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Slashback: Fairness, Radioactivity, Recovery
Ha, ha, puny earthlings! TinoMNYY24 writes "The Independent broke the story of SpaceShipOne leaving the Earth's atmosphere. The headline of the story is "'SpaceShipOne' becomes first privately funded vehicle to break through earth's atmosphere." One more step towards the X-Prize."
A data recovery success story - please send more. bigdog1 writes "I also had the IBM 75GXP data loss problem reported on slashdot. Like the guy in this article, I was not able to pay someone to do my data recovery. However, I eventually was able to get almost all of my data back using a free program, NTFS Reader. The only problem was that the file names were not in the long format. From now on I am buying an extra hard drive, but has anyone else had success stories recovering their data? Long file names?"
Too little, too late. An anonymous reader writes "I recently e-mailed paypals's public relations department and urged them to restore Freenet's paypal account. Their reply indicates that they have reexamined Freenet's account and decided not to terminate it after all. No news on the freenet project page, but here's paypal's reply:
'I apologize that your concerns were not addressed in the previous email. Our Compliance Department has reviewed The Freenet Project account in question and the service has been fully restored. If you have any further questions, please feel free to contact us again.
Sincerely,
Andrew
PayPal Account Manager'"
ultranova writes "Because PayPal has offered no explanation or apology, the project does not intend to continue advocating its usage, and has migrated to Amazon Honor System."
'Adventure Capitalist' is a much better motorcycle story anyhow. malign writes "Mary Mycio notes that the 'Ghost town' photo essay is probably faked, and notes her reasons. There go my fantasies! :(" Rumors and grumblings to this effect have been around for quite a while, but this seems the most straightforward debunking I've seen of the trip a Ukrainian woman named Elena claimed to have taken through the Chernobyl area.
(We posted two stories about the alleged trip in March.)
Corporate machinations meet the mounties. los furtive writes "The CBC is reporting that HP has agreed to pay back the Canadian Government $146 million that had been defrauded from the Department of National Defense (previously mentioned here). HP claims it was the victim of 'a complex scheme designed to exploit both parties through contracts inherited through HP's merger with Compaq Computer Corp.' In the end they decided it was more appropriate to take action against those responsible and not engage in protracted litigation with the government."
lets Slashdot readers (and others) write to their Congresscritter with one click,
In other news: Amazon sues the EFF
Shame to hear that the Chernobyl story is probably fake, even more so that Elena has a husband!
Website was featured in The Mail on Sunday - so much for background research.
The HP/Compaq story seems to be implying that they are actually taking action against individual employees of the corporation who were responsible for doing such-and-such, as opposed to HP/Compaq itself.
This could set a GREAT precedent! As things stand currently, people within corporations can pretty much do whatever they want, while acting in the interest of the corporation, and they'll never see a personal fine or the inside of a jail cell. (Case in point: Bill Gates was never fined or jailed for all the things he did. MS just got a slap on the wrist, but nothing happened to Gates himself.) Maybe now, we'll see some accountability, as people won't simply be able to hide behind their involvement with $BIG_CORPORATION to avoid criminal charges...
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
Man, that just ruined my whole day...not really, the pics were still cool. Why would anyone really care that someone thousands of miles away from them kinda lied?
hi
I don't think so. As far as I know the Amazon patent covers only buying with one click, not writing. But iANAL.
Sincerely,
Pan Tarhei Hosé, PhD.
"Homo sum et cogito ergo odi profanum vulgus et libido."
PayPal's restoration of Freenet doesn't help at all. It's hard to unring that bell, and Freenet now doesn't want to deal with them anyway.
PayPal wanted to break their association with Freenet, and they just got what they wanted.
I think I have that much in my couch cushions ;) (Just kidding!)
Honey, I shrunk the Cygwin
I got MOST of my data back. Here is a step by step that I posted:
b[RESTORE YOUR LOST DATA]b - If your Deskstar drive is doing a click-click-pause, you can get your data back!
I have 2 IBM Deskstar 60GB drives, about 1.5 years old. A month ago, I was backing up data from one of them, and it froze. I rebooted, and WinXP took 10mins too boot, and the drive in question never showed up. So I ripped the case off, and to my gut renching surpise, the drive was giving me the r[click of death]r . So I spent the next few weeks trying to find a solution, as I am not going to RMA a drive with all my data on it. I *NEED* that data. So after trying just about every method I could find, I finally found a combination that worked.
