eBay is so pervasive in the auction sector, what with its continual name-dropping in feature films, music videos and so forth that it can pretty much charge what it likes and know it'll still be regarded as the de facto auction site.
Recently they made a stand about sellers enforcing a percentage rise for whenever a buyer paid using Paypal. Justifable really, since the seller loses out to the tune of ~3% otherwise.
Also, the concept of a Final Value Fee has no justification in my eyes. I can understand eBay charging a variable listing fee (depending on the item visibility & features), but to charge someone a variable percentage of whatever they sell their item for is absurd. Imagine selling a car via a local newspaper, and finding a representative at your door demanding a cut in addition to whatever they charged you to list the item in the first place!.. oh, and then finding your bank asking for their cut too for processing the money.
It wouldn't be so bad if they were a shining light in the customer service stakes, but their track record is atrocious. Not only are they notoriously slow at answering dispute resolution correspondance, but invariably they wash their hands of all but the most legally threatening (to them) issues. Feedback arbitration is practically non-existant, with malicious negative feedback being effectively permanent (even from members no longer registered and/or banned!).
As others have remarked - they will find some way to pass whatever costs they have to bear as a result of this CS initiative, whether it be to the buyer or seller (or both).
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Seems it's just as polluted with spyware as it has always been.
I seriously doubt a company as lethargic and complacent as British Telecom would dedicate effort to this unless there was a genuine sustained hacking attempt (i.e. not a port scan, etc).
The "Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things" (the name doesn't exactly instil confidence in the credibility of its stories) sounds like typical Chinese whisper snoping to me.
To be fair to Microsoft, their software picked up things on my PC which I knew were "dubious", but I knew were safe (e.g. Kazaa Lite as opposed to Kazaa, etc).
It's obvious that this software is aimed towards the uninformed masses in the same way SP2. I'd wager that most non-techie people barely know what spyware is, let alone how to find spyware-free "lite" versions of software, assuming they exist.
Also, the real time agent kicks serious ass. I'm amazed that people have even tried to criticise that (simply because its MS) by saying "oh great, yet another TSR program to run in the background, way to go M$!". When I installed the latest Sun JVM it informed me that a Browser Helper Object was installed and that it was "safe". A nice touch.
In other news, how come there hasn't been a front page story on these serious flaws in Mozilla and Firefox ? Double standards? I'm all for bashing MS when appropriate but lauding every single IE flaw with a seperate story and ignoring something like this doesn't exactly paint the site as unbiased.
I've taken on a few systems that have been riddled with hard-coded references to the current year, which invariably means a regular headache every year(alas not from the alcohol) when on New Years Day I find things aren't working the way they should.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the same thing had happened to HSBC recently, although they obviously wouldn't come out and say it.
Sites that have been hit by the worm will already have been defaced, so there will be no chance of recovering the file short of using a backup. I suppose from a PR point of view a public-facing website saying "x is secured by y" is better than "This site is defaced!".
If the worm was clever enough it should be able to root out vulnerable sites that have not yet been defaced by Santy (by searching for Santys calling card in the source), and instead of defacing it anyway to say "x is secured by y", it could patch the hole and leave the site as is.
No idea whether it does this though, I suspect it doesn't.
Of course, if Verisign had its own way it would reinstate SiteFinder meaning that technically there would be an infinite number of domain names registered.
Does anyone else find it mildly comical that this screensaver is not only no longer attacking the spam sites it was originally designed to attack, but is also failing miserably at being an effective screen saver.:)
I wouldn't want to come back to work after a weekend of that grey "Stay Tuned" permanently burnt in to the screen of my LCD, which I can see happening to quite a few people who have installed this blindly on machines around the World.
I was under the seemingly somewhat misguided assumption that multi-processor systems incurred a non-trivial performance overhead from their application - i.e. a dual processor system doesn't technically perform at 200% the speed of the equivalent single because of the inherent overhead in the MP architecture and implementation. From memory generally speaking it's more like 90% (or even less).
Wouldn't this overhead rise exponentially as you added more processors to the point where - unless the machine had a compartively small form factor (vs an equivalent number of Blade servers for example) - it would become a Law of diminishing returns?
In a twisted sense it's newsworthy because they've set a precedant, but by the same token any coverage of it in media circles that would not otherwise report on such events will only serve to undermine the appointment.
Perhaps if as you say they had concentrated more on her life sciences background and its specific relevance to the post, rather than have it as a footnote then it would be viewed with less skepticism.
Unfortunately the tone of the article promotes the thinking that it was a quota-filling exercise rather than a routine "best person for the job" appointment.
It strikes me that reporting the threat of a "Internet meltdown", especially in such sensationalist terms, would only ensure that it happens rather than mitigate the results (which, like DDoS attacks, are near impossible to prevent).
