Well, if you think I'm doing a PKW, it certain failed, hasn't it? :P Got "overrated" right off the bat. (Of course I didn't get "troll" or "flamebait"; it was a legitimate question.)

Honestly speaking, I did NOT actually know people used the term "Nigerian scam" to talk about scams originating elsewhere, or that it is somehow popular. I only read about the "Nigerian scheme" term online. People in my country just call it "panggagancho", from the Spanish "gancho" I guess.

Yes. If Native Americans were seen as equals, they would have to be respected. If they were seen as inferiors, they could be conquered.

You're attempting to confuse the intent with the side-effect of the intent. "Conquer" is the intent. "Offend" is the side-effect. They did NOT mean to offend (they weren't AWARE that they can offend the Native Americans--there was no record at the time that the term got past their own circles, and there was no notion of political correctness at the time to necessitate restraint). As I said, they weren't saying it as an *expletive* to the Native Americans at the time--they were *surreptitiously* saying it amongst themselves, protected by language barriers--so HOW exactly are they going to offend them with it? (And for your OWN sake, look the word up yourself, if only to appreciate that precision does not preclude multiple usages of the word.)

Exactly. That was MY point.

Was I contesting that it was YOUR point? I was clarifying it and using it to explain my position so you see where I am getting at. Quoting that out of context shows that all you're doing is derailing the conversation. Let's put it back on track and point to the one thing your argument hinges on:

No `assumption that "no one is being offended"` was ever necessary for the term to become widespread

But you yourself have agreed that:

they STILL WOULD USE THE TERM because they considered those people who would be offended to be lesser

which is exactly the situation of "having an assumption that '*no one* is being offended'". (Is the obvious rhetoric lost on you? Okay, sure, I'll use "no one *important* is being offended", but only if you agree to use "Nigerian-type scam" yourself. See, I'm open-minded.)

You have not proven that Nigerians will NOT be offended when being attributed with a type of scam that did NOT originate from their country (as I've already pointed out, the method of this scam is different enough, same as the method of the Spanish Prisoner scam is different from the Nigerian scam), making it *sloppy* and *imprecise* to continue to throw around the term without the proper context. Furthermore it is definitely *inexcusable* to use the potentially politically-laden term in a LAW blog and other law literature (which is what I was pointing out in the first place!)

Oh genius oracle of all things past and future, please tell me more of what WILL happen, so that I may build my life around your omniscient predictions.

And that helps your argument.. how?

I need not say any more, seeing as is that you've descended to using outright scorn when I have been careful not to do so when addressing your points.

For some reason I ended up replying in the wrong place, but you can find my reply directly below this one. :)

Let's see, is the tendency of the term to diminish the value of Nigerians, or to indicate that the type of scam originated in Nigeria?

Do you honestly think that the term "Indian giver" started with the intent to diminish the value of Native Americans? At THAT TIME the Europeans thought of them just as some race they can conquer. Their propensity to offend them did not stem from a direct WANT to offend but from a default mindset of not treating them as equals -- they uttered the term not as an expletive to the Native Americans, but as a description to fellow Europeans.

In fact, historical evidence suggests the originators of the phrase intended it to be offensive

Proof? There was no such thing as political correctness back then. Unless you can point me to an exact source that specifically says that it was meant to directly offend the race (which I honestly have not found), then "intended it to be offensive" is plain conjecture.

It doesn't change the point of using the phrase, which is to reference the origin of that type of scam

Which was inaccurate to begin with. The Spanish Prisoner scam http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Prisoner predates it by a century.

And if you are going to argue now that this scam was somehow different, then I refer you to an earlier post in this thread -- pointing out the differences of this particular scam with the original Nigerian scam:

The foreigner is seeking the victim to be a money collector, instead of a money distributor. E.g. the money comes FROM someone else and is sent TO the person doing the email exchange.

If this happened often enough (which it is starting to), should we now call this the Malaysian scam? Good luck dealing with them Malaysians then.

And back to you:

Calling this a Nigerian scam WAS NOT BASED ON THE BELIEF THAT A NIGERIAN WAS INVOLVED in this context.

On the contrary, by the use of inaccurate terms, you are propagating THAT EXACT mistaken belief to others who do not know the difference. Look around this article thread -- some posters didn't even KNOW that Malaysia was a different country and have mistakenly assumed that the scam DID originate from Nigeria. Of course they did not read the slashdot summary, but then if the term "Nigerian scam" was immediately clear to everyone that it did not originate from Nigeria, then they would NOT have posted those erroneous comments in the first place.

And by propagating the mistaken belief to those who do not know the difference, you are essentially being like one of the original utterers of the "Indian giver" phrase--you do not know what you are starting. In the future, people WILL mean it to offend, even as the percentage of these scams become less and less from Nigeria and more from other countries. You could stop that right now by simply saying this is just another "advance fee fraud". If you REALLY want to put a name to it, say "Nigeria-style" (as the official court records for this case say), in deference to the historical notion that it was popular in Nigeria for a while. But don't use a term that is clearly a misnomer -- that alone is proven by a good number of posts in Slashdot that got the mistaken belief, and who knows how much more in less intelligent forums?

