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On Wed, 31 May 2000 12:57:51 eBay Customer Support wrote:
> Hello John,
>
> Thank you for taking the time to write us with your concern about our
> feedback policy. I will be happy to address your concerns. First the
> feedback for msoft@buddy.ebay.com hasn't been altered and our policies
> haven't been changed for this member.
>
> About three months ago we changed our feedback policy. Before members
> could leave neutral comments to any other member at any time. Negative
> comments had to be transaction related, so when members were upset with
> another member even if it wasn't in regards to a transaction they had
> completed with that member they could leave neutral comments.
>
> To answer your first question the feedback wasn't altered from negative
> to neutral. All of the comments that are neutral were originally left as
> neutral comments.
>
> Many alternatives to curb misuse of the Feedback Forum while still
> maintaining a non-transactional feedback option were considered.
> However, the input that we received from the community was
> overwhelmingly in favor of linking every comment to an actual
> transaction on the site.
>
> Based on that, we decided to change the past system to make all feedback
> transaction related. I hope that this information helps explain why this
> member has so many neutral comments. If you have any other questions or
> concerns feel free to contact us.
>
>
> Regards,
>
> Dale H. D.
> eBay Customer Support

While we're on the subject, check out the hilarious feedback left by andy46477.

Section 8 of the user agreement:
Feedback.

8.1 Integrity. You may not take any actions that may undermine the integrity of the feedback system. We may limit the number of bids and listings you may place on the Site based upon the level of your feedback. If you earn a net feedback rating of -4 (minus four), your membership may be suspended, and you may be unable to list or bid.

8.2 Export. You acknowledge that your feedback consists of comments left by other users and a composite feedback number compiled by eBay, and that the composite number without the comments does not convey your full user profile. Because feedback ratings are not designed for any purpose other than for facilitating trading between eBay users, you agree that you shall not market or export your eBay feedback rating in any venue other than an eBay operated website.

8.3 Import. We do not provide you the technical ability to import feedback from other (non-eBay operated) websites to eBay because a composite number, without the corresponding feedback does not reflect your true online reputation within our community

Also the stock is down 1.3% to 94 bucks, good god that is amazing in these tech stock days of woe.

With the amount of money they make, you'd think they could dedicate a little more man power to their feedback dispute resolution department. All it takes is a simple 'delete' SQL command, yet it seems to take the Supreme Court to get their attention.

Are they going to get a zillion complaints from people if they relax their dispute policy? Sure. But guess what...it's a big company, they should be able to get the man power.

There are plenty of people who abuse it...

So, I guess this guy is probably safe then.

One suggestion is to go looking for the original "God Loves, Man Kills" X-Men graphic novel. It's from the 1982, and the storyline is fantastic and puts a lot of the more recent stuff to shame. As well, I have heard from friends that the main villian has been reworked to appear in the X2 movie (Stryker).
I believe Marvel has just reprinted the story in normal comic book form as well.

Oh come on. You should know:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2727239390&category=11164

Did you write this ebay item description?
Kicker Box

Al Gore's boobies are DELICIOUS and provide NOURISHMENT

Like this wierd freak!!!!

Why are replacement lamps for these things so damn expensive?

But on ebay you could snag a DSLAM for your 160 units for under a grand. That's a DEAL. ebay search for DSLAM

First, forget DSL. It simply isn't reliable enough. Being out of connectivity is bad enough, having 100+ people mad at YOU because they're out of connectivity is even worse. Use a t1, multiple t1's, or a t3.

Here's the easy, cheap way to do it. Go over to ebay, buy yourself a Cisco 1720 with a Wic-1T-DSU card in it. Your t1 plugs into the WIC card, and ethernet port on the router plugs into your switch. You'll be able to do bandwidth limitting and port filtering as well.
From there, the only question left is the distance involved to the condos, which would dictate the structure of the ethernet design.

There are a few flaws with that design: First, with everyone on the same L2, there's no end to the mischief that someone can cause. Second, virii capable of exploiting the "network neighborhood" will spread like wildfire.

If you want to do things a bit better, put a firewall/router in each building, and wire those back to your central distribution switch. The "router" can be a $40 machine from the thrift store, with a couple of 4-port ethernet cards in them. Each ethernet port can be on it's own subnet, with appropriate firewalling on a *per port* basis. That will help you prevent lots of accidental and intentional problems that can crop up.

Of course, with 160 units, 1 t1 is pretty small. That only guarantees each unit about 10 kbits/second, which is lees than a 14.4 modem. Of course, not everyone is going to be on at the same time, but even if 1/10th of the people are on, that only guarantees them about 100 kbits/second.

When you also look at the fact that some people will use as much bandwidth as possible, then it gets even harrier. Let's say that you can each individual's bandwidth at 256k, with bursts to 512k. That means that it only takes 6 people downloading ISO's, using their favorite P2P app, watching streaming porn, or anything else to really make the connection suck for everyone.

