Is here. This guy really looked into Ponzi, and his site is the best I've found for explaining what a Ponzi scheme is in detail.
Of course, compared to many offers on the web today, Ponzi's supposed rate of return was downright conservative, but you can tell that Charles Ponzi would have LOVED the web. People are stupider these days, I guess...
JMR
I like your idea, and I've told at least one/. editor that moderation points are a currency. Considering my job, you'll hopefully pardon me if that's how my brain works naturally.
I think it might help to make mod points more persistent (or perhaps just make the gold variety behave that way) and in that way encourage later moderation of interesting comments. I know that CmdrTaco has argued that they should be even more fleeting, but maybe it could be tried both ways? I think that if the points were more-persistent, a market in them might develop, with interesting results...("Half a gram of e-gold if you mod this comment up, anyone?")
JMR
...Lends more credibility to the disposable credit card concept.
That's not the only concept that should be considered (and neither is e-gold, I'd just like to see better/deeper thinking on payment options here).
Western Union has objected to e-gold-selling market makers in the past, ostensibly because some interesting sites use the currency for gram-based gambling. Of course, Western Union is owned by First Data, a giant credit-card payment processor, which I'm sure would NEVER process payments related to plastic-using-gambling on the internet, since I'm convinced that they're the very model of moral decorum compared to venal exchange-providers using the filthy yellow metal as a currency. (smirk!)
I want folks to play with our system, especially Slashdot readers, so my usual offer to click a bit to any/. readers who create an e-gold account and send me the number applies, as does my usual "I don't care if you moderate this comment down because you think it's 'spam' because I'm self-interest personified," and "my opinions are mine alone" attitude(s). Thanks.
JMR
For starters, I'd get my idea to http://cryptome.org/, even though that's guaranteed to get it law enforcement attention, because John Young is a better and more trustworthy newsman as a part-timer (he's really an architect!) than 99.9% of the full timer$. Good people look at Cryptome, and I'm guessing if it upsets authority your project will interest him. You might also post it to cypherpunks, or Usenet, as has already been suggested here.
Of course, you may need to find a way to pay for it somehow, and there's a pretty good chance that some of what you're thinking of has already been done, anyway. Good luck!
JMR
Absolutely true (I'm the marketing-guy, but I'm impaired, I can't lie very well). That's why I said "go away" in the other message, though not in so many words. Allow me to elaborate:
JMR
Delivered-To: jray@e-gold.com
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 23:52:42 -0400
Subject: Explanation of the outage and slowness
To: "e-gold Discussion"
From: "Steve Foerster"
List-Unsubscribe:
List-Subscribe:
List-Owner:
Sender: bounce-e-gold-list-147@talk.e-gold.com
Status:
First, from all of us at G&SR, let me apologize for the inconveniences
that you have endured as e-gold's technical resources catch up to its
popularity. In the last few days a large network of e-gold customers
dramatically increased its activity, catching us just a few days before we
complete major hardware and software upgrades.
However, in the next few days we will be moving our database from our
paleolithic dual Pentium II 200MHz clunker to a new HP NetServer LH 6000.
A comparable upgrade in web server will be made at the same time.
While that alone would eliminate the lingering systemic lethargy, we're
also deploying a maintenance release to the current e-gold system that
will dramatically improve its design. As many people know, one of the
principle reasons for the issues that have been plaguing us has been that
the design of the original system -- now four years old! -- has
suboptimalities in its code and its database design. This maintenance
release will take advantage of a number of the current system's
opportunities for improvement.
Please note that this maintenance release is *not* the new e-gold system
that is coming later this year. That will be a completely new system,
written from scratch and using a different set of technologies.
I've established a new public list called "e-gold-tech" for discussing
this and other aspects of e-gold's use of technology, such as SSL
decryption boxes, geographically distributed servers, and so forth. To
see this and other lists, please visit . If you'd like to respond to this
message, please subscribe to the tech list and do so there, rather than on
this "list" list.
