Don't listen to parent! Parent has bad ratings and doesn't pay for auctions! Seller beware!
Grandparent is A+++++ first poster. Will recommend to all. Will read grandparent's post again
Is there anyone who think eBay's feedback system is truly useful or even fair? I get slammed when people don't pay and think they are funny. People ignore terms of auctions and think I'm unprofessional for not bending over backward. People don't ship my stuff because they found out the postage is way higher than they thought and decide to just keep my money. It's a sin how bad it is.
Just because it's more difficult to sell on Ebay does NOT mean the problem is management, it means there's more traffic (buyers and sellers), so you have more competition. It may take twice as long to sell a game as 2 years ago, but I'm willing to bet there's well more than twice as many video games on Ebay now, as there were then.
Ebay's BLOAT has got out of hand. Pages are enormous now and even when I'm shopping or browsing it is limiting the number of pages I can load on a dial-up line in a give time span. I eventually lose patience with staring at white screens loading and do something else.
As a seller, I can't believe how huge the selling pages have become. I dread listing any more than 10 items at a time, because the bandwidth is so fsking thick. I'm taking a break from selling things because I just can't stand the time necessary to go through it all.
Other issues: I bought something from someone who maintains an online store and a storefront on eBay. They turned out to be out of the item and asked if I wanted a refund while I was waiting for shipping confirmation. Damn. They say eBay doesn't offer decent inventory interfaces for store owners. So clearly there's a problem there as well.
Then I also hate being asked for my password repeatedly when shifting between eBay and PayPal, buying and selling, etc. There are some simple tricks to keeping the last login active, but still. It's a bit Microsoftie the way these groups don't seem to talk to each other.
If Microsoft had only had added a word that every geology noob knows, then the astronomy guys would have been better prepared at the conference.
It's because Yosemite National Park, home to perhaps the most famous Pluton in North America, isn't in Washington State. If only Half Dome loomed above the Redmond skyline. But surely they must have plutons in the Cascades? Or don't the Microsoft geeks get out enough?
No, you are correct. They would quickly become background radiation. Dark energy?
Gamma rays and X-Rays if I recall the life-cycle of small black holes correctly. As they continue to collapse in upon themselves they disapate radiation axially. Though they would need to already be collapsing inward. What would they be like if the were not?
"This is the most energetic cosmic event, besides the Big Bang, which we know about," said team member Maxim Markevitch of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass.
I guess he's never heard of Zaphod Beeblebrox.
"A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona at Tucson, and leader of the study. "These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."
Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough? What do the slashdot readers think is the appropriate outcome of this fiasco?
The paradox is that the one who takes overall responsibility is axed, yet they have learned from the experience. They have also undoubtably done many things right, which their successor may goof on.
It's trading a devil you know for a devil you don't. Should have just docked her pay, made her stand in a corner of sommat.
I'm as skeptical as the next nerd, but it's still essential for respected scientists to conduct the tests, do the math, and come up with an answer, even if just to debunk it formally.
Thing is, I do respect scientists who conduct experiments, debunk, etc, which is why I'm so damn skeptical of these people.
Have you ever talked to them? They're like zombies. Eyes glase over when they go into their mantra about how big energy and government want to keep this from the people, how wonderful free engery will be and (of course) how they're so excited to be in the ground floor of something which will be BIG money.
See, I took the math, chemistry and physics classes in college. I've done experiements in and out of class, to prove or disprove theories. It's a lot of work, which these weasels believe isn't necessary to success and Classical Science is there to fool people into believing falsehoods, to keep the real truth out of their hands.
Makes me want to gag every time I heard these things.
I've been around enough to know people do the same sh!t with software. Microsoft has been getting away with it for years.
They talk in circles and can't provide any definite explanations as to how something like this would work.
About 7 years ago I worked with a fellow who absolutely was buying into some black box he would just plug things into and it would
harvest energy from the earth's magnetic field. Sounds about the same thing. If there was enough density of magnetic fields to run a toaster, odds are
you'd be suffering some serious and potentially fatal side effects.
"What we have developed is a way to construct magnetic fields so that when you travel round the magnetic fields, starting and stopping at the same position, you have gained energy," McCarthy said.
Moving around in circles to gather energy, what a neat idea! Um, where do we get the energy to run around in circles? Sounds like that net forces thing, the sum of all forces acting upon my car at the moment are zero, but if I could just remove those coming from one direction, it should move in that direction, right? Hey, how about something that runs on gravity, since there's an unending supply of that, eh?
I'm also of the opinion if we started using something which was naturally in abundance, like earth's magnetic fields, it would cumulatively and ultimately affect
something we'd regret later.
It's the thing the Sci-Fi channel is on! And you call yourself a slashdotter...
