So that more people sell stuff on ebay (greed, you see). eBay would love to get more people listing stuff because they take about 10% of the purchase price.
That is because they are often stolen goods. fenceBay is the greatest thing for theives since the invention of the crowbar. It's like a pawnshop that doesn't care and finds you buyers across the country to avoid those pesky "hey, Bill, that laptop you just bought looks an awful lot like my stolen one" moments. All for the low, low, price of about 10% of purchase price (which is actually quite good, dishonest pawnshops will charge you far more and will give you up if the 50 come looking for you)
Now, granted, some people troll fatwallet and slickdeals looking for bargains, buy up all the stock and list it before it is even delivered, but you really can't say with a straight face that ebay isn't used by a good number of theives.
Nothing, really. Although ebay wants the name of your unborn first child in addition to a ton of other related financial information. If someone in organized crime wanted to do it, it would be almost trivial. Problem is that for the rest of us - IIRC, only one feedback counts per account (per time period?) - this was different in the begining, until people started boosting their feedback with false purchases (a week?;)
That all said, I hate the vultures on ebay who charge bullshit shipping prices and I've bid on some products with the sole intention of ruining their 100% feedback ratings with a negative feedback in the past few years. In exchange, I get a NPB or 3 on a throwaway account - something that leaves me crying at night. I know, I know, it is ultimately a small thing, but I get a teensy weensy sense of satisfaction by knowing, no matter what they do, they will never get that 100% again.
Before the apologists chime in saying "OMG GAS IS SOO MUCH AND I HAVE TO PAY FOR PACKING MATERIAL AND THAT IS WHY SHIPPING IS $12 FOR SOMETHING THAT WEIGHS 1 POUND" - no assholes, USPS will provide (and even deliver) free boxes, packing material, tape (ok, no tape anymore, people sort of abused it, but then again, they did send you 24 rolls at a time) and will pick up your packages from your doorstep if you ship priority mail, so die in a fire. I really have no fucking patience for people who blatantly and openly commit fraud.
Besides, ebay loves the power sellers because they make tons of money on them (which is also the reason why ebay puts up with clearly fraudulent - and, may I add, quite illegal under several laws - auctions such as $12 prada handbags from Hong Kong with unlisted shipping fees. And look, the seller is a power seller! Ebay (and paypal) makes a killing on each and every single sale, regardless of whether it is fraudulent - although they don't make any money on shipping fees. I'm actually surprised that ebay hasn't started going after sellers who inflate the shipping fees to avoid paying ebay their cut. I suppose that with the paypal fees (which are basically pure profit, it isn't like their buyer protection is worth a half damn to the defrauded purchaser, it all works out for ebay quite nicely. Sadly, because of the obvious conflict of interest, fenceBay won't be the ones who put an end to this sort of behaviour.
1. Why is this price particularly high? It's only half as much as a really good laptop, and has most of the same functionality (or at least the functionality that people buy laptops for).
I sit here writing this on a laptop I paid $382 for (ok, I spent another $40 on an extended warranty so I wouldn't have to call Toshiba support because I despise them and CompUSA gives me free batteries every so often). Photoshop CS2 is running in the background, a couple of remote desktiop clients, winamp is playing and I have a gazillion ff tabs open (I'm not counting them, but ff is using 586mb of ram) and it runs fine (Celeron M 1.5, a radeon 200, 802.11 g, a dvd combo drive and 1.25 gigs of ram). Sure, the batteries won't last anywhere near a week, but I think I could buy enough batteries with the money left over to last a while. The price for the ebook reader is way, way too high. And a good notebook doesn't cost all that much. Sure, the price will drop, but I'm really not going to be interested in it until it is 1/20th or so of this price if it is just an ebook reader. What it boils down to is that if it is this price, people will demand "unnecessary features" so that the purchase will be worth it for them. The company just has to figure out whether they want to market a "sorta laptop" or an ebook reader. I'm not sure how much taking off the wifi, mp3 player, speakers, etc, would shave off the price, but it might make this easier to swallow. And if they are going to go the route of a "sorta laptop", it better let me plug in a keyboard and use it for word processing (although if it has 4 seconds lag every time you type a letter, that will kill that pretty darn quick) and read my email, etc, etc. I'll be ok if photoshop doesn't get ported;)
Right now, the only real advantage of this over something like a Palm m105 is that the screen is bigger and it holds a little more, reads pdfs and "it looks good" (The m105 screen is quite readable imho - and it has a backlit mode too - which is quite comfortable to look at. Battery life is also quite good). A couple of white (or whatever) LEDs, properly diffused and set up with a front light wouldn't suck batteries either and would make this more useful at night. Even a couple LEDs shining down like a book light would work. Oh, and finally, there was a bit too much "(Format and DRM dependant.)" in the article. I know, I know, preaching to the choir and all that. I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea, but at this price, it really just isn't ready. Eventually the page flip will be much faster, the battery life will be even better and the price will come down, but just not yet (and probably not in this company's lifetime). I don't see many early adopters, which is unfortunate and will prevent this from maturing.
