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In Flint, Michigan supply is definitely in excess of demand. In real estate, prices do not always go up. It's reasonable to expect that this duplex was once worth more than the current $4500 price it's offered at. It's a shame I don't have enough cash to invest in Michigan real estate. It seems certain they'll find a use for the state someday. By that, don't take it that I would live there. I wouldn't, even if homes were free.

It's sad that people in Michigan are still renting. A 30 year mortgage on $5k is $28.00,/mo if you can find a lender that will mortgage that little. Renting in that situation is just dumb - a week's work at minimum wage is enough to pay your mortgage for more than a year.

Foreign folks pay much more than $5k just to come here. To come here, have a home and a spare they can rent out for more than their mortgage costs is a gift. We're due for a huge influx of immigrants.

Some of the people who come to the US don't do it for the opportunity - they do it because the situation in their home country is really really bad. I feel for them. Some of them are my friends. I wouldn't wish on them the economic conditions of Flint, MI, but in reality it's better than not coming here at all.

When we talk about how bad things are here, we need to keep an eye to the context of how the rest of the world is doing.

That's interesting. I guess they will have to find a shooting star collector if there is such a thing. I though these kind of disasters made people sick and caused serious unbalance if the meteor is big enough to screw with the balance of where it hits, the people of the town and the person that owned the building probably don't think of it as a blessing though at least not yet if what you are saying will happen that someone would actually pay money for it. I guess I am a cynic, I could see geologists studying it, not buying it.

There's a good market for them on eBay. Of course, unless it's an extremely large or rate meteorite, despite with GP said, it's unlike to be worth more than the property damage. Typical meteorites look to be going from around $10-50. The fact of the matter is, meteorites aren't very rare. OTOH, there's one current bid up to over $15 million right now. eBay search

"Super VHS looks just as "quality" as any DVD.... I will even go so far as to say "better quality" since S-VHS doesn't have annoying compression blur, blocking, or mosquitos."

I did some research hoping to disprove you, but apparently you're right. S-VHS is up there with LaserDisc and Hi-8, with a 560x480 (420 lines) resolution. DVD provides a 720x480 (520 lines) resolution, not significantly better IMHO, far less than the difference between DVD and 720p HD 1280x720 (720 lines) and 20% of people can't tell the difference between HD and SD anyway. S-VHS camcorders are very cheap used, under $100 on ebay, and the S-VHS players are equally as cheap.

I see no reason why police or other government agencies should use DVD as a storage media for recording video when less corruptible media providing similar quality is available for far less. Maybe they could upgrade to HD video stored on hard drives when prices drop some more in the future, but then you have issues with needing multiple backups to prevent data loss and potential for hackers to steal evidence and easier video tampering.

Sometimes newer isn't better. For just $1,000 they could buy a half dozen S-VHS camcorders and S-VHS players and never worry about corrupt DVDs again.

"Super VHS looks just as "quality" as any DVD.... I will even go so far as to say "better quality" since S-VHS doesn't have annoying compression blur, blocking, or mosquitos."

I did some research hoping to disprove you, but apparently you're right. S-VHS is up there with LaserDisc and Hi-8, with a 560x480 (420 lines) resolution. DVD provides a 720x480 (520 lines) resolution, not significantly better IMHO, far less than the difference between DVD and 720p HD 1280x720 (720 lines) and 20% of people can't tell the difference between HD and SD anyway. S-VHS camcorders are very cheap used, under $100 on ebay, and the S-VHS players are equally as cheap.

I see no reason why police or other government agencies should use DVD as a storage media for recording video when less corruptible media providing similar quality is available for far less. Maybe they could upgrade to HD video stored on hard drives when prices drop some more in the future, but then you have issues with needing multiple backups to prevent data loss and potential for hackers to steal evidence and easier video tampering.

Sometimes newer isn't better. For just $1,000 they could buy a half dozen S-VHS camcorders and S-VHS players and never worry about corrupt DVDs again.

Consider yourself a fool for spending money like that.

Inexpensive solution

I bought a set of these for my SureFire and would never go back. They have about the same capacity and have lasted me a few dozen recharges with no apparent capacity problems.