I don't watch TV, other than down the pub for a footy match now and then (which will probably be considerably less frequent with the new EPL distribution of matches.) I do, however listen to old radio X-1 and Dimension-X plays on classic sci-fi from the 1940's and 50's. Follow this link.
LCD backlights will fade unevenly...And when they do, they're prohibitively expensive to replace.
Since so many of these are new, they won't fade for about two years - if Plasma is still around, you may see the tide change.
Mine is going on 4 years and no fade at all.
One thing I never liked about plasma was the power consumption. Do they still suck 300+ watts and emit a lot of heat?
OF COURSE it would. It would no longer orbit the earth, so it would no longer be a moon.
Of course, they would be Binary Planets. And you just know Bi-Planet wouldn't go down at all well with some.
This smacks of an elementary-level understanding, I don't know why it made the front page. If you change the physical properties of a named object, and want to name it something else, who cares?
Smacks of those, who want do do away with Darwin, eh?
I have no doubt that Microsoft will capture close to 100% of the market: but the "market" for this device is "MP3 players other than iPods."
Actually, they won't have the cellphone-mp3 player, PSP/other portable video game-mp3 player or cheep mp3 player market, either. They aren't simply a late entry into THE market, they're a late entry into a NICHE
First, they rip off OS X and create Vista, now they rip off the iPod and create "zune".
No, first they ripped off MacOS and made Windows 95. I'm certain a goodly portion of their R&D budget was spent on Macs and copying "look and feel". Then they basically tried to trounce the video game console market by putting a PC in a cheap-o plastic box (something Dell is getting very good at these days) and adding a few proprietary twists.
Makes you wonder when they'll get around to seriously tacking creating a decent operating system instead of all this fucking around in other markets.
The one thing missing for Microsoft, is panache. There's nothing hip or cool aboug having some
music device from a giant corporation. Without that certain cachet of having something from a company which makes
very stylish computers and operating systems and got U2 on board.
It could say Ronco on it for all the Microsoft connection will be
good for. It'll sell to some who want to experiment beyond the bounds of iPodness, but with that plastic
case and wheel-like buttons it says WalMart-chic all over it.
Of course, we can't discount the notion that Microsoft might further piss-off the EU and risk a severe look from
US trustbusters, by bundling some shit into Windows Vista which only works with the Zune and means you have to have one
to get those Zune-casts...
Smells like another waste of money from a company that just doesn't understand that they are only profitable at
a few things and should stop this kind of nonsense. FFS, who are they trying to be, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?
We're halfway between a bunch of mushrooms with a plumber jumping around on them and a checkered landscape full of gold rings a hedgehog is running around trying to collect.
Well, maybe some kids will take a break from playing games to do some GeoCaching.
What?!? You should be glad to have Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office and other fine software products from Microsoft and other bloatware producers. It's the All-American, Blown-V8, 4x4 of software!
just because you don't like the gas mileage, don't hate the toy
My biggest problem with these super fast transistors is soldering them into my ArcherKit P-Box
Isn't that rather like arguing that you never really owned your record player, because you were forced to buy an iPod in order to keep up with technology? You can still play your old beatles records on an LP player.
I happen to have an old enough pre-amp that I can still hook up a turntable (record player to you.) A friend bought a new amplifier at the local Ciruit City (or equivilent) and found it couldn't accomodate his trusty old turntable Phono Input. He got by with some goofy little pre-amp which hangs off the back and requires a plastic cube to power it. How long before all these things are optical? How soon before the only video options you have don't include RF and/or Composite?
Telling my friends and family this have gotten me accused of everything from lying to fear mongering.
Those old Beatles records you bought years ago, you can't just digitise them so you can listen to them on your iPod. Not with the RIAA's blessing anyway. And TFB if you have something on vinyl which never came out, or in the case of my ELO Out Of The Blue double-LP, was clipped when making the abbreviated CD version.
"The one that prevents us from taking the old video tape I bought of it, which I can no longer watch on newer video devices due to
built in DRM and I am prevented from recording onto a computer and removing the old DRM and writing to digital storage which the new
digital video devices read."
"Man, obeying the law sucks!"
"No, creating laws which paint people into a corner and then hand them the brush suck."
Ultimately, the way DRM and DMCA is going, you will not have owned DVDs, CDs, LPs, 45s, etc. You will merely have rented them
until the march of technology locks you out of enjoying the content any further.
Slashdot Mirror
Don't listen to parent! Parent has bad ratings and doesn't pay for auctions! Seller beware!
Grandparent is A+++++ first poster. Will recommend to all. Will read grandparent's post again
Is there anyone who think eBay's feedback system is truly useful or even fair? I get slammed when people don't pay and think they are funny. People ignore terms of auctions and think I'm unprofessional for not bending over backward. People don't ship my stuff because they found out the postage is way higher than they thought and decide to just keep my money. It's a sin how bad it is.
