Allan Friedman took the scam conference issue more seriously and googled for it. To his surprise he discovered that it filled a real need - academics need line entries on their CVs of papers presented at conferences in order to meet their tenure targets. Is anyone shocked at this obvious need being filled? Market, meet incentives... incentives, market.
Also poking around on his site I found notes on FC05 for those that didn't go, and also FC04. Thanks Allan! I hope you got some mojitas in.
Sometimes it's hard to give credulity to the things you read in the press. Here's the story about how some Brits were arrested with $3 trillion of forged currency. I suspect that's more than the amount of USD notes out there in the first place, so it's only worth asking for amusement value how these guys got $3 trillion into the proverbial briefcase.
Another scam is being attacked in the US. The way this one works is that there are various stupid laws and regulations that allow non-profits to step in and deal in retail finance. Enterprising scammers set up these non-profits and take on the business that would previously been known as loan-sharking. They then either outsource (as intimated below) or they pay themselves huge salaries. The basic model here is "debt relief" where retail debts (like too many credit cards) have this odd clause: someone can step in, aggregate all your debts and force all lenders into keeping at bay. For a fee that is. Hopefully with a few cases more like this the legislators will realise the folly ("unintended consequences") of getting too tricksy with bankrupcy.
Posts have been slow here in FCland, and it isn't the spring weather. My laptop lost its screen; and 5 days later I'm still compiling KDE on the 7-year-old standby... thinkpads never die but there are lots of ways to drown them in mollasses. As soon as I get back onto graphical net, I intend to pursue 3 - three - contenders for a founding edition of FC++. I know who you are ;-)
(Oh, and late breaking rumours abound of a new project called Joe-E which is a <hush> rewrite of Java </hush> to be usefully secure. I can't wait, and hope we can round up the scalliwags who mucked it up last time and run them out of town. In another life I want to do the security, in this life I'll settle for talking to the guys who do.)
Posted by iang at April 27, 2005 05:05 AM | TrackBackMaybe it was just three trillion-dollar bills.
Posted by: Tom Harrison at April 27, 2005 08:50 AM