An Open Letter to Mr. Abibe Yala

posted by jack at 03:48 CET in / humor

This "nigeria letter" (aka advance fee fraud) arrived in my inbox today:

From Mr. Abibe Yala

Dear Friend,

Very Urgent & Confidential

I know you do not know me before, I am Mr. Abibe Yala, younger brother to Mr. Kumba Yala the Ex-President of Guinea-Bissau. I got your contact information during my private search for a reliable and trustworthy person to carry out this urgent transaction with.

In view of the political crisis happening in my country today, I discovered that my brother Mr. Kumba is just trying to impose himself as a leader on his people who are not proud and satisfied with his past administration.

My brother sent me on a mission to South Africa to purchase fire arms which he intend to use in fighting a political war against his opponent so he can become the President again. I am not in support of his intensions but I do not have any other options than to do what he asked me. He provided the sum of US$22,100,000.00 (Twenty Two Million, One Hundred Thousand United States Dollars), which we brought into South Africa through diplomatic means. On getting to South Africa, I found out that the person (Mr. Jacob Zuma Ex- Vice President of South Africa) whom he instructed me to meet for the operation was under government probation for related crime and never want to get himself involved in such deals anymore. Since I have never been in support of my brother's intentions, I made up my mind never to go back to my country (Guinea-Bissau). I want to relocate immediately to a better country especially in the Europe or Asia, where I can have good investment with this money since I cannot stay here in Africa.

My reason of contacting you is that, I want you to support me as my foreign partner to move the funds and myself out of Africa as soon as possible. Presently, the funds are deposited as consignment with a depository company in Johannesburg South Africa for safekeeping. Why I am presently residing in West Africa for security reasons. I am willing to offer you 40% of the whole money for the inconveniences this will cost you and for your support in this transaction, while the remaining 60% will be for me to setup a profitable investment in your country through your guidance and directions.

As a matter of urgency, please do let me know if you can assist me in handling this transaction and the investment involve.

I anticipate your quick response.

Best Regards. Mr. Abibe Yala

The funny thing about this is how the story he tells to gain our sympathies is basically about how he wants to steal his brother's money and move to Europe. (See the bold bits above) Nice guy! Here's my response:

OK, I'm not stupid, I recognize a so-called "Nigeria letter" when I see one. You're obviously a con-man, and if that's what works for you, fine. I just hope you don't hurt anybody.

But anyway: You really need to work on your story. The way you describe it, it sounds like you're basically trying to steal $22 million from your brother. It makes you sound like a thief. Even with the part about your brother trying to become a dictator, etc. He's supposed to be your BROTHER for god's sake. He TRUSTED you with the money, right? And you respond with BETRAYAL? No one will sympathize with you about that.

Instead, you need to first make it seem that HE betrayed YOU. Say that your brother decided to kill you, and you're fleeing from his paramilitary death squads. Then maybe someone will say, "Wow, that poor Mr Yala, he needs my help". With the story you sent me, anyone too stupid too realize you're a con-man will probably just think, "This Abibe seems like a real asshole, trying to steal his brother's money".

--
// jack
// http://www.nuthole.com

RoR etc

posted by jack at 13:02 CET in / compute / programming

OK, i haven't posted in ages, but what can I say, life is keeping me busy. Recovering from a bit of minor surgery, followed by a long Easter break, followed by stomach flu, consumed the past few weeks.

But, more importantly than all that, I changed jobs at the end of January, and am now spending most of my work time (not to mention free time) programming with Ruby on Rails!

Ah, ruby. I've used python for a variety of side projects over the past few years, and I've long held the opinion that the two languages are largely equal, but in the short time since I started using ruby full-time, I'll admit that I've started acquiring a definite ruby bias. Things like ruby's block syntax, for instance, don't really have a corresponding language feature in python (at least, not anything quite as succinct).

Above all though, I'm mainly happy to be back in the world of dynamic languages. At my last job, I spent two years using C++, which taught me a lot: mainly that I don't like C++. In fact, I've started to get the feeling that using C++ at all, when other options are available, is in many cases a textbook example of premature optimization. You end up consuming lots more programmer-hours (which means greater expense, and later releases) chasing the chimera of an end-product which "runs faster" than a similar program written in a dynamic language would run. I put "runs faster" in quotes because in reality, most software is I/O-bound most of the time (either waiting for user input, or waiting for disk or network traffic), so the amount of time that your particular program is actually running is probably pretty small (and getting smaller as CPU speeds increase), no matter what language it's written in.

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