Things to note:
- Freezing the drive had no effect, but try to keep the drive cool throughout the restore process. I had a fan blowing over the drive in question constantly
- Putting the drive in different positions (i.e. on it's side, end, etc) had no effect. Lay it flat.
- From what I can tell, the data is not lost. The drive seems to make sectors as 'bad' in certain sections of the drive, and thus 'can't read them'.
What you will need:
- 2 Drives of equal or greater size that are working
- A copy of "Media Tools Professional" [FULL] http://www.atl-datarecovery.com/mtl.htm (I had version 3.3)
- A copy of "Ontrack EasyRecovery Professional 6" [FULL] http://www.ontrack.com/easyrecoveryprofessional/
- A floppy diskette
[For these instructions, the BAD drive will be called Drive-B, and the good drive will be Drive-A. Drive-C is where the data will be restored (This CAN be an FTP site)]
1 - Hook up Drive-B and Drive-A onto your mainboards IDE controller (NOT any onboard HPT, RAID, etc)
2 - Boot off the floppy containing Media Tools Pro
3 - Select the Drive-B and choose Clone, Drive-to-Drive
4 - Select the Drive-A as the destination, and press Ctrl-S to bring up the options screen
5 - Change the rety attepts to '1', and click off the 'disable error control codes on last attempt'
6 - Choose to 'Invert' the clone (the last check box on the options screen)
7 - Start this process and wait for days (my 60GB drive took 49 hours) You will hear ALOT of clicking and it will the remaining time will bounce around from 200,000 hours down to 2 seconds. This is normal, but be prepared for a LONG wait.
--After clone is done--
8 - Reboot into WindowsXP, with Drive-A connected (disconnect Drive-B)
9 - Open up Ontrack EasyRecovery Pro 6 and do an advanced recovery
10 - Choose Drive-A and select the Advanced Options
11 - Choose Advanced scan, and 'Disable MFT'
12 - Start the scan (this took 1.2 hours). Then it will present you with a file list of what it files it found.
13 - Select the files/directories you want to restore and then select Drive-C as your destination
14 - As it starts to restore, it will prompt you to 'Overwrite' files. DO NOT OVERWRITE ANYTHING. Most of the files are cross-linked, and you will end up with garbage. You need to either 'RENAME' each one, OR, wait for it prompt you to rename, then in an explorer window, delete the files that it restored, and then click overwrite. Here is an example:
- You have selected the dir 'mp3'
- It starts restoring by putting all your *.mp3 files in there (ex: e:\mp3\*.mp3)
- After it restores all the files in that dir, it will restore the same files, with different data.
- At this point, it will ask you if you want to overwrite or rename
- Open Explorer, and delete all the files in e:\mp3\
- Then click 'Rename' in the dialogue box
- It will then write out the GOOD data
AND THANKS TO THE GRACE OF GOD, YOUR DATA IS BACK! I got %99 of my data restored, using this workflow.
The ONLY thing I didn't mention was that I updated the drives BIOS before I did this. I have NO clue if that made any d
The question I have is why did she fake it? I mean, the story says she went in the standard Chernobyl tourist ride with a helmet, in order to fake photos, so it was a deliberate, planned deception.
So why did she take the pain to do all this? I doubt it's the money, since she didn't sell her story AFAIK, and I doubt she wants to promote some form of radioactive tourism. So, unless she's completely mythomaniac and/or she really really wanted to delude herself that she had made the trip for real, I just don't get it...
So maybe she didn't motorcycle through... but the pictures aren't fake, are they? Are they ripped off from somewhere?
I'm on a couple of these "fax your representative and senators" alert systems now. I have two feelings on them, either they've opened a new avenue (or rather mass transport for an older one" for communicating with our public servants, or they will just further immunize our representatives from individual opinions.
...weeks ago that the site was a fake. The story in Swedish is here.
It seems that all the outrage over the faked Chernobyl excursion is focused on the also-revealed fact that the chick is married.
Fuck. There goes a few million
I'm amazing. You aren't. SUCK IT
....MOON LANDING FAKED.
Also,
CHERNOBYL RIDE IS A TRUE STORY
I have provided the same amount of evidence for my point of view as that forum post.
Great. Now, instead of the whole company being held responsible for the actions of employees, the company will instead be able to throw a couple of those employees to the lions and go on with what they were doing. How much do you want to bet it will never be high-level management that takes the fall for this kind of thing? Personally, I think I kind of prefer it when the whole company takes a hit - at least it hits the managers (the ones ultimately responsible) in the pocketbook, if nowhere else.
