Just to clear the air, Rings-Online.com does not require a photograph or a photocopy or anything of the sort. I merely sympathize with companies that do.
That having been said, we put the exact same restrictions on phone orders as we do online orders.
Re: What's your definition of international?
on
A Matter Of Trust?
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· Score: 1
Unfortunately, neither UPS nor FedEx will insure jewelry, so we are SOL.
Re: What's your definition of international?
on
A Matter Of Trust?
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· Score: 1
Joking: Countries outside the one I live in. What's yours?
Serious: Unfortunately, no. The USPS and the Canadian Postal Service do not work smoothly together.
If we ship to someone in Canada, and he or she claims to have not received it, it takes at least 90 days for the USPS to retreive tracking information from the Canadian Postal service.
Plus, we have very little ability to prosecute fraud in Canada.
I finally understand why large businesses split into many national divisions (ie. Nintendo of America, etc), so that they have actual legal power in those countries.
Re: No We're Not - We need the information!
on
A Matter Of Trust?
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· Score: 5
How much information does a small business selling on the Internet need about potential customers? As much as they can get.
I own a small, web based retailer selling engagement rings, and I can tell you that we need as much information as possible about each customer. You have no idea how much fraud there is on the Internet: on average, 4 out of every 5 orders at our site are fraudulent. Most of these orders come from the UK and Australia. As a result we have had to stop all international orders. We simply cannot afford the enormous risk.
A few facts that might help you empathize with small Internet merchants.
There is no way of reliably tracking international orders if you are a small business. Sending a diamond ring to the UK or Australia is like sending it to Timbuktu. You might think that the USPS and the UKPS would work smoothly together, but this is not nearly the case.
Credit card companies always side with the customer. No matter how ridiculous their claim. The merchant services company (in our case, Nova) will take money out of our bank account without warning, charge us a penalty for doing it, and hold the money as long as they want (we have never won a case against a fraudulent company).
The credit card companies don't care about fraud. They make a big deal about fighting credit card fraud, but it is all bluster. We have seen dozens of examples of outright fraud, which we promptly report. We have never heard back from anyone at any credit card company. Our complaints fall on deaf ears.
I have bought thousands of dollars of merchandise on the Internet and sold much more, and I can say from personal experience that the Internet is a much more dangerous environment for small businesses than it is for customers. I have never experienced fraud on the net as a consumer, but I see it every day as a merchant.
Remember, you are asking a merchant who has never seen you, and knows very little about you to ship expensive merchandise to you before they receive any money for it. Additionally, customers can almost always cancel the order without returning the merchandise and the merchant is out of luck.
Large corporations can absorb some of these losses, but most small business owners can't.
Unless his kids want to be "plumbing programmers" they should stay away from C. It is a good language for operating systems and device drivers, but not much else.
If they want to program high level applications they should use a high level language. The lingua france of business development will for the next generation will be Java.
Only a small percent of next-generation programmers will be "plumbers". Most programmers will be developing web applications or business logic. For these projects, C makes no sense (neither does C++).
From the BBC "Computer virus experts are currently battling to find an antidote to the problem, which is thought to be targeting idiots..." -Bruno "Truth Against the World" -FLW
Thank you skelly, I wasn't aware of the fact that: "Americains are notorious for trampling over other people's rights in the pursuit of their own agendas..." I had mistakenly thought that the US was a pretty nice place to live, but now that you mention it, I suppose we all are a bunch of greedy, money grubbing bastards. It has taken a man with your great wisdom and talent for vicious stereotyping to show me the truth about my people. Here's one thing I know, the people of whatever country you are from will soon be known for not being able to spell. Retard. -Bruno
Seriously dude, if you think you will be playing Q3 Arena with a Voodoo 1 with anything close to satisfying results, you are grossly mistaken, unless your idea of 'gaming goodness' is 640x480 at about 15fps.
The page with detailed info concerning these boards is www.3dfx.com/prod/voodoo/newvoodoo.html
The really interesting thing is that *once again* 3dfx promised us more than it will deliver. On the low end (Voodoo4 4500) these babies are getting smoked by the GeForce 256, which will be a half a year older! The GeForce can do 480 Megapixels per second, about 1.3 times as fast as a Voodoo 4 (which clocks in at 367 Megapixels per second).
