Re:Pegging currency to the dollar can cause proble
on
PayPal Goes Public
·
· Score: 2
No no, PayPal money is real US dollars, just like "Bank money" (you know, that number in your checking account that you don't actually ever seen in cash unless you withdraw it) is real US dollars.
That's part of the success of PayPal, REAL dollars, not Floooz or Beans or Bullshitz.
The $10 they gave out at the beginning generally NEVER LEFT PayPal's bank accounts, which was a bit of a clever thing for them to do, really.
The problem with PayPal, they can do anything they want with your money, all they have to do is change the terms of service. Without banking regulations, there's no guarantee that your money will be there until you take it out.
And I think you can short PayPal on the NASDAQ just like anything else..after a waiting period perhaps...
I love PayPal. I use it regularly for buying and selling on eBay (sometimes several thousand dollars a month), for giving online donations, and for occasional general money-sending.
I have never had any problems with them. Their customer service has replied with real answers most of the time, the web page has been inaccessible once or twice, but other than that has never had any big problems. I have a merchant-level account, with a low fee (lower than Billpoint's regular rate, for sure). I take my money out every time I receive it, or I use the very handy Debit card to buy something. And they even TELL you when they change their terms of service!!
eBay's billpoint? Junk! They really missed the boat when they bought them. The PayPal model, where they hold your money, has many more possibilities, including the debit card, bill payment, and investing (X.com style). Of course there are more possibilities for fraud too, but from a features point of view, PayPal wins. Plus my biggest problem with Billpoint, I can't sign up my multiple eBay accounts and addresses, but with PayPal, there's no problem.
But, being the jaded and cynical fellow I am, I know that happy feeling will disappear very soon.
Now PayPal, which is essentially an UNREGULATED bank that deals in short-term loans from customers (essentially, I am loaning them my money for short periods of time), now they don't have an obligation to their customers, they have an obligation to their SHAREHOLDERS. I'm very afraid, and everyone else should be the same.
I guarantee they will do one or more or all of the following: 1) abuse patents.. 2) hide and massage the fee structure (how about charging 1% to withdraw YOUR OWN money.. that would be a good start).. 3) change the terms of service WITHOUT notification (why slow things down like that?).. 4) piss of the credit card companies who will stop allowing them to use their credit cards and logos.. 5) piss off enough people so that the government steps in and over-regulates after several state lawsuits..
Who, knows, maybe I'm overreacting, maybe, like eBay, they will stay good after their IPO. But of course eBay was profitable very quickly, maybe that kept the shareholders happy. PayPal is in a unique and tempting position, and can easily screw over MANY people for their quest to profitability.
What do you folks think? Along with eBay, I consider PayPal one of the few actual "innovations" that the Commercial Internet(tm) has brought us.
Yeah, we all know what this guy was going to do. If he wasn't going to pirate games and deprive Sony of their earned income, then he was probably going to "hack" the console, and we all know hacking is illegal.
As part of the lab, we are intending on using the Sega Dreamcast console as a real-time system; we'll be writing a scheduler for it and some simple games.
Man, an entire class devoted to stealing other people's work? I think it's time for a TOP TO BOTTOM review of our educational system, and we need to route out these thieves pretending to be teachers. Put them behind bars I say!
The Dreamcast isn't even mine; it's my roommate's.
Sure, steal from Sony, steal from your roommate, steal from old ladies, steal from your Church, what's the difference?
Looks to me like the DMCA was working just fine, and stopped another potential criminal from commiting a crime. Does this guy really think he's smarter than Congress, who knew exactly what they were doing when passing this law?
(Note this post is a JOKE. And a bad one at that.:-) Move along.)
They can henceforth change the terms without notice, just by posting the new terms on the website. (Currently they are obliged to give 15 days notice by email, a period that we are currently in for this change.)
This is the part that disgusts me about "Terms of Use". Basically, they could say anything they want, and you would be bound by it, before you can even read it!
So Tuesday, they can say they don't own the copyright in your programs, but Wednesday they can, and NOBODY WOULD KNOW until AFTER the terms went into effect.
Yes, they have the right to put pretty much anything in their terms, BUT they should have to make a reasonable effort to inform their users of any new terms.
Free markets work best when information is available about your choices. Saying "if you don't like it, go elsewhere" is silly if you don't know what it is exactly you just agreed to.
There should be a consumer protection law that says, you have 30 days before new terms go into effect, no matter what. Then you would know, just have your attorney or your web-page watcher script check the terms every 30 days. But now, they can change them twice a day, or just for 5 minutes every night, or whatever, and nobody knows.