I guess employees just better become a lot more careful - get all directives in writing, and ignore anything your boss tells you to do that they don't write down. Employees are going to be held responsible for what they have most likely been directed to do, or at least have done with full knowledge of their bosses, so they better learn to protect themselves.
Basically, my point is (if I actually have one), while it is great that "those responsible" are being held responsible, somehow I doubt they are the ones that are really responsible.
I hate to break it to ya. But both men and women are whores. So the next time you look at your son or daughter, take a good hard look. They may not be yours. Muahahhaha
Elena, please !!!
Say it ain't so!
will the a/c
$146 million CDN =
$107 million US
or
89 million Euros
or
60 million UK Pounds
wouldn't a slash back be /..(slashdotdot)?
Are you serious? Look at the Tyco case...Dennis ain't exactly scott free, even if he did have a mistrial.
DAs are more than happy and able to go after individuals if they have the evidence to do so.
Please help metamoderate.
...that it's *not* a private matter. Freenet, as the account holder, has all the say in what's private. If they say that their account is frozen, and they want an explination, then paypal can't say it's private matter.
To make laws that man cannot, and will not obey, serves to bring all law into contempt.
--E.C. Stanton
Corporate "immunity" has more to do with the shareholders than the employees or management. It simply means that people who bought stock in the corporation and don't oversee/participate in day-to-day functions of the corporation, meaning they had no say in the wrongdoings of people within and on behalf of the corporation, can't be sued for misconduct that they weren't part of. It also means that, should the corporation go into horrible debt, etc. the shareholders can't lose more than they put into the company - their stock value can go no lower than 0.
I claim first use of "Error No. 0B" - or "No. 0B error." It'll be the new ID 10T!
It's a tour of an abandoned missile silo. Pretty kool. Don't try this at home (well unless your home IS a missile silo).
Since we are backing up from where we are now, I think it would be more like ./..
I won't join Slashcott. OTOH, If Beta goes live, I just won't be back until it's fixed. Sorry Dice.
Just remember to put it in a sealed plastic bag. Many many people have said it worked, although I've never had to do it myself.
Some Swedish idiot has put up a verbatim copy of the story without mentioning the original source at all - actually funny, because then he states that he was just a little girl when the pictures were taken. In case somebody is curious: Jerka!=jerk in Swedish (I think it's his nick name because the name of the site is Jerka's Market).
I still don't get the point why would she bother to make a story like that. Back when I read it the first time it did seem odd that anyone would let her into the zone by herself. What if she fell and broke her leg or something, or had an accident. But I guess the risk made the fantasy so much more thrilling. I suspect she might have wanted to try to either publish a photo album, or was expecting that someone from the West would pay her to go back and shoot some more, or maybe invite her on Oprah. I grew up and lived in those parts and I know that as nice and hospitable as Ukranians (and Russians for that matter) are, they can also be liars and manipulators (learned from papa lenin himself). I think the young couple wanted to somehow make money off of it, which if true, would be very sad.
(But I'm biased, since I was lucky enough to be present at that launch.)
What body decides what marks the boundary of space? I see all sorts of references to "officially defined" but no one says by whom.
Here is a link to Elena's updated website.
"Thank you suckers, I'll laugh at you all the way to the bank."
I bought it. This has to be one of the best trolls in recent times. Snookering a bunch of so called-technophiles and a bunch of news outlets calls for at least a beer or something.
And yeah, damned husband.
Boy, she got me good. Elana got me hook line and sinker! She really moved me.
Still the points she made were good and she told a good story.
So, Freenet had their Paypal account shut down. It seems that from the get-go, Freenet (and its community) decided this was politically motivated and shouted to the world about it; y'know, instead of trying to work it out with Paypal. So now that PayPal has reversed their decision, Freenet is unhappy because PayPal didn't show the proper respect & apologize? Gimme a break.
Not a troll or a flame, just think its a pity that the Freenet leaders can't exhibit a little diplomacy in order to advance their cause.
If the reactor building in Three Mile Island wasn't strong enough to sustain the hydrogen explosion, the ghost town could have been Harrisburg rather that Chernobyl. I could have made a site similar to Elena's. The only difference is that nobody would take it seriously.
blast it all, I was hoping to mention e-gold first.
But such is life. e-gold is very much the way to go if at all possible.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
"[HP] said it was the victim of a scheme run by an employee of Defence and others.
