This is certainly not the first commerical processor without a clock. The PDP/8 operated using a series of delay lines arranged in a loop so that the end of an instruction triggered the next one. One of the EE courses I took (back when EE majors still had to use real test equipment and soldering irons) involved a design of a clocked version of a PDP/8 as a class project.
Gads. Now that I'm "overqualified" to write software (i.e., employers don't seem to think experience is worth paying any extra for), the geek world has completely forgotten that it even has a history.
I haven't had much problem with that. If anybody notices, I tell them I'm not using my main number, but I have my main number forwarded to whereever I happen to be. I always leave my VOIP number if I leave a voicemail message. Maybe if I ever start getting lots of unwanted calls, I'll try something else. Meanwhile, I have the attitude that I have a phone for my convenience, and I don't answer it if I'm busy with something else. I can check cell voicemail from my VOIP phone, so the extra cell time isn't a problem.
Does that include the same $13+ of FCC fees and taxes like my $13.00 land line account tacks on?
I recall that my bill is around $35/month. That includes all taxes and other fees, for two VOIP lines (my wife liked the features so much that she got a 2nd line).
I got a $400+ phone bill one month for all local calls.
If you got a $400+ bill in one month for all local calls, you really need a new phone company. I think the unlimited calling plan on my cellphone would be substantially less than that. FWIW, I get 1000 minutes/month shared on 2 cellphones with rollover (Cingular family plan) for about $85 per month. In-network calls (and a lot of my cellphone time is spent talking to my wife) don't count towards the 1000 minute monthly allotment. I've been with Cingular since before they split off from AT&T, and I seem to get a better deal every two years (I threaten to shop around at the end of every contract period, since I'm not 100% happy with Cingular, but I kinda wonder if anybody else is really better...).
My FiOS landline with internet service, my DirectTV, my VOIP lines, my efax line, plus my two cellphones (6 different phone numbers!) run substantially less than $400/month, total.
VoicePulse. I got the $14.99 account with unlimited local calls and 200 long distance minutes, of which I rarely use more than 20 or 30. Only problem I've had was when I was with Comcast, the bandwidth that Comcast provided after 5pm in the evening was not sufficient to use the VOIP line. However, since Verizon came to my neighborhood with FiOS, Comcast is now history as far as I'm concerned; good riddance.
VoicePulse does not pay referral fees, so my recommendation is a freebie. Probably better that way...
I determined long ago that I did not want to be a captive to a cell phone company, so I got an inexpensive VOIP number to forward to my cell phone. I do not give out my cell phone number at all, but I forward my VOIP phone to my cell phone (most of the time). In addition to being able to ditch my cell phone company at any time without having any hassles over notifying people of my new number, I can also go online anytime I want to 1) get a complete list of calling stats, 2) set filters to weed out unwanted calls, and 3) set timers on various other features.
My favorite feature is the ability to assign any number that I don't want to answer again a permanent busy signal. That, BTW, includes *any* call with a blocked caller ID. I get a little kick out of seeing in my log some low-life telemarketing company trying unsuccessfully to reach me hundreds of times. I can also set timers to go directly to voicemail during certain hours (like when I want to sleep), and I can selectively filter important callers (like my family) to ring through anyway.
Costs about $15/month. Oh, yes, I can also use the VOIP phone as originally intended, too.
Nowadays, with local number portability, the 'captive' part is less of a problem, but the other features make keeping a VOIP service worthwhile.
The parent is one of those rare articles that I wish I could mod up past +5. The blatant abuse of the H1-b system (I have been on the receiving end of that) is an effort to reduce programming to a McJob (and, as Cringely observed, is just another way of discriminating against older programmers). It is an effort that I expect to substantially succeed by the end of this decade, which is why I am building a business selling and repairing violins and other stringed instruments, and teaching violin lessons.
I advise my students (I occasionally teach community college CS courses, as well as private courses) to avoid (or leave) software engineering, simply because it really is a dead-end career.
