dmcowen674
No Lifer
Georgia's stat of 59 cents a second has finally been broken:
5-20-2005 Coasting to a white-knuckle world record
TRENTON, NJ - The idea of paying nearly 1,700 dollars to be catapulted up a vertical incline the height of a 45-story building at 130 miles per hour comes naturally to the likes of Jeremy Delong.
Worth every cent," the 22-year-old naval serviceman from Ohio concluded as he disembarked from the maiden run Thursday of "Kingda Ka" -- the world's newest, tallest and fastest roller coaster.
With the entire ride lasting under a minute, the thrill cost Delong 33 dollars per second, after he bid 1,692 dollars on the Internet auction house eBay for the right to be on the first run.
Installed at the Six Flags Theme Park near Trenton, New Jersey, the monster ride uses a hydraulic launch system to slingshot riders horizontally from 0 to 205 kilometers (128 miles) per hour in 3.5 sickening seconds.
The momentum flings the 18-seater train into a 90 degree climb to a height of 139 meters (456 feet), followed by a vertical plunge through a three-quarter spiral and a final jaunt over a 39-meter (129-foot) high "camel hump."
To put the velocity of Kingda Ka into perspective, a Ferrari 360 Modena takes one more second to accelerate to half the speed.
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I put this in the same thread to not clutter DC up. Here is a related story. It is related because at the time what happened to me was considered "Cybercrime" and the Georgia Attorney General called it "the worst case the State had ever seen in terms of costing the State money".
I am sure real Cybercrime has cost the State real money now to the tune of millions of dollars.
5-21-2005 Feds Intensify Crackdown On Cybercrime
In an unmarked building in downtown Washington, Brian K. Nagel and 15 other Secret Service agents manned a high-tech command center, poised for the largest-ever roundup of a cybercrime gang. A huge map of the U.S., spread across 12 digital screens, gave them a view of their prey, from Arizona to New Jersey. It was Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004, and Operation Firewall was about to be unleashed. The target: the ShadowCrew, a gang whose members were schooled in identity theft, bank account pillage, and the fencing of ill-gotten wares on the Web, police say.
At 9 p.m., Nagel, the Secret Service's assistant director for investigations, issued the "go" order. Agents armed with Sig-Sauer 229 pistols and MP5 semi-automatic machine guns swooped in, aided by local cops and international police.
Twenty-eight members were arrested, most still at their computers.
"The wave of the future is getting inside these groups, developing intelligence, and taking them down," says Christopher M.E. Painter, deputy chief of the Computer Crime section of the Justice Dept., who will help prosecute ShadowCrew members at a trial scheduled for October.
-infiltrating hacker groups, monitoring their chatter on underground networks, and when they can, busting the baddies before they do any more damage.
In late April, leads supplied by the FBI and eBay Inc. helped Romanian police round up 11 members of a gang that set up fake eBay accounts and auctioned off cell phones, laptops, and cameras they never intended to deliver. "We're getting smarter every day," says Larkin.
This makes the hacker hunters an eclectic bunch. Larkin ends up working in tandem with people like Mikko H. Hypponen, director of antivirus research at Finnish security outfit F-Secure Corp. Larkin is a straitlaced, 45-year-old native of Indiana, Pa., who honed his skills during Operation Illwind, the 1980s investigation into kickbacks paid to Pentagon officials by defense contractors. Hypponen is a 35-year-old computer whiz who lives on an island southwest of Helsinki populated by fewer than 100 people and a herd of moose.
On a Rampage
There's a clear reason for this newfound collaboration:
The bad guys are winning.
They're stealing more money, swiping more identities, wrecking more corporate computers, and breaking into more secure networks than ever before.
Total damage last year was at least $17.5 billion
The Secret Service won't discuss the funding breakdown for cybercrime. Both agencies are aggressively lobbying Congress for more money.
Cybercrime laws haven't been much of a help.
Hacking into computer networks was long seen as little more than a prank, and punishment was typically a slap on the wrist. That's beginning to change, however.
Prosecutors are starting to make aggressive use of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, which carries penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
The lengthiest sentence so far has been nine years, issued last December. Now prosecutors plan to send a message with the ShadowCrew case. Several members face prison sentences of 5 to 10 years if convicted. "There have to be consequences," says Painter.
<Rest of article snipped, it is extensive on the complexity of Shadowcrew, good read>
=======================================================
Many in here have to laugh at the maximum 9 yr sentence, Georgia had me facing 120 yrs and nearly $1 million dollars in fines & restitution.
