The Great Train Robbery
"England, 1855. The days of Queen Victoria. Once a month a train roars toward the channel laden with a fantastic shipment of gold. The train is guarded. The two safes are invulnerable...Yet Edward Pierce, a handsome, redbearded rogue, will have his way. In his plan he will choose one companion--a beautiful and dangerous woman. He will commit one of the most shocking crimes of the century."
Stats for nerds
3recommend
5mentions
5people
2011–2025years
60% recommend40% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- The Andromeda Strait is one of the best Crichton books/movies, along with The Eaters of the Dead (skip the movie) and The Great Train Robbery. I also have a strange fondness for Congo, but by that time Crichton had gone crazypants.
- I enjoyed the likes of Jurassic Park, Timeline, The First Great Train Robbery hugely. Found State of Fear too much like hard work.
I think I might be similarly disappointed with Fleming if he had held a well publicised stance about equality and women's rights through his career, and then put out James Bond. Course the Bond movies were very different to the books.
- Has anyone read The Great Train Robbery by Crichton? It talks about all sorts of stuff like this, except in Victorian era England. Great book.
http://www.amazon.com/Great-Train-Robbery-Michael-Crichton/d...
- They couldn't find a more apt demnonstration of what an LLM is and does if they tried.
An LLM doesn't know more than what's in the training data.
In Michael Crichton's The Great Train Robbery (published in 1975, about events that happened in 1855) the perpetrator, having been caught, explains to a baffled court that he was able to walk on top of a running train "because of the Bernoulli effect", that he misspells and completely misunderstands. I don't remember if this argument helps him get away with the crime? Maybe it does, I'm not sure.
This is another attempt at a Great Robbery.
- This story meshes with every incident of long term fraud or embezzlement I've seen in my business life (I've had to deal with four, so it is annecdata):
1. The fraudster is really, really nice and often has a disarming appearance. Often it's pretty or handsome. The one that got the most, an book keeper who got $143,000 via petty cash looked like everyone's Grandma.
2. The money is always spent quickly and on things that were not obvious to others at work. Vacations, gifts for family members, luxury items... One guy spent it all on guitars and amplifiers.
3. When caught, the fraudster/embezzler admits it readily and cooperates with everyone... The reason every one gave was right out of a Michael Chrichton book, "The Great Train Robbery":
Judge: Now, on the matter of motive, we ask you: Why did you conceive, plan and execute this dastardly and scandalous crime?
Edward Pierce: I wanted the money.