Just because it's more difficult to sell on Ebay does NOT mean the problem is management, it means there's more traffic (buyers and sellers), so you have more competition. It may take twice as long to sell a game as 2 years ago, but I'm willing to bet there's well more than twice as many video games on Ebay now, as there were then.
Ebay's BLOAT has got out of hand. Pages are enormous now and even when I'm shopping or browsing it is limiting the number of pages I can load on a dial-up line in a give time span. I eventually lose patience with staring at white screens loading and do something else.
As a seller, I can't believe how huge the selling pages have become. I dread listing any more than 10 items at a time, because the bandwidth is so fsking thick. I'm taking a break from selling things because I just can't stand the time necessary to go through it all.
Other issues: I bought something from someone who maintains an online store and a storefront on eBay. They turned out to be out of the item and asked if I wanted a refund while I was waiting for shipping confirmation. Damn. They say eBay doesn't offer decent inventory interfaces for store owners. So clearly there's a problem there as well.
Then I also hate being asked for my password repeatedly when shifting between eBay and PayPal, buying and selling, etc. There are some simple tricks to keeping the last login active, but still. It's a bit Microsoftie the way these groups don't seem to talk to each other.
If Microsoft had only had added a word that every geology noob knows, then the astronomy guys would have been better prepared at the conference.
It's because Yosemite National Park, home to perhaps the most famous Pluton in North America, isn't in Washington State. If only Half Dome loomed above the Redmond skyline. But surely they must have plutons in the Cascades? Or don't the Microsoft geeks get out enough?
No, you are correct. They would quickly become background radiation. Dark energy?
Gamma rays and X-Rays if I recall the life-cycle of small black holes correctly. As they continue to collapse in upon themselves they disapate radiation axially. Though they would need to already be collapsing inward. What would they be like if the were not?
"dark matter" I don't think it means what you think it means
It's probably Pre-Dark Matter.
The announcement of the pending announcement regarding Dark Matter
I guess he's never heard of Zaphod Beeblebrox.
"A universe that's dominated by dark stuff seems preposterous, so we wanted to test whether there were any basic flaws in our thinking," said Doug Clowe of the University of Arizona at Tucson, and leader of the study. "These results are direct proof that dark matter exists."
Also a bit of info on physorg
How does the Coalsack Nebula fit into this? It's dark and it's matter, right?
Is this an appropriate penalty for releasing 20 million keyword search results, or is it too harsh, or not harsh enough? What do the slashdot readers think is the appropriate outcome of this fiasco?
The paradox is that the one who takes overall responsibility is axed, yet they have learned from the experience. They have also undoubtably done many things right, which their successor may goof on.
It's trading a devil you know for a devil you don't. Should have just docked her pay, made her stand in a corner of sommat.
I'm as skeptical as the next nerd, but it's still essential for respected scientists to conduct the tests, do the math, and come up with an answer, even if just to debunk it formally.
Thing is, I do respect scientists who conduct experiments, debunk, etc, which is why I'm so damn skeptical of these people.
Have you ever talked to them? They're like zombies. Eyes glase over when they go into their mantra about how big energy and government want to keep this from the people, how wonderful free engery will be and (of course) how they're so excited to be in the ground floor of something which will be BIG money.
See, I took the math, chemistry and physics classes in college. I've done experiements in and out of class, to prove or disprove theories. It's a lot of work, which these weasels believe isn't necessary to success and Classical Science is there to fool people into believing falsehoods, to keep the real truth out of their hands.
Makes me want to gag every time I heard these things.
I've been around enough to know people do the same sh!t with software. Microsoft has been getting away with it for years.
They talk in circles and can't provide any definite explanations as to how something like this would work.
About 7 years ago I worked with a fellow who absolutely was buying into some black box he would just plug things into and it would harvest energy from the earth's magnetic field. Sounds about the same thing. If there was enough density of magnetic fields to run a toaster, odds are you'd be suffering some serious and potentially fatal side effects.
Moving around in circles to gather energy, what a neat idea! Um, where do we get the energy to run around in circles? Sounds like that net forces thing, the sum of all forces acting upon my car at the moment are zero, but if I could just remove those coming from one direction, it should move in that direction, right? Hey, how about something that runs on gravity, since there's an unending supply of that, eh?
I'm also of the opinion if we started using something which was naturally in abundance, like earth's magnetic fields, it would cumulatively and ultimately affect something we'd regret later.
What didn't you know about vices driving technology?
The pr0n industry has been driving innovation since the days of the Apple ][
The DoD study made one critical error. They failed to take special interests* into account. Clearly this needs amending.**
* Proprietary Software Industry leaders and House, Senate and Predidential campaign donors.
** According to same special interests.
It's the thing the Sci-Fi channel is on! And you call yourself a slashdotter...