I am now being paid a salary about half of what I was getting in 1999 (and lucky to be working at all after 3 years of un- and under-employment); another 10% decrease, and the musical instrument business will pay better (I can get about $40/hour to teach violin lessons, although it's hard to get more than 20 hours a week). Plus, playing my fiddle is much more enjoyable than enduring management that talks the talk, but won't walk the walk. Or users who can't understand why a non-standard change to a GUI is a Bad Idea.
I have lost more than 100 lbs, and it had very little to do with willpower. It had roughly everything to do with the fact that I quit eating the things that were making me constantly hungry, namely, the things on that goddamned low-fat fad diet that the high priests of the nutritional religion are still pushing, despite the fact that it is not only ineffective, but unhealthy. Hunger is like water-drip torture; you can stand it for a while, but eventually you cave. Since I quit eating grains, starches, and sugar 7 years ago, I not only lost 100 excess pounds, but also lost my excessive hunger, my nocturnal myoclonus (RLS), my arthritis, my lack of night vision, and my adult acne. So far, the only problems that I had experienced with low-carb have been the well-meaning fools (including doctors) who insist on lecturing me about how 'unhealthy' low-carb is.
The Iron Curtain was not brought down by gunfire, but by faxes, copiers, telephones, and other ways of getting forbidden ideas to people in their totalitarian regimes. China will ultimately fail to keep out the forbidden ideas, and will utimately fail in its attempts to keep its own people from being able to compare notes -- the one thing the Chinese government fears more than anything else. The Government dread of secret meetings between its people is the main reason for their hysterial fear of Falon Gong (which would be a fairly unlikely source of revolution if not for the active repression; an oxymoron which the ruling party fails to comprehend). The Internet is facilitating the ability of the people to communicate with each other (and outsiders) on a scale that China simply will not be able to effectively control (despite the rumored half-million people that are supposedly hired to do just that). I have seen stories about code phrases and steganography being used in ways that bypass the many filters in place on the Chinese internet, and unless the Chinese government is willing to spend more on internet control than on everything else combined, they haven't got a chance.
Just the same, I'm careful not to discuss anything controversial with my Chinese suppliers of violins and musical accessories, just because I don't want them to get into trouble.
I think Google realizes what is going on, and what the likely outcome will be, and has decided that it is better to "go along to get along" for now so that they will be in the driver's seat when the inevitable finally happens. Possibly this is a dangerous game, but I would not fault them for trying.
I've been watching the news coming out of China for a while now (because of my import business), and I see definite signs of political unrest. The Chinese government put down more than 87,000 riots in 2005. There are a number of systemic problems which will continue to fester, such as the 21,000,000 young males that can't find wives because of the 50 years of government policies that led to the systmatic murder of female babies (that's 21,000,000 men of military age, many with some military training).
The presence of Google in China, especially with the way that they are informing searching of why the forbidden searches failed, can only hasten the demise of the totalitarian despots currently running China.
Precisely. The search engines add significant value to the web, much more than they currently get in return. This is not a zero-sum-game, and just because search engines make money doesn't detract from your website at all; it makes your website more valuable if people can find it easily. I don't care how much money Google manages to make from helping me get my website noticed! In fact, I hope they make LOTS of money that way. Jealosy of search engines is just pathetic.
Whatever else you might think of Bill Gates, you gotta admire a geek that becomes a billionaire. That is a large part of why geek is no longer stigmatized.
There are millions of small businesses with local constituencies. How hard would it be to have 50 (or 51) new TLDs in the form USAK, USAL, USAR,...USVT? I would definitely sign up for USTX, although I would like some way to indicate my city as well. Google has already made an attempt to cater to these folks. BTW, if such a new scheme is implemented, it would be nice to have them restricted to people and businesses that actually have some physical address in the given region.
Gmail is invite only to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for spammers to create a large volume of accounts to spam with.
Huh? It would be trivially simple to get any number of gmail accounts to spam with. Each new signup get 100 invitations, and you can send them to your own email account. If you have a "catch-all", you could send 100 invitations to random-name@catch-all-account.com, and each of those gets 100 invitations to send, etc. Plus your original account will get refreshed with 100 invitations within a day or two. You could hire some minimum-wage grunt to do the work for you and have several thousand of these in a week.
