A Petty Blog

How many ways can a non-American screw up a scam letter?  Let me count the ways…

Attn: My Dear,

I am Mr.Steve Morgan, I am a US citizen, 48 years Old. I reside here in New Braunfels Texas. My residential address is as follows. 108 Crockett Court. New Braunfels Texas, United States, I am one of those that took part in the Compensation in Nigeria many years ago and they refused to pay me, I had paid over $50,000 while in the US, trying to get my payment all to no avail.

So I decided to travel to WASHINGTON D.C with all my compensation documents, And I was directed by the ( F B I) Director to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams, who his a representative of the ( F B I ) and a member of the COMPENSATION AWARD COMMITTEE, currently in Nigeria.and I contacted him and he explained everything to me. He said whoever is contacting us through emails are fake.

He took me to the paying bank for the claim of my Compensation payment. Right now I am the most happiest man on earth because I have received my compensation funds of $15 Million Us Dollars Moreover, Mr.Kelvin Williams, showed me the full information of those that are yet to receive their payments and I saw your name as one of the beneficiaries, and your email address, that is why I decided to email you to stop dealing with those people, they are not with your fund, they are only making money out of you. I will advise you to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams.

You have to contact him directly on this information below.

COMPENSATION AWARD HOUSE

Name : Mr.Kelvin Williams

Email: fbiagnet.kelvin001@yahoo.cn

You really have to stop dealing with those people that are contacting you and telling you that your fund is with them, it is not in anyway with them, they are only taking advantage of you and they will dry you up until you have nothing.

The only money I paid after I met Mr.Kelvin Williams was just $290 for the paper works, take note of that.

Once again stop contacting those people, I will advise you to contact Mr.Kelvin Williams so that he can help you to Deliver your fund instead of dealing with those liars that will be turning you around asking for different kind of money to complete your transaction.

Thank You and Be Blessed.

Mr. Steve Morgan

108 Crockett Court.

Apt 303, New Braunfels Texas,

United States Of America

 I almost fell for this because of the “very convincing” non-US email address for “agnet” Kelvin.

Here’s to interesting stuff and not enough time:

First Follower

This is an educational voice-over on an old viral video (Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy).
Follow the link for a transcript.

America’s Worst Mom

A lot of people say she’s America’s worst mom. What do you think? (I think a lot of people are pansies)

Some People Just Won’t Listen
.. or why you shouldn’t bank at Starbucks

If someone sent me a message from my own account, telling me what I’m drinking right now, I’d listen to his advice.

You’d think that with the name scratch, people wouldn’t expect it to be around for a long time

This is funny, because we have a “scratch” drive at work. Our IT guys (who are excellent, by the way) found it necessary to add folders named “___SCRATCH_IS_NOT_BACKED_UP” and “zzzSCRATCH_IS_NOT_BACKED_UP”. I’ll bet the target audience still didn’t get the message.

Some excellent answers to almost any post on any biking forum.

Including…
* No bike does everything perfectly. In fact, no bike does anything until someone gets on it to ride.
* The more you ride your bike, the less your *** will hurt.

and

Great advice in any context:
Maybe the person you waved at while you were out riding didn’t see you wave at them.

This was probably in response to people like this (warning: not polite)

Beethoven’s 5th - Salsa

Don’t need a computer? Finally, there’s a non-computer device for you.

PALO ALTO, CA—Hewlett-Packard announced Friday the release of the first-ever non-computer, a fully unusable device specially designed to address the demands of individuals who have absolutely no need to own a computer.

 These illusions are amazing.  Many involve the effect of motion on perception -click through to check them out, and make sure you play with the settings as applicable.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

Update: check out the finalists from previous years too - links are on the left.

The top illusion for 2010 is amazing.

I can’t resist adding this update on the gorilla illusion (see the 2010 finalists page if it won’t load):

The details are coming out about yet another data breach, this time at Sony’s PlayStation Network. Light Blue Touchpaper has the details. (excerpts below, with my emphasis)

Sometime last week, Sony discovered that up to 77 M accounts on its PlayStation Network were compromised. Sony’s network was down for a week before they finally disclosed details yesterday. Unusually, there haven’t yet been any credible claims of responsibility for the hack, so we can only go on Sony’s official statements. The breach included names and addresses, passwords, and answers to personal knowledge questions, and possibly payment details.

… regarding the leaked passwords. The risks here are very real—hackers can attempt to re-use the compromised passwords (possibly after inverting hashes using brute-force) at many other websites, including financial ones. There are no disclosure laws here though, and Sony has done nothing, not even disclosing the key technical details of how passwords were stored. The implications are very different if the passwords were stored in cleartext, hashed in a constant manner, or properly hashed and salted. Sony customers ought to know what really happened.

