looking at the linked info, maybe IBM should have used some URL translation scripts before subbing the search engines. Maybe then they've found a whole load more stuff. Anyway I guess (just guess) anyone who wanted to link out o fan isolated site / page could strip referrer headers to prevent obvious detection by target page logs?
seriously, some of those posts are just dupilcates of one here. how did this get mod up? i mean surely the basic idea is to contriute to THIS debate / thread not tell peopl ethey should go somewhere else. maybe link to a comment i fits real good, but i dont think thats possible on the other place. hey even better put your thought here?
fravia has been talking about unlinked or hard to find sites for a long time now. My first experience with the idea of a non contigious internet of pages (semi - web?) came from his site. Now its tidied up and lays off trying to frighten MSIE users with rotten scripts;-) but looks nothing like offering the level of depth it once did:(
You can find a nice link map image and walk his site for other searching info.
this AC surely is not a troll - to swear and let off steam is not trolling. I thought the coment was fair, but not otherwise deserving of attention. If in doubt - ignore.
since when did an IP address give you anything other than an indicater of a pseudo geographic pool eg dialup1.xsrvr.ny.myisp.sucks.com , and really, even if th eisp someho wmanages sessions on this dyn ip, how does that help shame someone?
but for every crap thing that ever happened on some M$ machine, wouldn't reversing the code and posting a fix publicly get you hammered in court / imprisoned?
IBM in their EULA makes it so clear "IBM Software is *never* sold* - you don't own it - you can't fix it, prolly same with M$.
so lets extrapolate this - as we move fast into a world conttrolled by embedded systems where the distinction between hardware and sware is blurring (copyright on fpga design e.g. and all sorts of other stuff) where even the hardware may never be ours - "internet appliance" . ..
basically if we dont get for ourselves the ownership or rights to change the machines which are instrumental to our lives
"Everyman's death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind" John Dunne
Mr Katz appears to me as a tragic man, who deserves a better obituary than that given to him wither here or in the linked article
Very humbly I offer that the very lack of detail of his life is prompting a acute sense of loss in many who post here. This lack of detail i sprompting many I think to ask questions of themselves.
Since I have a first person experience of aloholism in a variety of stages of "development" and at different times in my life, I switched to -1 reading to catch a full thread (from +1 flat) and immediately saw the unthinking and somehow predictable set of responses to a man who died through drink.
From "selfish idiot" to "sufferer of disease" (my simplifications) I have heard them all - often directed in person at me by complete strangers
I once overheard a snippet of argument from an anthropologist studying apes in the wild, which oservation was that no primate had ever been discovered alone, except dead.
One of the central tenets of protracted alcohol use, even when it is not a strict dependency or physical addiction is the alienation which results. This is so exacerbated by the reactions of people to what may be the most complex drug relation of man (booze is so pervasive in western culture we have hardly begun to think about it) that I remember myself hiding from even close friends who understood my predicament for as long as six months at a time
It is truly sad to see how alcohol afflicts so often individuals who have an idealistic approach to life. Somehow I think the false perceptions drink can give allows even the most self aware drinker a chance to reconcile deep differences between desire, perception and reality in a hazy "reality distortion field". I think for some the alcohol and the insulation from both reality per se and importantly OTHER PEOPLES conflicting realities this can provide for its users can even help maintain a sense of idealism which may be to that individual of primary importance, above any other consideration
Someone in a decidedly off - topic post mentioned Bill Joy. Since when have the creators of this world *not* been dreamers?
I think the real tragedy in a death such as Katz's is the fact that so many similar incidents pass so wholly undocumented, without ever a real explantion or even an attempt to understand what was going on.
I would not be able to offer any comment on Mr Katz at all without knowing a lot more about the man, his life and his work than I do. At least for those who are arguing that public recognition does *not* come to those who contribute freely to the world, or are not *pretty* or whatever, I CAN say that in death I should like to think the fact or circumstances would provoke someone else to really think about their own life and environment. This sort of thing does not tend to hapen in "hero worship".