The subcontractor in question already had his bid accepted, so the money he saved by firing one of his helpers went directly to his bottom line, not to the person who taught him how to do it. In the long run, the cost reductions might lead to winning more bids by being able to bid lower, but this time (and probably for the next several times), the subcontractor just made more money. The phenomenon you cited only occurs in a "frictionless" marketplace, which does not actually exist anywhere.
I import violins, violas, and cellos from China. The Chinese are producing the best quality/price in those instruments available anywhere in the world, as long as you stay away from the bottom 3 or 4 'tiers' of quality. There are literally hundreds of violin vendors on ebay, and all but a few of them ship the instrument to the end-user in the same condition as it was received from China, which borders on fraud. The typical end-user beginner has no clue how to properly set up the instrument, and typically has to spend more on professional setup than on the violin.
Shipping is not too bad. My cost for shipping a violin is around $18, including the cost of packaging and insurance. The main thing that I emphasize in my listings is the fact that I check out every instrument before I ship it. That reduces my volume, but I get much better prices. And, yes, I'm an expert on violins -- most of the sellers on ebay wouldn't know which end of the thing to point at the enemy. I have played professionally for several years, and I have studied luthierie.
Maybe Craig's List hasn't sold out... yet. But the camel's nose is in the tent. It will be interesting to see how long principles can stand up against great wads of cash.
Definitely. I have tracked a significant percentage of the traffic to some of my websites to Froogle, either directly, or via Blujay. As I mentioned, and you have also observed, Froogle has not yet hit it's stride, and (from the buyer's perspective) if you are really persistent, you can sometimes find better pricing elsewhere. But I believe it has enormous potential, and is just now reaching critical mass. The process of getting listed is still a bit of a hassle, but it's definitely worthwhile -- and at least for now, there is no cost other than a little time and effort. And since Blujay.com does that for its users, I don't even bother with a direct listing anymore.
I just wish that GooglePay would become real... Google isn't really taking over the world; they are just seducing us into giving it to them:) Eventually, Google may become the evil empire (displacing Microsoft), but for now, I even participate in Orkut.
There are a number of things that are particularly prone to fraud on eBay. The most common are laptops and cameras, followed closely by cellphones and cellphone accessories. Unfortunately, the particular genre I have chosen (musical instruments) is also full of fraud (and borderline ripoffs). No way I would buy a laptop on eBay, if for no other reason than most commodity items are not really suitable for the eBay auction format anyway.
BTW, there is already an eBay-killer lurking in the wings. It's Froogle. Froogle hasn't really hit it's stride yet, but the Froogle business model has some significant advantages over eBay -- and is inherently superior for about 90% of the stuff you find on eBay now. The eBay auction format is well-suited for one-of-a-kind items with high personal value-add, and little else.
In addition, eBay doesn't scale worth a damn. In order to get twice the sales, you have to work at least twice as hard (assuming you are actually an honest seller). I have recently scaled my auctions way back (from 90+ active auctions to fewer than 20), and watched my sell-through percentage more than triple, and my workload cut by 90%. For a net reduction in eBay-linked profit of about 40%. I consider that a pretty clear indicator that I really need to change my approach to de-emphasize eBay.
eBay *does* have other competition besides Froogle. One of my favorites is Blujay, which is mainly a fixed-price aggregator listing/classifieds service. Blujay.com has grown large enough to show up on the watchlist at PowerSellersUnite.com (a forum of mostly disgruntled ebay sellers). Blujay.com also leverages listings with Froogle, which has definitely helped their traffic. I sell about 1/10 as much stuff through Blujay.com as I do on eBay, and it accounts for more than 1/4 of my profits -- or it did until this month (I just made a large volume sale to a school directly, without eBay or PayPal), mainly because the cost of selling there is much lower.
Craig's List was also a viable alternative, but since they have sold out to eBay, I expect that to change.
Unfortunately, in the Internet world, there is a strong tendency for the market leader to completely dominate, and #2 is way down in the noise. The #1 position can change, however... If GooglePay ever becomes reality, eBay and PayPal are going to be in serious trouble.