5-20-2005 Coasting to a white-knuckle world record
TRENTON, NJ - The idea of paying nearly 1,700 dollars to be catapulted up a vertical incline the height of a 45-story building at 130 miles per hour comes naturally to the likes of Jeremy Delong.
Worth every cent," the 22-year-old naval serviceman from Ohio concluded as he disembarked from the maiden run Thursday of "Kingda Ka" -- the world's newest, tallest and fastest roller coaster.
With the entire ride lasting under a minute, the thrill cost Delong 33 dollars per second, after he bid 1,692 dollars on the Internet auction house eBay for the right to be on the first run.
Installed at the Six Flags Theme Park near Trenton, New Jersey, the monster ride uses a hydraulic launch system to slingshot riders horizontally from 0 to 205 kilometers (128 miles) per hour in 3.5 sickening seconds.
The momentum flings the 18-seater train into a 90 degree climb to a height of 139 meters (456 feet), followed by a vertical plunge through a three-quarter spiral and a final jaunt over a 39-meter (129-foot) high "camel hump."
To put the velocity of Kingda Ka into perspective, a Ferrari 360 Modena takes one more second to accelerate to half the speed.
=======================================================
I put this in the same thread to not clutter DC up. Here is a related story. It is related because at the time what happened to me was considered "Cybercrime" and the Georgia Attorney General called it "the worst case the State had ever seen in terms of costing the State money".
I am sure real Cybercrime has cost the State real money now to the tune of millions of dollars.
5-21-2005 Feds Intensify Crackdown On Cybercrime
In an unmarked building in downtown Washington, Brian K. Nagel and 15 other Secret Service agents manned a high-tech command center, poised for the largest-ever roundup of a cybercrime gang. A huge map of the U.S., spread across 12 digital screens, gave them a view of their prey, from Arizona to New Jersey. It was Tuesday, Oct. 26, 2004, and Operation Firewall was about to be unleashed. The target: the ShadowCrew, a gang whose members were schooled in identity theft, bank account pillage, and the fencing of ill-gotten wares on the Web, police say.
At 9 p.m., Nagel, the Secret Service's assistant director for investigations, issued the "go" order. Agents armed with Sig-Sauer 229 pistols and MP5 semi-automatic machine guns swooped in, aided by local cops and international police.
Twenty-eight members were arrested, most still at their computers.
"The wave of the future is getting inside these groups, developing intelligence, and taking them down," says Christopher M.E. Painter, deputy chief of the Computer Crime section of the Justice Dept., who will help prosecute ShadowCrew members at a trial scheduled for October.
-infiltrating hacker groups, monitoring their chatter on underground networks, and when they can, busting the baddies before they do any more damage.
In late April, leads supplied by the FBI and eBay Inc. helped Romanian police round up 11 members of a gang that set up fake eBay accounts and auctioned off cell phones, laptops, and cameras they never intended to deliver. "We're getting smarter every day," says Larkin.
This makes the hacker hunters an eclectic bunch. Larkin ends up working in tandem with people like Mikko H. Hypponen, director of antivirus research at Finnish security outfit F-Secure Corp. Larkin is a straitlaced, 45-year-old native of Indiana, Pa., who honed his skills during Operation Illwind, the 1980s investigation into kickbacks paid to Pentagon officials by defense contractors. Hypponen is a 35-year-old computer whiz who lives on an island southwest of Helsinki populated by fewer than 100 people and a herd of moose.
On a Rampage
There's a clear reason for this newfound collaboration:
The bad guys are winning.
They're stealing more money, swiping more identities, wrecking more corporate computers, and breaking into more secure networks than ever before.
Total damage last year was at least $17.5 billion
The Secret Service won't discuss the funding breakdown for cybercrime. Both agencies are aggressively lobbying Congress for more money.
Cybercrime laws haven't been much of a help.
Hacking into computer networks was long seen as little more than a prank, and punishment was typically a slap on the wrist. That's beginning to change, however.
Prosecutors are starting to make aggressive use of the Computer Fraud & Abuse Act, which carries penalties of up to 20 years in prison.
The lengthiest sentence so far has been nine years, issued last December. Now prosecutors plan to send a message with the ShadowCrew case. Several members face prison sentences of 5 to 10 years if convicted. "There have to be consequences," says Painter.
<Rest of article snipped, it is extensive on the complexity of Shadowcrew, good read>
=======================================================
Many in here have to laugh at the maximum 9 yr sentence, Georgia had me facing 120 yrs and nearly $1 million dollars in fines & restitution.