One employee of Defence was fired and is now living in the Turks and Caicos.
The article and its predecessor state that HP claims that it was acting as the programme manager for a number of subcontractors, one or more of whom allegedly colluded with a civil servant to submit fraudulent invoices, which HP then passed on to the Ottawa government.
HP is not going after its own employees, as it claims that none of them profited from the scam.
Corporate immunity is something of a given, BTW. If a corporate officer is sued for their actions in their corporate capacity, the corporation tends to foot the bill through its liability insurance - you won't get a penny from the individual themselves.
- Sig files: contemptibly familiar the second time around.
Well, I gave PayPal a call - I have cancelled all of my accounts. I currently run over $10,000 per year through there, totalling somewhere around $500 in fees (the occasional uncovered chargeback, and lots of small transactions).
I let them know I would not do business with them(I know several people personally who have had problems with them as well), and I am in the process of switching to YowCow.
Slight recommendation: don't use SolarPay. I ended up buying a re-branded version of their software, and it is backdoored. No, I won't tell you the backdoor - there are a number of sites still using it.
$146 million? We'll finally be able to save our National Igloo!!
But for NTFS recovery, use GetDataBack.
Calling atheism and agnosticism a religion is like calling bald a hair color.
This might sounds stupid, but I managed to get access to a unreachable IBM click'o'death disk in a very simple way : The drive was installed horizontaly in my PC case, well, tried to run it in a vertical position. Believe me or not, it worked, the disk started fine. I didn't investiguate how long it could still run this way. 15 minutes was all it took me to make a complete disk copy, then it got dumped.
//TODO: put sig here
The high UID is because I got tired of posting at -1 (too many troll/flamebait mods). As you can see, I'm rather blunt.
Anyhow, I really don't _care_ if you trust me or not. I could give you the email of my old paypal account - what good would it do?
Let's see - friend and client FastModz (sells modchips, http://www.fastmodz.com/us/) - lost nearly $5000, because apparently Mod Chips violate the ToS. Legal, or not, PayPal should not have just pocketed the money.
http://www.lowcostfurnishings.com/ - Lost hundreds of dollars because a client discovered a piece of furniture was too wide, and disputed it. PayPal reversed the funds, hit her with a chargeback (she finally managed to get it off), and she had to pay out of pocket to get the furniture shipped back. This was all part of PayPal's "protection" policy.
Perhaps, if it will make you feel better, I should use one of my other IDs, if it would make you feel better.
Really want to get to know me? Google is your friend. Yes, every single search resul tis about me.
So, screw you. Who needs karma anyway?
I am of the opinion that it was probably fakes, but the link does not in anyway disprove her claims.
In the former soviet union, we fake...unhem..excuse me, almost slipped.
In Russia(both before and after the fall) Anything can be had for money. I know someone who paid to have there military records marked them as deceased.
Now the link says:
" Zone Administration personnel were in an uproar over who approved a motorcycle trip in the zone."
of course, that doesn't mean she didn't give 100 bucks to the gate keeper. Or that they new about it, and became alarmed because of the media attention.
"Elena and her husband have changed the Web site and the story considerably in the last few days. Earlier versions of the narrative lied more blatantly about Elena taking lone motorcycle trips in the zone. That has been changed to merely suggest that she does so, which is still misleading."
That's called covering your ass, and in no way is proof of a fake.
I wonder what would be good proof that she did it?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
A recent data recovery operation I did on a Windows XP system: My friend had installed VMWare, and I think he somehow managed to set VMWare to use his physical primary drive as the drive the VM would use. He then installed Windows 95a (FAT16) onto his 40GB drive (which he thought was a virtual drive) which surprisingly worked until he tried to exit the VM and it wouldn't let him. After he rebooted, his machine booted into Windows 95a -- it had overwritten his NTFS drive! He was horrified at all the data he had lost, so I told him I'd try to recover it, although I didn't have much confidence in the situation. Rebuilding the MBR was straightforward -- I just used an MBR from another Win2K machine and modified the partition table to match his drive size (this is something I have a lot of experience with). The boot sector was also straightforward -- NTFS keeps a backup copy of the boot sector at the end of the partition. My main concern was the MFT. The mirror at the center of the drive would be intact (the FAT16 partition used by Win95a was 2GB and wouldn't reach 20GB into the drive), but I didn't think that the MFT mirror was a complete mirror. However, after reading the location of the MFT in the boot sector, it turned out that his MFT was located 3GB into the drive! This surprised me quite a bit. I later checked into this and found that a friend's XP machine had the MFT at about the same spot. My Win2k machine at work had the MFT about 200-400mb into the drive, and my machine at home had the MFT less than 1MB into the drive. Anyway, after a reboot (into an alternate installation of WinXP) and a scan, he was able to recover most of his data, which was a great relief. Some day though, I'll have to try out the MFT mirror thing and see if it would have been enough to recover an NTFS partition...