The funny thing, of course, is that police departments have public funding and wouldn't think twice about ordering thousands of CR123 cells.

HUGE! altoid!!!!

"How is this ripping off eBay?"

Well... by cheating on the contest, it's hurting eBay customers, which could be interpreted as "ripping off" eBay, because they may lose money on this.

However these scripts aren't doing anything ebay wasn't already designed to do. Here's the $1 Corvette auction. Says "Holiday Doorbusters" in text in the auction and it's a $1 auction, so anyone with half a brain could search all auction text for "Holiday Doorbusters" and narrow the search to only auctions that are $1. You can do this manually within the search tools provided by eBay, and that functionality on ebay has been available for many years. Dozens of programs existed for the past few years that can automatically search titles and auctions for keywords and limit it to under a certain price. I have one I use that I know has been around since at least 2003, and I'm sure eBay knows these programs exist.

So if anything eBay did this to themselves and encouraged the "cheating" by making it so simple to do. If they really wanted people to search ebay for great deals they should have made the whole page an image, that would have prevented searching at least.

Yea, there is no text in the listings now, and they require your ebay account be linked to a paypal account before you can bid. I even read one person got a message that ebay would call the phone in his profile with a code he had to enter.

heres an example of one sold today to a real person.
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?afepn=5335869999&campid=5335869999&PID=1225267&ViewItem=&item=220324732667

A QUAD SIZED Altoid that one of my friends sent me last night.

"What can I do to maximize the performance of Linux while running off of a slow medium?"

Stop trying to fight physics and use a different technology

Not as funny as this auction ARE!!

Woot!

Bid on this...

QUAD sized Wintergreen Altoid!

Just because they use the same engine doesn't mean they are the same. That's like saying why compare a Corvette to a GTO since they have the same engine;
http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=200280846198

I have both Camino and Firefox on my Mac. Camino gives me a more Aqua like feel, whereas Firefox 3 has more recent versions of the engine and some menu options not found in Camino.

When my 18 month daughter waned to press the keys on my laptop as I worked I pulled out an eMate and set it up for her. Hours of fun drawing and scribbling ensued and now, some 4 years later, she's up to writing letters and email and the like. Sadly the eMate isn't that good at visiting CBBC or CeeBeeBies because there's no colour and no flash but its still working brilliantly.

There are plenty of eMates on eBay: http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37.l1313&satitle=emate&category0=

Jobs really screwed up when he pulled the Newton programme.

This same thing happened 5 years ago with 15k drives. A 73gb 15k SCSI drive was $400+, but a 80gb 7200rpm IDE drive was only $75. Now you can get that same 15,000 RPM drive for less than $50.

so just wait a few years. In 5 years that 256gb SSD will be $50, and $100 will buy 12tb.

on eBay

This: http://cgi.ebay.com/Magnetic-Sculpture-Kit-Neodymium-Magnets_W0QQitemZ230030516350QQcmdZViewItemQQptZBuilding_Toys?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

Thanks, however it's not looking good for stateside folks for TY DL: http://club.cdfreaks.com/f33/where-buy-ty-dvd9-dl-disc-255018/ I guess if money is no object: http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?from=R40&_trksid=m37&satitle=yuden+dl

http://shop.ebay.com/items/_W0QQ_nkwZPagerQQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZQQ_mdoZ

Four easy steps to dead-cheap SAN/NAS storage:

1. Buy HP DL180 or DL185 servers, with a Smart Array P800 RAID card
2. Buy 12 to 14 1TB or even 1.5TB hard disks from Seagate and trays in eBay (I've bought in the past from SCSITray and there are other sellers)
3. Install Solaris 10 or Nexenta OS, set up ZFS
4. Sun goes bankrupt

For hardware that's no longer commercially available, and games that are also no longer available to buy

Copyright owners would counter that the hardware and games are still widely available on the secondary market.

I'd probably recommend a ROM site.

I thought about that, but it could get U.S. users in trouble. Even owning a lawfully made copy isn't a defense to downloading (and the incidental uploading that comes with P2P downloading). Google UMG v. MP3.com.

