Everyone knows how to play solitaire. It’s the second most fun thing to do by yourself with a computer.
Hundreds upon thousands of people have wasted time playing the somewhat pointless game.
Mathematicians have figured that between 82% and 92% of solitaire games are winnable.
Surprisingly, mathematicians have figured out how to beat the game.
Take blackjack. In 1962, Edward Thorpe wrote Beat The Dealer, outlining basic strategy and card counting. Countless other thinkers have figured out odds and statistics of every possible way of playing the game.
Stanford University have figured out a method for increasing the chances of winning, but not how to get to that magic 82%.
“ Many people play this game every day, yet simple questions such as What is the chance of winning? How does this chance depend on the version I play? What is a good strategy? remain beyond mathematical analysis”- Solitaire: Man Versus Machine
Of course, the best strategy is to hit Shift + Alt + 2.
Now if anyone can help me beat Angry Birds, I’m all ears…
First and foremost, I don’t need to be reminded I need to lose a few kilograms by a crudely drawn animated gif.
Secondly, the ad links to a scam.
According to website Gawker, the scam plays out like this.
An animated ad, featuring an inflating and defalting stomach, catches your eye, and you click through, landing on a site called ConsumerOnlineTips.com or WeeklyHealthNews.com or something like that.
You are presented with glowing testimonials falsely attributed to ABC, CNN and USA Today. A fake TV hottie from “Channel 7″ might pretend to “investigate” the product in question (her initial skepticism is quickly overcome!).
You are sent to a third site and asked for a credit card number to order “free” or trial samples. The number is presumably solicited for shipping costs or a nominal cost. The scammers then go to town on your card with bogus charges, according to a lawsuit filed by the FTC. In at least some cases, there was very fine print warning you that you were agreeing to a “free” sample followed by two $80 samples. Ha.
The FTC in the US is cracking down on these scams and also on website who make money by showing the advertisments.
Based on the number of times I’ve seen it, there will be a lot of charges laid.
You’ve probably heard now about the woman from Spartenburg, South Carolina who paid $180 for an iPad in a McDonald’s car park. When she got home, she opened the package to find it was made from wood and she’d been scammed.
When the con artists felt the need to make the iPad look like that is beyond me. Was it meant to actually fool her? Or were they just rubbing salt in the woman’s wound?
Weird thing is, the same swindlers (or one’s matching their description) showed up in the same city and pulled the same scam again, this time scamming the victim into buying a $250 laptop that turned out to be made of paper.
I would have paid $250 if the paper laptop looked like this.
Are Spartenburg people really gullible or are their con artists just really ballsy?
Imagine you’ve been chatting with this nice Nigerian gentleman who would like your help cleaning several million dollars in black money that he claims has been treated with dark ink for ’security purposes.’
If you pay a few thousand bucks to the men, they’ll clean the money and give you half.
You’re not sure about this and so you google ‘black money cleaning’
At the top of the page you see two advertisements for companies that specialise in the process: Anzia and Century1.
You click on the links and find information that verifies the men’s claims.
So you hand over the cash.
In reality of course, the whole thing is a scam. There is no such thing as black money.
The con artists have paid google to advertised their fake businesses. Google are not just taking money from the swindlers, they are actively helping them promote their cause. They may even be considered accessories.
Even the search engine regular results support the swindler’s claims. Over the ten links on the front page, one is the wikipedia page explaining the fraud and one is a blog about scams.
The rest of the links are created by con artists to promote the swindle.
You can watch dailymotion/youtube videos, visit facebook pages and buy products on alibaba. All related to black money cleaning.
Google’s mission statement has always been “You can make money without doing evil”. I don’t know about evil, but this does seem a little dodgy.
Ever wondered why it is that people keeping on throwing money down on the roulette wheel, even when they’ve already lost?
Can’t understand why suckers keeping sending money to Nigerian swindlers even though they never deliver.
The answer could be found in economist Martin Shubik’s Dollar Auction game.
Imagine an auction where two people are bidding for a dollar.
The two bidders take it in turn to make a bid for the buck.
The catch is, everything they bid, they have to pay. So if you bid a single cent, you’ll make 99 cents profit. Unless the other person bids 2 cents, in which case you lose your penny.
Eventually, the first player bids 99 cents, accepting a simple penny as payment for their effort. The second sees any hope of profit dissolving, but they do see a hope of breaking even. Only one penny more and they can walk away ’square.’ They bid a dollar. The first player now has a choice; it’s silly to bid over a dollar on a dollar. But it’s even more silly to give up 99 cents. Paying a little more minimizes their loss. In the end, both will bid far more than a dollar, putting them in debt, in the hope of making the smallest loss.