"No one likes working in a hamster wheel, and your shop smells of cedar shavings from here." - TaleSpinner
In the US, there is an important exception. If the alleged bad activity involves pollution, then the Resource Conservation and Recovery Act of 1976 ("RCRA": USC 42, chapter 82) applies. It says that a coporate officer will go to jail if the corporation is convicted. Congress had some sense back then.
I've dealt with many of these 60GB IBM drives. Turns out, the problem is overheating. I think the cause it a faulty temp sensor and thus cannot thermal recalibrate correctly based on servo data on one of the platters. To get around this, I would power down the PC and let the drive cool down. Next, I would place a powerful (yet small) table fan right up against the hard drive to keep it cool. I recommend the Honeywell Enviracair HT-800. Now your drive should work trouble free and thus would be a good time to back up your data.
Life is not for the lazy.
NT FOO!
Mod parent up plz.
It's a tour of an abandoned missile silo. Pretty kool. Don't try this at home (well unless your home IS a missile silo).
If you'd like to see a silo without the health (and legal) risks... and learn a bit, check out the Titan Missile Museum in Tucson, Arizona (Museum Photo Tour.) Quite impressive. I went last year. Even got to press the button, which was a bit unsettling.
Portable versions of Firefox, GIMP, LibreOffice, etc
The HP/Compaq story seems to be implying that they are actually taking action against individual employees of the corporation who were responsible for doing such-and-such, as opposed to HP/Compaq itself.
This could set a GREAT precedent!...
I disagree. The Canadian governement sued HP over a breach of contract. HP took responsability and paid. No precedent here.
Then HP made an inquiry into what happened and found out that some of its own employees were responsible of fraud against themselve and their customers. They are looking into suing theirs employees for fraud, breach of contract ( employment contrats ) and misrepresentation. Once again, nothing is precedent.
Finally, they are looking for breach of contract with their subcontractors who failed to deliver. Still no precedent.
What does create a precedent is the fact that subcontracting ended up costing them a lot more money than they would have saved using it. It may make several corporation re-evaluate subcontrating. This is good for you and me.
e-metal® payment confirmation: Batch 36278290 .59 grams of Gold
Paid To: 1377420 (Joshua Wise)
Amount:
Memo: Play around with sci.e-gold.com !
From:
101961 (e-gold promotional account)
Actual payment weight = 0.018969 oz. (0.590000 grams)
Applicable Conversion factors:
1 oz. troy = 31.1034768 grams
Gold exchange rate = 381.70USD/oz.
The e-metal payment was successful.
Your batch number for confirmation is 36278290
Thank you for using e-gold.
Try e-gold - (contact me). I'm NOT e-
=
$153,058,477.20 Aust. Dollars
or
173,497,877.39 Bulgarian Leva
or
279,994.170 Gold Ounces
or
133,091.283 Platinum Ounces
or
172,212,351,743.92 Italian Lira
or
3,093,234,971.99 Russian Rubles
or
106,685,949.95 Cuban Pesos
Just because I don't care, doesn't make me lazy, HP must pay $147m Canadian it makes no diffence how much that is in USD or Euros
That site has the worst background and hardest text to read I've seen all week. I do not reccommend.
$107 million US =
r s/ story/0,10801,91916,00.html?from=story_kc
14,267 Indian programmers (for 1 year)
http://www.computerworld.com/careertopics/caree
That's overkill leave it overnight underneath a reverse cycle air conditioner, 21 degrees celcius is sufficient. Obviously more people have freezers than reverse cycle air-conditioners but I have tried this and it does work!
I remember when my dad's 40GB hard disk (with Window$ 2K on it) which was also an IBM DeskStar, corrupted, I put it into my Linux box and ironically it worked 100%.
Then configured an FTP server pointing to that drive and my dad recovered all his data again.
Weird!
