22 December 08 - 01:11Scam scam scam...
I keep hearing about Carlo (Charles) Ponzi as the Bernard Madoff scheme becomes a daily item in the papers. For what it's worth, Ponzi has been revered as the "best" swindler of the 20th century. His scheme, as was Madoff's was a pyramid scheme that used new money to pay off old investors. It is a plan similar to chain letters, becoming a "distributor" in a "product" selling scheme, or our social security system.
Ponzi was born on March 3, 1882 in Lugo, Italy and died on January 15, 1949 in Rio de Janeiro at the age of 66. Carlos Ponzi was a man with a plan. His signature scam was to claim he was buying "International Reply Coupons" and selling, or converting them at a profit. The plan was weak to start with and soon after he began Carlos discovered that it was easier to skip the step of converting International Reply Coupons and simply rob Peter to pay Paul.
I did learn what an IRC is. It is a coupon you can buy in any participating country to enclose in a letter to allow a person in another country to get stamps to send a letter in reply. Sort of the equivalent of an international "self addressed stamped envelope" or a "business reply" envelope. The stamped envelope or the reply envelope only work when a letter does not cross international boundaries. The IRC, is a coupon to allow a reader of mail to buy stamps on the sendors nickel.
Ponzi claimed he was buying the coupons in countries where they were cheap and trading them in for stamps in countries where postal rates were higher, thus allowing him to make a profit. The idea is childish at best, possibly idiotic as an investment scheme, but since Ponzi didn't really do it it was never much of a problem.
Read about Ponzi for free here
Wikipedia Article or here
Buyandhold Article or buy one of the two books about him here
at Amazon if you want to wallow in this sort of thing.
Bernard Madoff is now ten years older than Carlos at his time of death, so it is unlikely he will have the interesting series of events and prison doings which filled the middle of Ponzi's life. Even now Bernard gets to stay in his, ahem, apartment while the legal beagles sort things out.
Lincoln - default -
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14 December 08 - 19:15Where is the change?
What are we to think regarding Barack Obama's relationship with Governor Rod Blagojevich. Blagojevich seems to be very dirty on the "pay to play" senator's seat scandel. In fact this situation will probably throw a spotlight on a a lot of things Barack Obama would rather not like revealed in the near future. It has to.
So far Barack has said none of his people talked to the governor about the senate seat. Then the Chicago Tribune reported Saturday that Obama's new White House chief of staff, Rahm Emanuel,
did indeed have contacts with Blagojevich, he provided a list
of nominees acceptable to Obama. Now its, "Ooops, well my staff only discussed candidates names, not anything to do with that auction."
Now this begs the question..., "what were Emanuel and Obama throwing these 'senate picks' into if they didn't even know what game was being played?" Are Rahm Emanual and his boss this naive? Why are they so out of touch with the the State Illinois political apparatus. How could they represent the people of Illinois without close contact with the governor? And yes, what of the man Obama himself?
Now I start thinking. Are Obama and his staff inept, naive, unobservant, or what? Are they unable to discern corruption? How could Obama have been a part of the Illinois political scene and not have known of this type of behavior? Do Emanual and Obama condone this sort of illegal, immoral, and unethical political play? Or maybe Obama is an outsider in Illinois politics? Does Obama and his staff have a habit of being dissociated with their surroundings? You know, like going to church, but not buying in to what the minister is saying.
Maybe Obama will be one of those "Teflon" sort of presidents like Reagan. The NBC press is still sticking up for him. I watched the Today Show this morning and watched Lester Holt and David Gregory literally stuttering as they tried to talk positively about Barack with regard to the unfolding Obama-Emanuel-Blagojevich connection. They were less than unbiased and their stuttering highlighted their difficulty talking honestly about the situation.
I want to give this guy a chance, but, it's getting harder for me. Obama said he has been reading a lot about the dead Illinois politician, Abraham Lincoln. I wonder if he got to the part where Lincoln said. “You may fool all the people some of the time, you can even fool some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.”
The future will tell if Obama fooled a lot of the people this time.
Lincoln - default -
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10 December 08 - 21:17Do ya think it may be the unions?
A Japanese company (Toyota) and an American company (GM) decided to have a canoe race on the Missouri River. Both teams practiced long and hard to reach their peak performance before the race. On the big day, the Japanese won by a mile.
The Americans, very discouraged and depressed, decided to investigate the reason for the crushing defeat.
A management team made up of senior management was formed to investigate and recommend appropriate action. Their conclusion was the Japanese had 8 people rowing and 1 person steering, while the American team had 8 people steering and 1 person rowing.
Feeling a deeper study was in order, American management hired a consulting company and paid them a large amount of money for a second opinion. They advised, of course, that too many people were steering the boat, while not enough people were rowing. Not sure of how to utilize that information, but wanting to prevent another loss to the Japanese, the rowing team's management structure was totally reorganized to 4 steering supervisors, 3 area steering superintendents, and 1 assistant superintendent steering manager. They also implemented a new performance system that would give the 1 person rowing the boat greater incentive to work harder.
