archives | crime

jun 03 2007

a decline in spam?

it looks like the americans have caught one of the world's most wanted terrorists (imo anyway).

US prosecutors said they captured on Wednesday a nefarious Internet marketer responsible for so much junk email they called him "Spam King".

this guy spammed 10's of millions of email addresses and they want to seize a mere $773,000? i know that spammers only make very small percentage on their efforts. but take 10's of millions and take a 0.1 percentage of that on an item that sells for $10... that's a lot more than $700,000!

either way, the longer this guy stays in prison, the better for all of us.

update: ha, that was wishful thinking... no decline in spam. oh damn

Posted by sarah | add a comment | crime, tech, web

jul 20 2006

schools

the place were kids learn for a better future (among other things, kids will be kids right?) have gone back to school this week. mostly bad news for me because the traffic has gone to the dogs as a result. not my main concern though... that goes to the stupid assholes who break into schools and steal their resources. in this day and age a computer is not for a pupil seeking to 'specialise', computers are used in most offices nowadays, useful to every single pupil in our schools. for the shuttleworth foundation to give back to the disadvantaged in a really helpful way is just awesome. for a scumbag to deliberately break into a school and steal those gifts is despicable... and it wasn't as if the community wasn't getting anything out of the deal, the schools had 'open days' for the surrounding community (it's probably when the scumbags 'cased' out the places).

more stories about schools and kids

Posted by sarah | add a comment | crime, debate

jun 12 2006

what to do

i've thought about the increasing levels of crime. please don't tell me the stats say that crime is decreasing, because it isn't... there have been a spat of robberies in duynefontein recently - residents and police are linking it to the eskom drive to get people using energy effecient light bulbs and warm blankets on their geysers. the houses are being marked according to the difficultly the robbers would experience in the robbery attempt. so violence could be possible. i'm not saying eskom is involved, there is speculation that the people employed by eskom to distribute these items are involved.

this sucks. this is a place where i have grown up and known for most of my life. it's a sleepy town, where when you drive through it there aren't many walls around the yards. garages are left open with no-one in sight and lots of 'goodies' to be seen... there's hardly been any crime in this town and in one evening last week more than 8 houses were robbed!

earlier, i was reading carte blanche's site at the recent stories section (i went there to read this - unrelated) and came across this expat story and later clicked through to see some expats posts and their stories...

i am stressed out about crime. my world revolves around ways to keep my stuff safe from criminal elements and working hard to get my stuff.

so what's the solution? these people don't have stuff and want stuff. should they get a job and buy their own stuff? are they illiterate and unemployable? do they need further education? are they hungry and needing to feed their families?

there could be a ton of reasons why my stuff and your stuff gets stolen. there has got to be a solid first step to getting our society working better than it is right now. should we emply more police and build more prisons? what about all the corruption (case dockets going missing in murder cases)? why does it seem like only carte blanche is asking these questions and all other forms of media are not? why are we so tolerant about it? should i buy a gun? and why are criminals walking around so freely (brazenly) while we increasingly become prisoners on our homes?

there's got to be a solution, i don't feel positive about south africa's future when i read about all the crime. i love this country and i always hope for the best, but lately i'm seriously worried about our future...

how do we make our country a better place for everyone?

Posted by sarah | comments (2) | crime, debate, ranting

may 18 2006

f*^@ers

this morning, after ed had just done 2 snoozes, i heard a police siren. not a full on one, you know the one where they do a 'wooo' just to get your attention? followed by pounding on our front door.

i yell 'careful baby'. the cops enter and tell us some-one was trying to take yoghurt or something out the combi, it's open please go and check. it turns out the f*^@ers got the radio and were going through the site box filled with the guys coffee and sugar...

anyway, cop goes through to the back yard to check if they came that way. they can't see anything or anyone, they leave. "ask the old people in the bush", they recommend.

why do people do this? it just hacks me off because i've worked hard for the 'toys' i have and then some f*^@er just rips it out the dash! urrgh

here's the irony. our neighbours dogs (one has 5 of them) are barking all the time, but there was not a single peep while the car was being broken into!

it's time to move back to melkbos.

Posted by sarah | comments (4) | crime, ranting

may 12 2005

stats

surfing around today, i came across nationmaster.com. a handy way to graphically compare nations...

i did a comparison on murder rates and south africa came 4th. 1st was india, 2nd russia and 3rd colombia...

we should be a little quite worried though because then i did a comparative on population figures and south africa is rated 26th (42,768,678), while india, in 2nd place, has over a billion people (1,049,700,118) and in the murder category we even beat the gun-loving americans who came in 6th!

interesting and disturbing!

Posted by sarah | comments (1) | crime, information