Shop around, and see if you can get a good deal on a larger connection. Not long ago, I was offered a full DS3 (45 mbits/sec!) from Broadwing for $6k per month. While $40 per month might sound high on a per-unit basis, remember that would *guarantee* 768 kilobits per resident! There are very few places you can get that sort of *guaranteed* bandwidth for $40 per month *anywhere*.

steve

I bought two of these printers and never plan on buying another printer for b&w use ever.

Let the games begin!

You should try the Freespace series of games. They're getting a little long in the tooth these days, but they work perfectly well under Win2K and XP. As well, they really take up the slack where Wing Commander III dropped the ball -- screw the FMV, Mark Hamill, 5 minutes of gameplay for 30 minutes of movie crap. The Freespace series has a decent story (not groundbreaking, but still good for what it is) but more importantly great action and lots of it. You won't spend your gaming time watching poorly acted or rendered video sequences. You'll spend it in the cockpit of your fighter, blowing away aliens and fighting massive capital ships.

Of course, the Freespace games are a couple years old now, and it'll probably be pretty difficult to find them in stores. Your best bet is to hit EBay and see what you can find.

I've been coveting a Powerbook (pretty much every geek friend I've got has drank the Apple KoolAid) but just haven't been able to get past that impending feeling of buyer's remorse. All I really need is a decently fast Unix-ish laptop with 802.11b. And after hearing the friends with TiBooks complain about the finish coming off, heat, the case cracking, etc, I decided that I can handle using a slower x86 laptop. Having to make payments on a computer which has obvious defects is not something I'd take too well. I don't get a "cool" OS, but I've got two grand more cash in the bank than I'd otherwise have.

If I were you, I'd think very seriously about selling your Apple while you can still recover most your losses.

-B

I'd quote your whole post, but by debunking the following FUD, the whole premise of your comment falls apart:

The problem is of course the ionic breeze *ISN'T MOVING AIR*

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I bought one for a relative, and I tested it before I gave it to her. When you turn the Ionic Breeze on, you can feel air flowing out of the front of the unit, and if you tie little streamers (like thin, light ribbons)to the front grating, they start flapping in the breeze the moment you throw the switch. Yet there are no moving parts, and operation is totally silent (not just really quiet, I mean SILENT). I can't even hear any high-pitched sound from the power supply!

(Needless to say, they have an even better unit now, but oh well.

So how does it work, you ask? Well, Sharper Image has a somewhat-dumbed-down explanation of what they call the "Zenion Effect" here, or you can dive in head-first here.

One more BS rumor debunked. <accent character="Apu Nahasapeemapetilon">Thank you, come again!</accent>

After all that, if you're interested in buying an Ionic Breeze, don't buy it from the Sharper Image for US$299 or US$349 or whatever stupid amount they want for it. You can get them on eBay for something like US$160 or so, either new or factory-refurbished with full warranty (but photocopied manual, oh darn).

On another note, what's with the "No Subscriber Bonus" checkbox? Am I gonna start posting at +3 by default now?!

This is sad. But True...

here's one for you - faster and better than mine w/ 6.5, only $45, two hours left and NO bids.

ebay auctions, like this and this.

ebay auctions, like this and this.

Check ebay:

Dutch auction, 21 availabe, $195 each:
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item =2318020218&category=20610

Just search for "ionic breeze"

If you're in the Boston area, I'm selling one on Ebay right now.

Sorry, I just couldn't resist.

What he's doing is against ebay regulations anyway since ebay doesn't let you sell anything on CDR, even if you created it yourself.
Interesting! You didn't get it quite right, however. Here's their policy. You can't sell a CDR with data on it unless you're the copyright owner.

I can't find the ad you are complaining about,
It's here, but it will probably disappear soon, since I've complained to eBay about it.

Another of his auctions has a URL reference to an index of one of the CD volumes he is selling, and it's at http://members.rogers.com/techtraining/

Anyone know the right procedure to ask for the identity of a given Rogers user?

Ummm, in the one quoted auction, it looks as if he's also selling the Radio Shack mini-notebook and the Stan Gibilisco book "in pdf form on CD".

In this auction, he's selling pdf copies of Feynman's Physics Lectures.

I think he's violating a LOT of other people's copyrights, and NOT just copyleft licenses, real copyrighted books and manuals. Maybe you'd have better luck contacting the copyright holders of these other works, and pointing out to them his chronic behaviour and ask if they'd like to do more than simply have auction after auction closed.

He may not even realize that he's violating the terms of the license.
If you take a look at his user page on eBay, you'll see that he's not just an innocent guy who made some inadvertent mistakes. He's selling screensavers with copyrighted images in them (commercial porn, copyrighted paintings, stills from LOTR), digitized books that are not copylefted (the Feynman lectures), etc.

Don't make the mistake that so many corporations do of thinking/hitting with your lawyers first.
I have no intention of suing him anyway -- it wouldn't be worth the time, expense, and effort.

