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Akt1veRad: I'm in the middle of a Nigerian credit card scam
N1ck Gray WFU: whaaaat?
Akt1veRad: lots of bad orders
Akt1veRad: lots of calls to the Secret Service and FBI
N1ck Gray WFU: when did you start to get bad orders?
Akt1veRad: 1/12/04
Akt1veRad: then on 1/21 they did a few more orders using
other identities
Akt1veRad: on 1/24 there were over 50 orders, many from the same person, this is when the alarms went off.
Total for that day was just over $20,000
Akt1veRad: another $8,000 on the 25th and 26th
N1ck Gray WFU: what kinds of things were they ordering
Akt1veRad: they started out ordering car audio and small electronics. But after those orders they were ordering
high end home theater systems and plasma TV's
N1ck Gray WFU: automatically drop-shipped?
Akt1veRad: All the credit cards where good and authorized by the bank
Akt1veRad: still have to see what I get back and what they end up covering with insurance
sh1mmer303: hey i found an AMAZING website
sh1mmer303: www.investopedia.com
sh1mmer303: all kinds of tutorials and info on every possible type of investment
Jan 22, 2004
Well, it took a bit longer than I (or likely anybody else expected), but after four and a half years, I've resigned from my position at AOL. Yay/sigh/etc.
vidblog backlog!
^^ there's tiffany, in yesterday's snow! and later, zach klein protecting his pasture. the song for vidblog number eight was Kruder & Dorfmeister - Bomberclaad Joint - Knowtoryous
WHAT ATKINS? COME SOUTH BEACH! ON EPHEDRA, AND BLITZEN! Santa called
JennifrBrooks: as i already said, i am in my pjs and i have a fire going
JennifrBrooks: not to mention if would take me 2 hours to dig mycar out of the snow
nick on the danger: How would voice IM work
nick on the danger: Like Nextel direct connect
nick on the danger: But, I want to review
nick on the danger: You want history
nick on the danger: How do you semi-live digitize/send/play and cache those voice MP3s?
nick on the danger: Answer that for your tiara
nick on the danger: Bella
JennifrBrooks: ciao
nick on the danger: He tries
JennifrBrooks: ciao also means hello in italian
JennifrBrooks: dual function, like aloha
JennifrBrooks: (taps nails on coffee table)
JennifrBrooks: (unwraps another starburst)
JennifrBrooks: (pulls red blanket around body and snuggles into the down throw)
nick on the danger: Wait
JennifrBrooks: [AWAY] movies and a fire
Time to get back into the market, so I had Casey give me a crash course in option trading just now. He uses AmeritradeAmeritrade bought out Datek a year ago, so I guess I have an account with them somewhere? Hmmm for options trading, but it wasn't easy getting those privileges. Options are a much riskier to trade than equities, and it's hard to justify giving that access to an undergraduate student without a full time job.
Say stock X is priced today at $25. I buy a contract that says, I can buy the stock at *anytime* in the next two years for $20. That's a call contract for American style options. Say the stock drops to $15- then the option is totally worthless.
There are two types of options:
PUT- selling shares of a stock // stock goes down, more value here
CALL- buying shares of a stock // stock goes up, more value here because you're buying the shares cheaper than the market
So how do they come up with pricing structures for options?
I can't believe you guys don't do this in business school. Basically, there are two things that determine the price for options:
- Price of underlying equity, commodity, etc
- Time-lapse on the option
Personally, I buy options for January 2006, which are more expensive than options for January 2005, because there's more time value in that extra year (since the stock will have the opportunity to fluctuate in price). Only 40% of those people who trade options actually make any money.
Casey just IM'd some eBay auctions that feature great Flash photo galleries of handsome automobiles with striking model companions.
Ferrari : 360 Modena
2002 Cadillac : Escalade Luxury
2001 BMW : 3-Series 325Ci
Someone at the World Economic Forum is providing a nice Saturday morning refresher read... Whiskey Bar: Davos Man Gets the Blues"Two days into the forum, and the mood here feels like a cross between a CEO's funeral and the VIP lounge at Kennedy Airport -- after the VIPs have learned that all flights have been cancelled due to weather."
What is it about reading econ after a rough night that makes me feel so good?
"It will change the way you look at all of history."
I still love the web design of this newspaper's articlesInternational Herald Tribune - Look, up in the sky, it's a - Honda?. article link per joi ito - check out his moblog from the World Economic forum!
