Cyber Con Is Just Like Old Crimes
Sun Herald
Sunday April 22, 2001
EVEN cyber crime is going back to the old economy. A New York waiter has raided the accounts of the rich and famous, including Steven Spielberg, Ted Turner and Oprah Winfrey, by e-mail with an old-fashioned twist. He apparently conned credit agencies with official looking letters from investment banks requesting credit reports which contain Social Security and credit card numbers and even mothers' maiden names which he e-mailed to the banks.
Crisis, what crisis?
THE slump in the building industry is no doubt real, but where exactly is it? Finding a tradesman is no easier and, reports Glenn Maynard of The Mortgage Store, builders are pre-booked two years out in the leafier and inner city parts of Sydney.
Sign of the times ...
A SIGN at an ANZ Sydney branch says ``This branch operates with limited cash facilities". At least that's what it tried to say. An obviously impatient customer has crossed out cash and scrawled ``staff".
... and sign language
SPEAKING of signs, ING Bank has successfully eradicated any chance appearance of Mercantile Mutual. The switch to the new name has been helpfully explained by MD John Wylie. ``We are now increasingly leveraging ideas and innovations, operational synergies, development costs and the global pool of management expertise for the benefit of our clients here and the name change reflects that capability." Oh.
Not sitting so Pretty
IT seems Telstra's Ted Pretty was onto something when he ditched his casual look for a suit and tie. An article in The Economist, being circulated by the Tie Rack shop (they would, wouldn't they?), reports the suit and tie are back in fashion in what's left of dotcomland. Noting the ``vision of an open-neck future was but a mirage" the magazine said the old hemline theory about the higher they went, the better the times, might now apply to suits. The more suits worn, the worse the economy. ``The suit is the perfect attire for hard economic times," it concluded.
Rational explanation
And while dotcomland might be down and out, it is still generating news speak. The latest is a webinar, which presumably is something that happens on the internet. Rational Software surely a contradiction in terms will host a webinar on ``the essence of an effective software development and the basic principles of the Rational Unified Process". See you there.
© 2001 Sun Herald