Maybe someone who knows him might feel they could post something here.
To any such person I think I can speak for many more than just myself when I say I am truly ashamed to read the gutter minds of a large number of the "-1" and troll / flamebait posters here.
"Everyman's death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind" John Dunne
"I regret to announce the end of my efforts to mediate the Microsoft antitrust case. Since my acceptance of this assignment on November 19 of last year, I have endeavored to find common ground that might enable the parties to settle their differences without further litigation. Unfortunately, the quest has proved fruitless. After more than four months, it is apparent that the disagreements among the parties concerning the likely course, outcome, and consequences of continued litigation, as well as the implications and ramifications of alternative terms of settlement, are too deep-seated to be bridged.
"This result is disappointing not only because of the amount of time that so many busy professionals, officials, and executives have devoted to the mediation, but also because the public interest would be served by avoiding further litigation, with its potential for unsettling a key industry in the global economy. I believed when I undertook this assignment that it was in the national interest that the case be settled, and I believe it even more strongly today.
"Mediation is a confidential process, and I do not intend to make any public or private comments on the merits of the litigation . . . I can, however, without impropriety, say this much: Despite my strenuous efforts to maintain the confidentiality of the mediation, there has been a good deal of leaking and spinning, and this leaking and spinning have given rise to news reports that have created a misleading impression of several aspects of the process and that should be heavily discounted by anyone interested in hewing to the truth. "I do not intend to make any further statements about the mediation."
When do you want this litany of Fool "stories" to end?
[ ] Midnight EST
[ ] Midnight PST
[ ] Midnight BST (British Summer Time)
[ ] Never (I'm gonna Troll all night . . )
[ ] As the editor's decapitated heads fall softly to the ground, in the narrative of this outraged last ditch post I'm writing to *BEG* for some Real News
Now, I'll wait until there is some vestige of reality in the "News" story before waiting a while, as usual to let some people have a real think before posting.
Besides, "News" here can usually be checked for veracity by the sheer number of people pointing out how the same was written up / editorialised / discussed / fully exposed SOMEWHERE ELSE 3,4,5 days or months ago depending on how clued in they are
Hrumph, now everyone's going to post some really deserving comments and they'll just languish at 1 or AC 'cos I cant mod now
I've often wondered, reading the trolls and silly people, musing at the real time spent (wasted?) with ascii art to bloat my average page, set at 50 comments limit -1 flat, to 70k dowload, whether this recent outburst of noise is not a part of the psyche of/. which portends ill
Moot the linux / free sware / open source predications, whom I understand, but is it not narrowcast *advocacy* itsself the root of wild instability in the coherence of what people write here? So that, in a rush to say something of value, even good people fail to craft an argument, and default to invective.
Does that sect(ion) of the/. community want to loose their voice so much? I for one am a little tired to load such large pages just to get a low point limit. And the number of times my browsers (from IE to M13, depending) just fail to render a real long page totally sucks the virtue out of the medium.
But I for one am adamant, with the erraticism of moderation as it stands, front loaded, often wasted in "killing off" trolls and flames, that I *will* continue to read "uncut" (or maye if in hurry with work at +1 or +2, itending to come back later.
Those posts I come back here for *again and again* are (guess) 60% at +1, of which maybe half AC.
The system works - yes, I get some of what I came for. But also I *want BAD* to loose this cruft of bad language and insult, of deliberate and pointless provocation which comes with every article
Okay, fine. Funny. But having just read the last two "stories" at -1 flat it really shows if you put it out cheap, you get it back poor. It really shows what kind of posters are attracted to this banality - the puerile, wasteful and unconstructive. What a real pity those who are posting the stires can think of no better way to pass the day.
And did I gather that the translations are from Babel fish? Oh really, no style. At least maybe someone could have looked up a native speaker, or worked on some "prep school" french - or even Latin?