BTW, I do agree with you about the cell phones, but I think it would be difficult to screw someone out of $6 a month for a ringtone blasted out of a PC speaker and a 80x80 black and white background of paris hilton or whoever the pop idol of the month is, not to mention charging $1 to send a 320x240 picture over the cell network.
By-the-by - this isn't anything surprising....congressman vote on topics they have no clue about each and every day. From Computers, to medicine, to infrastructure. Some of these guys might have specific knowledge on a few of these issues, but for the most part they don't....they rely on their staff to do the research. This guy should have been reading a speech written by his staff memebers.
He did, and the staff member probably quit his job shortly after the speech, just like the piece of shit known as Mitch Glazier If you're wondering, btw, Mitch is doing quite well for himself.
You apparantly have some faith in the legal system that DAs and prosecutors will act rationally. DA's can press whatever charges they want, even if they are completely off the ball. This usually isn't a problem, but sometimes, especially when a murder is involved, tempers flare and stuff happens. I have virtualy no faith in juries, btw, you might think differently.
You seem to be unaware of the "conspiracy to commit..." series of crimes, which can actually be quite draconian.
If you and your friend are drinking one night and say something like, "Yo, we need to pop a cap in Mr. X's ass." and one of you goes out and purchases a deer rifle - an overzealous DA can press charges and you'll probably be convicted by the average jury.... even if the conversation wasn't serious and you bought the rifle for a deer hunt.
Damn straight, although I do think that one of the problems is that there is virtually no selection criteria for police officers in the states - there isn't a standardized one. Some people just shouldn't be cops. The armed forces have a much better screening process (although I've heard a couple of amusing stories about fuckups who slipped through;)
I've lived and traveled in both Canada and the USA and I can say that the RCMP are much, much better than what passes for a police officer in the states, probably because the training and selection process is quite good and there is a standardized program that they have been refining for quite some time. In many smaller towns in the states (and I'll have to say that this is much, much more common in the south), you can become a police officer without spending all that much time in school - a criminal justice certificate from a correspondence college and a pistol qualification will work just fine (an honorably discharged armed forces MP is pretty much a guaranteed acceptance). Smaller towns have virtually no oversight either - it is very, very, very rare for the feds to get involved - which makes it quite easy for a culture of corruption to take root. Because of this lack of oversight, you see disgusting stuff like this. Now, sure, you'll have the occasional bad apple in Canada, but nothing like that. Nobody bats an eye here either when a defendant arrives in court mysteriously beat to a pulp. And besides, with the RCMP, there is always someone on a higher level who you can take a complaint to. In the average US small town, you can try to go to the mayor, but the buck stops there.
Big cities are usually a bit better, although, again, the level of training isn't really standardized and oversight varies.
I think that you'd find that most people really wouldn't shed many tears if a bad cop was gunned down. Of course, his buddies would make sure you never saw the inside of the courtroom...
Yeah, but they still arrested his wife on charges of failure to appear (obviously, she had been committed to an institution by another judge, so showing up to court wasn't exactly an option) and he got shot in the back with a taser in the kitchen in front of his kids as he turned away from the cops to call a lawyer. Was then arrested for interfering with a police investigation. Charges dropped, etc, etc, but damage done. Portland cops are notoriously corrupt, but they are still trying to get civil damages. Fucking messy situation...
Easier to ask for a good chunk of change if you have a vhs tape of the tv show and they wan't to avoid a lawsuit;)
Actually, case was more or less like this - photographer has a picture of Mt. Hood overlooking Portland, and during the opening of a big mall here, it got blown up into a poster (believe by the mall folks) and the today show did a couple minute segment with the picture in the background. Lawyer for the photographer called in and the conversation went like this. "Hey, umm, you folks had one of my client's photos in the back of one of your sets during last night's taping." "Shit. $1000 ok?" "$1500.." "Done. Where should I send it?" Money arrived shortly thereafter.