The article talks about Honda's only recently un-secret private aircraft project. It's certainly competition to the Eclipse 500, which is supposed to be a breakthrough sub-$1 million jet-powered aircraft (tick-tock, tick-tock). More on Vern Raburn and his company, EclipseWIRED: "One of the pioneers of personal computing has a plan to reinvent aviation. Now if he can just get the future of flying off the ground ". Flashback to Eclipse at Oshkosh 2000 (1"Everyone we hung out with was always talking about this new Eclipse 500. Why so much hype? Mainly because it's a sub-$1 million jet with room for two pilots and four passengers. It'll be out in 2003, but if you want one there's a waiting list through 2005.", 2"Here I am with Dr. Sam Williams (L), CEO Williams International, and Mr. Vern Raburn (R), CEO of Eclipse Aviation. Interesting notes about these guys- Dr. Williams developed the jet engine for the cruise missile, also being used in the Eclipse 500. Mr. Raburn was one of the original Microsoft employees (#18) and even had Gates as his best man at his wedding. Raburn is also the former CEO of Symantec.").
vidblog #7 featuring Zach Klein and Nick Gray NASA
For more information about my latest vidblog, zach klein says it best:
It is all because of NASA Engineer Wayne Lee, whose celebratory photo made the frontpage of every American newspaper on Jan 04, 2004 -- after it was confirmed that 'Spirit' had successfully landed on Mars. Ricky, realizing my lust for the shirt, found it for me on EBay and surprised me with an early birthday present. See Wayne Lee and the Infamous Shirt
The World's Most Dangerous Geek
Rolling Stone interviews Justin Frankel and reaffirms what Frankel has been mumbling since last May: that he's thinking about leaving AOL's bureaucratic ways way, way behind. It's a nice inside look at this young internet legend. See 5/29/2003 for background on Frankel and Nullsoft; he made WinAmp. link per blogdex
I've been spending way to much time at the day spa lately. That's the name I give JBC's place, because of the relaxed, chill atmosphere. She's got a lot of sexy electronics.
My dad's credit card purchased some new shoes last week (Hail Mary) from Zappos. Mad props to everyone involved with the transaction - it was amazing.
I started reading Vannevar Bush's As We May Think; forethought in attempting to organize my computer files. I need to re-format badly (XP is swamp bogged) and I want keyword searchable, folder-defined, database driven mecca. But so many types of information! Pictures I took, videos, pictures I didn't take, Word documents, PDFs, Photoshop, MP3s, articles, blog entries.
I've been reading as Justin Hall from links.net has been pondering the same thing. A few of his friends have contributed suggestions; here's one from Joichi Ito.
Update on Raisethefist.com creator Sherman Austin, now in prison per Politech's old index page.
That same Sherman Austin used to be a customer of my high school web hosting company. He was running the 2CP.COM domain through pair's servers. Here's his old resume. Sherman caused some trouble during his short stint as a customer- I'd imagine he left or we kicked him out after six or eight months. He racked up a few hundred dollars in excessive bandwidth fees, and his Perl scripts caused trouble. I remember a chat application that had to be deleted because it kept locking the servers with runaway processes.
I'm pretty sure that I was the technical contact on www.first-amendment.com for at least a year. I should have seen the trouble coming, even at 16.
Did you know that there are tennis courts in Grand Central Station? (read here). Amazon did a press event there a few months ago with Anna Kournikova.
update r1cksterbot: There used to be actually, up to about eight or so years ago. You were probably just thinkin’ about those, superfan!
One important Japanese businessman once told me. Power in Japan is not about having money yourself. It is about having the influence to move money.
per Joi Ito's Web
Check out my latest vidblog by clicking the link below.
- How steep is the learning curve?
- bAD FONTS KILLED MY BROTHER
- tight baselines
- What is world span?
- Broadband to the home is NOT cable or DSL!
My parents insisted on going to the Space Needle for the countdown in Seattle last night. I was like, "No way! How passé!"
Of course we went, and it was amazing. I've never had such intense architectural feelings as I did during those seven minutes of firework-induced visuals! For during that period of time, the one hundred percent purpose for that building above me was to entertain the public! All eyes fixed, oooohs and ahhhs- how often does an urban construction perform to that function? It's certainly a World's Fair relic- For the people of Seattle.
In the two days we wandered about, Seattle certainly felt small. Even at this New Year's celebration, it's didn't feel as crowded as I had expected from a fabled Northwestern metropolis. The fireworks were amazing- but it felt like there were only five or ten thousand people there to watch. I liked Vancouver MUCH better. Ten times better, probably. It felt even smaller, and there were more people around. People everywhere! The parts I saw felt much more lived-in and urban (Tokyo urban, not Detroit urban) than where we toured through Seattle. I think Vancouver is my favorite city that I have ever visited.
See that guy on the roof of the building to the right of the Space Needle? He's carrying a gun and he's on your side (CODE ORANGE, again).