…this is a serious market failure. Sony’s security breach has potentially compromised passwords at hundreds of other sites where its users re-use the same password and email address as credentials. This is a significant externality, but Sony bears no legal responsibility, and it shows.

This is yet another example of why reusing passwords, and perhaps even user ids is a bad idea.  In this case, part of the exposed data includes the answers to all those secret questions - you know, the top secret ones that give you a free give-me-a-new-password pass?

(more…)

I’m a little late on this one.  It’s not my fault though.

Yep, it’s official. Today is Blame Someone Else Day – the first Friday the 13th of each year. And since there is only one Friday the 13th this entire year, today’s your only chance to blame others all day long. So have at it. You don’t have to take responsibility for anything that goes wrong. And you can blame someone else for all the problems, mistakes and unfairness in your life. According to the Stress Management Center and Phobia Institute in Asheville, North Carolina, an estimated 17 to 21 million people in the United States are affected by a fear of this day. Some people are so paralyzed by fear that they avoid their normal routines in doing business, taking flights or even getting out of bed. According to Wikipedia “It’s been estimated that $800-$900 million is lost in business on this day.”

(thanks to Dan Miller’s 48 Days)

Here’s my attempt to pass on some interesting stuff, and leave room to write about something substantial later.

First, some new links that have been forcing me to keep Firefox open for most of a week:

The Sure Don’t Make Pyrex Like They Used To

Most people probably don’t think of Corning as a crime fighting company, but when it sold its Pyrex brand to World Kitchen in 1998, the company accidentally made the illegal manufacture of crack cocaine more difficult—a fascinating example of unintended consequences.

(via Schneier on Security)

Fisher Investments has a good explanation about why we can’t extrapolate the future from today in  A Common Thread Between Horse Manure and Peak Oil.

Second, some old links from the backlog.

Tracking Fireflies in the forest

Cool photography project.  Read the article at Flowing Data.

How Men and Women Label Colors

This is part of the results of an experiment in which visitors were asked to name colors. I find the analysis below amusing, and even less complimentary of my gender than I would have predicted.

His calculation of most masculine and feminine colors is by far the most interesting part of the results, however. Here are the top five feminine colors, by finding the ones that were most disproportionately used by women:

1. Dusty Teal
2. Blush Pink
3. Dusty Lavender
4. Butter Yellow
5. Dusky Rose

Not bad, right? The colors are flowery and descriptive. Nothing surprising there. Now here’s the top five masculine colors:

1. Penis
2. Gay
3. WTF
4. Dunno
5. Baige

The only real color in the list is “baige” — and it was misspelled. Like Randall, I also weep for my gender. Although, I think these results also say a lot about the type of people who read xkcd (like me).

 I found this collection of Star Wars mashups via an internal company newsletters (yeah, I work for a cool company.)

(Mashup: “In Web development, a mashup is a Web page or application that uses and combines data, presentation or functionality from two or more sources to create new services.”)

You gotta love Star Wars.  There’s something here to offend every fan.

Star Wars .. and Scooby Doo!  Cool.

Star Wars … and Monsters and BobbleHeads! (This is getting wrong)

Star Wars … and Disney characters.  (Getting Wronger, but check them out!)

Star Wars … and Hello Kitty.  (This is just wrong.)  (especially Chewbacca)

Star Wars … and Dr. Seuss. (Now we’re back to cool.  Check these out - he has more.)

(sorry again about the Hello Kitty)

 Star Wars … and Winnie The Pooh.

Say what you like, but I love this one, ’cause I like Pooh and Eyore as much as I like Star Wars.

Funny.

I have nothing to add to this video.  You’ll love it or just scratch your head.

The video is … amazing.  I fear to even glance at the comments.

I’m guessing  NextGenHacker is wishing the internet had an undo button.

via Larry Osterman’s WebLog

This photo says “Knowledge Is Powe[r]” using Sir Francis Bacon’s Bilateral Cipher.  See how here.

I found this on a fascinating treatise about cryptography, steganography and WWII cryptographers William and Elizebeth Friedman.

Read more in the original: How to Make Anything Signify Anything

Here’s one of several more examples:

The biologist turns cryptographer. Friedman’s most elaborate example of how to make anything signify anything using Bacon’s biliteral cipher. Courtesy the Bacon Cipher Collection, Manuscripts and Archives Division, New York Public Library.