremely sophisticated supply chain behind the illegal pharmacy products shipped after orders were placed on botnet-spammed Canadian pharmacy Websites. But the relationship between the technology-focused botnet masters and the global supply chain organizations was murky until [...]

Craigslist “everything is free!” scams

Robert Salisbury
From “Man scammed by Craigslist ad” (The Seattle Times: 24 March 2008):
The ads popped up Saturday afternoon, saying the owner of a Jacksonville home was forced to leave the area suddenly and his belongings, including a horse, were free for the taking, said Jackson County sheriff’s Detective Sgt. Colin Fagan.
But Robert Salisbury had no [...]

Conservatives are more ruthless than liberals

From Alan Wolfe’s “Why Conservatives Can’t Govern” (The Washington Monthly: July/August 2006):
Political parties expend the time and grueling energy to control government for different reasons. Liberals, while enjoying the perquisites of office, also want to be in a position to use government to solve problems. But conservatives have different motives for wanting power. One [...]

The way to trick smart people

From Paul’s “The easiest way to fool smart people“:
There’s a saying among con-men that smart people are easier targets, because they don’t think they can be conned.
I’m not sure if that’s true, but there’s one scam that’s almost guaranteed to make smart people switch off their brains and reach for their wallets. It’s a trick [...]

Canals & tolls

From Andrew Odlyzko’s “Pricing and Architecture of the Internet: Historical Perspectives from Telecommunications and Transportation“:
The modern canal era can be said to start with the Duke of Bridgewater’s Canal in England. Originally it was just a means of connecting the Duke’s colliery to Manchester. The parliamentary charter (which enabled him to take over private property, [...]

Google ad advice

From “Google Adsense Tips, Tricks, and Secrets“:
While every website is different, Google has published some heat maps showing the optimal locations. No surprise that the best spots are middle of the page and left hand side. …
Google has also has published a list of the highest performing ad sizes:

336×280 large rectangle
300×250 inline rectangle
160×600 wide skyscraper

Related [...]

DRM Workaround #18: HP printer cartridges

From “Cartridge Expiration Date Workarounds“:
In light of the lawsuit against Hewlett-Packard over the expiration date of their cartridges, two ways to fix the problem:
1) Remove and reinsert the battery of the printer’s memory chip
2) Preemptive: Change the parameters of the printer driver
Search for hp*.ini … In it there is a parameter something like pencheck. It [...]

Amongst family and friends

From "The Producer" in the 15 October 2001 issue of The New Yorker, an article about the Hollywood producer Brian Grazer:
His creation achieved its brilliant apotheosis a few years ago, when he reconceived Brian Grazer as a form of performance art. He started putting photographs of himself, grinning like a pixie, in dime-store frames and [...]