If the past is any indication it at least a few more months for the Voodoo 5 to be released (ignore what 3dfx says), by this time Nvidia will probably already have a better card.
In summary, the Voodoo 4 is slower and less feature rich than the GeForce 256, plus is won't be out for 4 more months. It could take longer for the Voodoo 5 which will probably be an anachronism before it is released.
Come on 3dfx! This is *not* the technology that will keep us ahead of the PSX2!!!
Slashdot Mirror
Just to clear the air, Rings-Online.com does not require a photograph or a photocopy or anything of the sort. I merely sympathize with companies that do.
That having been said, we put the exact same restrictions on phone orders as we do online orders.
Brian Woodring
Rings-Online.com
Unfortunately, neither UPS nor FedEx will insure jewelry, so we are SOL.
Joking: Countries outside the one I live in. What's yours?
Serious: Unfortunately, no. The USPS and the Canadian Postal Service do not work smoothly together.
If we ship to someone in Canada, and he or she claims to have not received it, it takes at least 90 days for the USPS to retreive tracking information from the Canadian Postal service.
Plus, we have very little ability to prosecute fraud in Canada.
I finally understand why large businesses split into many national divisions (ie. Nintendo of America, etc), so that they have actual legal power in those countries.
Regards,
Brian Woodring
Webmaster, Owner
Rings-Online.com
How much information does a small business selling on the Internet need about potential customers? As much as they can get.
I own a small, web based retailer selling engagement rings, and I can tell you that we need as much information as possible about each customer. You have no idea how much fraud there is on the Internet: on average, 4 out of every 5 orders at our site are fraudulent. Most of these orders come from the UK and Australia. As a result we have had to stop all international orders. We simply cannot afford the enormous risk.
A few facts that might help you empathize with small Internet merchants.
I have bought thousands of dollars of merchandise on the Internet and sold much more, and I can say from personal experience that the Internet is a much more dangerous environment for small businesses than it is for customers. I have never experienced fraud on the net as a consumer, but I see it every day as a merchant.
Remember, you are asking a merchant who has never seen you, and knows very little about you to ship expensive merchandise to you before they receive any money for it. Additionally, customers can almost always cancel the order without returning the merchandise and the merchant is out of luck.Large corporations can absorb some of these losses, but most small business owners can't.
Regards,
Brian Woodring
Webmaster, Owner
Rings-Online.com
Unless his kids want to be "plumbing programmers" they should stay away from C. It is a good language for operating systems and device drivers, but not much else.
If they want to program high level applications they should use a high level language. The lingua france of business development will for the next generation will be Java.
Only a small percent of next-generation programmers will be "plumbers". Most programmers will be developing web applications or business logic. For these projects, C makes no sense (neither does C++).
From the BBC "Computer virus experts are currently battling to find an antidote to the problem, which is thought to be targeting idiots..." -Bruno "Truth Against the World" -FLW
Thank you skelly, I wasn't aware of the fact that: "Americains are notorious for trampling over other people's rights in the pursuit of their own agendas..." I had mistakenly thought that the US was a pretty nice place to live, but now that you mention it, I suppose we all are a bunch of greedy, money grubbing bastards. It has taken a man with your great wisdom and talent for vicious stereotyping to show me the truth about my people. Here's one thing I know, the people of whatever country you are from will soon be known for not being able to spell. Retard. -Bruno
Seriously dude, if you think you will be playing Q3 Arena with a Voodoo 1 with anything close to satisfying results, you are grossly mistaken, unless your idea of 'gaming goodness' is 640x480 at about 15fps.
The page with detailed info concerning these boards is www.3dfx.com/prod/voodoo/newvoodoo.html
The really interesting thing is that *once again* 3dfx promised us more than it will deliver. On the low end (Voodoo4 4500) these babies are getting smoked by the GeForce 256, which will be a half a year older! The GeForce can do 480 Megapixels per second, about 1.3 times as fast as a Voodoo 4 (which clocks in at 367 Megapixels per second).
If the past is any indication it at least a few more months for the Voodoo 5 to be released (ignore what 3dfx says), by this time Nvidia will probably already have a better card.
In summary, the Voodoo 4 is slower and less feature rich than the GeForce 256, plus is won't be out for 4 more months. It could take longer for the Voodoo 5 which will probably be an anachronism before it is released.
Come on 3dfx! This is *not* the technology that will keep us ahead of the PSX2!!!