For now, eBay is still the place to get some real bargains -- if you are careful. That's because the typical eBay seller has no clue what her/his actual costs are, and is often selling at a loss. The vast majority of eBay sellers last about 6-9 months before the clue-stick smites them in the form of running out of money. Just stay away from the really huge ripoff-potential items like laptops and consumer electronics sold at ridiculous prices by people you have never heard of. And do some research on what you are buying; in particular, don't get in a hurry and skim through the auction description, and take some time to read the negs and neutrals in the feedback log. Check out the history of the seller. Use PayPal if you can't use a credit card directly. Don't even look at auctions with private bid lists or one-day limits (the one-day auctions with private bidders and private feedback are roughly 100% fraudulent, and there is no way that eBay can be unaware of this).
Moderately funny, I guess... I'm trying to build a business that I can transition to prior to having to learn Hindi, Chinese, or Russian in order to continue writing software for a living. Although in a way, it's better that MS is going to India or whereever instead of increasing the abuse of the H1b system. Government-encouraged abuse of H1b will make programming a McJob by the end of this decade. I'm now earning about half what I was making in 1999, and I expect my income to be cut by half again over the next 4 or 5 years, with a serious of layoffs and periods of unemployment. Right now, the situation is actually improving (I even saw an IT-related help-wanted ad in the Tuesday edition of the local paper last week), but I don't see any good reason to expect that improvement to be long-lasting.
There was a time when I had a real passion for software, but it's going to get real old fast when I can't make a living at it (I'm getting real tired of the word "overqualified"). I suspect the real problem is my lack of ability at sales -- not just selling stuff like insurance (I'd rather chew glass than return to insurance sales), but selling my own abilities. I don't seem to be having that problem with my music (and teaching) business, probably because I have more passion for music nowadays than I have for programming. And the $30/hr I can get for teaching kids how to play the violin is looking better all the time (now, if I could just get more than 4 hours/week...).
I taught for a while at the local community college. I advised all of my students to find something else to do, because the US government's active encouragement of the blatant abuse of the H1-b system will make programming a McJob by the end of the decade. I'm in the process of building a music business, and I hope that I will be able to transition out of writing software for a living before I have to learn Hindi, Chinese, or Russian.
I live in the Netherlands where most part of the country is below sea level.
When was the last time the Netherlands experienced a Hurricane?
A good guide for choosing a place to live is whether you can get unsubsidized insurance for your property. If, for instance, flood insurance is either not available in a given area, or must be subsidized by the government, that should be a strong clue that smart people don't live there.
There is nothing wrong with Paypal and eBay that wouldn't be cured in a heartbeat by some credible competition, but I don't see any credible competition at the moment. Auction sites (and similar listing sites) come and go, as do online payment systems. I have a few such sites that I like (e.g., Blujay.com and TheHighBidder.com) from the standpoint of user-friendliness and lower cost, but they can't deliver the traffic like eBay.
One alternative for online payments that should definitely be avoided is the latest Ponzi scheme from Damon Westmoreland, called GreenZap.
I have some hope for either GooglePay or AliPay (from the B2B site Alibaba.com). I would not mind seeing both competing head-to-head with PayPal. Unfortunately, in the Internet world, there is a tendency for only one company to completely dominate any particular niche -- and #2 is usually way down in the noise.
No need to encourage that behaviour, indeed. I live in a state that allows me to carry a concealed handgun, and I am certified to teach the state concealed handgun course. The most effective deterrent is the occasional would-be thief that is shot by his intended victim. This encourages thieves to move to areas that require potential victims to be unarmed.
Google is insinuating itself into everything. The maps thing is pretty awesome (has a few kinks to work out, though), and Froogle will eventually trounce ebay and all of it's competitor-wannabes, even if it's slow getting started. Google Earth is truly mindblowing (even in its currently primitive state). And now, Google has a customizable 'personal' page. I would not be suprised to wake up some morning and discover that I now live in GoogleWorld. I am very much impressed that they are taking over without doing much in the way of advertising. If anything, they un-advertise (consider the fact that most of the folks posting here today did not realize that Google already has an IM service). They just release a feature, announce it to a few folks, and watch it spread like a virus.