Of course every company is completely honest and above-board and would never change their terms like that, would they??
Unless of course, they silently change their terms to read: "..by using the Service you agree that all code, data, programs, ideas, algorithms, images, sound files, and mailing lists become the property of SourceForgeCorp.".
Perhaps the most wide-ranging request for customer information of this kind came in the summer of 2000, when Ohio authorities subpoenaed Amazon.com. They requested records of all the people in a large part of Ohio who had purchased the "Cyborgasm I" and "Cyborgasm II" audio CDs, trying to identify a stalking suspect who had sent the CDs to his victims.
Holy shit! I bought Cyborgasm #1 from Amazon.com a few years ago. I'm not from Ohio, but that is downright creepy.
Check those records kids..let's see, judging by the handful of random books and CDs I've bought from Amazon, I'm a pot-smoking accountant who listens to new age music, writes cryptography software with "vi", and has a fascination with women's health...
Art has always been affected by technology. Artists have always used technology in their work, sometimes as a type of social statement, but mostly because it offers a new medium with different possibilities.
Painters have always looked for new paints that offer new textures and hues. Or they look for new ways to reproduce and distribute their work. The introduction of photography is one example. At first people thought it was a surrogate for painting, but soon people exploited it as a medium on its own terms. From a social point of view, too, photography became a way to transport people to events that already occured, in a way that painting and sketching just couldn't do.
Musicians always look for new ways to use technology. DJs scratching records come to mind, the turntable is a musical instrument based on mechanical reproduction, both a social statement about reproducing and manipulating someone else's recording, and an art form unto itself. Scott Joplin's mechanical syncopated piano rolls also come to mind, in this case his style was very much influenced by the limitations of the technology (no loud/soft dynamics). How about today's "glitch" music (like kid606, etc), based on manipulating sound at the sample level, and exploiting "digital decay" for artistic effect.
I bet this same "Katzenjammer" could've been written at any point in history. Yawn.
Interestingly, Contax just came out with what I believe is the first full-size sensor in a digital SLR, here's an article about it. But yeah full-size sensor, EOS lenses, in an SLR, that would rock! Oh yeah and it would be nice if it was under $1000...someday..
Well the problem is mostly that there aren't enough bits coming out of the camera, so adjacent intensities get combined into one and you lose the shadow detail.
Plus a lot of cameras have a lot of noise in the sensor, which further screws up shadow detail.
The "wild molten" look...Apple, are you paying attention? heh heh
Once I had to clean out a calculator that I spilled cranberry juice in, I dunked the parts in denatured alcohol (ethanol or isopropyl with very low water content) which I assumed would clean out the cranberry juice and drive out the water. The calculator (TI85) still works fine today......"teh oven" is "teh bad idea" I think.
I set one up this morning. I put a two year-old two Mbps AP with an 18dBi directional antenna on top of our downtown San Jose WiPoP, and pointed it at the Starbucks, Rock 'N Tacos, Spiedo restaurant, and the Campbell Cigar shop below. It works great. I got 1.2 Mbps inside these places with my WiFi card. I didn't have to ask Starbucks, nor offer to pay them anything!"
Does anyone else smell the start of a new type of stupid law, one that says you can't beam otherwise permitted radio waves into buildings?
Forgetting all the myriad reasons source code is useful, the one best thing about getting source code for your product is: it's the ultimate documentation for the program.
I always look at the source code when trying to solve a problem. It's like a reference manual written in a terse language that doesn't slow me down.
It's like including schematics with a piece of test equipment. Why bother with the manual when you can just look and see EXACTLY what that button does and how.
Source code may not be useful to users of software, but to the coders and people doing the actual work, it is a tremendous productivity boost.
So by putting metal tabs along a non-conductive material will help, but not much. The waves will still pass right through the material and out.
It might be possible to put a mesh or something on the clear material, so it is somewhat see-through, but still blocks the waves.
Like the door of a microwave, which blocks the lower frequency microwaves but allows the higher frequencies (light) through.
Of course with microwave ovens the energy is confined to a narrow band and the interference from GHz computers is all over the place, but I'm sure some clever engineer is working on it. I can see in my newer iMac a type of mesh surrounds a lot of the circuits.
I think a lot of/. folks are letting their RMS disillusionments take control. I personally would definitely NOT like to see the Free software world start using Microsoft-invented, Microsoft-owned, Microsoft-patented technology if it can be helped.