If he refuses change the auctions, contact Ebay.
I have, but all they've done so far is delete the auction items after the fact. If you're a copyright owner who's being infringed, they really won't do much unless you join their VeRO program, which involves the DMCA stuff. I also don't think I'm the first person to complain to eBay about him. If you look at his user page, a bunch of other transactions have been deleted, which seems to be what eBay does if you complain but aren't registered in the VeRO program.

I recently heard about the Iraq playing cards that were distributed, and checked Ebay to see if people had 'em out of morbid curiousity. What I found is that many people were selling "electronic copies" of the cards .. a PDF showing all of the cards together. I just looked, and there are still a few people selling 'em, but mostly they sell the "real" cards now. Here's the interesting thing.. I found a link (not there anymore, but here's a similar one)that claimed in the tag line 'Free, no scam!' and I looked. Turns out the PDF everyone is selling is downloaded from a link to the military website that displayed it. It is freely available for download and being sold. Nasty capitalists, we are =)

The important thing to note is this: In a situation like the one the author is in on ebay, you can pull a reverse warner*. Just flood ebay with similar items, listing them as free, and linking them to download the original document, explaining that anyone selling this (like that person) is frauding you, and here is the same thing for free. That might help deter the snake.

-sgilti-

Pulling a Warner
To flood file sharing services with fake copies of your song, lowering the chances of successful infringements.

the Reverse Warner
Combatting the selling of free materials by flooding the same forum with your free materials.

That would be cool if I coined a phase. =)

Here is the guy doing it on eBay and here is an example of the activity. His feedback is pretty good, though I realize it is anathema to the issue. I only mention it for those who don't have an eBay account and are curious.

Here is the guy doing it on eBay and here is an example of the activity. His feedback is pretty good, though I realize it is anathema to the issue. I only mention it for those who don't have an eBay account and are curious.

The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP ...this is getting tiring going through the list of his transactions... most of which are marked provate...

The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP ...this is getting tiring going through the list of his transactions... most of which are marked provate...

The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP ...this is getting tiring going through the list of his transactions... most of which are marked provate...

The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP ...this is getting tiring going through the list of his transactions... most of which are marked provate...

The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP ...this is getting tiring going through the list of his transactions... most of which are marked provate...

The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP ...this is getting tiring going through the list of his transactions... most of which are marked provate...

The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP The GIMP ...this is getting tiring going through the list of his transactions... most of which are marked provate...

A company named Luxuriousity run by Gregg Collins is apparently rebranding well known open source projects and selling them on Ebay. He gives no indications as to the original title of the software, and he even goes as far as to claim, 'Be careful who you buy from, only Luxuriosity offers a complete package including full support and refund services.' and 'We are a licensed Community distributor.'

I've submitted this as a story twice, the first time it was accepted, but not posted (Slashdot went down, I think it got lost), second time rejected. Anyway, it seems like this is a good story to post it under, since it's basically the same story as this one.

I want to find a copy of his poker book.
Try eBay.

in late 2003 or early 2004 they are completely switching memory to DDR2, but since DDR2 is as hard to come by as Jesus in a Bottle

DDR2 on eBay

Oh, that DDR2.

They make great gifts too, since everyone thinks Palms are expensive. For $20 it sure beats giving them a CD.

A few people have suggested the Canon Powershot series - while they're semi-durable, they really aren't ruggedized, and underwater enclosures are expensive and clunky.

I used to be a sysadmin at an engineering company where our engineers would often need to take pictures out on job sites, and we found the perfect camera for the job: the Kodak DC5000. The interface is simple, they're 2MP, and they're tough as nails. They're weatherproof and could probably survive a dunk into water as all the doors and buttons are rubber sealed. There's a protective tube to protect the lens when it's extended. Battery life is pretty decent, and it works great on AA NiMH rechargables. Also, if you're in the field and you absolutely need power you can always stop by a 7-11 and get some AA alkalines.

Unfortunately Kodak no longer makes them, and there's been a service recall because a few people have gotten shocked while changing batteries. It's a shame Kodak (or anyone else) doesn't make a camera like this any more, especially in the 3MP+ range. There's a chance you could find one on eBay.

Get yourself a PS/2 to USB converter. I use one with one of my Model Ms and it works great. Expect to pay 15-25 USD.

Feel free to pick this up from me...

The keyboard is a little small but a nice touch that it's detachable making it a nice slim portable keyboard that happens to match my PowerBook G3. I hunt and peck anyway (but still 40 words a minute)

I'd suggest it to anyone.

For those that want to see the car, the auction is here.

Now that's a car...damn. I wouldn't worry about the #10 cylinder...it still has 11 others.

Click this link to view the auction on eBay!!!

Does anyone have an archived copy of when Romero had his on eBay as well?

John Carmack's Ferrari on eBay!!!!.

Desktop Laser Engraver/Cutter