The program was called the 'Rowing Team Quality First Program,' with meetings, dinners, and free pens for the rower. There was discussion of getting new paddles, canoes, and other equipment, extra vacation days for practices and bonuses.
The next year the Japanese won by two miles. Humiliated, the American management laid off the rower for poor performance, halted development of a new canoe, sold the paddles, and canceled all capital investments for new equipment. The money saved was distributed to the Senior Executives as bonuses and the next year's racing team was out-sourced to India.
The End.
But here's something else to think about:
GM & Ford have spent the last thirty years moving all their factories out of the US, claiming they can't make money paying American wages.
TOYOTA has spent the last thirty years building more than a dozen plants inside the US.
The last quarter's results: TOYOTA makes billions in profits while Ford and GM rack up billions in losses.
IF THIS WEREN'T TRUE, IT MIGHT BE FUNNY.
Lincoln - default -
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08 December 08 - 23:38AML Free Registry Cleaner
I am including a link to the registry cleaner I now use.
http://www.amltools.com/
I have used various cleaners in the past (they are a speeder upper for your system in many cases) and I find this one to work well.
I have been a Windows user since Windows Version 2 (which was a real dog) and I thought windows might amount to something when Versiion 3.11 came out. This was the version where I could network things fairly easily.
I have worked with computers since 1970 and I started working with what were called IBM clones in 1985. For various reasons have always purchased and used various utility software to fix and clean Microsoft things since the days of DOS (pronounced daws). One of the best was most certainly notably Norton Commander, and then there were System Mechanic, etc. Recently I found this software (and others like it) when I needed something and did not have time to get my existing software from the shelf which was 200 miles away at the time of need.
I tried a few of these free registry cleaners and found this one to have the most features and I especially like the feature whih allows me to configure which entries to leave out of the cleaning process. This feature was not there on the other free software I tried.
Hey, I am not endorsing or recommending you use this stuff as better than the rest of the software available. My testing wasn't in any way scientific. I am just letting you know that this worked fairly well for me and I continue to use it.
Try it, you might like it!
Lincoln - default -
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04 December 08 - 10:10W T F ? ? ?
Jerry sent me an email that was hillarious. It describes a town called, you may have guessed from the picture, Fucking, Austria. The local folk pronounce this in the Germanic manner making it "fooking" as said in Austria instead of "fu-ucking" as you might say in Texas.
I even checked this out myself at Snopes, I coudn't believe a town had such a name.
Think of the possibilities with this town's name.....
Anyways, I mentioned the British because apparently British tourists flock to this place to steal the signs. Poor Fucking town has to put the Fucking signs in concrete. The locals are tired of having their Fucking signs stolen. Anyway, these are some questions raised about the town in Jerry's email.....
What is the Fucking weather like?
Are the residents called Fuckers?
What are the mothers called?
What would you buy at the Fucking store?
Do the Fucking people like living there?
If your friend came from another town, he wouldn't be your Fucking friend.
Is this town Fucking hard to find?
Can you buy a Fucking T-Shirt?
Maybe at this web site. www.fucking.at/fucking/. (Except I can't fucking figure it out.)
Oops, sorry.
Lincoln - default -
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02 December 08 - 23:40What's the case with a dozen lawyers buried up to their necks?
Recent headline-
Lawyer says: Trampled NY worker lacked crowd training
I'm not even reading beyound this headline. The entire concept that Walmart employees (or Target employees, or Macy's employees, or Penney's employees, . . .you get the picture) should be expected to be given "crowd training." The story is plain and simple. Lawyers are unconstrained in our society in any meaningful way in this type of suit. They can create and dispense a false reality to the jury and use that as the basis to bilk money out of others, nearly always those with deep pockets.
I once heard that lawyers don't base decisions to do "pro bono" (free for the public good, yea right) work on the legitimacy, legality, or reality of the situation. They only gauge their chance to win. If they think they can win, it's "how much."
Twice I have sought legal help from lawyers in my life and both times I was told I was right, I could probably win my case, but there was no money in it. The cost of retaining the lawyer in either case was high enough that I was discouraged from going further.
The chance to sue Walmart for specious reasons is a much better bet. Maybe I can burn my groin with McDonalds coffee and get a million or two. After all, that loud blonde gal, Greta, from Fox News thinks that the McDonalds burning bush lawsuit was a reasonable case, but, then,
she's a lawyer.
Update, I just read that some of the customers are suing as well. Yup, this could have just been avoided with a bit of training, and might I add, a crystal ball.
Lawyers never saw deep pockets they didn't want to get their hands into.
Reason be damned. Anyway, I'd like to say some more, but I need to go to my crowd control seminar.
[Not enough dirt.]
Lincoln - default -
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