I'm looking forward to something to moderate up. Go on, annoy me. Put it below.
yep, they were definately using laserdisc then. I think these things must have some particular importance or something - check out this picture on NEC's Annual Report which is proud of the electric fish!.
they must be getting updated these days to DVD - IKNA DVD but isnt DVD line resolution *much* less than a laserdiscs i.e. DVD just tries to be VHS+ not 500 lines + Anyone?
About summer '96 I tried to get some prices from NEC UK for LCD's - they sent me instead some beautiful brochures offering HDTV widescreen aquariums. £25,000 (c$40,000?) Ouch! I really wanted one
Re:mouse pointers. Save on RSI - switch to CLI
on
Apple's New Trackpad?
·
· Score: 1
just to remove an apparent inconsistency from the above post. design and layout use all stemmed from working on my web site recently. Win* is god awful for UI consistency. 30 years from now lets all sue MS$ for personal injury same basis as the tobacco companies who *knew* what they were selling was bad.
Ive been using a thinkpad 600 for about 1400 months now at work, and consider it on eof th emost durable and excellent pieces of kit I have. This whole issue abou tpointing devices really is becoming crucial I think to the whole development of mobile computing. If I take my 'pad on the road or on a 'plane ther's just no simple way - if at all - to keep a comfortable typing angle. Event though this is blessed with nice responsive keys which feel nice when plunging code into the machine as fast as my mind will take, the tradeoffs between this portable and a full desktop system, wher eI can pay real attention to ergonimics, become almost unbearable. If (curse work - not possible in this instance, see later) I could switch to running a shell (yeah, I know this could be kludged on the Win98)then my pain levels would drop real fast. Thing is I'm using layout and design ware and getinto a lot of forced mouse movements. After about 2 hrs or less, the way the Pointer works is causing lateral strains across the palm of my hand and affecting my concentration. As soon as I'm sedentary, this is no matter - plug in trackall or graphics tablet. But if companies such as Apple are really going to take advantage of the vast investmets in mobile networks GPRS 3rdGen etc they've got to think of less stressful ways for people to enter the majority of their typical data. When on the move laconicism counts. Shorthand was the ultimate tool not so very long ago, allowing secretaries and professionals to keep up with the spoken word and transcript a dictation or conversation. But the vocabulary of a mobile executive in a fast moving environment is going to be different from that of an author or a negotiator. So a few stock phrases or replies, or at least a less demanding response could be more important than any other aspetc of using a computing device : "What do you think about this contract, Dave?" "Too much, we're being stiffed on para 4 subsection blah blah" Not that I advocate a move to parenthetic opinionation or anything;) but IMHO this ergonmics on the move thing is going to be big, and above all the flexibility of the input devices is paramount. Best of luck to anyone who tries to improve the situation. [note to Linux developers, I *bet* that the most important thins to computing havent been learnt or maybe thought of yet. Much general respect from non user:( ]
Way to get Linux some real fast market share amongst professionals.
Now I haven't checked this for viability (sorry but this is off the top of my head) but what if RedHat or someone could BUY a big Graphics firm such as Adobe, then give a linux version of Photoshop for free.
Cost of my Adobe licenses well exceeds the cost of *nice* linux boxen plus my time to retool my brain to get comfortable under KDE or Gnome.
How many would convert?
If this could happen then someone should work out a way of *legally* requiring Apple to GPL Colorsync. Maybe Apple would do this just 'cos it might blow away windoze in a whole market area? What do you think?
dang - I mean non trivial content which is on topic at least enough to widen someone's horizon a little who is actually reading a thread for news relevant about the story - which is the point of/. anyway? not mean to bait at all.