The same thing happens when we gamble or give money to a con artist. Rather than just cutting our losses and going home, we keep on betting and believing, hoping to recoup at least some of our losses, unwilling to admit that we’ve been played for fooled.
Remember It’s A Wonderful Life? When Jimmy Stewart offered to lasso the moon for Donna Reed?
If you love that saccharine stuff, you’re going to love the latest swindle to rear its head in Australia.
Swindlers are claiming they can sell you a chunk of the moon, offering lunar land packages at sixty bucks per square kilometre.
The company, Moontastic, is doing the same thing that American star and lunar sellers have been doing for years, selling off property that the owner can never actually claim.
The whole scam reminds me of Gregor McGregor, the Scottish con man from the nineteenth century who invented a fictional country called Poyais. 240 victims paid to settle the new country. 180 of them died looking for the non-existent land.
Once you’ve paid the earth for the moon, you get a certificate that the company owner calls “a bonafide statements of intention to own.” You don’t own it, you just ‘intend’ to own it. In the same way that I ‘intend’ to lose 10 kilos and do my taxes on time.
The scam isn’t illegal but the secretary of the Space Industry Association of Australia Michael Davis said it best.
“Just because there is no law prohibiting something does not mean it is lawful and legitimate.”
Or maybe I’m just a cold hearted old cynic who can’t see this for the romantic gesture that it is.
I did a gig about ten years ago for a festival that failed to pay me. After months of emails and phone calls, I finally got a check for…$35 less than I was owed.
I rang the organiser who said “yeah, you got paid last and got all the money left in the account. But it’s only $35 right?”
I was furious. It was only $35, but it was my $35.
Now, ten years later, I find myself getting angry about another $35.
This time, the $35 isn’t just mine. It’s your’s.
If you visit a Coles or K-Mart or a McDonalds in Australia and pay less than $35 with a card, you won’t be asked for a PIN or signature. You don’t need to prove who you are. In other words, anyone can take your card and use it at these shops.
You can’t opt out or go to another bank because the Fast Pay system is an industry wide policy. Every card from every bank is now open to small scale fraud.
It doesn’t matter if you don’t go to Coles, K-Mart or McDonalds because it is the con artists who are taking advantage of the system.
I spoke this afternoon with Judy Shaw from VISA who was the only person I could find willing to discuss the issue. Coles, K-Mart, McDonalds and the banks I called all ducked the issue or ignored me.
Judy stated that the system is low risk because a) Fast Pay only applies on transactions $35 or less and b) you will get your money back if you get scammed (after going to your bank and requesting a fraud report and waiting several weeks).
However, none of this explains why the big banks feel it necessary to save 20 seconds at the check out by not asking for the PIN or signature. All of those twenty seconds saved will get added up and lumped onto the poor sod who has to go chasing down their thirty bucks later on.
I reminds me of a dodgy housemates who steals money from your wallet and then, when you complain, rolls his eyes and says. “It’s only a few bucks. I’ll pay you back. Just chillax man.”
Where is the opportunity to opt out of the system?
We should be able to go the bank and tick and box that means a PIN or signature is required for all transactions.
Credit card fraud is on the rise. Skimmers and card duplicators are rife. It’s never been more risky to use a credit, dedit or key card. Why make things less safe?
But I’ve got to relax. It’s taking me back to ten years ago when I yelled at a festival organiser for stiffing me.
Con artists have a habit of honing in on the desperate, the credulous and the zealous.
And there are few people more desperate, credulous and zealous than the fans of Harry Potter.
After all, they stumped up money twice to see that last book split into two separate films when there is barely enough material for one.
That is why, despite having more money than the US economy, J.K. Rowling has created Pottermore, a chance to re-read all of the books online plus get access to extra bonus material deemed too crappy to put in the actual books.
Rowling opened the website for a few weeks to a small number of people who had the chance to access the half finished site. To participate, you had to jump through more hoops than a quidditch quaffle answering trivia questions and following links.
And this is when the con artists showed up.
Websites started popped up offering people free access to the site if they would only hand over some personal details.
Other con artists hit eBay, selling fake accounts at one hundred dollars a pop.
Worse still, some users have found themselves accidentally signing up to premium services lines, like daily horoscopes, thinking they are getting their daily dose of Potter.
This all happened despite the fact the site was closed down two days ago until the official launch in October.
So until these scammers get caught and locked up in Azkaban or have their souls sucked by dementors, just take a deep breath, relax and remind yourself that it’s only a book.
