Uncle John's Presents Book of the Dumb 2 by John Michael Scalzi Page B

did Mr. Customer then have to pay for his lunch? And did he leave a tip? We’re guessing no on both counts.
    Source: CBS News

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Wireless Yet Stupid
    A s any geek will tell you, the hot trend in home computer geekery is wireless networks: with just a couple of wireless cards and about a day and a half of screaming technological hairpulling before you give up and pay your nephew a case of Mountain Dew to set everything up, you can compute effortlessly anywhere in your house, without wires. Truly, never have so many done so much in order to play online poker in so many nooks and crannies of the house.
    But there’s a dark side to wireless networking. If you’re not careful and don’t protect your connection, people can log into it anonymously and use it to do all sorts of bad things. Like Myron Tereshchuk, a fellow from Maryland who had it in for MicroPatent, a company in Connecticut. Tereshchuk believed the firm was in someway responsible for some of the misfortunes his own business had, and took to sending the company threatening e-mails and extortion demands.
    Normally something like that would be traceable—to be technical about it, you could look at the e-mail header and see the path the e-mail took from the sending computer to the receiving computer. But Tereshchuk masked his identity by driving around the Washington, DC, area and looking for unsecured wireless networks to log into; when he found one, he’d use it to mail off his threats. These and other tactics kept Tereshchuk one step ahead of the company he was trying to blackmail.
    So, yes, Tereshchuk did a fine job in covering his tracks on the technical front. But when it came to other aspects of identity obscuring, he was, well, less “ept.” For example, therewas that time he decided to attempt to extort $17 million from the MicroPatent, or else he’d release some corporate secrets he’d recovered; he demanded the company cut a check payable to “Myron Tereshchuk.” As they say, this was the big break investigators were looking for.
    One wonders why a man whose desire for anonymity caused him to drive around a major metropolitan area looking for home networks to hack into would suddenly just plop his name out there like fool. We suppose when $17 million is on the line, people’s thinking just gets a little fuzzy.
    Armed with a big fat honkin’ clue like Tereshchuk’s name, the FBI began following him around (at one point noting observing him driving erratically as he paid attention to something in the passenger seat—driving and Web browsing don’t mix) and eventually got a warrant for his house. Inside they found evidence linking him to the harassment of MicroPatent, as well as some other interesting goodies, like grenades and a recipe for ricin, a nasty poison. Clearly this fellow was just a ball of fun. Tereshchuk was hauled in and eventually pled guilty to “attempted extortion affecting commerce.”
    Oh well. It was a good plan. A technologically sneaky plan. Too bad the weakest link in Tereshchuk’s plan was himself.
    Source: The Register (UK), U.S. Department of Justice

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Insert “Fava Beans and a Nice Chianti” Joke Here
    E very now and again —by which you can understand to mean probably every fifteen seconds—some idiot somewhere in the world gets the bright idea to put up a joke auction listing on eBay, the world’s largest online auction site. Because who doesn’t enjoy a good joke auction?
    Well, we have two reasons to not file a joke auction on eBay. The first, of course, is that every joke auction eventually has to be taken down by some tech geek at eBay whose very expensive degree in information systems technology is being used to delete an attempt at auction-based humor. So whether or not the joke succeeds in being funny, removing it certainly isn’t the high point of the tech’s day.
    Also, there’s the outside chance that