Take a look seriously at the moderation of the early comments on this news thread. (based on the time fo my posting, I hasten to add) just how many are atributable to posters who have added content? I mean anyone going to write a context engine to switch off positive moderation for off topic posts and - maybe for really interesting ones - post them into a new thread "serious offtopic for 2/28/00" no but really im only thinking that this is silly. ***fsuck my karma. Think about content *****
this is a wonderful link with a detailed description of how Sotheby's was found to be dealing in stolen goods fron East Germany, found in the High Court of London.
This sort of thing is quite common and it highlights how naive Ebay must be to consider such a bid - there is so much undefined risk in the business of an auction house, only a combination of historical, legal and art experts could manage to assess.
However, with such a concentration of the employment of these in the main auction houses, the public is at a disadvantage to discover what is really going on. *all great fortunes are founded on a crime* taken note of by many in this business, I am sure. Here's the link :
sothebys.com offers a guarantee on all transactions, but rarely offers any detail at all concerning the history and provenance of the ieces for sale. this may be okay for $5000 items where sotheby's could even get the insurance underwritten. but many of the finest pieces in the world are sold not to private collectors, but between dealers, have complex provenances, may have been the subject of involved legal dispute, and so on and so on. plus, since thesetransactions on web sites are usually backed by credit cards, who the fsk is going tostump VISA or whoever's 2-3% commission on a multi million $ deal. Christies has a dealers card issued to those who are creditworthy, and generally recognised to bid. actually, more often than not these houses sell to people they KNOW wont pay and stiff the vendor. In a mo' I'll post some nice Lost Suit links for sotheby's. If there being bought by ebay its because they are as screwed a business model as ebay. bye for now.
Slashdot Mirror
"Bill Joy, now a billionaire capitalist"
you must be joking - Joy sold his SMCC stock for about 10$mln very early on - he was so naive this guy is never what you just implied
yeah, that's normal. didnt mean to be up tight or anything
nice page on obscuring web pages - if you want to do that kind of thing :)
looking at the linked info, maybe IBM should have used some URL translation scripts before subbing the search engines. Maybe then they've found a whole load more stuff. Anyway I guess (just guess) anyone who wanted to link out o fan isolated site / page could strip referrer headers to prevent obvious detection by target page logs?
seriously, some of those posts are just dupilcates of one here. how did this get mod up? i mean surely the basic idea is to contriute to THIS debate / thread not tell peopl ethey should go somewhere else. maybe link to a comment i fits real good, but i dont think thats possible on the other place. hey even better put your thought here?
fravia has been talking about unlinked or hard to find sites for a long time now. My first experience with the idea of a non contigious internet of pages (semi - web?) came from his site. Now its tidied up and lays off trying to frighten MSIE users with rotten scripts ;-) but looks nothing like offering the level of depth it once did :(
You can find a nice link map image and walk his site for other searching info.
Bad moderation ?????
#28
this AC surely is not a troll - to swear and let off steam is not trolling. I thought the coment was fair, but not otherwise deserving of attention. If in doubt - ignore.
#15
is not "funny"
#38
how is this insightful ? - the post conveys useful (unverified) information, surely "informative" or maybe "interesting"
is there a "rogue" moderator in the house, trying to make me trip up over all these silly descriptions.
Is a "rougue" moderator a Troll as a result? - then how to indicate this fact?
i am right, then i hope s(he) has no points left :')
since when did an IP address give you anything other than an indicater of a pseudo geographic pool eg dialup1.xsrvr.ny.myisp.sucks.com , and really, even if th eisp someho wmanages sessions on this dyn ip, how does that help shame someone?
Deal with corporations - take away their status as *perpetual legal persons*
I think several states fought against the idea of companies becoming independant legal bodies, sometime around Vanderbilt's day
just occured to me - so sorry if this is obvious
but for every crap thing that ever happened on some M$ machine, wouldn't reversing the code and posting a fix publicly get you hammered in court / imprisoned?