Especially as its being billed as a terrorist attack. Ordinarily the media are left to make all kinds of outlandish terrorist links after the event, but to suggest it in advance seems to me to be an ideal way for anyone anti-Government to orchestrate attacks on this day purely to get greater-than-normal coverage. Newsflash: Not all scriptkiddies are by definition terrorists.
Advisories like these, coupled with the implied terrorist connections (which is FOTY now in media circles) and the fact that no one can practically do anything about things like this if they do in fact happen seems to be helping the terrorists by giving them ideas, than helping us, the citizens, who are constantly living in fear of Al Qaeda hacking our hard drives.
Ahh I remember fondly the halcyon days of POVRay on the Atari ST, leaving it to render an elaborate scene for a day only to realise after it had finished that a light source was facing the wrong way and that consequently practically 75% of the scene was in complete darkness.
Shame there isn't any AI built in which somehow flags this.. "hold on, this is like the millionth pixel that I've rendered which is #222222":)
Not to mention that otherwise plain text articles with huge great popup/popover Flash adverts, or even those that are broken up by an animated image/Flash movie of some kind are a nightmare on a PDA.
I have tried browsing to a site with a useful HOWTO using my phone (P900 over GPRS) when I have no had any other Internet access and ended up using up to 10x as much bandwidth than was actually necessary had the article been true plain text.
I can't see the merit of that PSU article at all. It's nothing new, 500w is hardly ground-breaking (ok its a lot of wattage but there have been Enermax 550w out for years).
Commercially IBM doesn't have anything to fear from Linux, and in fact its current business model would suggest it has everything to gain from ensuring that it is looked upon favourably by pro-Linux parties.
The only real difference in this case is that IBM is using its software patents as a means to paint itself as "the good guys" (take note SCO), which is every bit as commercially viable as the more traditional litigious application of software patents.
Sure, the studios probably led the charge for the sequels to be made but in all honestly I'm sure the Wacowski Bros made a fortune just off the back of the first film, without "selling out" for the sequels.
As has happened in the past with other films they would've probably still been made, but by different (read: worse and/or less scrupulous) directors.
Hell, even if they made the sequels and just came out and said "there is no reason for these films to exist except to perpetuate the Matrix movie merchandise money gravy train" (there's a tongue twister for ya) I would've had more respect for them. To imply that they somehow always intended for the 2nd and 3rd films to be made, and then to make such a half-assed job of making them whilst all the while proclaiming about how the films have "hidden meaning", etc is just plain annoying, frankly.
The only thing "hidden" in the Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions is the agenda the studios, producers and - it seems - the Wacowskis had in making them.
I had never put much faith in MMORPGs being a meaningful source of income (I believed I could earn more doing more traditional things like IT consultancy), but this changed when I sold my Jedi character (one of the early ones) for just under $1500.
For the amount of grinding work that it involved (approx. 1 month fairly hardcore play - i.e. most/all of the weekend and 7pm-early AM most weekdays) it would've been roughly equivalent to a 17,000 GBP per annum job over here, which is pretty scary.
At best users are mere passengers in a car (PC) being driven by Microsoft (Windows). By this token should these passengers be held accountable for the mistakes made by the driver?
The passenger can not influence or control the actions of the driver, all he/she can do is don a crash helmet and padded suit (firewall) and prepare for the worst.
One thing I don't understand, forgive me if this has been touched on before, is how SCOX can offer licenses based on as yet legally unproven information? I could understand SCOX charging for IP licenses after a successful court ruling, and EV1 opting to purchase said license(s) to indemnify themselves against prosecution after the event.. but before? It makes no sense.
And how is charging real money on the basis of an unresolved case even legal?
Anyway, what sort of company pays out protection money to another company when there is no actual proven threat of damage should they fail to? The Mafia could learn a lot from SCOX it would seem, as they appear to have mastered the "insurance" racket without actually having tangible muscle.
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Funnily enough, although not entirely unsurprising in our current "wardrobe malfunction" times, is that you're not the first person to highlight this as 'offensive or defamatory in nature'.
Hit the nail on the head.
eBay is so pervasive in the auction sector, what with its continual name-dropping in feature films, music videos and so forth that it can pretty much charge what it likes and know it'll still be regarded as the de facto auction site.
Recently they made a stand about sellers enforcing a percentage rise for whenever a buyer paid using Paypal. Justifable really, since the seller loses out to the tune of ~3% otherwise.
Also, the concept of a Final Value Fee has no justification in my eyes. I can understand eBay charging a variable listing fee (depending on the item visibility & features), but to charge someone a variable percentage of whatever they sell their item for is absurd. Imagine selling a car via a local newspaper, and finding a representative at your door demanding a cut in addition to whatever they charged you to list the item in the first place!.. oh, and then finding your bank asking for their cut too for processing the money.
