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Yet TradeMe still exists and people use direct bank transfers than any other payment method on the site. If your claim (that business this way is not practical) was true then people would not use direct bank transfers. But they do. Ipso facto your claim can't be true.

My claim was and still is that using cash eliminates many of the scams - your claim was that scamming was too infrequent to matter. I provided evidence that it was frequent enough that the marketplace warned you against handing over money via bank transfers (other than their own special bank transfer that still had no guarantees). Please read those links I posted - they actually specifically warn against bank transfers.

Again, the system is widely used here. So the onus is on you to back up your claim that it can't possibly work with evidence.

I refer you to the trademe trust and safety blog (yes, it really is called that): http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust...

But the system still works. You haven't provided any evidence that it doesn't. You haven't even provided evidence that the incidence of fraud is higher with direct bank transfers.

I don't need to provide evidence that it doesn't work because I never made the claim that it does not work. I claimed that untrusted transactions are best with payment and possession taking place at the same time, hence cash works best for this. The sites you pointed me to warn specifically about doing bank transfers.

You're saying "it can't possibly work, because scams". I'm telling you it does actually work here.

You're claiming "It works, because there are no scams", and I'm telling you, right now and right here, there are scams in all the classifieds. You're relying on the fact that people are honest; I'm comfortable being skeptical. You're asking me to trust "because it doesn't happen", and I'm saying that over here it's a daily occurrence. I actually don't know how to make it any clearer - if you're buying something off of craigslist, or whichever classifieds, the damn site itself warns you to be skeptical! Even the marketplace itself is telling you that there are scammers out there!

No, you're misrepresenting my position. I never claimed there were no scams. I said it was not a significant problem in practice. Perhaps that is due to a difference in the cultures of our countries. But the fact remains that the system works here. When you claim that a system that is in widespread use doesn't work, that's not skepticism. It's simply denial.

From the trademe site, they warn about this specifically: http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust... So, they themselves think that if you hand over money you could lose it. Let me emphasise that for you: Trademe themselves think that you should use any protection you can when paying money and you should not rely on trust!

So the trust issue is not an insignificant problem, but it is one that is painlessly solved by using cash.

Yet TradeMe still exists and people use direct bank transfers than any other payment method on the site. If your claim (that business this way is not practical) was true then people would not use direct bank transfers. But they do. Ipso facto your claim can't be true.

Again, the system is widely used here. So the onus is on you to back up your claim that it can't possibly work with evidence.

I refer you to the trademe trust and safety blog (yes, it really is called that): http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust...

But the system still works. You haven't provided any evidence that it doesn't. You haven't even provided evidence that the incidence of fraud is higher with direct bank transfers.

You're saying "it can't possibly work, because scams". I'm telling you it does actually work here.

You're claiming "It works, because there are no scams", and I'm telling you, right now and right here, there are scams in all the classifieds. You're relying on the fact that people are honest; I'm comfortable being skeptical. You're asking me to trust "because it doesn't happen", and I'm saying that over here it's a daily occurrence. I actually don't know how to make it any clearer - if you're buying something off of craigslist, or whichever classifieds, the damn site itself warns you to be skeptical! Even the marketplace itself is telling you that there are scammers out there!

No, you're misrepresenting my position. I never claimed there were no scams. I said it was not a significant problem in practice. Perhaps that is due to a difference in the cultures of our countries. But the fact remains that the system works here. When you claim that a system that is in widespread use doesn't work, that's not skepticism. It's simply denial.

From the trademe site, they warn about this specifically: http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust... So, they themselves think that if you hand over money you could lose it. Let me emphasise that for you: Trademe themselves think that you should use any protection you can when paying money and you should not rely on trust!

So the trust issue is not an insignificant problem, but it is one that is painlessly solved by using cash.

Yet TradeMe still exists and people use direct bank transfers than any other payment method on the site. If your claim (that business this way is not practical) was true then people would not use direct bank transfers. But they do. Ipso facto your claim can't be true.

Again, the system is widely used here. So the onus is on you to back up your claim that it can't possibly work with evidence.

I refer you to the trademe trust and safety blog (yes, it really is called that): http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust...

But the system still works. You haven't provided any evidence that it doesn't. You haven't even provided evidence that the incidence of fraud is higher with direct bank transfers.

You're saying "it can't possibly work, because scams". I'm telling you it does actually work here.

