Re:And this is indeed a serious problem with EBay.
on
How to Win on Ebay: Snipe
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· Score: 3, Insightful
That's a very good idea. (The more I think about it the more I like it.) There is a problem, though, in that it will not help out folks who live in different time zones. If the auction ends at a time when I would rather be asleep then the extra 10 minutes will not help. The bidders on ebay are spread out over a very large geographic region which makes it difficult to insure some sort of fairness about the end time of an auction.
Just remember this post when your local subnet gets knocked out when this new thing and some titan of a spammer start slamming each other and happen to be near you. I believe there is an old African proverb about what happens when two elephants fight that is appropriate here.
You are so right. I miss the good ole days when new finds had real scientific names like the louse named after Gary Larson. (*sigh*) Yeah, those were the days.
Speaking of science, it is nice how these folks can find a collection of bones from seven or eight animals and create a whole set of hunting behaviors and lifestyles. The scientists admit this is conjecture, but fortunately, the reporters and editors writing these stories don't let a little science get in the way of just writing the juicy bits.
Dude! This chick just made a joke about Ubuntu *and* Gentoo users in the same sentence and then went on to disparage Red Hat users. I don't know what bug is up your nether regions, but I for one am in love. (She also discusses "USB devices." *drool*)
Besides, what they did was a crime and they knew it. Who in their right mind would have accessed a private police network to publish public reports? Gee, you'd think as a reporter that maybe the coroner is setting you up there and you might want to contact the police to get him nailed and not you.
Not only that but anybody who talks to a reporter should know that there is no guarantee that the reporter will not be forced to tell law inforcement their source. When reporters write something down it should be assumed that it may be investigated. This raises the question of why reporters would put information on a computer and not encrypt it. If they have sensitive information it should be encrypted. How hard is it to use pgp? That is the only way to insure that the information they have will remain private.
If reporters really want to protect their sources they will not rely on judges to back them up but take precautions to insure that their information is secure from prying eyes.
The unfortunate thing about doing business is that companies have to pay attention to a group of people we will call "customers." These "customers" tend to have preferences. Their preferences are often irrational, yet the poor companies have to pay attention especially if they face "competition." The "customers" in Japan have a strong preference for clamshell phones. Vodaphone did not pay attention to their "customers" so they did not have enough.(That and the Japanese market is notoriously hard to break in to, but that is a different conversation.)
In some ways the scenario is worse than that. They will be taking depositions in private, and there will not be a judge present. Can you imagine being the poor nerd being asked questions with both the MS lawyers and IBM lawyers leering at you from all sides of the table. I wouldn't go in that room without the protection of being in a steel cage hanging from the ceiling.
Yeah, especially when you consider the bad guys in Iraq get to watch US solidiers do this on a daily basis.
This reminds me of a visit I made to Toronto just before the current action in Iraq started. The front page of the Toronto star has satellite pictures of airbases in Saudi Arabia showing a huge build up of forces. (They had before and after pictures.) When I went back to the states none of this was being shown and the media was repeating the administrations assertions that they were trying to avoid military action. (This was before the US went to the UN security council.)
The media can give the politicians the benefit of the doubt, and there was a good reason to build up forces even if they did not want to use them. However, we can be trusted to know what our government is doing and trusted to make the right decision. We can handle the truth especially when the information is *freely* available outside of the US and easily attainable to other people.
How long will it now take before we start seeing iTunes Payola. Networks eager to get their shows on people's ipods will certainly be tempted to try to strike special deals to make their shows more easily obtainable. They may try to offer Apple cash, try to reduce the cost to consumers, or try to find ways to get their links on the front page. If it happens, can an individual state try to take action against the practice? This may turn out to be another interesting episode of the theatre of greed.
Absolutely right. It is the poor, poor, executives that make the sacrifices here in the US while the over fed, over indulgent, over rich workers make out like bandits. If it were not for the unions those poor robber barrons would have kept our standard of living comparable to China's where it belongs.
When I buy music, or anything else, I don't care what it's worth to other people; I care what it's worth to me,
The problem is that the price that the supplier wants to sell matters just as much as the buyer's price.