"If someone is driving by on the street they could easily use your internet access to commit a crime, whether it's fraudulent credit card transactions
I found that quite amusing, especially given that credit card fraud is ranked right beside "car breakin" on the list of "things that cops don't give a shit about." I think what this is really about is wanting to peek into people's houses under the guise of "your AP is open". Basically it's exactly the same as having a traffic chekckpoint that "rewards people who have their children buckled up in approved child seats with a plushie"
Even opening the door may be a mistake - friend of the family opened the door and the cops pushed their way in. Claimed they had a warrant, but, for some reason, no copies of it can be found.
Hehe, the sysadmins at psu hated me with a passion. Filled 900 gigs in less than 24 hours a day or two before I left - and they didn't have enough bandwidth to begin with.
Ok, you have this blazingly fast connection at the internet cafe... What server, gaming or otherwise, will be able to transfer information that fast back?
You apparantly haven't used many usenet servers that host binaries;)
Agreed, potato guns are quite easy to make and can be quite deadly if you use, shall we say, "unconventional ammunition" (such as potatoes loaded with nails / soaked in gasoline). Fires off hairspray, butane, propane and in a pinch, gasoline fumes. A zip gun is also pretty easy to construct - basically take a steel pipe that has the same inside diameter of a 12 gauge shell or.22 LR round (or any other very low pressure cartridge), drill a hole in the back of it and make a firing pin. Not terribly elegant, but hey... cost of construction is minimal and requires nothing but a dremel to put together.
Since there isn't any rifling, the bullet comes out tumbling and does all sorts of nasty damage.
Slashdot Mirror
Why this focus on a few people getting rich?
So that more people sell stuff on ebay (greed, you see). eBay would love to get more people listing stuff because they take about 10% of the purchase price.
Prices are very low on ebay
That is because they are often stolen goods.
fenceBay is the greatest thing for theives since the invention of the crowbar. It's like a pawnshop that doesn't care and finds you buyers across the country to avoid those pesky "hey, Bill, that laptop you just bought looks an awful lot like my stolen one" moments.
All for the low, low, price of about 10% of purchase price (which is actually quite good, dishonest pawnshops will charge you far more and will give you up if the 50 come looking for you)
Now, granted, some people troll fatwallet and slickdeals looking for bargains, buy up all the stock and list it before it is even delivered, but you really can't say with a straight face that ebay isn't used by a good number of theives.
Nothing, really. Although ebay wants the name of your unborn first child in addition to a ton of other related financial information. If someone in organized crime wanted to do it, it would be almost trivial. ;)
Problem is that for the rest of us - IIRC, only one feedback counts per account (per time period?) - this was different in the begining, until people started boosting their feedback with false purchases (a week?
That all said, I hate the vultures on ebay who charge bullshit shipping prices and I've bid on some products with the sole intention of ruining their 100% feedback ratings with a negative feedback in the past few years. In exchange, I get a NPB or 3 on a throwaway account - something that leaves me crying at night.
I know, I know, it is ultimately a small thing, but I get a teensy weensy sense of satisfaction by knowing, no matter what they do, they will never get that 100% again.
Before the apologists chime in saying "OMG GAS IS SOO MUCH AND I HAVE TO PAY FOR PACKING MATERIAL AND THAT IS WHY SHIPPING IS $12 FOR SOMETHING THAT WEIGHS 1 POUND" - no assholes, USPS will provide (and even deliver) free boxes, packing material, tape (ok, no tape anymore, people sort of abused it, but then again, they did send you 24 rolls at a time) and will pick up your packages from your doorstep if you ship priority mail, so die in a fire. I really have no fucking patience for people who blatantly and openly commit fraud.
Besides, ebay loves the power sellers because they make tons of money on them (which is also the reason why ebay puts up with clearly fraudulent - and, may I add, quite illegal under several laws - auctions such as $12 prada handbags from Hong Kong with unlisted shipping fees. And look, the seller is a power seller!
Ebay (and paypal) makes a killing on each and every single sale, regardless of whether it is fraudulent - although they don't make any money on shipping fees. I'm actually surprised that ebay hasn't started going after sellers who inflate the shipping fees to avoid paying ebay their cut. I suppose that with the paypal fees (which are basically pure profit, it isn't like their buyer protection is worth a half damn to the defrauded purchaser, it all works out for ebay quite nicely.
