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Marco Bertschi wrote: Hey, at least it seems like a new idea 😂
No it isn't; it's the same concept as the Spanish Prisoner[^] con from the 16th century.
Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose. 
If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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Now I've got Rush in my head. Thanks!! 
(da da da dump da da da dump dump da da da dah da da da dah)
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So I'm not the only one in that circumstance!
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Someone should update that Wikipedia page with this one though. Lost Nigerian astronaut is definitely a new twist to an old con.
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Well, I didn't know that (about the Spanish Prisoner con). Thanks for the link! 
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Spanish Prisoner? You might be on to a new one!
Subject: Nigerian Time Traveler needs Assistance for Rescue
REQUEST FOR ASSISTANCE-STRICTLY CONFIDENTIAL
I am Dr. Bakare Tunde, the researcher whose brother I sent back to the 16th century where he is being held prisoner. How do I know. He sent me a letter from back in that day to my house via Western Union, same as in Back To The Future III. So far, I know he is doing well but he may be killed for claiming that the world is round and many other unheard of ideas. Also, his Spanish is coming along quite well. I need the money to further my research and to send a rescue team.
YadaYada....
You get the idea.
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If you have an important point to make, don't try to be subtle or clever. Use a pile driver. Hit the point once. Then come back and hit it again. Then hit it a third time - a tremendous whack.
--Winston Churchill
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I read through the first paragraph of the Spanish Prisoner: "a confidence trick originating in the late 16th century. In its original form, the confidence trickster tells his victim (the mark) that he is (or is in correspondence with) a wealthy person of high estate who has been imprisoned in Spain under a false identity. Some versions had the imprisoned person being an unknown or remote relative of the mark. Supposedly the prisoner cannot reveal his identity without serious repercussions, and is relying on a friend (the confidence trickster) to raise money to secure his release. A classical Pigeon Drop game archetype, the confidence trickster offers to let the mark put up some of the funds, with a promise of a greater pecuniary reward upon release of the prisoner plus a non-pecuniary incentive, gaining the hand of a beautiful woman represented to be the prisoner's daughter. After the mark has turned over the funds, he is informed further difficulties have arisen, and more money is needed. With such explanations, the trickster continues to press for more money until the victim is cleaned out, or declines to put up more funds."
This sounds like some engineering projects that I have witnessed and been on. The promise is that the company will make a bundle of money from the project, but it is late. So the engineering managers go to the company CEO and ask for more money and time to get it done. (We're 95% done.) A month later, it is 99% done. Another month, unforeseen difficulties and it will drag on another two months. The company still has a promise of making a profit, not as large as before. So, more money is poured into that project pit. Finally, the company has wasted too much money and closes down, with not product to show for its effort. Such-as were the times of the old days. Entrepreneurs a vision and illusions of grandeur being conned by engineers who will try to make it happen.
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I never knew travelling to space is the cheapest way of making savings. 
I would stay 1000 years there. Dr Bakare could you help with some calculations?
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Its obvious this is not a nigerian.
I suspect that,like most of the scams labelled nigerian,this is another scam from U.S
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This needs to be a Bring Him Home meme 
I need an app that will automatically deliver a new BBBBBBBBaBB (beautiful blonde bimbo brandishing bountiful bobbing bare breasts and bodacious butt) every day.
John Simmons / outlaw programmer
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There's got to be a bar room song in there somewhere. We can sing while chugging our beers.
All together now 1, 2, 3...
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I second that - excellent talk and hilarious to boot!
Sincerely,
-Mark
mamiller@rhsnet.org
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Marco Bertschi wrote: Why wasn't this one caught in the filter
I would imagine because it's presented as a quote.
I am not a number. I am a ... no, wait!
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Has he tried reaching to the Nigerian Royal Family (princes et al.)? They surely have the money!
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C'mon folks, where's your heart? Somebody needs to set up a GoFundMe site to help this poor chap out! Maybe we can get Matt Damon to publicize it. If we can raise $50k we can hire Mark Wahlberg to emcee a telethon!
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Someone needs to feed the trolls or they become an endangered species. Thank the universe for James Veitch.[^]
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"He was stranded there in 1990 when the Soviet Union was dissolved."
"In the 14-years since"
Either something is wrong with the math here...or the second number is elapsed time from the astronaut's perspective and he's going really elephanting fast!!!
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Welcome to XXI century!
And just remember: "the only constant is the change" ja ja ja.
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So last week we got a new Virtual Machine with Visual Studio 2015 installed.
With this project we're coming from 2010, so I was pretty excited as I've worked with 2015 before and it has so much improvements!
Check out the project and... Visual Studio 2015 crashes... It happens.
Open it up again and for some reason I can't open a cshtml file.
Restart. Cache is out of date. Restart. Can't load unit tests (getting it to work required me to unload all non-test projects). Restart. Something else crashed...
WHAT THE HELL MICROSOFT!? 
Then I checked out the project on my laptop with the Visual Studio 2015 Community Edition and everything worked like a charm.
Back to the VM and nothing but trouble.
So screw working in a VM I'll work on my laptop (we've got VM's for different VPN clients, different versions of the same tools, etc.).
Let me first update my laptop though, apparently I've got some Visual Studio Update 1 pending.
Installed and... I get the same problems on my laptop!
WHAT THE HELL MICROSOFT!?
I just de-installed Visual Studio on my laptop and I'm now doing a clean install (with Update 1).
If that doesn't work I'm going to look for an older installer without Update 1.
Anyone else has these problems?
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VS2015 is a hog compared to VS2013 (which in itself was one, but better than 2010).
Disable perftip, diagnostic tools and stuff like that. Limit also autocomplete background to 2 threads insteaf of maximum (15). Even the full debug symbols load (both MS and private), the browser we supply in the product - I'm talking about Bitdefender full consumer product - which in itself is CEF-based which 1.5+ GB .pdb just for one file, libcef.pdb and still is not that bad as perftip + diagtools.
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Cristian Amarie wrote: Disable perftip, diagnostic tools
Where do you go to disable these?
If it's not broken, fix it until it is
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Tools > Options > Debugging > General
for "Enable Diagnostic Tools while debugging" and "Show elapsed PerfTip when debugging"
Text Editor > C/C++ > Advanced => Intellisense
Auto Tune Max Cached Transation -> False
Max Cached Translation Units -> 2 (my setting, not 15)
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