I was happy when the pager business finally died. That reduced the number of gizmos that I was carrying around on a daily basis from 4 to 3; the cellphone features became advanced (and cheap) enough to obsolete the pager completely. At one time, I thought that I would probably snarf up the PDA/phone combo, but I haven't yet found one that I really want to buy -- the price/performance just isn't there yet. When the PDA/cellphone combination gets cheap enough (and full-featured enough), then I envision reducing my current gizmo count to 2.
As for the laptop, it looks like that will be around for a while. At this point, the PDA just doesn't have the display or input capability to make it the all-in-one personal computing tool. In order for a PDA-sized device to displace the laptop, the I/O needs to get way more advanced, something on the order of a combination ocular/cochlear implant and voice (or better yet, thought) recognition.
What are the security folks gonna do when the day comes that you can look at a document and issue a thought-command "copy"? I'm guessing that will be the end of paper documents; to be replaced entirely by electronic (and encrypted) communications for all purposes, including money.
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Gads. Now that I'm "overqualified" to write software (i.e., employers don't seem to think experience is worth paying any extra for), the geek world has completely forgotten that it even has a history.
I haven't had much problem with that. If anybody notices, I tell them I'm not using my main number, but I have my main number forwarded to whereever I happen to be. I always leave my VOIP number if I leave a voicemail message. Maybe if I ever start getting lots of unwanted calls, I'll try something else. Meanwhile, I have the attitude that I have a phone for my convenience, and I don't answer it if I'm busy with something else. I can check cell voicemail from my VOIP phone, so the extra cell time isn't a problem.
I recall that my bill is around $35/month. That includes all taxes and other fees, for two VOIP lines (my wife liked the features so much that she got a 2nd line).
I got a $400+ phone bill one month for all local calls.
If you got a $400+ bill in one month for all local calls, you really need a new phone company. I think the unlimited calling plan on my cellphone would be substantially less than that. FWIW, I get 1000 minutes/month shared on 2 cellphones with rollover (Cingular family plan) for about $85 per month. In-network calls (and a lot of my cellphone time is spent talking to my wife) don't count towards the 1000 minute monthly allotment. I've been with Cingular since before they split off from AT&T, and I seem to get a better deal every two years (I threaten to shop around at the end of every contract period, since I'm not 100% happy with Cingular, but I kinda wonder if anybody else is really better...).
My FiOS landline with internet service, my DirectTV, my VOIP lines, my efax line, plus my two cellphones (6 different phone numbers!) run substantially less than $400/month, total.
VoicePulse does not pay referral fees, so my recommendation is a freebie. Probably better that way...
My favorite feature is the ability to assign any number that I don't want to answer again a permanent busy signal. That, BTW, includes *any* call with a blocked caller ID. I get a little kick out of seeing in my log some low-life telemarketing company trying unsuccessfully to reach me hundreds of times. I can also set timers to go directly to voicemail during certain hours (like when I want to sleep), and I can selectively filter important callers (like my family) to ring through anyway.
Costs about $15/month. Oh, yes, I can also use the VOIP phone as originally intended, too.
Nowadays, with local number portability, the 'captive' part is less of a problem, but the other features make keeping a VOIP service worthwhile.
I sure wish I had the opportunity to beat the crap out of the low-life that joe-jobbed the email account that I was using for my business.
The parent is one of those rare articles that I wish I could mod up past +5. The blatant abuse of the H1-b system (I have been on the receiving end of that) is an effort to reduce programming to a McJob (and, as Cringely observed, is just another way of discriminating against older programmers). It is an effort that I expect to substantially succeed by the end of this decade, which is why I am building a business selling and repairing violins and other stringed instruments, and teaching violin lessons.
I advise my students (I occasionally teach community college CS courses, as well as private courses) to avoid (or leave) software engineering, simply because it really is a dead-end career.