Sadly, because of the obvious conflict of interest, fenceBay won't be the ones who put an end to this sort of behaviour.
1. Why is this price particularly high? It's only half as much as a really good laptop, and has most of the same functionality (or at least the functionality that people buy laptops for).
;)
I sit here writing this on a laptop I paid $382 for (ok, I spent another $40 on an extended warranty so I wouldn't have to call Toshiba support because I despise them and CompUSA gives me free batteries every so often). Photoshop CS2 is running in the background, a couple of remote desktiop clients, winamp is playing and I have a gazillion ff tabs open (I'm not counting them, but ff is using 586mb of ram) and it runs fine (Celeron M 1.5, a radeon 200, 802.11 g, a dvd combo drive and 1.25 gigs of ram). Sure, the batteries won't last anywhere near a week, but I think I could buy enough batteries with the money left over to last a while.
The price for the ebook reader is way, way too high. And a good notebook doesn't cost all that much.
Sure, the price will drop, but I'm really not going to be interested in it until it is 1/20th or so of this price if it is just an ebook reader. What it boils down to is that if it is this price, people will demand "unnecessary features" so that the purchase will be worth it for them. The company just has to figure out whether they want to market a "sorta laptop" or an ebook reader. I'm not sure how much taking off the wifi, mp3 player, speakers, etc, would shave off the price, but it might make this easier to swallow.
And if they are going to go the route of a "sorta laptop", it better let me plug in a keyboard and use it for word processing (although if it has 4 seconds lag every time you type a letter, that will kill that pretty darn quick) and read my email, etc, etc. I'll be ok if photoshop doesn't get ported
Right now, the only real advantage of this over something like a Palm m105 is that the screen is bigger and it holds a little more, reads pdfs and "it looks good" (The m105 screen is quite readable imho - and it has a backlit mode too - which is quite comfortable to look at. Battery life is also quite good).
A couple of white (or whatever) LEDs, properly diffused and set up with a front light wouldn't suck batteries either and would make this more useful at night. Even a couple LEDs shining down like a book light would work.
Oh, and finally, there was a bit too much "(Format and DRM dependant.)" in the article. I know, I know, preaching to the choir and all that.
I'm not saying that it isn't a good idea, but at this price, it really just isn't ready. Eventually the page flip will be much faster, the battery life will be even better and the price will come down, but just not yet (and probably not in this company's lifetime). I don't see many early adopters, which is unfortunate and will prevent this from maturing.
BTW, I do agree with you about the cell phones, but I think it would be difficult to screw someone out of $6 a month for a ringtone blasted out of a PC speaker and a 80x80 black and white background of paris hilton or whoever the pop idol of the month is, not to mention charging $1 to send a 320x240 picture over the cell network.
By-the-by - this isn't anything surprising....congressman vote on topics they have no clue about each and every day. From Computers, to medicine, to infrastructure. Some of these guys might have specific knowledge on a few of these issues, but for the most part they don't....they rely on their staff to do the research. This guy should have been reading a speech written by his staff memebers.
He did, and the staff member probably quit his job shortly after the speech, just like the piece of shit known as Mitch Glazier
If you're wondering, btw, Mitch is doing quite well for himself.
You apparantly have some faith in the legal system that DAs and prosecutors will act rationally.
DA's can press whatever charges they want, even if they are completely off the ball. This usually isn't a problem, but sometimes, especially when a murder is involved, tempers flare and stuff happens.
I have virtualy no faith in juries, btw, you might think differently.
If we criminalize planning to commit a crime,
.... even if the conversation wasn't serious and you bought the rifle for a deer hunt.
You seem to be unaware of the "conspiracy to commit..." series of crimes, which can actually be quite draconian.
If you and your friend are drinking one night and say something like, "Yo, we need to pop a cap in Mr. X's ass." and one of you goes out and purchases a deer rifle - an overzealous DA can press charges and you'll probably be convicted by the average jury
Damn straight, although I do think that one of the problems is that there is virtually no selection criteria for police officers in the states - there isn't a standardized one. ;)
Some people just shouldn't be cops.
The armed forces have a much better screening process (although I've heard a couple of amusing stories about fuckups who slipped through
I've lived and traveled in both Canada and the USA and I can say that the RCMP are much, much better than what passes for a police officer in the states, probably because the training and selection process is quite good and there is a standardized program that they have been refining for quite some time.
