Sveasoft occupied Wall Street before hipsters made it cool

A little birdie told me that, sometime in the late 2000s, James actually took up day trading. This is in the middle of a huge global economic crisis, so his timing was a bit off. Nevertheless, James thought he was confident enough to build his own artificial intelligence software to trade stocks. This would have been ground-breaking stuff forty years ago, but -- and I am sad to say this -- such algorithms are far too plentiful today. I don't want to get into specifics, but when the media mentions a "flash crash", it's because a bunch of computers miscomputed something and started liquidating securities.

James isn't enjoying his stay in Sweden, it seems:

I grew up in the US and now live in one of your European Socialist states. There is no comparison. The US system, broken as it is, is vastly superior in every way. And I include health care.

Really, James? You moved from Stockton, the car theft capital of California, to Stockholm, a city that's in a country with nearly the highest life expectancy in the world. Even with all the stress you're under, as a person living in Sweden you've got half a decade on the average American.

James has some strong words about Sweden's tax system, too:

US - ran own business (software), grossed 300K per year. Took two unpaid months off in Summer. Worked as much as I needed and wanted to. 

Europe - ran a startup software company. Of monthly gross, 2/3 went to state taxes. Employees got the other 1/3. Couldn't keep them in the building more than 30 hours a week on a good week. Result: shut down the European operation and sold the product to American investors who made a mint.

Okay, let's break this down...

"US - ran own business... Took two unpaid months off..."

Uh, James: if you are running your own business, you can't take a paid month off. What would you do, file a paid-time-off request with yourself?

"Europe - ran a startup software company."

More like ran it into the ground, am I right?!

"Of monthly gross, 2/3 went to state taxes. Employees got the other 1/3."

James, James, James... one of the rules of business is that labor is always your largest expense. Even child labor in Vietnam costs a fortune nowadays.

(By the way, James is NOT referring to Sveasoft in these paragraphs. He is referring to a software company he ran in 2000 called "mi4e". Its main business model was serving Web pages to phones using an ancient system called WAP. The system barely made any money, so I doubt he got anything over four figures when he supposedly "sold the product". And who would buy an obsolete product anyway?)

And where would James rather live? Canada.

I'm currently in a Nordic country. Often wish I'd chosen Canada instead. All those goopy oilsands bode well for moving the wheat belt North of Ontario. I bet your grandkids will love surfin' Hudson Bay :-)

Canada, James? You'd be dealing with the same stuff that you'd get in Sweden. Hell, between Canada and Sweden I'd choose Sweden -- have you ever been to the parts of Vancouver where gray market herb isn't sold?

Further reading about James can be found here:

• Falling through widening cracks
• Lessons from Sweden
• A little map I made

James' other domains

Apart from willybox.com, James registered these domains:

• ewingfamily.name - Jumping on the dot-name bandwagon? Otherwise unused.
• theaitrader.com - Registered, but never used.
• wififirmware.com - An abandoned domain he used to promote Sveasoft back when people gave a shit.

James had some great ideas, I'm sure. Too bad his sociopathy got in the way.

This is sweet

I just cancelled three PayPal accounts; My company account, my personal US account and my Australian account. I have been a PayPal customer almost 10 years.

I had previously bought some software from this company http://www.sveasoft.com/ and found it to be quite good. My only issue is they they set up a subscription for $25 per year. After the first unexpected $25 charge I chalked it up to experience and cancelled the subscription.

I needed an updated version of the Sveasoft software so I paid the $25 using PayPal and got... nothing.

A very short Web search shows that the Sveasoft company imploded a few years ago leaving an unstable individual who does nothing except subscription fees with his PayPal account, yet the Sveasoft Website still looks slick and its shiny Pay Now button leads to the PayPal site with a statement "PayPal securely processes payments for Sveasoft..."

I suppose that is correct. Sveasoft (or its remnant individual) has securely got hold of my money and PayPal has made sure they keep it.

I opened a dispute and got the reply "PayPal was not able to resolve this case because the item in question was virtual or intangible."

So PayPal advertises itself as a safe way to pay, which is false. It may be a sort of safe way to pay for tangible goods. I have been ripped off twice and succeeded in claiming money back once, although the effort was hardly worth the $300 I got back.

PayPal not a safe way to pay for software, downloads, services or any one of many new products. There should be a warning on its front page to this effect. There is not. PayPal is therefore fraudulently misrepresenting its services.

So. It is time to start a sweet scam.

• Put together a Website selling software that does something like making DJ style mix tapes. It need not be real but there should be pictures of girls having fun using it. It should not cost much, maybe $15, so that disputing the charge is too much trouble.

• Put a big shiny PayPal button on there. "Pay Safely with PayPal."

• Wait until suckers pay you and watch the money come in.

Evidently Sveasoft has been doing this since 2008 and PayPal just keeps paying them.

More Information About James

Current postal address:

• Sankt Paulsgatan 10, 118 46 Stockholm Urban Area

Business P.O. Box:

• BOX 1453, 114 79 Stockholm

Åsa’s Information:

• Date of birth: 8 February 1971

OMG HAX!

My site was h4x3d. 0H N03Z!!1

This information was deleted from Wikipedia:

As of at least 13:00 GMT on November 7, 2009, the official Sveasoft site has been defaced by a hacking team with the message:

MFTeaM Sorry Admin
Your System Was Exploited



Thanks to:
MFTeAm
eX
eCoLoGy
FakoMasT3r
subzid
#MFTeaM, irc.mfteam.net

Who deleted it? I'll give you two hints: he's married to Åsa Ewing and he's a fucking nut.