Tree Poaching

Have you ever noticed how many random trees grow everywhere, such as along the freeway, in industrial parks, on the outskirts of suburbs?

All it would take is a pickup truck, a chain saw and a wood-chipper and you've got yourself a tree poaching business.

If your team dressed like normal road work crews with safety gear and fluorescent vests, no one would suspect a thing. You could sell firewood and discount mulch to all the mom & pop hardware stores.

Up High, Down Low, Little Dirty

I've owned a few domain names over the years... I was looking into one that I've been wanting for a while, and it's set to expire in a couple weeks.

I was researching the best ways to backorder the domain, and I came across this article - interesting reading, I had no idea!

The Pool.com method is especially awful/cool if you're them - what a great money making method, for something that is essentially automated.

yeah, that's the ticket

So you create a series of vast online scavenger hunt contests with thousands of questions - the winner will receive (cue Dr. Evil voice) One Million Dollars.

The scheme is - included among the actual factoids are numerous engineered nuggets of... er... newly created truth.

That's right, you've created a series of answers that can be found only on the sites you've created - which means millions of hits by people trying to compile all the answers and win the prize.

You've set up each of these dozens of web pages (using free/near free hosting sites) with multiple 'pay per impression' ads, and then advertise the contest widely (the biggest expense of the plan).

You could also sell web traffic to corporate sponsors - by creating question/answer pairs that would require contestants to patronize certain corporate websites to uncover the answers.

Then you allow people to hit the main contest site, (hey, let's charge em $4.99 for the privilege of competing) hit the sponsors, and the engineered factoid sites. A lot of applicants won't finish the contest because it's so long and involved, so you're getting their $5 free and clear.

And the winner? Well, it clearly states in the Terms and Conditions that the million dollars is paid out over 30 years...

Calling All Math Whizzes!

I'm sure this is not a new idea, but I'm a complete moron when it comes to math. Can one of you math whizzes out there break something down for me - (into small words, cause I don't speak this 'Math' of yours) Why can this not be done:

What's to keep someone from just getting Y amount of credit on X amount of credit cards, (say, 20 or more cards) and then quitting their jobs forever? Once you have a few cards, they just keep sending you more of them. They WANT you to rack up high balances that you can't pay. And the more cards you have, the more willing they are to send you more. And the more you use a card and pay it on time, the higher your limit rises.

So you just keep flopping the balances from card to card, paying each card with the others - as long as you meet the minimums, they're more than happy to let you carry a large balance - since that means more interest charges for them. Even if you could not pay a bill with another card directly, you could just withdraw cash from one card, then use it to pay your bill on the others.

Yes, you would die five million dollars in debt, but who cares? I'm guessing that there is a very simple reason why this can't work, or there would be no accountants and math teachers - they'd all be relaxing at home. OK, math whizzes - get to 'splainin. And I want details!