IBM in their EULA makes it so clear "IBM Software is *never* sold* - you don't own it - you can't fix it, prolly same with M$.
so lets extrapolate this - as we move fast into a world conttrolled by embedded systems where the distinction between hardware and sware is blurring (copyright on fpga design e.g. and all sorts of other stuff) where even the hardware may never be ours - "internet appliance" . . .
basically if we dont get for ourselves the ownership or rights to change the machines which are instrumental to our lives
then dont we all become Harry Tuttles?
"Everyman's death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind" John Dunne
Mr Katz appears to me as a tragic man, who deserves a better obituary than that given to him wither here or in the linked article
Very humbly I offer that the very lack of detail of his life is prompting a acute sense of loss in many who post here. This lack of detail i sprompting many I think to ask questions of themselves.
Since I have a first person experience of aloholism in a variety of stages of "development" and at different times in my life, I switched to -1 reading to catch a full thread (from +1 flat) and immediately saw the unthinking and somehow predictable set of responses to a man who died through drink.
From "selfish idiot" to "sufferer of disease" (my simplifications) I have heard them all - often directed in person at me by complete strangers
I once overheard a snippet of argument from an anthropologist studying apes in the wild, which oservation was that no primate had ever been discovered alone, except dead.
One of the central tenets of protracted alcohol use, even when it is not a strict dependency or physical addiction is the alienation which results. This is so exacerbated by the reactions of people to what may be the most complex drug relation of man (booze is so pervasive in western culture we have hardly begun to think about it) that I remember myself hiding from even close friends who understood my predicament for as long as six months at a time
It is truly sad to see how alcohol afflicts so often individuals who have an idealistic approach to life. Somehow I think the false perceptions drink can give allows even the most self aware drinker a chance to reconcile deep differences between desire, perception and reality in a hazy "reality distortion field". I think for some the alcohol and the insulation from both reality per se and importantly OTHER PEOPLES conflicting realities this can provide for its users can even help maintain a sense of idealism which may be to that individual of primary importance, above any other consideration
Someone in a decidedly off - topic post mentioned Bill Joy. Since when have the creators of this world *not* been dreamers?
I think the real tragedy in a death such as Katz's is the fact that so many similar incidents pass so wholly undocumented, without ever a real explantion or even an attempt to understand what was going on.
I would not be able to offer any comment on Mr Katz at all without knowing a lot more about the man, his life and his work than I do. At least for those who are arguing that public recognition does *not* come to those who contribute freely to the world, or are not *pretty* or whatever, I CAN say that in death I should like to think the fact or circumstances would provoke someone else to really think about their own life and environment. This sort of thing does not tend to hapen in "hero worship".
Maybe someone who knows him might feel they could post something here.
To any such person I think I can speak for many more than just myself when I say I am truly ashamed to read the gutter minds of a large number of the "-1" and troll / flamebait posters here.
"Everyman's death diminishes me for I am involved in mankind" John Dunne
"I regret to announce the end of my efforts to mediate the Microsoft antitrust case. Since my acceptance of this assignment on November 19 of last year, I have endeavored to find common ground that might enable the parties to settle their differences without further litigation. Unfortunately, the quest has proved fruitless. After more than four months, it is apparent that the disagreements among the parties concerning the likely course, outcome, and consequences of continued litigation, as well as the implications and ramifications of alternative terms of settlement, are too deep-seated to be bridged.
"This result is disappointing not only because of the amount of time that so many busy professionals, officials, and executives have devoted to the mediation, but also because the public interest would be served by avoiding further litigation, with its potential for unsettling a key industry in the global economy. I believed when I undertook this assignment that it was in the national interest that the case be settled, and I believe it even more strongly today.
"Mediation is a confidential process, and I do not intend to make any public or private comments on the merits of the litigation . . . I can, however, without impropriety, say this much: Despite my strenuous efforts to maintain the confidentiality of the mediation, there has been a good deal of leaking and spinning, and this leaking and spinning have given rise to news reports that have created a misleading impression of several aspects of the process and that should be heavily discounted by anyone interested in hewing to the truth. "I do not intend to make any further statements about the mediation."