Yes! I actually have that EXACT model from the first link. It is 20 Watts and I run all my usb devices off of it simultaneously. I think I got up to about 7 or 8 devices at once before it reached its peek. It's great, I worked at the beach all summer and carried the panel in my bag every day, only taking up the size of a thin composition notebook. and the great thing is, IT FLEXES like a softback book. So there is no need to worry about breaking the "glass" on the panels.

NOMADIC POWER!

I want to get the Y adapter and bump my power up to 60 watts with a 2nd solar panel. I would suggest E.Bay for some great deals on these panels. such as this. http://cgi.ebay.com/35-Watt-Foldable-Solar-Panel_W0QQitemZ190262865303QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item190262865303&_trkparms=72%3A1205|39%3A1|66%3A2|65%3A12|240%3A1318&_trksid=p3911.c0.m14

As much as this will sound like a trolling post, it's not... what is the point of buying a Mac and then triple booting OS X, Windows, and Linux? It seems to be that Linux and OS X are redundant, not to mention that most things you can run on OS X can be run on Windows as well... why buy the Apple hardware?

I dislike Windows, yet I need to test websites under IE.

The only reason I can think of is the image of the Mac, honestly ... granted, I don't use Macs much

I'm guessing you've hardly used a Mac at all. The difference is night and day. There really is no comparison. Let's try to make a comparison though.

Choose any PC to match up against a Mac Mini. Now, compare the screen reader options for the two: Mac comes with VoiceOver for free. The most popular screen reader for the PC costs more than the Mini itself. To you, that may not make much difference. To a web developer who needs to test accessibility of websites, or as a blind user, the Mac wins, hands down.

Like web browsing? Compare the default browsers for supported standards. That chart is for CSS selector support, but in pretty much any comparison, Safari on the Mac wins against IE.

Security: The Mac comes with a built in Keychain. It remembers my passwords for websites and system activities. It keeps those passwords locked up behind _one_ password. So it keeps my secrets safe for me. The PC does not have a keychain bundled.

The Mac comes with FileVault. Full encryption for each individual user's home folder. The PC does not have anything like FileVault bundled.

The Mac can do a randomized N-pass file wipe on trashed files. The PC does not bundle file wiping capability.

These are serious features that are seriously lacking in a typical PC. On Windows you would need to pay extra... a lot extra in some cases, to get features that are bundled on a Mac. On Linux, these features might be available, but you will likely need a considerably higher level of computer skill to install, maintain, and use them.

As such, I prefer a Mac. I get more features that I actually use with a Mac. I can easily maintain the system myself. I don't have to worry about computer viruses. The resale value of Apple is truly magnificent, making upgrades cheaper with Apple hardware than PCs. (When was the last time you saw a 2 year old consumer grade PC sell for $550?) And in a pinch, I can boot into Windows or Linux.

I'm sorry if you mistake that for vanity.

>>Is how many orders of "herbal viagra" do you need to sell to pull in $185,000 to register .v1agra (or other such clever alternate spelling) to run your spamming operation with no registrar oversight ever again?

That would be awesome. I'd setup my local BIND servers to think they are the TLD for .v1agra and point it all to 127.0.0.1. I would then block any e-mail coming form @*.v1agra.

But the majority of spammers wouldn't do this because of how easy it is to block.

What I can see is a security nightmare. In todays mind set, I will register .c0m Or .C0M with a zero. .0rg aka .0RG.

Now how hard is it going to be to spot the different between http://ebay.com/ and http://ebay.c0m/ for the average joe?

Mindset of a few years down the road. Now common are domains like http://checking.uowbank/ So as a hacker I register U0WBANK replacing the o with a zero. Will your font let you tell the difference in my phishing e-mail?

I'm not against the idea of more TLDs, but I can see how it will complicate security. Of course, if you allow any TLD then why not drop the entire TLD idea alltogether?

Let one register not EBAY.COM but EBAY. So it's HTTP://eBay You could basically do that with these opened up TLDs, but only those with $185k to burn will have something so nice. So we will end up with http://microsoft/ and http://apple/ but poor guys like me will still have .com at the end.