Stock market pricing is one of the stupidest ideas I've ever heard WRT the music industry
I seriously doubt that the recording companies would use a stock market price scheme. Instead they would more likely choose a market driven scheme. They would charge more for music that only sells a few copies because those people will shell out the money for their couple of copies. For music that sells to billions of teens, well... they would charge less for that because teens will be cautious about shelling out their baby-sitting money for Britney.
I have to disagree with this. This is about power. The record companies want to dictate how you use their product. They cannot get over the idea that once you purchase something it no longer belongs to them. This is why they call people "pirates" when they do what they want with their own stuff. Real pirates are thugs who forcibly board other people's property and take control over it which, by the way, is what Sony has done.
Somebody needs to make a video of Sony DRM pirates sailing the intenet sea with Monty Python's tune of the Crimson Permanent Insurance sung in the background...
the United States graduating only 4,400 mathematics and science PhDs each year compared with 24,900 math and science PhDs for greater Asia.
Since "greater Asia" has well over five to six times the population of the US this shouldn't be so alarming. When it comes to graduating PHD's in math and science you cannot simply throw money at the problem and expect to see huge results. Going through grad school and writing a thesis is not for everybody, and manufacturing PHD's is not like making shoes.
This may be snobbish, but the stuff you have to go through to get through grad school is not for everyone. There is more to it than just smarts. Temperment, expectations, and other things play a big part. People are not going to get PHD's in science and math just because some politician thinks it will be good for the economy.
Besides all that, the good Governor needs to make the case that having more science and math PHDs will be an economic spur. Sure, folks with PHD's from ALL fields help. But just producing more PHD's may not have much effect. From the job market it seems that things are close to saturation despite all the rantings about the impending crisis of lack of mathematicians and scientists that we have been hearing about for the last fifty years.
First, windows is getting better, but it sure seems like a slow grind.
More importantly, there is another thing that is not changing. The Wall Street Journal has an article today that confirms its previous reports of Google in talks with Time-Warner about giving them money to prop up AOL.
Nothing has changed. Every time a potential challenger to MS pops up, the challenger kills itself off through its own hubris. Once again, the folks at MS sit in Redmond and laugh all the way to the bank while Google is throwing its money away. Intense focus on small incremental changes for MS has turned them into a money making machine.
I read that too and thought it was odd that none of the weapons mentioned, ak-47, m-16, pistols, are weapons that snipers use. An M-16 has an effective range of 300-400 meters or so. Snipers are capable of sitting 1000 meters out and hitting their target. The sound of a weapon discharge at that distance is very faint.
Also, this is picking nits... but... Snipers use smokeless powder. They work very hard at not being seen.
You shouldn't assume from the name that organization is really about representing authors. In this case, though, they do not seem to be astroturf. If you check out their "talking points" they seem not to know the difference between scanning and publishing nor the difference between searching and publishing.
They make money by providing search results. Now, I know what you are going to say, "but they make no money when I click on one of the results from their search." Ah, yes, that may be so, but they can make up for that on volume.
additionally, iron has four known stable isotopes while aluminum only has one, and most computer builders prefer to build as much stability into their systems as possible.
I see some people want to spill their derision and venom on this comment in true/. fashion, but I just want to share my experience with this. I too once thought al would be a great case, but then one day a group of Iranian nuclear scientists busted in my door and trashed my house. They took all of the al out of the house. When they finally left they laughed as they talked about how they were going to isolate all those unstable isotopes for their neferious purposes. And you know what... one of those guys looked suspiciously like their new prime minister!
Another example is the state of Utah! Salt Lake City is the smallest city to have its own SEC office, and the state suffers from a high rate for people getting ripped off by people they know. This has been attributed by the close network of people within the LDS Church. Somebody who is intent on ripping someone off can join the church and instantly gain a large web of trust.
auto-detected everything in my laptop. Didn't expect it not to, as previous Fedora Core releases did so.
I was a very happy RedHat and then Fedora user until I tried to install FC3. I hope that FC4 does better then its predecessor. When I did the install for FC3 it clobbered my system. It appeared that it did not correctly configure itself for my scsi controller.
All I can say is thank you St. Anthony because my backups saved my derrier that day. I am now a very happy gentoo user who synced and updated my system this morning like any other Monday without tempting St. Anthony too much.
It is nice not to have to download 4 cds every four months and hope that I won't need the backups!
