Posts by Steve Taylor

Phone credit transfers

> So, please pardon my ignorance when I ask, is this transfer of credit from one PAYG phone to someone else's account a facility which is specific to Indonesia, or is it more widespread?

Widespread - I used to work for a company which did this with clients in Malaysia, the Philipines, Vietnam, India and Mexico.

No idea about the reality or otherwise of the virus, but SMS based phone credit transfers - and to a lesser extent real world purchasing - are big business.

Why click on an ad?

i) because I might want to buy the product in question. This does happen sometimes.

ii) because I like the site I'm reading and want to give the owner a tiny cash reward.

iii) because the advertiser sounds like a jerk and i want to levy a tiny fine on them.

Now what's so hard about that?

I loath any ads that animate, pop up windows, make noises or otherwise make me want to kill, but if they're just static clickable thingies I'm not all that fussed.

Prior art - 1975

> Poul Anderson had a similar idea in "Orion Shall Rise" way back in 1983 or thereabouts.

> Although, come to think of it, it's set in the future so it can't be prior art ...

Better yet, I remember reading a story called "Jill the Giant Killer" which proposed pitch bombing tornadoes to disrupt them, back in 1975. Still a wacky idea, but given that they're using bombs, not the planes themselves, and talking about tornadoes instead of hurricanes, probably not quite as wacky.

No doubt it was a silly story, but it had a big effect on me when I was 8 years old, so it's always stuck in my memory.

Here's a cover pic from the magazine I read it in, showing it in action:

http://www.amazon.com/Analog-Science-Fiction-Giant-Killer-Building/dp/B000KP4EVG