My $.0185

According to TFA, the TSA scumbag (Pythias Brown, eBay ID 'alirla') has been placed on administrative leave and will soon be fired. On top of that, his eBay registration has been canceled. :-) Pity (for eBay) because he has 100% positive feedback.

"I've done self repair on laptops before, and never even had a job come close to approaching this price."

Yes but that's self repair, if you did self repair on your apple it would be $55 for the part on eBay. Unless you're suggesting that you did self repair and bought the part brand new from the manufacturer. If you bought it "new" from a third party, I hate to tell you this but it wasn't new. The only place you can reliably get the parts new is from the company that made the laptop and even then it might be parts from a refurbished laptop or some old leftover parts that weren't quality enough to

"The part you quoted wasn't the model number I needed as well."

I know, it's not a part # it's a $400 laptop model from Dell, a Dell Vostro 1000.

The part number is WY383 you can see it on eBay -

http://cgi.ebay.com/New-Dell-Vostro-1000-Laptop-Base-Bottom-Plastic-WY383_W0QQitemZ110185600884QQcmdZViewItem?hash=item110185600884&_trksid=p3286.m63.l1177

It's "new" because the laptop is brand new probably never used, they just parted it to sell on eBay (it's worth a lot as parts, the LCD sells for the price of the laptop.) If you notice the part isn't being sold in the U.S. and it's selling for more than the same part for your Apple.

"No, I will not buy a used pan sight unseen online, that is ridiculous."

Why is that ridiculous? People do it all the time and get quality working hardware for a fraction of the cost it would be from the manufacturer. Not only that but you can see the photos, and you can contact the seller for more photos, you can also ask if they have a newer one or if they will accept returns. Most likely they'll have one in great shape, or you can find another place that's not eBay, I just used it as an example because it was the first result in Google.

If you want it "new" you can get it here -

http://www.powerbookmedic.com/MacBook-Pro-Bottom-Pan-15-Case---NEW-p-16909.html

That's as new as you're going to get it without going through Apple or if you don't mind getting a refurbished model

http://www.welovemacs.com/9227210r.html

Obviously you'll have to find your own part number (I don't know what model you have so I just picked the same standard 15" model.

I wanted one bad too. Now I wish I didn't pay the premium when I discovered just how easily the case of my MacBook Pro is damaged. I have three dents including on that has rendered my optical drive unusable. I paid $2000 for a laptop that is not as durable as advertised.

What the hell did you drop your laptop on that it has three dents? You can possibly dent the corners if you drop it onto a hard enough surface, although I have a MacBook Pro and it fell on the top left corner of the LCD. It was a 3' fall onto brick and the laptop is fine except for a scratch where it contacted the brick (girlfriend placed the laptop half on a table and her cat jumped on the part hanging over the table, caused it to fall over onto the brick.)

Besides, be glad your laptop still works, people drop their plastic laptops all the time and the plastic flexes (or cracks.) Since it's attached firmly to the motherboard, the motherboard can't handle the stress so it snaps (not fully but enough to create a short, I've seen it happen a lot.) Then they're out the price of a new motherboard which can easily cost $700-$1000 for a laptop.

Or another thing that happens, pieces start flying off the plastic laptops. Drop it on a hard surface and the whole shell cracks, sometimes the LCD hinges break and your LCD no longer stays up, or you drop it on your power connection, well that snaps the DC jack right off the motherboard and you need to either replace the motherboard or solder on a new DC jack. With an apple the power connection disconnects itself easily so you don't run into that problem, plus you'll never need to worry that the connection is going to get worn out from being plugged in/unplugged so many times.

As far as the price of the repair is concerned, well that's standard pricing for a laptop being "officially" repaired. The parts are very expensive from the manufacturer. You can find a shop that will get the part off ebay and repair it for ~$200. Or if you really need to, try and repair the bottom yourself.

Dude. Spend $50 and get a modern machine with an optical drive, or that boots properly off of USB. Used laptops are easy to find.

