American companies have tried to respond to the massive fraud being perpetrated online. One common preventive, adopted by most companies that sell products online, has been to refuse shipments outside of North America, or allow international shipping, except for Eastern Europe. Criminals have figured out a way around this, however. They hire folks to act as middlemen for them. Basically, these people get paid to sit at home, sign for packages from Dell, Amazon, and other companies, and then turn around and reship the packages to Russia, Belorussia, and Ukraine. You know those signs you see on telephone poles that read "Make money! Work at home!"? A lot of that "work" is actually laundering products for the Russian mob. Of course, anyone caught acting as a middleman denies knowledge of their employer: "I had no idea why I was shipping 25 Dell computers a day to Minsk! I just assumed they liked computers!"
Dave also had a great quotation for us: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them. So what do they do? By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none.
Two hours into an afternoon-long interview with the Hebrew-speaking Badirs, my translator's lips lock. He shrugs and tells me that the Badirs have shifted into a secret code. Ramy later explains that as kids he and Muzher developed their own language - reordering letters in mathematically complex ways - after they discovered that other boys were snooping on their conversations.
Ramy, Muzher, and Shadde were arrested on a variety of charges relating to computer fraud in connection with their hacks of the radio station and Bency Levy's phone sex operation. Police took them from their home in wrist and leg cuffs, but even in custody, they could not help but show off by conversing in their secret language and announcing telephone numbers that were being keyed in by law enforcers.
"The blogging community is terribly incestuous," Lapatine admits. "If the relationship doesn't go well, all your mutual friends will read about it. This," he adds, "is how a friend of mine learned that he had halitosis and was a bad dancer."
Some bloggers run into difficulties from seemingly mundane reports about their daily thoughts and activities. "As an Asian girl, I get weird Asian-fetish e-mails from people who read [my] site," says Lia Bulaong, the twentysomething Manhattan author of Cheesedip (she includes tame photographs of herself in everyday clothes). "Also, stalkers I had in college that I didn't know about have come out of the woodwork."
Did she do any brilliant scientific feats in the books/radio series, though, or was all that incidental to the plot?
I think it was just in there to make her seem like more of a catch (and therefore Arthur more disappointed). And of course because the apparent uselessness of such prestigious degrees as she had was funny.
Of course, the yanks will undoubtedly make her all "proactive", probably writing in a scene where she saves Arthur and Ford's asses from the CGI vl'hurgs or whatever.
Given Hollywood's track record in trashing cult mythoses into glorpitude, I can't say my hopes are high for this.
Everywhere, goths and fanboys are breathing a sigh of relief that Warner Brothers never got around to making their Sandman film. You know, the one with Dream as a dark, brooding superhero battling the evil Corinthian, and being saved by the love of the lead actress's character.
(Btw, isn't the plural of mythos "mythoi"?)
(Checks M-W) Ah yeah. You learn something new everyday.
Well let's see how it compares to:
The Judge Dredd movie
The Doctor Who movie
Judge Dredd was kind of trashy, though. My cousin used to have a lot of 2000AD comics.
I still have a lot of 2000 AD comics. In fact im catching up on about 3 months worth because I misplaced a couple of issues (since found) and didn't want to lose the continuity!
I've heard the new Judge Dredd vs Death game is pretty good, but I rarely play PC games these days.
Trillian *is* a brilliant scientist. She's a highly trained astrophysicist. At least she is in the radio series and books.. "beautiful, charming, devastatingly intelligent." One degree in maths and another in astrophysics. Just a shame they cast bloody Sandra "Squeaky" Dickinson in the TV show.