This is like turning Gnome into a Windows app. Sure,.NET sounds cool from a technology point of view but you should know by now that technology doesn't live in a vacuum. As soon as anything based on.NET becomes a threat to Microsoft, they will cripple it, through technological or legal means.
The Free software community should stand firm and develop and use open technologies, and not even pay lip service to.NET.
I agree with the view taken by Nick Peterly (or whatever his name, I can't remember right now) that Miguel has been baited by Microsoft.NET and this will just give Microsoft a way to try and subvert Free software. Maybe that's not what MS was thinking at the outset, and not what Miguel is thinking, but it will be possible and we shouldn't allow MS that kind of power.
I for one will lump anything that uses.NET in with Microsoft products, even if it's "open source". Why take the chance? I'm surprised that so many/. folks are calling.NET "progress" or "a standard". It's just a Microsoft technology.
I thought now that TPJ was a supplement to SysAdmin magazine, it's future wasn't so cloudy. I've only gotten one bundled issue so far but I think it's doing all right.
But another Perl mag is fine by me.
And I must say, Brian Foy's obsession with how his name is typeset gets old really fast.
All DRM systems will be cracked. All media can be re-recorded. The content companies are stupid greedy thugs. The DMCA was bought and paid for with the dollars you spend on CDs and DVDs.
I hope the corps hurry up with these products so we can get started cracking them.
Those aren't anti-terrorist commercials! They're anti-drug/anti-personal-freedom commercials!
Amen to that. I was just going to post a little rant about what a ridiculous and strained connection there is between drugs and terrorism. But you did a fine job yourself.
I thought maybe the gov. would want to do a little generic patriotic spot, something that helps bolster the illusion that we are the best nation on earth, or maybe a call to voluntary service, etc., but no, they use terrorism to further their anti-freedom agenda. Hey, maybe they can find a link between abortion and terrorism next!
I guess if you don't like something these days, just call it terrorism.
Slashdot Mirror
No no, PayPal money is real US dollars, just like "Bank money" (you know, that number in your checking account that you don't actually ever seen in cash unless you withdraw it) is real US dollars.
That's part of the success of PayPal, REAL dollars, not Floooz or Beans or Bullshitz.
The $10 they gave out at the beginning generally NEVER LEFT PayPal's bank accounts, which was a bit of a clever thing for them to do, really.
The problem with PayPal, they can do anything they want with your money, all they have to do is change the terms of service. Without banking regulations, there's no guarantee that your money will be there until you take it out.
And I think you can short PayPal on the NASDAQ just like anything else..after a waiting period perhaps...
I love PayPal. I use it regularly for buying and selling on eBay (sometimes several thousand dollars a month), for giving online donations, and for occasional general money-sending.
I have never had any problems with them. Their customer service has replied with real answers most of the time, the web page has been inaccessible once or twice, but other than that has never had any big problems. I have a merchant-level account, with a low fee (lower than Billpoint's regular rate, for sure). I take my money out every time I receive it, or I use the very handy Debit card to buy something. And they even TELL you when they change their terms of service!!
eBay's billpoint? Junk! They really missed the boat when they bought them. The PayPal model, where they hold your money, has many more possibilities, including the debit card, bill payment, and investing (X.com style). Of course there are more possibilities for fraud too, but from a features point of view, PayPal wins. Plus my biggest problem with Billpoint, I can't sign up my multiple eBay accounts and addresses, but with PayPal, there's no problem.
But, being the jaded and cynical fellow I am, I know that happy feeling will disappear very soon.
Now PayPal, which is essentially an UNREGULATED bank that deals in short-term loans from customers (essentially, I am loaning them my money for short periods of time), now they don't have an obligation to their customers, they have an obligation to their SHAREHOLDERS. I'm very afraid, and everyone else should be the same.
I guarantee they will do one or more or all of the following: 1) abuse patents .. 2) hide and massage the fee structure (how about charging 1% to withdraw YOUR OWN money.. that would be a good start).. 3) change the terms of service WITHOUT notification (why slow things down like that?).. 4) piss of the credit card companies who will stop allowing them to use their credit cards and logos.. 5) piss off enough people so that the government steps in and over-regulates after several state lawsuits..
Who, knows, maybe I'm overreacting, maybe, like eBay, they will stay good after their IPO. But of course eBay was profitable very quickly, maybe that kept the shareholders happy. PayPal is in a unique and tempting position, and can easily screw over MANY people for their quest to profitability.
What do you folks think? Along with eBay, I consider PayPal one of the few actual "innovations" that the Commercial Internet(tm) has brought us.