Number three could be expanded to: "ditch for new immature code which will take 3-5 years to implement new technology when completely workable alternatives exist and could be easily adapted." Should it really take a company with Microsoft's resources to take 3-5 years to implement a new scripting language? Are the permissions system that broken that it takes so much effort to plug the holes? Should I stop begging the question?
See, you just don't get it do you? These prediculators have a job which forces them to spew out stuff every day and even if most of it is garbage it is okay as long as it generates page hits. Now, people in the market for a computer have three choices all of which involve an intel "like" machine.
Most people really don't care what is inside the box and that includes the kernel. They just want the damn thing to work. Apples work even if you have to pay more. In the end it won't really matter one way or the other. People will buy apple cuz they look nice and work well. People will buy windows cuz its cheaper and they know how to put it to work. Some of us will still install linux on top of windows cuz we can make that work.
The rest will make predictions and rake in the money....
Slashdot Mirror
That's a very good idea. (The more I think about it the more I like it.) There is a problem, though, in that it will not help out folks who live in different time zones. If the auction ends at a time when I would rather be asleep then the extra 10 minutes will not help. The bidders on ebay are spread out over a very large geographic region which makes it difficult to insure some sort of fairness about the end time of an auction.
Just remember this post when your local subnet gets knocked out when this new thing and some titan of a spammer start slamming each other and happen to be near you. I believe there is an old African proverb about what happens when two elephants fight that is appropriate here.
Cheer up, chances are they really just felt sorry for you!
Speaking of science, it is nice how these folks can find a collection of bones from seven or eight animals and create a whole set of hunting behaviors and lifestyles. The scientists admit this is conjecture, but fortunately, the reporters and editors writing these stories don't let a little science get in the way of just writing the juicy bits.
Dude! This chick just made a joke about Ubuntu *and* Gentoo users in the same sentence and then went on to disparage Red Hat users. I don't know what bug is up your nether regions, but I for one am in love. (She also discusses "USB devices." *drool*)
Not only that but anybody who talks to a reporter should know that there is no guarantee that the reporter will not be forced to tell law inforcement their source. When reporters write something down it should be assumed that it may be investigated. This raises the question of why reporters would put information on a computer and not encrypt it. If they have sensitive information it should be encrypted. How hard is it to use pgp? That is the only way to insure that the information they have will remain private.
If reporters really want to protect their sources they will not rely on judges to back them up but take precautions to insure that their information is secure from prying eyes.
The unfortunate thing about doing business is that companies have to pay attention to a group of people we will call "customers." These "customers" tend to have preferences. Their preferences are often irrational, yet the poor companies have to pay attention especially if they face "competition." The "customers" in Japan have a strong preference for clamshell phones. Vodaphone did not pay attention to their "customers" so they did not have enough.(That and the Japanese market is notoriously hard to break in to, but that is a different conversation.)
In some ways the scenario is worse than that. They will be taking depositions in private, and there will not be a judge present. Can you imagine being the poor nerd being asked questions with both the MS lawyers and IBM lawyers leering at you from all sides of the table. I wouldn't go in that room without the protection of being in a steel cage hanging from the ceiling.
Yeah, especially when you consider the bad guys in Iraq get to watch US solidiers do this on a daily basis.
This reminds me of a visit I made to Toronto just before the current action in Iraq started. The front page of the Toronto star has satellite pictures of airbases in Saudi Arabia showing a huge build up of forces. (They had before and after pictures.) When I went back to the states none of this was being shown and the media was repeating the administrations assertions that they were trying to avoid military action. (This was before the US went to the UN security council.)
The media can give the politicians the benefit of the doubt, and there was a good reason to build up forces even if they did not want to use them. However, we can be trusted to know what our government is doing and trusted to make the right decision. We can handle the truth especially when the information is *freely* available outside of the US and easily attainable to other people.
How long will it now take before we start seeing iTunes Payola. Networks eager to get their shows on people's ipods will certainly be tempted to try to strike special deals to make their shows more easily obtainable. They may try to offer Apple cash, try to reduce the cost to consumers, or try to find ways to get their links on the front page. If it happens, can an individual state try to take action against the practice? This may turn out to be another interesting episode of the theatre of greed.
</irony>
pfffft. Oops sorry, didn't mean to let that slip.
Somebody needs to make a video of Sony DRM pirates sailing the intenet sea with Monty Python's tune of the Crimson Permanent Insurance sung in the background...