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=260291083862 ;)

These things are probably too cool to stay legal (if Apple can ban them somehow)... Someone should add a "hackintosh" /. tag to this thread... http://www.efixusa.net/product_info.php?products_id=28
They take Paypal and Credit Card and it was $169 + $10 shipping...

Interestingly, I noticed that their Website appears to be based in England? http://geotool.servehttp.com/?ip=209.25.134.78&host=www.efixusa.net
I wonder if Apple and its vast team of Lawyers are the reason for the offshore hosting and sales site? (I bet it will be shipped from overseas too...)
Hardware Compatibility List: http://www.efixusa.net/hardware_comp.php
NOTE: The EFiX-USA Ebay Store has no inventory at this time: http://stores.ebay.com/EFiX-USA

stop whinging and start buying

Search terms "imap email hosting" delivered a bunch of hits, this being one of the first. http://www.fusemail.com/cost/ Chances are excellent there's a smaller provider and a little hungrier providing the same service a few pages back.

Otherwise, roll your own. I've got a *great* DSL provider who had no problem hosting my own mail server. (sonic.net) You need a static IP and something as simple as the NSLU2 should do great. http://shop.ebay.com/items/_W0QQ_nkwZLinksysQ20NSLU2QQ_armrsZ1QQ_fromZR40QQ_mdoZ DSPAM + Postfix + Dovecot IMAP and a few hours learning Postfix. At this basic level, it isn't rocket science.

I've contemplated setting up a service for individuals like yourself, but I don't see what I could provide that's special besides sieve support and overtly supporting Evolution, kmail, and Thunderbird. Any recommendations are welcome.

Sorry. LOTS of rage at EBay. After buying selling responsibly for a number of years, and getting fucked by other sellers and buyers and getting no assistance from EBay (they got their shekel, they don't care), I refuse to give them ANY more money. EVER. I closed out my PayPal account. I closed out my EBay account.

The final straw was getting sold a laptop that was actually stolen property, and the merchant refusing to even ATTEMPT to make it right. I spent several months badgering EBay to make it right, but the SOB is STILL a power seller on EBay today.

http://pages.ebay.com/sell/August2008Update/OtherFAQ/#3

Fixed rate shipping on media (cd's, books, dvd's, etc), while it sounds good, in many cases their maximum allowed shipping and handling cost is several dollars less than the USPS flat rate box which is currently the cheapest way to ship. Their "faq" basically suggests that sellers just raise their prices. This leaves book rate as the only viable option, but try explaining to customers that they mey not get thier item for a month.

IMHO this is nothing more than a further attempt to deter the mom and pop businesses they have been so eager to push out over the past couple years.

If you read further you will also find they are eventually going to get rid of 3rd party checkout as well so regarless of whether you have your own credit card processing you will have to use ebay checkout.

DSR's (Detailed Seller Ratings) are required at 4.3 or higher..which is great, but it has to be that way in the last 30 days...so you have to constantly sell things in order to keep it maintained. Bought a new laptop and want to sell the old one? You are no longer welcome at ebay and have to find a consigner.

Ebay has forgotten who made it what it is, I dont know why they feel the need to be Amazon (actually amazon is more welcoming to the small seller) but I have a feeling this may finally be the push over the edge the rest of the old timers needed to bail on ebay and find something else to do.

Don't know if this works (waiting to see what happens), but it was given to me by their online chat help.

http://contact.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ContactUs&wftype=2024&rcode=IV%25A00253&subject=Close%20my%20account&bcrumb=+Home+%3E+Help+Topics+%3E%A0Account+Information+and+Billing%A0%3E%A0Suspended+Account&instruction=&expirationDate=

Such a shame, really. I've been buying stuff there for over 10 years, and have always paid with a Money Order.

Chip H.

If you're serious about blocking phishing sites, you have to accept some collateral damage. Blocking by URL stopped working last year; most attacks have unique URLs now. Many have unique subdomains. So you have to block at the second-level domain level to be effective.