I am now being paid a salary about half of what I was getting in 1999 (and lucky to be working at all after 3 years of un- and under-employment); another 10% decrease, and the musical instrument business will pay better (I can get about $40/hour to teach violin lessons, although it's hard to get more than 20 hours a week). Plus, playing my fiddle is much more enjoyable than enduring management that talks the talk, but won't walk the walk. Or users who can't understand why a non-standard change to a GUI is a Bad Idea.
I have lost more than 100 lbs, and it had very little to do with willpower. It had roughly everything to do with the fact that I quit eating the things that were making me constantly hungry, namely, the things on that goddamned low-fat fad diet that the high priests of the nutritional religion are still pushing, despite the fact that it is not only ineffective, but unhealthy. Hunger is like water-drip torture; you can stand it for a while, but eventually you cave. Since I quit eating grains, starches, and sugar 7 years ago, I not only lost 100 excess pounds, but also lost my excessive hunger, my nocturnal myoclonus (RLS), my arthritis, my lack of night vision, and my adult acne. So far, the only problems that I had experienced with low-carb have been the well-meaning fools (including doctors) who insist on lecturing me about how 'unhealthy' low-carb is.
The Iron Curtain was not brought down by gunfire, but by faxes, copiers, telephones, and other ways of getting forbidden ideas to people in their totalitarian regimes. China will ultimately fail to keep out the forbidden ideas, and will utimately fail in its attempts to keep its own people from being able to compare notes -- the one thing the Chinese government fears more than anything else. The Government dread of secret meetings between its people is the main reason for their hysterial fear of Falon Gong (which would be a fairly unlikely source of revolution if not for the active repression; an oxymoron which the ruling party fails to comprehend). The Internet is facilitating the ability of the people to communicate with each other (and outsiders) on a scale that China simply will not be able to effectively control (despite the rumored half-million people that are supposedly hired to do just that). I have seen stories about code phrases and steganography being used in ways that bypass the many filters in place on the Chinese internet, and unless the Chinese government is willing to spend more on internet control than on everything else combined, they haven't got a chance.
Just the same, I'm careful not to discuss anything controversial with my Chinese suppliers of violins and musical accessories, just because I don't want them to get into trouble.
I think Google realizes what is going on, and what the likely outcome will be, and has decided that it is better to "go along to get along" for now so that they will be in the driver's seat when the inevitable finally happens. Possibly this is a dangerous game, but I would not fault them for trying.
I've been watching the news coming out of China for a while now (because of my import business), and I see definite signs of political unrest. The Chinese government put down more than 87,000 riots in 2005. There are a number of systemic problems which will continue to fester, such as the 21,000,000 young males that can't find wives because of the 50 years of government policies that led to the systmatic murder of female babies (that's 21,000,000 men of military age, many with some military training).
The presence of Google in China, especially with the way that they are informing searching of why the forbidden searches failed, can only hasten the demise of the totalitarian despots currently running China.
Precisely. The search engines add significant value to the web, much more than they currently get in return. This is not a zero-sum-game, and just because search engines make money doesn't detract from your website at all; it makes your website more valuable if people can find it easily. I don't care how much money Google manages to make from helping me get my website noticed! In fact, I hope they make LOTS of money that way. Jealosy of search engines is just pathetic.
Whatever else you might think of Bill Gates, you gotta admire a geek that becomes a billionaire. That is a large part of why geek is no longer stigmatized.
There are millions of small businesses with local constituencies. How hard would it be to have 50 (or 51) new TLDs in the form USAK, USAL, USAR,...USVT? I would definitely sign up for USTX, although I would like some way to indicate my city as well. Google has already made an attempt to cater to these folks. BTW, if such a new scheme is implemented, it would be nice to have them restricted to people and businesses that actually have some physical address in the given region.
Huh? It would be trivially simple to get any number of gmail accounts to spam with. Each new signup get 100 invitations, and you can send them to your own email account. If you have a "catch-all", you could send 100 invitations to random-name@catch-all-account.com, and each of those gets 100 invitations to send, etc. Plus your original account will get refreshed with 100 invitations within a day or two. You could hire some minimum-wage grunt to do the work for you and have several thousand of these in a week.