It wouldn't be so bad if they were a shining light in the customer service stakes, but their track record is atrocious. Not only are they notoriously slow at answering dispute resolution correspondance, but invariably they wash their hands of all but the most legally threatening (to them) issues. Feedback arbitration is practically non-existant, with malicious negative feedback being effectively permanent (even from members no longer registered and/or banned!).
As others have remarked - they will find some way to pass whatever costs they have to bear as a result of this CS initiative, whether it be to the buyer or seller (or both).
Step 1 of 4
Kazaa file sharing application with: Bullguard Virus Protection, Altnet Topsearch.
Kazaa is a free download supported by advertising from Cydoor, the GAIN Network and InstaFinder.
Altnet PeerPoints Manager Package, an application that rewards you for sharing on Kazaa including My Search Toolbar and P2P Networking Application.
Sharman Networks respects your privacy. Read the privacy policy. You must also agree to the user license agreements linked from below before continuing.
[ ] I agree to the Kazaa Media Desktop End User License Agreement and Altnet PeerPoints Manager Package End User License Agreements.
Seems it's just as polluted with spyware as it has always been.
Agreed.
I seriously doubt a company as lethargic and complacent as British Telecom would dedicate effort to this unless there was a genuine sustained hacking attempt (i.e. not a port scan, etc).
The "Boing Boing: A Directory of Wonderful Things" (the name doesn't exactly instil confidence in the credibility of its stories) sounds like typical Chinese whisper snoping to me.
Ignore the last paragraph, just found the article. Boy do I look stupid!
To be fair to Microsoft, their software picked up things on my PC which I knew were "dubious", but I knew were safe (e.g. Kazaa Lite as opposed to Kazaa, etc).
It's obvious that this software is aimed towards the uninformed masses in the same way SP2. I'd wager that most non-techie people barely know what spyware is, let alone how to find spyware-free "lite" versions of software, assuming they exist.
Also, the real time agent kicks serious ass. I'm amazed that people have even tried to criticise that (simply because its MS) by saying "oh great, yet another TSR program to run in the background, way to go M$!". When I installed the latest Sun JVM it informed me that a Browser Helper Object was installed and that it was "safe". A nice touch.
In other news, how come there hasn't been a front page story on these serious flaws in Mozilla and Firefox ? Double standards? I'm all for bashing MS when appropriate but lauding every single IE flaw with a seperate story and ignoring something like this doesn't exactly paint the site as unbiased.
I've taken on a few systems that have been riddled with hard-coded references to the current year, which invariably means a regular headache every year(alas not from the alcohol) when on New Years Day I find things aren't working the way they should.
It wouldn't surprise me in the slightest if the same thing had happened to HSBC recently, although they obviously wouldn't come out and say it.
Sites that have been hit by the worm will already have been defaced, so there will be no chance of recovering the file short of using a backup. I suppose from a PR point of view a public-facing website saying "x is secured by y" is better than "This site is defaced!".
If the worm was clever enough it should be able to root out vulnerable sites that have not yet been defaced by Santy (by searching for Santys calling card in the source), and instead of defacing it anyway to say "x is secured by y", it could patch the hole and leave the site as is.
No idea whether it does this though, I suspect it doesn't.
Of course, if Verisign had its own way it would reinstate SiteFinder meaning that technically there would be an infinite number of domain names registered.
Really? I honestly never knew that.
:)
That kinda shoots my point out of the water then I guess.
Yep, says "Stay Tuned" here as well.
:)
Does anyone else find it mildly comical that this screensaver is not only no longer attacking the spam sites it was originally designed to attack, but is also failing miserably at being an effective screen saver.
I wouldn't want to come back to work after a weekend of that grey "Stay Tuned" permanently burnt in to the screen of my LCD, which I can see happening to quite a few people who have installed this blindly on machines around the World.
I was under the seemingly somewhat misguided assumption that multi-processor systems incurred a non-trivial performance overhead from their application - i.e. a dual processor system doesn't technically perform at 200% the speed of the equivalent single because of the inherent overhead in the MP architecture and implementation. From memory generally speaking it's more like 90% (or even less).
Wouldn't this overhead rise exponentially as you added more processors to the point where - unless the machine had a compartively small form factor (vs an equivalent number of Blade servers for example) - it would become a Law of diminishing returns?
$20 is a great price! :)
Here in the UK, as is the case with most things, we get robbed blind for LAN parties with most events costing in excess of £70 (~$175 AUD)
In a twisted sense it's newsworthy because they've set a precedant, but by the same token any coverage of it in media circles that would not otherwise report on such events will only serve to undermine the appointment.