Slashdot Poll!
When do you want this litany of Fool "stories" to end?
[ ] Midnight EST
[ ] Midnight PST
[ ] Midnight BST (British Summer Time)
[ ] Never (I'm gonna Troll all night . . )
[ ] As the editor's decapitated heads fall softly to the ground, in the narrative of this outraged last ditch post I'm writing to *BEG* for some Real News
I *was* going to fin dsomething to moderate up.
Now, I'll wait until there is some vestige of reality in the "News" story before waiting a while, as usual to let some people have a real think before posting.
Besides, "News" here can usually be checked for veracity by the sheer number of people pointing out how the same was written up / editorialised / discussed / fully exposed SOMEWHERE ELSE 3,4,5 days or months ago depending on how clued in they are
Hrumph, now everyone's going to post some really deserving comments and they'll just languish at 1 or AC 'cos I cant mod nowI've often wondered, reading the trolls and silly people, musing at the real time spent (wasted?) with ascii art to bloat my average page, set at 50 comments limit -1 flat, to 70k dowload, whether this recent outburst of noise is not a part of the psyche of /. which portends ill
Moot the linux / free sware / open source predications, whom I understand, but is it not narrowcast *advocacy* itsself the root of wild instability in the coherence of what people write here? So that, in a rush to say something of value, even good people fail to craft an argument, and default to invective.
Does that sect(ion) of the /. community want to loose their voice so much? I for one am a little tired to load such large pages just to get a low point limit. And the number of times my browsers (from IE to M13, depending) just fail to render a real long page totally sucks the virtue out of the medium.
But I for one am adamant, with the erraticism of moderation as it stands, front loaded, often wasted in "killing off" trolls and flames, that I *will* continue to read "uncut" (or maye if in hurry with work at +1 or +2, itending to come back later.
Those posts I come back here for *again and again* are (guess) 60% at +1, of which maybe half AC.The system works - yes, I get some of what I came for. But also I *want BAD* to loose this cruft of bad language and insult, of deliberate and pointless provocation which comes with every article
Shame has no face in a sea of people
Okay, fine. Funny. But having just read the last two "stories" at -1 flat it really shows if you put it out cheap, you get it back poor. It really shows what kind of posters are attracted to this banality - the puerile, wasteful and unconstructive. What a real pity those who are posting the stires can think of no better way to pass the day.
And did I gather that the translations are from Babel fish? Oh really, no style. At least maybe someone could have looked up a native speaker, or worked on some "prep school" french - or even Latin?
I'm looking forward to something to moderate up. Go on, annoy me. Put it below.
yep, they were definately using laserdisc then. I think these things must have some particular importance or something - check out this picture on NEC's Annual Report which is proud of the electric fish!.
they must be getting updated these days to DVD - IKNA DVD but isnt DVD line resolution *much* less than a laserdiscs i.e. DVD just tries to be VHS+ not 500 lines + Anyone?
About summer '96 I tried to get some prices from NEC UK for LCD's - they sent me instead some beautiful brochures offering HDTV widescreen aquariums. £25,000 (c$40,000?) Ouch! I really wanted one
just to remove an apparent inconsistency from the above post. design and layout use all stemmed from working on my web site recently. Win* is god awful for UI consistency. 30 years from now lets all sue MS$ for personal injury same basis as the tobacco companies who *knew* what they were selling was bad.