We publish a list of major domains being exploited by phishing scams. Today, there are 46 domains listed. eBay, for example, is on the list, because eBay has an open redirector exploit. Click on that URL. It says "ebay.com", right? It looks like eBay, right? It's not.

On the other hand, "tinyurl.com", which used to be popular with phishers, has been able to get off the blacklist by cracking down on misuse of their service. It's possible to do redirection competently.

When we started our list last year, it had about 175 exploited domains. After some serious nagging and an article in The Register, we're down to 46. And only 11 have been on the list for more than three months; the others come and go as exploits are reported and holes plugged. So this is a problem that can be solved.

I'm glad to see Google taking a hard line on this. It's necessary that sites that do redirection feel the pain when they accept redirects to hostile sites. Google can apply much more pain that we can. Few sites will want to be on Google's blacklist for long.

Why wouldn't all the southern states just say "Ok, great, we'll come back to the Union and keep our slaves, just like you said we could." if that was "the cause of the war"?

For the simple reason that there were too many Union abolitionists demanding emancipation. The slave holding states were not going to be allowed to keep their slaves. This does not mean that everyone in the North was in favor of abolition or wanted to go to war to end it. The abolitionists had strong arguments among their factions over the best means to the end (compare the Quakers to John Brown) but overall, the abolitionists were certainly a very large and very vocal majority in the North. Harriet Beecher Stowe's book about the evils of slavery, Uncle Tom's Cabin, for example, sold 300,000 copies in the North before the Civil War and the Republican Party was formed in opposition to the Kansas-Nebraska Act that would have allowed the expansion of slavery into Kansas. The abolition of slavery was a question of when and how, not a question of if.

The fact is, the winners write the history books.

There are too many Southern histories of the Civil War for that statement to have any meaning.

And in other news, it appears Palin has made an appearance on a piece of toast...

You can get one on eBay for like $6.50, with Tetris. What else do you need?

How about something that will run games I actually want to play?

You can get one on eBay for like $6.50, with Tetris. What else do you need?

Exactly.
A 20x4 dot matrix display with a standard controller is $5 on eBay
Add a cheap USB enabled microcontroller or use the otherwise useless parallel port. That's all.

reminds me of stuff like this :

http://shop.ebay.com/items/?_nkw=copper+bullion&_fromfsb=0&_trksid=m270.l1313

some of them are ridiculously priced imho, especially if you compare them to :

http://www.metalprices.com/FreeSite/metals/cu/cu.asp#

and to go a bit further off-topic : yes, there's even "lead bullion" =P

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-12-av-oz-999-Pure-Lead-Bullion-Bar-Ingot_W0QQitemZ380056862549QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

reminds me of stuff like this :

http://shop.ebay.com/items/?_nkw=copper+bullion&_fromfsb=0&_trksid=m270.l1313

some of them are ridiculously priced imho, especially if you compare them to :

http://www.metalprices.com/FreeSite/metals/cu/cu.asp#

and to go a bit further off-topic : yes, there's even "lead bullion" =P

http://cgi.ebay.com/NEW-12-av-oz-999-Pure-Lead-Bullion-Bar-Ingot_W0QQitemZ380056862549QQcmdZViewItem?_trksid=p3286.m20.l1116

As (almost) always, you can get one right here...

eBay!

I am not an employee of... and am not selling... etc.

I know my father has some 5.25" drives in the garage. An 8" floppy would be a little harder, but eBay is your friend: http://cgi.ebay.com/Iomega-CDS-PC-20-Dual-8-Floppy-Drive_W0QQitemZ190174698961QQcmdZViewItem

i was going to make a sarcastic remark about building a sweet gaming rib for almost nothing.. so looking on ebay for a 386 i found a ps/1 (386 with 2mb ram) for $500 "vintage". I didnt know Epsons made in 1993 were that expensive
Ebay.com

$26 + shipping and it's yours.

I'm not affiliated with the seller, and rarely buy things on eBay, but I usually find that it's great for finding those oddball things you want that you can't find anywhere else.

What next, getting an actual perpetual motion engine from eBay?

You didn't think it would already be there?

The Xbox 360 can: link

Looks like the PS3 and Wii can too: link