The subcontractor in question already had his bid accepted, so the money he saved by firing one of his helpers went directly to his bottom line, not to the person who taught him how to do it. In the long run, the cost reductions might lead to winning more bids by being able to bid lower, but this time (and probably for the next several times), the subcontractor just made more money. The phenomenon you cited only occurs in a "frictionless" marketplace, which does not actually exist anywhere.
Shipping is not too bad. My cost for shipping a violin is around $18, including the cost of packaging and insurance. The main thing that I emphasize in my listings is the fact that I check out every instrument before I ship it. That reduces my volume, but I get much better prices. And, yes, I'm an expert on violins -- most of the sellers on ebay wouldn't know which end of the thing to point at the enemy. I have played professionally for several years, and I have studied luthierie.
Maybe Craig's List hasn't sold out... yet. But the camel's nose is in the tent. It will be interesting to see how long principles can stand up against great wads of cash.
Definitely. I have tracked a significant percentage of the traffic to some of my websites to Froogle, either directly, or via Blujay. As I mentioned, and you have also observed, Froogle has not yet hit it's stride, and (from the buyer's perspective) if you are really persistent, you can sometimes find better pricing elsewhere. But I believe it has enormous potential, and is just now reaching critical mass. The process of getting listed is still a bit of a hassle, but it's definitely worthwhile -- and at least for now, there is no cost other than a little time and effort. And since Blujay.com does that for its users, I don't even bother with a direct listing anymore.
I just wish that GooglePay would become real... Google isn't really taking over the world; they are just seducing us into giving it to them :) Eventually, Google may become the evil empire (displacing Microsoft), but for now, I even participate in Orkut.
There are a number of things that are particularly prone to fraud on eBay. The most common are laptops and cameras, followed closely by cellphones and cellphone accessories. Unfortunately, the particular genre I have chosen (musical instruments) is also full of fraud (and borderline ripoffs). No way I would buy a laptop on eBay, if for no other reason than most commodity items are not really suitable for the eBay auction format anyway.
BTW, there is already an eBay-killer lurking in the wings. It's Froogle. Froogle hasn't really hit it's stride yet, but the Froogle business model has some significant advantages over eBay -- and is inherently superior for about 90% of the stuff you find on eBay now. The eBay auction format is well-suited for one-of-a-kind items with high personal value-add, and little else.
In addition, eBay doesn't scale worth a damn. In order to get twice the sales, you have to work at least twice as hard (assuming you are actually an honest seller). I have recently scaled my auctions way back (from 90+ active auctions to fewer than 20), and watched my sell-through percentage more than triple, and my workload cut by 90%. For a net reduction in eBay-linked profit of about 40%. I consider that a pretty clear indicator that I really need to change my approach to de-emphasize eBay.
eBay *does* have other competition besides Froogle. One of my favorites is Blujay, which is mainly a fixed-price aggregator listing/classifieds service. Blujay.com has grown large enough to show up on the watchlist at PowerSellersUnite.com (a forum of mostly disgruntled ebay sellers). Blujay.com also leverages listings with Froogle, which has definitely helped their traffic. I sell about 1/10 as much stuff through Blujay.com as I do on eBay, and it accounts for more than 1/4 of my profits -- or it did until this month (I just made a large volume sale to a school directly, without eBay or PayPal), mainly because the cost of selling there is much lower.
Craig's List was also a viable alternative, but since they have sold out to eBay, I expect that to change.
Unfortunately, in the Internet world, there is a strong tendency for the market leader to completely dominate, and #2 is way down in the noise. The #1 position can change, however... If GooglePay ever becomes reality, eBay and PayPal are going to be in serious trouble.
For now, eBay is still the place to get some real bargains -- if you are careful. That's because the typical eBay seller has no clue what her/his actual costs are, and is often selling at a loss. The vast majority of eBay sellers last about 6-9 months before the clue-stick smites them in the form of running out of money. Just stay away from the really huge ripoff-potential items like laptops and consumer electronics sold at ridiculous prices by people you have never heard of. And do some research on what you are buying; in particular, don't get in a hurry and skim through the auction description, and take some time to read the negs and neutrals in the feedback log. Check out the history of the seller. Use PayPal if you can't use a credit card directly. Don't even look at auctions with private bid lists or one-day limits (the one-day auctions with private bidders and private feedback are roughly 100% fraudulent, and there is no way that eBay can be unaware of this).