You're claiming "It works, because there are no scams", and I'm telling you, right now and right here, there are scams in all the classifieds. You're relying on the fact that people are honest; I'm comfortable being skeptical. You're asking me to trust "because it doesn't happen", and I'm saying that over here it's a daily occurrence. I actually don't know how to make it any clearer - if you're buying something off of craigslist, or whichever classifieds, the damn site itself warns you to be skeptical! Even the marketplace itself is telling you that there are scammers out there!

No, you're misrepresenting my position. I never claimed there were no scams. I said it was not a significant problem in practice. Perhaps that is due to a difference in the cultures of our countries. But the fact remains that the system works here. When you claim that a system that is in widespread use doesn't work, that's not skepticism. It's simply denial.

From the trademe site, they warn about this specifically: http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust... So, they themselves think that if you hand over money you could lose it. Let me emphasise that for you: Trademe themselves think that you should use any protection you can when paying money and you should not rely on trust!

So the trust issue is not an insignificant problem, but it is one that is painlessly solved by using cash.

Again, the system is widely used here. So the onus is on you to back up your claim that it can't possibly work with evidence.

I refer you to the trademe trust and safety blog (yes, it really is called that): http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust...

You're saying "it can't possibly work, because scams". I'm telling you it does actually work here.

You're claiming "It works, because there are no scams", and I'm telling you, right now and right here, there are scams in all the classifieds. You're relying on the fact that people are honest; I'm comfortable being skeptical. You're asking me to trust "because it doesn't happen", and I'm saying that over here it's a daily occurrence. I actually don't know how to make it any clearer - if you're buying something off of craigslist, or whichever classifieds, the damn site itself warns you to be skeptical! Even the marketplace itself is telling you that there are scammers out there!

No, you're misrepresenting my position. I never claimed there were no scams. I said it was not a significant problem in practice. Perhaps that is due to a difference in the cultures of our countries. But the fact remains that the system works here. When you claim that a system that is in widespread use doesn't work, that's not skepticism. It's simply denial.

From the trademe site, they warn about this specifically: http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust... So, they themselves think that if you hand over money you could lose it. Let me emphasise that for you: Trademe themselves think that you should use any protection you can when paying money and you should not rely on trust!

So the trust issue is not an insignificant problem, but it is one that is painlessly solved by using cash.

Again, the system is widely used here. So the onus is on you to back up your claim that it can't possibly work with evidence.

I refer you to the trademe trust and safety blog (yes, it really is called that): http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust...

(From the side of ebook authoring): this is a good idea, but won't help much. I would say that the biggest problems with reviews on Amazon are:

(1) "Shills" or "sock puppeting" to promote one's own product. We'll often see a new author appear with a single book, hardly any sales, and five or six 5-star reviews. One particular example had five 5-star reviews from new reviewers (no other activity), all with the same poor level of English. Interestingly, that ebook hasn't shown up again. I do know of other 5-star reviews that were removed as they looked suspect, so it seems that Amazon at least do something here.

(2) Shills to sabotage rivals. Example: we had a few kids' ebooks in the top of their categories over Christmas, then in one day all of those that were on the first page get 2-star reviews, all from different reviewers who had not reviewed anything else, with suspiciously similar wording. This one is probably a bit harder to police, but I'd like to hope that Amazon have the sense to look for this sort of thing. It's quite tragic really to realise how nasty authors - children's authors! - can be.

(3) Stupid people who have no idea about the concept of objectivity. There isn't much one can do here, but most user reviews seem to be either something to the effect of "OMG, this was the best thing evar!" with 5-stars, or "My daughter wasn't interested [as if that's an objective measure], this is crap. Oh, I liked the illustrations and the story though" with 1 star, or the reviews "This is not what I expected", followed by comments that make it obvious they didn't read the description, the other reviews, or information like the number of pages... This is perhaps where a "reviewer rating" system would be good - and I think this needs to happen; New Zealand's TradeMe website's user rating would be the sort of thing I would suggest, with reviews weighted by the reviewer's rating - in summary, highlight suspect (new) accounts, and give more credence to someone who has done lots of reviews and has been frequently marked as "Helpful".

It has made me realise that the average star rating is irrelevant - you'd have to look at individual reviews, and their quality and sense (or lack thereof) and judge for yourself.