Ive been using a thinkpad 600 for about 1400 months now at work, and consider it on eof th emost durable and excellent pieces of kit I have. This whole issue abou tpointing devices really is becoming crucial I think to the whole development of mobile computing. If I take my 'pad on the road or on a 'plane ther's just no simple way - if at all - to keep a comfortable typing angle. Event though this is blessed with nice responsive keys which feel nice when plunging code into the machine as fast as my mind will take, the tradeoffs between this portable and a full desktop system, wher eI can pay real attention to ergonimics, become almost unbearable. If (curse work - not possible in this instance, see later) I could switch to running a shell (yeah, I know this could be kludged on the Win98)then my pain levels would drop real fast. Thing is I'm using layout and design ware and getinto a lot of forced mouse movements. After about 2 hrs or less, the way the Pointer works is causing lateral strains across the palm of my hand and affecting my concentration. As soon as I'm sedentary, this is no matter - plug in trackall or graphics tablet. But if companies such as Apple are really going to take advantage of the vast investmets in mobile networks GPRS 3rdGen etc they've got to think of less stressful ways for people to enter the majority of their typical data. When on the move laconicism counts. Shorthand was the ultimate tool not so very long ago, allowing secretaries and professionals to keep up with the spoken word and transcript a dictation or conversation. But the vocabulary of a mobile executive in a fast moving environment is going to be different from that of an author or a negotiator. So a few stock phrases or replies, or at least a less demanding response could be more important than any other aspetc of using a computing device : "What do you think about this contract, Dave?" "Too much, we're being stiffed on para 4 subsection blah blah" Not that I advocate a move to parenthetic opinionation or anything ;) but IMHO this ergonmics on the move thing is going to be big, and above all the flexibility of the input devices is paramount. Best of luck to anyone who tries to improve the situation. [note to Linux developers, I *bet* that the most important thins to computing havent been learnt or maybe thought of yet. Much general respect from non user :( ]
Now I haven't checked this for viability (sorry but this is off the top of my head) but what if RedHat or someone could BUY a big Graphics firm such as Adobe, then give a linux version of Photoshop for free.
Cost of my Adobe licenses well exceeds the cost of *nice* linux boxen plus my time to retool my brain to get comfortable under KDE or Gnome.
How many would convert?
If this could happen then someone should work out a way of *legally* requiring Apple to GPL Colorsync. Maybe Apple would do this just 'cos it might blow away windoze in a whole market area? What do you think?
dang - I mean non trivial content which is on topic at least enough to widen someone's horizon a little who is actually reading a thread for news relevant about the story - which is the point of /. anyway? not mean to bait at all.
Take a look seriously at the moderation of the early comments on this news thread. (based on the time fo my posting, I hasten to add) just how many are atributable to posters who have added content? I mean anyone going to write a context engine to switch off positive moderation for off topic posts and - maybe for really interesting ones - post them into a new thread "serious offtopic for 2/28/00" no but really im only thinking that this is silly. ***fsuck my karma. Think about content *****
This sort of thing is quite common and it highlights how naive Ebay must be to consider such a bid - there is so much undefined risk in the business of an auction house, only a combination of historical, legal and art experts could manage to assess.
However, with such a concentration of the employment of these in the main auction houses, the public is at a disadvantage to discover what is really going on. *all great fortunes are founded on a crime* taken note of by many in this business, I am sure. Here's the link :
http://iecl.iuscomp.org/gl a/judgments/foreign/gotha1.htm
sothebys.com offers a guarantee on all transactions, but rarely offers any detail at all concerning the history and provenance of the ieces for sale. this may be okay for $5000 items where sotheby's could even get the insurance underwritten. but many of the finest pieces in the world are sold not to private collectors, but between dealers, have complex provenances, may have been the subject of involved legal dispute, and so on and so on. plus, since thesetransactions on web sites are usually backed by credit cards, who the fsk is going tostump VISA or whoever's 2-3% commission on a multi million $ deal. Christies has a dealers card issued to those who are creditworthy, and generally recognised to bid. actually, more often than not these houses sell to people they KNOW wont pay and stiff the vendor. In a mo' I'll post some nice Lost Suit links for sotheby's. If there being bought by ebay its because they are as screwed a business model as ebay. bye for now.