There was a time when I had a real passion for software, but it's going to get real old fast when I can't make a living at it (I'm getting real tired of the word "overqualified"). I suspect the real problem is my lack of ability at sales -- not just selling stuff like insurance (I'd rather chew glass than return to insurance sales), but selling my own abilities. I don't seem to be having that problem with my music (and teaching) business, probably because I have more passion for music nowadays than I have for programming. And the $30/hr I can get for teaching kids how to play the violin is looking better all the time (now, if I could just get more than 4 hours/week...).
I taught for a while at the local community college. I advised all of my students to find something else to do, because the US government's active encouragement of the blatant abuse of the H1-b system will make programming a McJob by the end of the decade. I'm in the process of building a music business, and I hope that I will be able to transition out of writing software for a living before I have to learn Hindi, Chinese, or Russian.
I live in the Netherlands where most part of the country is below sea level.
When was the last time the Netherlands experienced a Hurricane?
A good guide for choosing a place to live is whether you can get unsubsidized insurance for your property. If, for instance, flood insurance is either not available in a given area, or must be subsidized by the government, that should be a strong clue that smart people don't live there.
There is nothing wrong with Paypal and eBay that wouldn't be cured in a heartbeat by some credible competition, but I don't see any credible competition at the moment. Auction sites (and similar listing sites) come and go, as do online payment systems. I have a few such sites that I like (e.g., Blujay.com and TheHighBidder.com) from the standpoint of user-friendliness and lower cost, but they can't deliver the traffic like eBay. One alternative for online payments that should definitely be avoided is the latest Ponzi scheme from Damon Westmoreland, called GreenZap. I have some hope for either GooglePay or AliPay (from the B2B site Alibaba.com). I would not mind seeing both competing head-to-head with PayPal. Unfortunately, in the Internet world, there is a tendency for only one company to completely dominate any particular niche -- and #2 is usually way down in the noise.
No need to encourage that behavior.
No need to encourage that behaviour, indeed. I live in a state that allows me to carry a concealed handgun, and I am certified to teach the state concealed handgun course. The most effective deterrent is the occasional would-be thief that is shot by his intended victim. This encourages thieves to move to areas that require potential victims to be unarmed.
Google is insinuating itself into everything . The maps thing is pretty awesome (has a few kinks to work out, though), and Froogle will eventually trounce ebay and all of it's competitor-wannabes, even if it's slow getting started. Google Earth is truly mindblowing (even in its currently primitive state). And now, Google has a customizable 'personal' page. I would not be suprised to wake up some morning and discover that I now live in GoogleWorld. I am very much impressed that they are taking over without doing much in the way of advertising. If anything, they un-advertise (consider the fact that most of the folks posting here today did not realize that Google already has an IM service). They just release a feature, announce it to a few folks, and watch it spread like a virus.
Should I cheer them on, or be very afraid?
Here's a very interesting and well-done flash presentation on that subject.
I was happy when the pager business finally died. That reduced the number of gizmos that I was carrying around on a daily basis from 4 to 3; the cellphone features became advanced (and cheap) enough to obsolete the pager completely. At one time, I thought that I would probably snarf up the PDA/phone combo, but I haven't yet found one that I really want to buy -- the price/performance just isn't there yet. When the PDA/cellphone combination gets cheap enough (and full-featured enough), then I envision reducing my current gizmo count to 2.
As for the laptop, it looks like that will be around for a while. At this point, the PDA just doesn't have the display or input capability to make it the all-in-one personal computing tool. In order for a PDA-sized device to displace the laptop, the I/O needs to get way more advanced, something on the order of a combination ocular/cochlear implant and voice (or better yet, thought ) recognition.
What are the security folks gonna do when the day comes that you can look at a document and issue a thought-command " copy "? I'm guessing that will be the end of paper documents; to be replaced entirely by electronic (and encrypted) communications for all purposes, including money.