Thanks,
-=Steve=-
================
Stephen H. Foerster
Chief Technical Officer
e-gold * G&SR/OmniPay
---
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Hi, I'm willing to click anyone from/. a spot of e-gold if they send an account number to me. Yes, we do charge storage fees (and at the moment, dammit, the site is down, by Murphy's Law this story came along when it did instead of next Tuesday). There is an active market for exchange of e-metals (the e-gold family of currencies includes gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, but gold is by far the most popular). The fees are higher than PayPal's 0 fees, but we ARE international, and safe, and (please come back next week, don't slashdot us now!!!) we're about to be very interesting. I'm sorry about the currently swamped state of the site, but I'll click Slashdot readers a bit of gold anytime, as I said, when it's back up, and I'd love to answer any questions if you have them, but basically PLEASE mess with e-gold. It's designed to be a foundation, and other currencies built on top of it will be cheaper and more interesting.
A good analogy would be a house on a granite foundation. Until the storm, it seems just like the house built on a sand dune. Thanks, and again my apologies for the state of the site, PLEASE come back next week when we can welcome you with new equipment and an interesting change in the system. We WANT free-software types to play with our system.
JMR
(Not that any of the news media has much noticed, preferring either vapor or companies that bleed a sea of red ink.) My usual offer to click a bit to./ readers who want to actually try it still stands.
JMR
Is that the user is almost-certainly using plastic at the site he's objecting to here, and I have my doubts as to whether many folks here have read through credit card user agreements. Whether or not the cat food store has it for sale, AFAIK the plastic companies still own and sell the information about you. They're too smart to sell it in a way that leads you to seeing that they sold it, but they sell it still.
Of course, there are many payment alternatives, and my usual offer to slashdot readers of a spot of the filthy yellow metal if they try mine still stands.
JMR
(Go ahead, mod me down as 'spam' -- see if I care!)
Thanks for the kind words. Naturally, like all internet startups, the Flying Rat project seeks money and -- while keeping to its.org roots -- would like to become a.com with a LOT more services, including (perhaps) an information and rating service. Contact me for details if interested & wealthy.:^)
JMR
(BTW. Blatant self-interest -- especially when I admit my own greed -- != "spam" if my avarice is more-or-less on-topic, as it was, whether or not it elicited a fine whine!)
Well, I don't think so (although it's been alleged-not-proven that her fine rant in Salon may have been lifted from another person's work). For one thing, she didn't OD or kill herself, and for another, I liked her performance as Althea Flynt in a recent movie.
If she isn't stupid, what's the problem? I think it's her webmaster being swamped with mail, and perhaps mistaking mine for spam even though it referenced holemusic.com and Courtney Love's rant repeatedly. At this point, I've given up on her webmaster and hope to get through to her by luck and persistence and other means.
When I first read the rant in Salon (which has another...um...int eresting article about gold in general, not e-gold!!! ) I felt her scream for a person to person payment system between the lines, and e-gold -- imperfect as it presently is -- fills the bill much better than the theoretical stuff the media loves to hype so much, despite absent fundamentals. *sigh* Anyway, my point is that I don't think she's stupid, and I'll refrain from comment about her webmaster.:)
JMR
Re:But will they actually get the money?
on
The Virtual Tip Jar
·
· Score: 1
I graduated with "Summa Cum Laude" honors from the Ferengi school of business ethics.;^)
Actually, I'm willing (Argh! Charity!) to click/. folks who manage to send me email with an account number a small spot of e-gold to play with, but only because there are lots of programmers who do cool stuff still hanging around here despite the trolls (whew, barely pulled naked self-interest out of that one!).
JMR
Re:But will they actually get the money?
on
The Virtual Tip Jar
·
· Score: 2
In my experience, small amounts of cash + Visa = skimming.
You're correct, but not because of the nature of administrators IMO. Even honest administration can't get around the fact that Visa makes very small transactions un-economic, and makes person to non-merchant-person transactions impossible.