Since "greater Asia" has well over five to six times the population of the US this shouldn't be so alarming. When it comes to graduating PHD's in math and science you cannot simply throw money at the problem and expect to see huge results. Going through grad school and writing a thesis is not for everybody, and manufacturing PHD's is not like making shoes.
This may be snobbish, but the stuff you have to go through to get through grad school is not for everyone. There is more to it than just smarts. Temperment, expectations, and other things play a big part. People are not going to get PHD's in science and math just because some politician thinks it will be good for the economy.
Besides all that, the good Governor needs to make the case that having more science and math PHDs will be an economic spur. Sure, folks with PHD's from ALL fields help. But just producing more PHD's may not have much effect. From the job market it seems that things are close to saturation despite all the rantings about the impending crisis of lack of mathematicians and scientists that we have been hearing about for the last fifty years.
First, windows is getting better, but it sure seems like a slow grind.
More importantly, there is another thing that is not changing. The Wall Street Journal has an article today that confirms its previous reports of Google in talks with Time-Warner about giving them money to prop up AOL.
Nothing has changed. Every time a potential challenger to MS pops up, the challenger kills itself off through its own hubris. Once again, the folks at MS sit in Redmond and laugh all the way to the bank while Google is throwing its money away. Intense focus on small incremental changes for MS has turned them into a money making machine.
I read that too and thought it was odd that none of the weapons mentioned, ak-47, m-16, pistols, are weapons that snipers use. An M-16 has an effective range of 300-400 meters or so. Snipers are capable of sitting 1000 meters out and hitting their target. The sound of a weapon discharge at that distance is very faint.
Also, this is picking nits... but... Snipers use smokeless powder. They work very hard at not being seen.
You shouldn't assume from the name that organization is really about representing authors. In this case, though, they do not seem to be astroturf. If you check out their "talking points" they seem not to know the difference between scanning and publishing nor the difference between searching and publishing.
They make money by providing search results. Now, I know what you are going to say, "but they make no money when I click on one of the results from their search." Ah, yes, that may be so, but they can make up for that on volume.
Except for Best Buy which boots out customers/freeloaders who don't keep their margins high enough.
I see some people want to spill their derision and venom on this comment in true /. fashion, but I just want to share my experience with this. I too once thought al would be a great case, but then one day a group of Iranian nuclear scientists busted in my door and trashed my house. They took all of the al out of the house. When they finally left they laughed as they talked about how they were going to isolate all those unstable isotopes for their neferious purposes. And you know what... one of those guys looked suspiciously like their new prime minister!
bastards...
Another example is the state of Utah! Salt Lake City is the smallest city to have its own SEC office, and the state suffers from a high rate for people getting ripped off by people they know. This has been attributed by the close network of people within the LDS Church. Somebody who is intent on ripping someone off can join the church and instantly gain a large web of trust.
Oh puh-lease. What kind of wacko-commie-left-wing trash is this? I say we take this guy out back and beat the crap out of him!
I was a very happy RedHat and then Fedora user until I tried to install FC3. I hope that FC4 does better then its predecessor. When I did the install for FC3 it clobbered my system. It appeared that it did not correctly configure itself for my scsi controller.
All I can say is thank you St. Anthony because my backups saved my derrier that day. I am now a very happy gentoo user who synced and updated my system this morning like any other Monday without tempting St. Anthony too much.
It is nice not to have to download 4 cds every four months and hope that I won't need the backups!
Number three could be expanded to: "ditch for new immature code which will take 3-5 years to implement new technology when completely workable alternatives exist and could be easily adapted." Should it really take a company with Microsoft's resources to take 3-5 years to implement a new scripting language? Are the permissions system that broken that it takes so much effort to plug the holes? Should I stop begging the question?
See, you just don't get it do you? These prediculators have a job which forces them to spew out stuff every day and even if most of it is garbage it is okay as long as it generates page hits. Now, people in the market for a computer have three choices all of which involve an intel "like" machine.
Most people really don't care what is inside the box and that includes the kernel. They just want the damn thing to work. Apples work even if you have to pay more. In the end it won't really matter one way or the other. People will buy apple cuz they look nice and work well. People will buy windows cuz its cheaper and they know how to put it to work. Some of us will still install linux on top of windows cuz we can make that work.
The rest will make predictions and rake in the money....