In many smaller towns in the states (and I'll have to say that this is much, much more common in the south), you can become a police officer without spending all that much time in school - a criminal justice certificate from a correspondence college and a pistol qualification will work just fine (an honorably discharged armed forces MP is pretty much a guaranteed acceptance).
Smaller towns have virtually no oversight either - it is very, very, very rare for the feds to get involved - which makes it quite easy for a culture of corruption to take root.
Because of this lack of oversight, you see disgusting stuff like this. Now, sure, you'll have the occasional bad apple in Canada, but nothing like that. Nobody bats an eye here either when a defendant arrives in court mysteriously beat to a pulp.
And besides, with the RCMP, there is always someone on a higher level who you can take a complaint to. In the average US small town, you can try to go to the mayor, but the buck stops there.
Big cities are usually a bit better, although, again, the level of training isn't really standardized and oversight varies.
I think that you'd find that most people really wouldn't shed many tears if a bad cop was gunned down.
Of course, his buddies would make sure you never saw the inside of the courtroom...
The Nashua Police Department did all police officers throughout the country a major harm by this action. It's just plain disgusting.
On the contrary, the more people that realize that the police are their enemy, the better.
Simple - your average juror is an idiot.
Police suicide are incredibly high
Sadly, a lot of police having those problems actually have a conscience and are the folks that we'd like to keep around.
Yeah, but they still arrested his wife on charges of failure to appear (obviously, she had been committed to an institution by another judge, so showing up to court wasn't exactly an option) and he got shot in the back with a taser in the kitchen in front of his kids as he turned away from the cops to call a lawyer. Was then arrested for interfering with a police investigation.
Charges dropped, etc, etc, but damage done.
Portland cops are notoriously corrupt, but they are still trying to get civil damages.
Fucking messy situation...
Easier to ask for a good chunk of change if you have a vhs tape of the tv show and they wan't to avoid a lawsuit ;)
Actually, case was more or less like this - photographer has a picture of Mt. Hood overlooking Portland, and during the opening of a big mall here, it got blown up into a poster (believe by the mall folks) and the today show did a couple minute segment with the picture in the background.
Lawyer for the photographer called in and the conversation went like this.
"Hey, umm, you folks had one of my client's photos in the back of one of your sets during last night's taping."
"Shit. $1000 ok?"
"$1500.."
"Done. Where should I send it?"
Money arrived shortly thereafter.
From TFA:
"If someone is driving by on the street they could easily use your internet access to commit a crime, whether it's fraudulent credit card transactions
I found that quite amusing, especially given that credit card fraud is ranked right beside "car breakin" on the list of "things that cops don't give a shit about."
I think what this is really about is wanting to peek into people's houses under the guise of "your AP is open". Basically it's exactly the same as having a traffic chekckpoint that "rewards people who have their children buckled up in approved child seats with a plushie"
As has been argued many times, when you leave a WAP wide open you are infact authorizing anyone who connects the privilege of using that network.
/., but /. discussions don't mean shit in a court of law.
Maybe on
Arrest you for theft of service, obviously...
Assuming the tape isn't "lost"...
Even opening the door may be a mistake - friend of the family opened the door and the cops pushed their way in. Claimed they had a warrant, but, for some reason, no copies of it can be found.
Go to a 7-11, get a slurpee straw and use the little spoon thingy while sucking.
-Glad to be of help.
I've heard of cases where a photo /poster in the background of a tv show got the photographer $1,500.
Hehe, the sysadmins at psu hated me with a passion. Filled 900 gigs in less than 24 hours a day or two before I left - and they didn't have enough bandwidth to begin with.
Ok, you have this blazingly fast connection at the internet cafe...
;)
What server, gaming or otherwise, will be able to transfer information that fast back?
You apparantly haven't used many usenet servers that host binaries
Agreed, potato guns are quite easy to make and can be quite deadly if you use, shall we say, "unconventional ammunition" (such as potatoes loaded with nails / soaked in gasoline). Fires off hairspray, butane, propane and in a pinch, gasoline fumes. .22 LR round (or any other very low pressure cartridge), drill a hole in the back of it and make a firing pin. Not terribly elegant, but hey... cost of construction is minimal and requires nothing but a dremel to put together.
A zip gun is also pretty easy to construct - basically take a steel pipe that has the same inside diameter of a 12 gauge shell or
Since there isn't any rifling, the bullet comes out tumbling and does all sorts of nasty damage.