Fairtunes is interesting, and anything's better than the RIAA as a middleman, but if Courtney Love would ever-in-hell listen to me about e-gold some really interesting things could happen. Yes, if e-gold is the tip jar, there's a small spend fee & storage fee, and you have to get used to a market with lots of merchants who have different bid/ask spreads. If Fairtunes uses e-gold properly, it should be good for both artists and me (just a guy who likes art).
It's easy to do things like my Dutch friends did with "The Plant" by Steven King even if artists have never even heard of e-gold (Thanks for covering only hype, instead of fundamentals, news media of the planet!).
JMR
(Ok, I'll try to stop posting on this subject.)
Because most people don't yet have a bit of e-gold to give, yet.:) I know Fairtunes has an account (and I could even make the balance publicly-viewable if any owner wants).
I have repeatedly tried to get Courtney Love (or any musician) to notice that we've been able to do micropayments or macropayments efficiently, cutting out the middleman and saving people money even if they keep using plastic. Wanna buy an animated gif (hey! it's PUSSY! WooHoo!) for ten cents worth of e-gold? It has been possible for over a year... Try it.
Step back and think about gold logically, even though it's the most emotional element on the periodic table. The stuff makes damn good money, and this e-gold bunch (me included) are NOT going away. We'll keep doing, keeping promises made about the internet and its possibilities instead of hyping the theoretical. Journalists interested in fundamentals (if that's not an oxymoron anymore...) should contact me. Thanks.
JMR
(My main point is that Dave Barry is a far better writer than Paulina, who seems to have the gift of mindless attraction from/. editors regardless of um...challenged writing ability, but let's get to Ted's ostentatious gift.)
I disagree that the whole point for Ted of giving the UN money is/was (or could be) shaming the US. I doubt that's even his main point (as far as how he actually feels, not what he says). Hell, the man has an entire television network! There are FAR more effective ways to get people's attention than by annoying misanthropes like me with ostentatious do-goodery if you own a TV network and have a BILLION dollars to toss down the crapper!
The reason the USA denies UN funds is because the UN is INCREDIBLY wasteful and corrupt, to the point that even someone as unpopular as Jesse Helms can regularly (and forcefully) prove it, easily, to more than 50 senators. The rest of the UN is free to kick the USA out and leave (with NYC parking tickets still unpaid!) or come up with another way to raise dues if they're determined to continue to be so wasteful & corrupt. IMO.
But if the Ted Turner example still bothers you, please insert another instance of ostentatious giving. I think we'd both agree that "anonymously" is the only way to give without possible suspicion from Jim Ray. I'm always thrilled by stories like Krugerands* getting dropped into a Salvation Army donation bucket. Sounds like the person just dropped in a little bit of change, but I just like it.
Not everything about giving is recognition, and (as I implied/said before) not all gifts are designed to make for easy stories for Paulina to write about, in her annoyingly-scatter-brained, simplistic style. [Question: Will this woman ever in hell come up with any topic other than "why-I-hate/how-to-date those eeevil libertarians"??? She might be even more annoying if she didn't do so much recycling, but I'm willing to chance it!]
JMR
(Yeah, with me, it ALWAYS gets back to gold! I'm a dangerous "cybergreedy" libertarian)
Dave Barry. The Falwell piece was especially amusing, but he covered the Republican convention and has plans to cover the Democrat convention the same way shortly. He tends to do a better job on the conventions than some of the "serious" journalists, and all of his recent convention columns are at that URL.
For more about his libertarian politics (which tend to match mine) see:this interview. BTW, Dave Barry isn't just right & Paulina Borsook's wrong (although that's so, IMO) he's also a FAR better writer. I find Paulina downright tedious in her partisan, repetitive zeal to paint libertarians as all-one-thing. Wrong.