But, your suggestion of marking author accounts would help, even if it didn't completely do away with the first two. I think that the first filter I'd put in place against shills is something that checks against IP address, credit card details, etc. Amazon's idea of stopping authors from reviewing other books in their categories is useless (and counter-productive) unless they make a really good effort to deal with sock puppeting, as that's where the real problems lie. I would say they should let authors review others' work, but have something that marks this, exclude it from the calculation of the average, and have a good "report abuse" system, which can hurt the author if they abuse it (e.g. a "Not helpful" on an author's review counts as negative points in the ranking of all their own books).

Also, they need to make the calculation of star ratings more comprehensive, and design it to filter abuses - like what IMDb does.

'Cause Slashcode supports Holdens! Go Lowndsey! (Ducks)

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Electronics-photography/Other/auction-36725938.htm

Try and find something like http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Networking-modems/Wireless-networking/Antennas/auction-257378717.htm

eBay url for an electronic item for sale:

http://cgi.ebay.com.au/SONY-5-1-Home-Theatre-Amplifier-Receiver-STRDE497_W0QQitemZ180339459830QQcmdZViewItemQQptZAU_HOME_CINEMA_SYSTEMS?hash=item180339459830&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14&_trkparms=66%3A2%7C65%3A1%7C39%3A1%7C240%3A1318

NZ's Trade Me url for a piece of electronic equipment:

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Electronics-photography/Home-audio/Headphones/auction-210021888.htm

There is no excuse for the difference in length, and eBay is not only confusing search engines and us, but is also making their pages slower to load.

Note that the ebay.com.au and Trademe sites have about the same number of listings. The url is a symptom, and a cursory analysis of the rest of the page and the site will see plenty of other examples of poor design for page loading speed.

trademe

http://www.trademe.co.nz/

Nice map, as a Kiwi, I'm proud to be a Firefox user. I think it helps that a couple of Firefox developers were Kiwis too. Since then they've been snapped up by Google and are living the high life. New Zealand has a thriving technology sector and I think that has lead to New Zealanders being open to change more than most. While we're a dumping ground for old cellphones, we also trial a lot of cool stuff, like IP-based phone systems (courtesy of our Telecom and Alcatel). We've provided radio systems for the Soccer world cup (the last one and the next one), we are the source of high tech companies like Navman and Tait Electronics... and we even have the Macdiarmid institute that does some great research into nanotechnology.

Back ontopic... I recommend Firefox to anyone. My family all love the tabs especially when using the country's most favourite website TradeMe. However, I recently converted to Konqueror after acquiring an old, low spec iBook. Firefox is way too slow. I'm even considering ditching Thunderbird after a long devotion.

Check the wx forecast
Google headlines plus local content
Mea culpa
One of the few remaining exponents of in-depth journalism

If slack time presents itself, I'll trawl around Gizmodo, some aggregator-type sites related to ongoing r&d, and see if there's anything cool on TradeMe.

Some enterprising kiwi is now auctioning the iceberg on www.trademe.co.nz
TradeMe is the New Zealand equivilent of eBay (the UI doesn't suck though)

This technology has existed for quite a while. My step-daughter had one of these (http://www.trademe.co.nz/Toys-models/Battery-wind up/photos/a-76582917/p-29182841.htm) when she was 3. I could jam out to a rockin' version of the Sesame Street theme song just by moving my hands......and I don't know diddly about music.

Layne

I would highly recommend considering a second hand printer. By that I mean something like a printer that is ex-lease, and may have only been running for a few years. In New Zealand I'd source something like this from TradeMe. I guess in the US you might look somewhere like eBay.

Remember. Reduce - Reuse - Recycle.

not in New Zealand they dont. Take a look at this, http://www.trademe.co.nz/Computers/Apple/Laptops/a uction-64970669.htm, an American MBP bought by this guy and sold on TradeMe, its eBay but better. Feel sorry for me, you can see all the prices at www.apple.co.nz too.

Other countries often have much-preferred local versions, such as http://www.trademe.co.nz/ here in New Zealand, whose traffic dwarfs all other websites of all types, and is at the top of the 'I Hate It Yet Can't Live Without It!' list of every management and IT person in NZ.

This is the system used here in New Zealand by Trademe. If there is a higher bid placed in the last 2 minutes, the auction 'auto-extends' by 2 minutes.

This makes sniping pretty much impossible, as if my maximum was $35 and the auction was sitting at $23 and someone came in with 7 seconds to go and tried to snipe at $24, my earlier bid would kick in and they would more than likely be unable to get another shot at it before the 7 seconds expired.

If they came in at 7 seconds to go with a bid of $40, then the auction would extend and I would at least have 2 minutes to decide if I was willing to pay more.