It's both derogatory and based on false beliefs

So, then, who are you to judge that it is not derogatory to Nigerians to call any confidence tricks of that type as a "Nigerian" scam? It is precisely the assumption that "no one is being offended" which led to widespread careless use of the term "Indian giver".

Also, as in your argument, calling this a "Nigerian scam" was already based on a false belief in THIS context -- i.e., it was really a Malaysian that was involved, not a Nigerian. Just as the Europeans were the ones who went back on their words instead of the American Indians.

Would you tell someone that s/he's an "Indian giver" if a Native American is within earshot?

In legal circles, the language HAS to be technically correct. Otherwise you risk all sorts of things, from frivolous lawsuits to straining diplomatic ties.

This "Nigerian scam" identification comes from a law blog. That's why it's bothersome.

It's the equivalent of requesting your supermarket to stock up Scott's brand tissue (maybe it's cheaper) and they stock up on Kleenex instead, and the supermarket just shrugs it off saying "it's the same thing."

But the 419 scam *specifically* originates from Nigeria. After all it was named after the article number of the Nigerian criminal code.

The type of scam really is "Advance fee fraud" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advance-fee_fraud. The Nigerian scam is only a subtype of this.

Besides, the court decision in question http://www.rhlaw.com/blog/californialitigationattorney/wp-content/uploads/2010/12/E049170A.doc specifically said "Nigeria-style email scam" instead of "Nigerian scam". Similarly, one cannot say this is a 419 scam, just a 419-type scam.

Anyway, the point is that this is poor reporting. The court decision exerted due diligence to be accurate in its wording; why not the blog article?

... when the article clearly says it was a Malaysian doing the fraud, and the funds are transferred to a Hong Kong bank?

It's not even close to Africa.

IE4 was actually pretty good.

Its footprint was quite reasonable (unlike Netscape Communicator 4). It does a good job of rendering all web pages I visit, and faster too. We all pay the price when WWW innovations were being dictated only by a single browser, and I did not want to see yet another Geocities page with blink tags all over.

I can see where IE4 being offered free (and then being offered via Service Releases) would make Netscape unhappy .. but f*ck them, Netscape is just a terribly bloated pile of junk.

(seriously, I have MSE installed on all my computers, and i'm perfectly happy with the current method of acquisition, but this all looks way too familiar)

If you try hard enough, you'll get to World -1.

*sits down waiting for Troll moderation*

I'd rather the splash screen than having the program running resident in the background(like MSOffice does) eating up my resources.

Have you actually tried using MSOffice recently? It doesn't run resident in the background for quite a while now, and yet it still starts up orders of magnitude faster than OO.org.

*rant up ahead, totally irrelevant, feel free to skip*

I'm truly disappointed in OO.org. I say this as a formerly devoted OO.org user for 7 years. But when I had to make a quick presentation and only MSOffice 2007 was available in my lab's computers, the first thing in my mind was "why did I put up with that horrible OO.org interface for so long?" Many people may hate the Ribbon, but to me it was completely usable and quick to use, even for someone that has all the keyboard shortcuts ingrained in long term memory. I immediately downloaded the 2010 beta on my notebook, loved it, and purchased it when the beta expired. Never looked back.

OO.org could have had better progress in the 7 years I gave it. I even switched to the ODF format for all that "truly open format" jazz, which in practice gave me so much headache. C'mon, missing lines of text (!!) whenever I print out documents on a computer other than my own? On the *exact same* version of OO.org?! Yes, MSWord used to give me that same problem, but TEN years ago. (And usually the text just moves to another page, not DISAPPEAR entirely. What the eff is up with that?!)

Now that I am back to MSOffice, I'm just glad that I don't have to put up with OO.org's bugs, slowness and UI inconsistency anymore. The only qualm I had was that 7 years of my work would be rendered useless, but guess what, all of my OO.org documents opened up (most of them perfectly) in MSOffice! Did not expect it to, but hey it's there! The same cannot be said of OO.org's support for Office format files (DOC/XLS/PPT is just barely there, and every PPTX I have ever opened was just garbage in OO.org Impress. Not impressive at all (pardon the wordplay, just had to) -- isn't OOXML an open standard?!)

I hope I don't sound like an MS shill -- happy Android user here, and I completely detest Visual Studio, but of out of all office suites, MSOffice is still the best I have ever used.

*end rant*

Going back to your 3-second argument... it was definitely on the order of 15 seconds for me. 15 seconds is an ETERNITY when you have to restart Impress in the middle of your thesis defense.

What's curious is the word "idle" here in Slashdot has been mangled to mean "weird stuff with some (or a lot of) idiocy involved", when it really ought to mean "this might be remotely interesting in an otherwise completely uneventful day."

Anyway, by either of those standards, this article is clearly not idle.

As they say, hindsight is ... *gets shot*

(Okay, the recording industry could be right... they claimed back then that "something MUST be done", but they never claimed that something "is NOT currently being done". After all, thirty years later, we now have all these stupid copyright laws...)