virtualeconomics

Gaming analysis by satellite

Via MR - UBS analysts following Wal*Mart in the US have started using satellites to count how many cars are in Wal*Mart parking lots and basing their analysis on that.

Free money therefore available for anyone with the time and inclination to drive a lot of cars into some Wal*Mart lots and take a big short position. Or even (my colleague Tom suggests) just stacking cardboard cars into the lots - how good does a cardboard car have to be before a casual look at a satellite photo won't spot the difference?

Aiding and abetting the spammers

Being at something of a loose end on Sunday, I spent a little time writing back to one of the spammers that regularly plagues my company with spurious offers - since I wrote the email mostly for my own amusement and cannot imagine the broken pidgin of my probably Chinese correspondent was up to appreciating the effort I went to, I thought I'd share it with you guys.

Dear Angela

Thank you for your email. We do not intend to buy any domains from you or do business with you in any way. Since you have asked for an explanation and I am a generous and indulgent man I will offer one – you are running a very, very obvious scam and only a simpleton would fall for it. When fishing for companies to ensnare in this scam in future, you may wish to consider some or all of the following

(1) Your basic story makes not an iota of sense. You apparently contacted me because “another company in the UK” applied to you to register some URLs which bear a passing similarity to URLs used by my company. Why would you ever contact me about such a thing? Assuming for the sake of argument that another UK company has placed such an order with you, why not simply process that order and take their money rather than take the extraordinary risk of breaching their confidentiality to go trawling for third parties who might be interested in thwarting your client’s instructions?

(2)    My name is not Claire. Legitimate businesses generally tend to get this bit right, not least because it appears in both the “from” field of all my emails and in the footer where people invariably list their own names.

(3)    Legitimate businesses do not customarily send emails during the very early hours of Sunday morning.

(4)    You have contacted me, and indeed give every appearance of still being unwittingly in correspondence with me, about two entirely separate domains that I manage. At no time have you appeared to realise that both of these conversations are with the same company, let alone the same individual (which may at least shed some light on the delusion that my name is Claire), so we have somehow managed to carry out much the same conversation twice.

(5)    At least one of the things you propose to sell to me does not in fact exist. What do you even imagine I would be paying for if I was to buy “global protection for my company’s keyword”?

I confess that I have rather enjoyed our conversations – the feeble transparency of your scam has at least removed any element of doubt, and while it hardly constitutes a public service to point out to you where you went most obviously wrong I trust that in future communications you will make some similarly childish error which will entirely give the game away. However, since I really do not plan to give you any money I must insist that this be the last time we correspond, and while I cannot precisely wish you good luck, hoping as I do that no-one is ever foolish enough to do business with you, I will at least wish you very good health and the sense to find a different line of work before you actually starve.

Yours etc

Seamus

Demolishing the graduate tax

Today's game for the blogosphere seems to be demolishing the graduate tax. Actual Journalists have done the heavy lifting of working out how much more the tax would cost each graduate, so here's a rag-bag of unintended consequences I thought I'd throw out there for shits and giggles

(1) no-one will complete a degree or technically "graduate", however graduating comes to be defined by HMRC. They will complete the requirements of the course right up to that point and then drop out before the exams, accepting that their first employer will apply a slight risk premium to their first salary and that everyone thereafter will accept that they de facto completed the course to an employable standard. Possibly genuine professional qualifications (lawyers, vets) would bear the tax, but it hardly seems likley for lawyers to take that fall practically alone

(2) since the tax is intended to recover the cost of higher education presumably I can simply study for a degree in America and come back afterwards to take up my first job untaxed. So our universities will only cater to people who cannot count, people who are terminally ill and the poor, since anyone who can afford the cheaper long-term option of paying the flat fee will do that instead. Alternatively the tax will fall on graduates of any university anywhere, in which case what cost is it recouping?

(3) non-UK graduates will be cheaper to employ as they will need a relatively lower salary than their UK counterparts to achieve the same earnings. (There is something wonderfully suicidal about a government willing to implement a policy that will make it harder for voters to compete with unenfranchised foreign nationals.) Alternatively the tax will fall on all graduates of any nationality making the UK simply a less attractive place for skilled mobile labour

(4) Unscrupulous universities in poorly-regulated or politically inpenetrable territories (say the former USSR, the Middle East or China) will charge a premium for degrees which they will be "selective" in admitting the candidate has achieved. Employers - sure. HMRC? No thanks.

(5) Since the UK government will be almost alone in administering the rules on the graduate tax scrupulously and fairly, no graduate will work for the government, unless the government pays a 5% premium.