This means it is in your best interests to put in an autobid (aka Proxy Bid) for the maximum you are willing to pay, as it only extends if the bid placed in the last 2 minutes is higher than the current maximum proxy bid and it only bids the minimum necessary amount for you to reach the reserve price/lead the bidding

Or if your Sydney (Australia) just buy mine! See here: http://www.trademe.co.nz/Browse/Listing.aspx?id=47 953218

That's nothing.
They are going for $1500 in NZ if you want one before March next year.

I don't use e-bay but prefer a local (NZ) auction site and a quick search finds:

• Flock of Ducks
• A whole section on Horses including stud

I don't use e-bay but prefer a local (NZ) auction site and a quick search finds:

• Flock of Ducks
• A whole section on Horses including stud

Goods & Services Tax also exists in New Zealand levied at 12.5% as opposed to the Australian 10%. It is a consumption tax similar to the UK's VAT but is on pretty much all goods and services. A range of exclusions exist (in NZ) on rent, exports, financial services etc. It replaced a raft of Sales Taxes of differing rates and has made tax collection that much easier and efficient. It is not mandatory to show a GST exclusive price but consumers expect the final price to include GST and get snotty when it is not. As to EBay, ha, we have http://www.trademe.co.nz/. EBay never got any traction and Trademe is the one used. It was suggested that the Trademe website be blocked at our large company, but not imposed due to fear of a riotous mob descending on the IT Dept.

Interesting how these 'apparently' bright people can't work things out in their head.

Purchase a 7200rpm Hitachi drive, sell the old one on http://www.trademe.co.nz/ or http://www.ebay.com/ taking everything into cost, it'll be a matter of only paying an extra US$50 or so for a faster and larger hard disk - small price to pay for having a small and fast little pocket rocket for the desktop.

As for playing games; not to sound elitist, but isn't it getting pathetic when 20 somethings are sitting at home playing games? I mean, geeze.

I've noticed a few sites aren't displaying *anything* on their front pages. Lots of amateurs out there with broken networks today...

What really cheeses me off about businesses that benefit from a network effect (like ebay) is that once they have their customers "locked in" there is no incentive for them to improve their business because it is very hard for competitors to challenge them.

On a sidenote, check out New Zealand's version of ebay. The interface is so much cleaner and easier to use. I'm surprised how e-bay can have such a crap, ugly interface and continue to operate as a successful company.

What about VCD, SVCD or DVD? There are portables Or maybe a jukebox?

The thing is, products that work are fine for dull. boring people like us, but special people need to have an apple product to reassure them that they are special and unique.

Don't be silly. If you buy a sony you can feel l33t and replace the battery.

Why not use gumstick batteries?? Sony has been using them for years in their minidisk players, which are mostly smaller then iPods. When my memory-stick media player battery died, I just poped in a new gumstick from best buy for $10. The thing is about a 1/10th the size of an iPod.

Yeah old games rock.

I've just got an old Toshiba laptop real cheap and it came win DOS. I've been replaying all sortos of old games from dosgamesarchive and other sites. I've rediscovered DOOM and Quake and Sam & Max hit the Road and Warcraft and sh!tloads of others...

Man old games were (are?) cool. :)

About 15 years ago when I had only recently been thrown out of university, my flatmate found a largish number (40-50) of unsold textbooks in a dumpster behind the on-campus bookshop. He managed to sell at least 30 through the university's own second-hand bookstore before they became aware of the situation, and I think he sold a few more via noticeboard adverts.

More recently, me and a friend found well over 200 Windows manuals with licences for windows98 in a paper-recycling bin, and sold most of them through an auction site with no hassles whatsoever.

So what exactly is the difference between dumpster-diving an unsold sewing pattern, magazine or software licence, and dumpster-diving a slightly damaged but easily repaired "probably returned-under-warrantee" monitor?

Or is that 'piracy' too?

2nd hand auction for Windows version can't find a bidder at US$2.50 (NZ$5.00). LOL

http://www.trademe.co.nz/Gaming/PC-games-Action/au ction-3657085.htm

An Acorn 3010 computer (early 1990s).
A newish version of RiscOS

New Zealand's 'lovely' telco has brought out a flat-rate 128k ADSL service called JetStart. However, you must purchase your own DSL modem. I don't know whether or not the ones you have would be compatible ... I don't really know how DSL works.
However, I've heard that DSL modems sold on trademe, a .nz based auction site, are quite sought after. It might be worth a try. =)