MacAddict Tracks Down eBay Scam Artist

OS24Ever writes "A future high school history teacher, Jason Eric Smith, sold an 867MHz PowerBook G4 on eBay right before finals. He found out the hard way that people are out there to rip you off, and he went to great lengths to catch this guy with the help of Mac heads everywhere. A great read and agreat way for us little guys to get back at these scammers."

Comments

He used a *NIX tracking utility

[Anonymous Coward]

openDK() was used to takedown this scammer.

This is excellent news

[TerryAtWork]

Although myself I have never had trouble on eBay - 15 positive feedbacks, and never been burned.

Your logic is faulty

[PaxTech]

if drugs were legal they wouldn't cost NEARLY what they do on the black market. Most of that markup is to cover the risks. If heroin was legal, most addicts would be able to afford it by working at McDonald's.

I think possibly my biggest pet peeve is when people cite the negative effects of prohibition as a reason to keep drugs illegal.

Re:Funny

[Trogre]

Hey!

How come I'm on your 'foes' list?!

Re:A smart mob / posse?

[Planesdragon]

Something those pagan redskins would never do, or what?

The native americans in upstate NY did indeed work together as one nation. But, AFAIK, it was something that the leaders of the five tribe-nations organized, and not something the "common folk" suggested and implemented. I could be wrong--I've only got at most 1/8th native blood and (sadly) little cultural interaction, and the details are so sparse as to be irrelevant.

Democracy--that is, the concept of people working together for a common good and a common purpose not decreed by "the wise" or "the noble"--is something whose earliest-continous (and most famous) example is the people of the Untied States of America.

The "pagan redskins", to use your slurs, were all "kin" within a tribe and so naturally worked together. The best examples to the historical nature of the orignal parent's noted "discovery" are periods of either high mobility or sudden shift in geographic location. Something that, thanks to the relatively peaceful life (compared to Europe, anyway) of the native americans made a rare event.

The parent post was propably posted in a hurry, but this thing really pisses me off. And yes I'm a european (swedish) and a lawyer and seen this exact argument used against our aborigines (the sápmi) to which we 'brung' law and order. As if they didn't hav any...

Am I missing something, or is Sweden one of those country's who's "civlization_by_conquest" events were so far back in time that they're either prehistorical or, at least, solidly the Romans' fault?

You're reading a statement into my post that I simply isn't there. I never stated anything about any of the native american tribes, nor would I intend to.

Allow me to clarify...

I was listening to a presentation about different pagan holidays, and one component of one of the rituals was to honor / remember your ancestors. What made me remember this was that the presenter said that the ancestors didn't have to be biological, instead could be cultural, intellectual, or spiritual ancestors.
Must... resist... urge to... point out... self-intersted religion...

The only people in the world who refer to themselves as "pagans"* are the largely american polytheists, who can also very often be mixed in with the same general religious morass as wiccans or "druids." (Some of my best friends are wiccans, though we disagree on their historical peroggative.)

Now, these "pagans" have a tendency to claim a historical background that, allegedly, predates my own faith (non-denominational Christian). As far as I can see it, those that make the claim essentially take a history of religious rebellions and historical interest in the occult and prop it up as "historical proof." (Which, of course, ignores the fact that even if they DID stretch back to the time of the pre-roman druids, the jewish roots of Christianity would still have a few thousand years on them.)

Given this viewpoint I have, I'm sure that you can see why a discourse on "pagan" holidays that eliminates the definition of "relative", leaving the concept as "anyone you looked up to", could be called "self-interested."

Were I the sort of Christian who runs around damning pagans**, I'd probably damn these polytheists for being too mob-minded to use proper words for themselves and their holidays.

NOTES:
*: "Pagan" is derived from a Latin word that does roughly mean "people of the wild", and no doubt got its meaning as a reference to those outside of the Roman city-states who worshipped different gods.

But we're not speaking Latin, we're speaking English--and up until the 60s, "pagan" was an equivalent term to "gentile" and meant "not christian" rather than any specific religion. It strikes me as rather insulting to the finite dieties that they worship to name themselves as "not Christian."

**: The only people who use the word "pagan" properly anymore are overly-zealous ministers of my own religion (see why I'm non-denominational?). I only use it here to emphasisize a joke.