I don't watch TV, other than down the pub for a footy match now and then (which will probably be considerably less frequent with the new EPL distribution of matches.) I do, however listen to old radio X-1 and Dimension-X plays on classic sci-fi from the 1940's and 50's. Follow this link.
Google is so ubiquitous it seems going to TV advertising is going backward.
I know I've heard of those somewhere. I'll have to Google it and find out what it is.
LCD backlights will fade unevenly...And when they do, they're prohibitively expensive to replace. Since so many of these are new, they won't fade for about two years - if Plasma is still around, you may see the tide change.
Mine is going on 4 years and no fade at all.
One thing I never liked about plasma was the power consumption. Do they still suck 300+ watts and emit a lot of heat?
I always like a Convention that heralds the next convention as the really big news of this convention.
OF COURSE it would. It would no longer orbit the earth, so it would no longer be a moon.
Of course, they would be Binary Planets. And you just know Bi-Planet wouldn't go down at all well with some.
This smacks of an elementary-level understanding, I don't know why it made the front page. If you change the physical properties of a named object, and want to name it something else, who cares?
Smacks of those, who want do do away with Darwin, eh?
I have no doubt that Microsoft will capture close to 100% of the market: but the "market" for this device is "MP3 players other than iPods."
Actually, they won't have the cellphone-mp3 player, PSP/other portable video game-mp3 player or cheep mp3 player market, either. They aren't simply a late entry into THE market, they're a late entry into a NICHE
There's no buzz about Zune. Microsoft will need a significant and unique advertising campaign to make this thing sell.
So .. Rolling Stones again?
you make a grown man cryyyy...
First, they rip off OS X and create Vista, now they rip off the iPod and create "zune".
No, first they ripped off MacOS and made Windows 95. I'm certain a goodly portion of their R&D budget was spent on Macs and copying "look and feel". Then they basically tried to trounce the video game console market by putting a PC in a cheap-o plastic box (something Dell is getting very good at these days) and adding a few proprietary twists.
Makes you wonder when they'll get around to seriously tacking creating a decent operating system instead of all this fucking around in other markets.
The one thing missing for Microsoft, is panache. There's nothing hip or cool aboug having some music device from a giant corporation. Without that certain cachet of having something from a company which makes very stylish computers and operating systems and got U2 on board.
It could say Ronco on it for all the Microsoft connection will be good for. It'll sell to some who want to experiment beyond the bounds of iPodness, but with that plastic case and wheel-like buttons it says WalMart-chic all over it.
Of course, we can't discount the notion that Microsoft might further piss-off the EU and risk a severe look from US trustbusters, by bundling some shit into Windows Vista which only works with the Zune and means you have to have one to get those Zune-casts...
Smells like another waste of money from a company that just doesn't understand that they are only profitable at a few things and should stop this kind of nonsense. FFS, who are they trying to be, the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation?
We're halfway between a bunch of mushrooms with a plumber jumping around on them and a checkered landscape full of gold rings a hedgehog is running around trying to collect.
Well, maybe some kids will take a break from playing games to do some GeoCaching.
Maybe we should just get faster software.
What?!? You should be glad to have Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office and other fine software products from Microsoft and other bloatware producers. It's the All-American, Blown-V8, 4x4 of software!
just because you don't like the gas mileage, don't hate the toy
My biggest problem with these super fast transistors is soldering them into my ArcherKit P-Box
Isn't that rather like arguing that you never really owned your record player, because you were forced to buy an iPod in order to keep up with technology? You can still play your old beatles records on an LP player.
I happen to have an old enough pre-amp that I can still hook up a turntable (record player to you.) A friend bought a new amplifier at the local Ciruit City (or equivilent) and found it couldn't accomodate his trusty old turntable Phono Input. He got by with some goofy little pre-amp which hangs off the back and requires a plastic cube to power it. How long before all these things are optical? How soon before the only video options you have don't include RF and/or Composite?
Telling my friends and family this have gotten me accused of everything from lying to fear mongering.
Those old Beatles records you bought years ago, you can't just digitise them so you can listen to them on your iPod. Not with the RIAA's blessing anyway. And TFB if you have something on vinyl which never came out, or in the case of my ELO Out Of The Blue double-LP, was clipped when making the abbreviated CD version.
stormtroopers are standing by
"Wanna watch Erik The Viking?"
"Can't. It would be a violation of the law."
"What Law?"
"The one that prevents us from taking the old video tape I bought of it, which I can no longer watch on newer video devices due to built in DRM and I am prevented from recording onto a computer and removing the old DRM and writing to digital storage which the new digital video devices read."
"Man, obeying the law sucks!"
"No, creating laws which paint people into a corner and then hand them the brush suck."
Ultimately, the way DRM and DMCA is going, you will not have owned DVDs, CDs, LPs, 45s, etc. You will merely have rented them until the march of technology locks you out of enjoying the content any further.