In September, an enterprising bandit robbed an armored car aided by unwitting accomplices hired through a Craigslist ad, and then escaped by floating down a nearby creek in an inner tube.
On Monday, a suspect was nabbed by police officers and FBI agents outside a Target store in Monroe, Washington, and charged with the hold-up.
Saturday, 29 May 2004
A schoolboy posed as a female British secret service spy in an internet chatroom to persuade a friend to try to murder him, a court heard yesterday.
The boy, John, now 15, groomed a 16-year-old boy, Mark (both pseudonyms to protect the children), with an “elaborate matrix of deceit” involving six fictional characters in the MSN chatroom and correspondence totalling 56,000 lines of text.
The fictions created by John, then 14, convinced Mark that he was murdering someone who had a terminal brain tumour.
He was told that his reward would be money, a job as a British secret service agent and sex with the spy, whom he believed was a middle-aged woman.
In fact, John was determined to get himself killed…
Now I know that Craigslist is good for a lot of things but this is novel:
Armored truck robber uses Craigslist to make getaway
“I came across the ad that was for a prevailing wage job for $28.50 an hour,” said Mike, who saw a Craigslist ad last week looking for workers for a road maintenance project in Monroe.
He said he inquired and was e-mailed back with instructions to meet near the Bank of America in Monroe at 11 a.m. Tuesday. He also was told to wear certain work clothing.
“Yellow vest, safety goggles, a respirator mask…and, if possible, a blue shirt,” he said.
Mike showed up along with about a dozen other men dressed like him, but there was no contractor and no road work to be done. He thought they had been stood up until he heard about the bank robbery and the suspect who wore the same attire.
Civil.ge, the Georgian news site, is under cyber attack by the Russians. Their news output was moved to Google’s Blogspot at http://civilgeorgia.blogspot.com/ to keep the information flowing about what’s going on in Georgia. Google has the infrastructure and resources to defend against these attacks.
It seems that Georgia is cyber-locked just like a land-locked country has no access to the sea. Cyber-locked countries rely too heavily on a handful of connections through hostile countries like Russia for their network access to the outside world.
Today marks the beginning of the third year of The Confidential Resource blog.
Today’s work has been downright strange.
First I was asked to research the online antics of one of those annoying individuals often found on blogs and forums. I found some very immodest pictures of her on a lesbian dating service. That led to a treasure trove of artfully composed pictures of her doing some unusual sexual gymnastics. I don’t know if any of this was relevant to the original research mandate, but it was interesting.
Right on the heels of that, I was asked to find a field telephone for use during an extended rural surveillance. It seems the subject was a Ham radio operator and scanner fanatic. I found a field telephone that was voice powered. I hope they have fun lugging around a mile and a half of wire.
Strong Canadian dollar said hurting pot exports
VANCOUVER, British Columbia (Reuters) - The strong Canadian dollar has hit the illegal marijuana sector just as it has other industries that export to the United States…
When most people hear the word Investigator, they immediately think of Police Detectives or Private Investigators. However, any act of inquiry is investigation. The word research derives from Middle French; its literal meaning is to investigate.
Some of the best Investigators I know have nothing to do with policing or the private investigation business. One of best Investigators I know is a fund manager. He manages a fund that invests in companies that may strike it rich and become take-over targets. He travels the world looking for these investment opportunities.
He must collect data from diverse sources in many languages. He interviews people who are often hostile, dishonest, and dangerous. He reviews economic data and forecasts, accounting data, government documents, court records, and corporate filings. Through all this he must sift, to discover companies that represent worthwhile investment opportunities.
Doing all this, when he is the only guy without a gun, in frequently hostile and volatile environments, is not for the feint-hearted or the simple-minded. He is a true Investigator.
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No, you may not ask how I found this.
Jared Benedict held 56,000 USGS maps for ransom. Benedict purchased the 56,000 public domain maps on CD-ROM from USGS. He then asked Internet denizens for donations to recoup his cost of $1600. This was met in 24 hours. All the maps are now freely accessable at the Internet Archive!
Does this strategy bring anything to mind?
The nomenclature of big numbers varies depending on who writes them.
In the USA, a billion is 109 (a 1 followed by 9 zeroes) and a trillion is 1012. This seems straight-forward until you realize that Americans spell differently than the British and other Commonwealth countries. Some further thought might be in order.
In the UK and Germany, a billion is 1012 and a trillion is 1018. Now this makes more sense to me.
Bi means twice or 1 million squared for a billion, or 1012, as 1 million is 106. Tri is three times, or 1018, or 1 million cubed. The same follows for quadrillion being 1 million to the 4th power, or 1024, rather than the American 1015.
This confusion means having to get clarification on all large numbers unless all the zeroes are present, or they come from a recent article written by a bona fide Economist or Statistician who will use the American interpretation of these large numbers.
Now I’m sure you’ll never be confused by this again!
Here’s a link to Fortune 500 Business Blogging Wiki, with 32 company Blogs identified. This is a directory of Fortune 500 companies that have active public blogs by company employees about the company and/or its products. It also lists the Fortun 500 companies alphabetically.
Another similar, but smaller Wiki called the Global 1,000 Business Blogging also exists.
Foreign policy will be one of the main issues in the next election. Embassy, Canada’s Foreign Policy Newsweekly, is one of the sources we use to stay informed.
The word research derives from Middle French; its literal meaning is ‘to investigate thoroughly’.
(please visit Wikipedia for more details)