Damn you moderator with your -1: Overrated... a pox on your family! May wasps eat at your eyes!
How about giving those sharks a little PRIVACY!
Shark #1: Darling, allow me to gentle stroke your pectoral fin.. let me gently nibble your..
Researcher: HEY! He's getting close, turn on the video camera! Play the Barry White! Turn on the spotlight!
Shark #2: Uhm, not interested.
Shark #1: Damn you humans and your infernal lights and music! A pox on your families! May wasps eat at your eyes!
...blah blah blah...blah blah blah..
waiting for the 4-line Perl version.....
Yeah, we all know what this guy was going to do. If he wasn't going to pirate games and deprive Sony of their earned income, then he was probably going to "hack" the console, and we all know hacking is illegal.
As part of the lab, we are intending on using the Sega Dreamcast console as a real-time system; we'll be writing a scheduler for it and some simple games.
Man, an entire class devoted to stealing other people's work? I think it's time for a TOP TO BOTTOM review of our educational system, and we need to route out these thieves pretending to be teachers. Put them behind bars I say!
The Dreamcast isn't even mine; it's my roommate's.
Sure, steal from Sony, steal from your roommate, steal from old ladies, steal from your Church, what's the difference?
Looks to me like the DMCA was working just fine, and stopped another potential criminal from commiting a crime. Does this guy really think he's smarter than Congress, who knew exactly what they were doing when passing this law?
(Note this post is a JOKE. And a bad one at that. :-) Move along.)
Yes, I agree!
;-)
Oh man, that's damn funny, good job!
Lameness filter really really really sucksxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Lameness filter sure sucks Lameness filter definitely sucks Lameness filter stinks
They can henceforth change the terms without notice, just by posting the new terms on the website. (Currently they are obliged to give 15 days notice by email, a period that we are currently in for this change.)
This is the part that disgusts me about "Terms of Use". Basically, they could say anything they want, and you would be bound by it, before you can even read it!
So Tuesday, they can say they don't own the copyright in your programs, but Wednesday they can, and NOBODY WOULD KNOW until AFTER the terms went into effect.
Yes, they have the right to put pretty much anything in their terms, BUT they should have to make a reasonable effort to inform their users of any new terms.
Free markets work best when information is available about your choices. Saying "if you don't like it, go elsewhere" is silly if you don't know what it is exactly you just agreed to.
There should be a consumer protection law that says, you have 30 days before new terms go into effect, no matter what. Then you would know, just have your attorney or your web-page watcher script check the terms every 30 days. But now, they can change them twice a day, or just for 5 minutes every night, or whatever, and nobody knows.
Of course every company is completely honest and above-board and would never change their terms like that, would they??
but they don't own the data you stored there.
Unless of course, they silently change their terms to read: "..by using the Service you agree that all code, data, programs, ideas, algorithms, images, sound files, and mailing lists become the property of SourceForgeCorp.".
Perhaps the most wide-ranging request for customer information of this kind came in the summer of 2000, when Ohio authorities subpoenaed Amazon.com. They requested records of all the people in a large part of Ohio who had purchased the "Cyborgasm I" and "Cyborgasm II" audio CDs, trying to identify a stalking suspect who had sent the CDs to his victims.
Holy shit! I bought Cyborgasm #1 from Amazon.com a few years ago. I'm not from Ohio, but that is downright creepy.
Check those records kids..let's see, judging by the handful of random books and CDs I've bought from Amazon, I'm a pot-smoking accountant who listens to new age music, writes cryptography software with "vi", and has a fascination with women's health...
Art has always been affected by technology. Artists have always used technology in their work, sometimes as a type of social statement, but mostly because it offers a new medium with different possibilities.
Painters have always looked for new paints that offer new textures and hues. Or they look for new ways to reproduce and distribute their work. The introduction of photography is one example. At first people thought it was a surrogate for painting, but soon people exploited it as a medium on its own terms. From a social point of view, too, photography became a way to transport people to events that already occured, in a way that painting and sketching just couldn't do.
Musicians always look for new ways to use technology. DJs scratching records come to mind, the turntable is a musical instrument based on mechanical reproduction, both a social statement about reproducing and manipulating someone else's recording, and an art form unto itself. Scott Joplin's mechanical syncopated piano rolls also come to mind, in this case his style was very much influenced by the limitations of the technology (no loud/soft dynamics). How about today's "glitch" music (like kid606, etc), based on manipulating sound at the sample level, and exploiting "digital decay" for artistic effect.
I bet this same "Katzenjammer" could've been written at any point in history. Yawn.