Perhaps if as you say they had concentrated more on her life sciences background and its specific relevance to the post, rather than have it as a footnote then it would be viewed with less skepticism.
Unfortunately the tone of the article promotes the thinking that it was a quota-filling exercise rather than a routine "best person for the job" appointment.
..or more accurately - the warning or the threat?
It strikes me that reporting the threat of a "Internet meltdown", especially in such sensationalist terms, would only ensure that it happens rather than mitigate the results (which, like DDoS attacks, are near impossible to prevent).
Especially as its being billed as a terrorist attack. Ordinarily the media are left to make all kinds of outlandish terrorist links after the event, but to suggest it in advance seems to me to be an ideal way for anyone anti-Government to orchestrate attacks on this day purely to get greater-than-normal coverage. Newsflash: Not all scriptkiddies are by definition terrorists.
Advisories like these, coupled with the implied terrorist connections (which is FOTY now in media circles) and the fact that no one can practically do anything about things like this if they do in fact happen seems to be helping the terrorists by giving them ideas, than helping us, the citizens, who are constantly living in fear of Al Qaeda hacking our hard drives.
Ahh I remember fondly the halcyon days of POVRay on the Atari ST, leaving it to render an elaborate scene for a day only to realise after it had finished that a light source was facing the wrong way and that consequently practically 75% of the scene was in complete darkness.
:)
Shame there isn't any AI built in which somehow flags this.. "hold on, this is like the millionth pixel that I've rendered which is #222222"
Not to mention that otherwise plain text articles with huge great popup/popover Flash adverts, or even those that are broken up by an animated image/Flash movie of some kind are a nightmare on a PDA.
I have tried browsing to a site with a useful HOWTO using my phone (P900 over GPRS) when I have no had any other Internet access and ended up using up to 10x as much bandwidth than was actually necessary had the article been true plain text.
(and GPRS bandwidth is hella expensive in the UK)
I'd have to agree with this sentiment.
I can't see the merit of that PSU article at all. It's nothing new, 500w is hardly ground-breaking (ok its a lot of wattage but there have been Enermax 550w out for years).
Why is it relevant?
Commercially IBM doesn't have anything to fear from Linux, and in fact its current business model would suggest it has everything to gain from ensuring that it is looked upon favourably by pro-Linux parties.
The only real difference in this case is that IBM is using its software patents as a means to paint itself as "the good guys" (take note SCO), which is every bit as commercially viable as the more traditional litigious application of software patents.
Sure, the studios probably led the charge for the sequels to be made but in all honestly I'm sure the Wacowski Bros made a fortune just off the back of the first film, without "selling out" for the sequels.
As has happened in the past with other films they would've probably still been made, but by different (read: worse and/or less scrupulous) directors.
Hell, even if they made the sequels and just came out and said "there is no reason for these films to exist except to perpetuate the Matrix movie merchandise money gravy train" (there's a tongue twister for ya) I would've had more respect for them. To imply that they somehow always intended for the 2nd and 3rd films to be made, and then to make such a half-assed job of making them whilst all the while proclaiming about how the films have "hidden meaning", etc is just plain annoying, frankly.
The only thing "hidden" in the Matrix Reloaded and Revolutions is the agenda the studios, producers and - it seems - the Wacowskis had in making them.
Does it come in a wooden box?
Reminds me of SWG.
I had never put much faith in MMORPGs being a meaningful source of income (I believed I could earn more doing more traditional things like IT consultancy), but this changed when I sold my Jedi character (one of the early ones) for just under $1500.
For the amount of grinding work that it involved (approx. 1 month fairly hardcore play - i.e. most/all of the weekend and 7pm-early AM most weekdays) it would've been roughly equivalent to a 17,000 GBP per annum job over here, which is pretty scary.
A flawed analogy in my opinion.
At best users are mere passengers in a car (PC) being driven by Microsoft (Windows). By this token should these passengers be held accountable for the mistakes made by the driver?
The passenger can not influence or control the actions of the driver, all he/she can do is don a crash helmet and padded suit (firewall) and prepare for the worst.
I'm not new no, but I have been lurking for much of the time. :)
I'm also from the UK so I suppose my understanding of the workings of the legal system might be different to your own.
One thing I don't understand, forgive me if this has been touched on before, is how SCOX can offer licenses based on as yet legally unproven information? I could understand SCOX charging for IP licenses after a successful court ruling, and EV1 opting to purchase said license(s) to indemnify themselves against prosecution after the event.. but before? It makes no sense.
And how is charging real money on the basis of an unresolved case even legal?
Anyway, what sort of company pays out protection money to another company when there is no actual proven threat of damage should they fail to? The Mafia could learn a lot from SCOX it would seem, as they appear to have mastered the "insurance" racket without actually having tangible muscle.