I've been trying to interest Slashdot in a story about breeder reactors. I still think it's the best way to build a nuke. It doesn't create plutonium waste, it burns it up. If we built breeders, we wouldn't have a nuke waste problem. Some stories... One of the most fascinating things I've read on this topic is how a Boy Scout working on a science merit badge managed to build a working breeder reactor in his backyard, and got into considerable trouble for doing so. The whole story is here: http://www.findarticles.com/cf_0/m1111/n1782_v297/ 21281407/print.jhtml
This essay (http://www.argee.net/DefenseWatch/Nuclear Waste and Breeder Reactors.htm) strongly argues the pro-breeder position. A basic explanation of how LMFBRs work can be found here (http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/nucene /fasbre.html).
The USA built an Experimental Breeder Reactor at the Idaho National Engineering and Environmental Laboratory. It no longer functions, but it's open to public visitors:
http://216.239.57.104/search?q=cache:9sr2-vf-QQsJ: www.inel.gov/publicdocuments/factsheet/ebr1-fsheet .pdf+%2Bbreeder+%2Breactor&hl=en&start=7&ie=UT F-8
India is the latest country to build a breeder reactor, and this article sums up the current situation well:
http://www.thehindu.com/2003/09/17/stories/2003091 703770800.htm
Now, instead of the whole company being held responsible for the actions of employees, the company will instead be able to throw a couple of those employees to the lions and go on with what they were doing.
... if they break the law?
Just tell me why is it either/or?
What if the precedent for this gets set, then a) individuals can be targeted by law if they break the law, and b) corporations who have been proven to allow/permit/encourage such law-breaking by its constituent members also can be targeted by the law
Why does it have to be A vs. B all the freakin' time? Life is not dialectic unless you make it so!
; -- the corruption of government starts with its secrets. a truly free people keep no secrets. --
as a Freenet-crybaby I can only say one thing:
"Whéééééééééééééééééé 3;"
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---
Great. Now, instead of the whole company being held responsible for the actions of employees, the company will instead be able to throw a couple of those employees to the lions and go on with what they were doing. How much do you want to bet it will never be high-level management that takes the fall for this kind of thing
... just look at the history of software patents in Europe if there was any doubt ... but the decay is significantly further along in the US), it is reasonable to expect the same from corporate criminals as well.
Well, if the Abu Ghraib prison scandal is any indication, that is already the norm in government circles. As the west has largely degenerated into a corporatist state (this includes the EU
Until the public rises up and demands accountability from brazen criminals like Bill Gates, GW Bush, and Rumsfeld, they will continue to brazen it out while their pawns take the fall. As long as we as a people quietly acquiesce to such nonsense, it will not only continue, it will continue to get significantly worse.
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
Has anyone considered that Elena (and maybe her husband) are probably laughing their butts off at all of the discussion of her web sight? Someone may be thinking "priceless," and she doesn't even have an ad banner.
The Chernobyl girl's English seems to have improved dramatically. From the revised page:
"I have never had problems with the dosimeter guys, who man the checkpoints. They are experts, and if they find radiation on you vehicle, they give it a chemical shower. I don't count those couple of times when "experts" tried to invent an excuse to give me a shower, because those had a lot more to do with physical biology than biological physics."
Caveat Emptor is not a business model.
Which is one of many reasons I don't put much trust in high UID logins.
What would you expect them to do? They should certainly not be delivering the money, since it is presumably illegial. What do you think they should do with it?
No, no. My high-UID remark was just me pointing out that there is no reason to trust you, since you've provided no proof. I put a small bit more faith in users with a low UID and a history of accurate comments, but that's just an aside. Knowing all about you (especially knowing that you regularly troll/flame) isn't going to make me trust what you have to say.
Slashdot gets worse every day... Pipedot: News for nerds, without the corporate slant
What would you expect them to do? They should certainly not be delivering the money, since it is presumably illegial. What do you think they should do with it?
How about refund it? If it's illegal, they shouldn't have it anyway. Besides, it's not illegal - it's just against their ToS. If they aren't allowed to transfer the money to the recipient, why should they be allowed to just pocket it? Presumably, there is something of value being exchanged - if the item was shipped, the seller is out the money. If it wasn't, the buyer is out the money.
Either way, PayPal benefits, and someone else loses. Their ToS are subject to change, and frequently do. Why should they be able to go "well, we now don't like X, so we will freeze the account of anyone we know to do it, and take the money?" Isn't that a little too much power?
Banks, at least, have no incentive to do this. If there is a question of legality, they don't get to keep the money - it gives them little incentive to act without proof of wrongdoing.