Interestingly, Contax just came out with what I believe is the first full-size sensor in a digital SLR, here's an article about it. But yeah full-size sensor, EOS lenses, in an SLR, that would rock! Oh yeah and it would be nice if it was under $1000...someday..
Well the problem is mostly that there aren't enough bits coming out of the camera, so adjacent intensities get combined into one and you lose the shadow detail.
Plus a lot of cameras have a lot of noise in the sensor, which further screws up shadow detail.
The "wild molten" look...Apple, are you paying attention? heh heh
Once I had to clean out a calculator that I spilled cranberry juice in, I dunked the parts in denatured alcohol (ethanol or isopropyl with very low water content) which I assumed would clean out the cranberry juice and drive out the water. The calculator (TI85) still works fine today......"teh oven" is "teh bad idea" I think.
(this is from somebody that emailed Cringe)
I set one up this morning. I put a two year-old two Mbps AP with an 18dBi directional antenna on top of our downtown San Jose WiPoP, and pointed it at the Starbucks, Rock 'N Tacos, Spiedo restaurant, and the Campbell Cigar shop below. It works great. I got 1.2 Mbps inside these places with my WiFi card. I didn't have to ask Starbucks, nor offer to pay them anything!"
Does anyone else smell the start of a new type of stupid law, one that says you can't beam otherwise permitted radio waves into buildings?
Forgetting all the myriad reasons source code is useful, the one best thing about getting source code for your product is: it's the ultimate documentation for the program.
I always look at the source code when trying to solve a problem. It's like a reference manual written in a terse language that doesn't slow me down.
It's like including schematics with a piece of test equipment. Why bother with the manual when you can just look and see EXACTLY what that button does and how.
Source code may not be useful to users of software, but to the coders and people doing the actual work, it is a tremendous productivity boost.
So by putting metal tabs along a non-conductive material will help, but not much. The waves will still pass right through the material and out.
It might be possible to put a mesh or something on the clear material, so it is somewhat see-through, but still blocks the waves.
Like the door of a microwave, which blocks the lower frequency microwaves but allows the higher frequencies (light) through.
Of course with microwave ovens the energy is confined to a narrow band and the interference from GHz computers is all over the place, but I'm sure some clever engineer is working on it. I can see in my newer iMac a type of mesh surrounds a lot of the circuits.
I think a lot of /. folks are letting their RMS disillusionments take control. I personally would definitely NOT like to see the Free software world start using Microsoft-invented, Microsoft-owned, Microsoft-patented technology if it can be helped.
This is like turning Gnome into a Windows app. Sure, .NET sounds cool from a technology point of view but you should know by now that technology doesn't live in a vacuum. As soon as anything based on .NET becomes a threat to Microsoft, they will cripple it, through technological or legal means.
The Free software community should stand firm and develop and use open technologies, and not even pay lip service to .NET.
I agree with the view taken by Nick Peterly (or whatever his name, I can't remember right now) that Miguel has been baited by Microsoft .NET and this will just give Microsoft a way to try and subvert Free software. Maybe that's not what MS was thinking at the outset, and not what Miguel is thinking, but it will be possible and we shouldn't allow MS that kind of power.
I for one will lump anything that uses .NET in with Microsoft products, even if it's "open source". Why take the chance? I'm surprised that so many /. folks are calling .NET "progress" or "a standard". It's just a Microsoft technology.
I thought now that TPJ was a supplement to SysAdmin magazine, it's future wasn't so cloudy. I've only gotten one bundled issue so far but I think it's doing all right.
But another Perl mag is fine by me.
And I must say, Brian Foy's obsession with how his name is typeset gets old really fast.
I think it's okay to live at home if you're 18.
All DRM systems will be cracked. All media can be re-recorded. The content companies are stupid greedy thugs. The DMCA was bought and paid for with the dollars you spend on CDs and DVDs.
I hope the corps hurry up with these products so we can get started cracking them.
Those aren't anti-terrorist commercials! They're anti-drug/anti-personal-freedom commercials!
Amen to that. I was just going to post a little rant about what a ridiculous and strained connection there is between drugs and terrorism. But you did a fine job yourself.
I thought maybe the gov. would want to do a little generic patriotic spot, something that helps bolster the illusion that we are the best nation on earth, or maybe a call to voluntary service, etc., but no, they use terrorism to further their anti-freedom agenda. Hey, maybe they can find a link between abortion and terrorism next!
I guess if you don't like something these days, just call it terrorism.
Please note, the correct misspelling of "copyright" is "copywrite", not "copywright".