Mr. Barry also won't blow his own horn about it (and he has a right not to tell Paulina what he does with HIS! money) but I happen to know that he's a generous person, too -- as if that matters to this "debate." In fact, I find the spectacle of pre-announced, feted, giving (like Ted Turner's immense gift to the UN) to be distasteful for a number of reasons, and certainly every bit as political & ideological as a gift to the Boy Scouts or the NRA, whether or not the news media choose to paint it as such. I refuse to disclose or defend, to Paulina or anyone else who can't mind her own business, my charitable activities.
JMR
Space Duel was the ultimate evolution of Asteroids -- it was like "Asteroids on acid!" (not advocating drugs here -though I don't oppose 'em either and think most should be legal - but that's the best description I've ever heard of the game).
The great thing about Space Duel was that you could cooperate with another player against the machine, or go it alone as a single/double ship, or compete with the other guy (while cooperating at the same time, to kill each-other and get new shields -- "kill me, dammit, KILL ME!!!"). The best was cooperation mode, especially once we figured out the "trick." Unlike the original Asteroids, where you stood your ground in the middle of the screen and blasted, in Space Duel you had to march to survive. Momentum was a life-saver, and keeping the march gave stability.
We generally marched left-to-right, with the only danger zone being the crossover from far-right to far left of the screen. If one guy got hit, he became a popgun, and generally took over navigation/thrust duties because the other guy still had full-auto shots available. Then once either of you got nailed again, the tie between the ships became a fuse, and the other guy had just enough time to bring weapons to bear and kill the fscking-saucer that had done this to us. We even developed a shorthand language for the game so we could warn eachother of rocks and other hazards, and if we missed them on the first few shots, we'd occasionally try to outrun the double-spaceships sent after us so that we came up behind them.
The game was never popular with arcade owners, for good reasons. We could make 2 quarters last from 45 minutes to an hour or more, and the problem was that once I bought the damn thing myself (which I should have done before I finally did) the video display had a habit of crapping out, and Atari was too busy screwing themselves over Apple-computer-style to ever either fix it or tell me how. In a cruel twist of fate, most of the shells of old Space Duel games (stand-up, not table) are now another, much less fun game, so I occasionally enter a video parlor and see one, only to be disappointed. It's sad...I haven't seen one in years!
Anyway, people who didn't love the game tended to hate it, as it was never as complex to play as Defender (9 out of 10 fingers!!!?!) or some of the others I was too fumble-fingered to play, or as simple as Battlezone (the tank game), but I REALLY miss it a lot, and if there are any arcades that still have it or people who can emulate it, I'd love to know about them! Thanks.
JMR
Not just conservative organizations (though they've obviously taken leadership in the problem at first, for various reasons). My Peacefire t-shirt of blocked links includes a link to "Peaceable Texans for Firearms Rights" -- hardly a left-wing bunch I'd guess.:) Anyway, ultimately, anyone with a political agenda of any kind who controls tax dollars is likely to soon learn how alluring blacklist-control is, and will naturally want more of it.
I used to have no objection to censorware as long as it wasn't tax funded, figuring (incorrectly) that parents would learn by experience how stupid it was, and the companies that made it and shamelessly lied about its abilities would go under like they should. I was wrong, though. All of these companies already knew that a market consisting of all-but-the-dimmest-parents is a losing proposition, and they ALL want tax money, every damned one of 'em.
What I don't understand about the phenomenon (and no lawyer, not even the estimable Mr. Tyre, has explained this to my satisfaction) is why we don't see taxpayer-class-action type lawsuits for fraud and misrepresentation against these companies. I'd sign on, because (as always) I object to penny-one of my taxes going to this crap in libraries instead of books, etc. and I'd object even if the invariably-crappy software were somehow truthfully represented as effective and accurate at blocking "bad" sites, which it's obviously not & never has been. Seems like an open and shut case to me, and far more questionable cases get settled every day (I'd like a percentage of that legal fee if this works!).:^)
Don't rely on the crappy, barely off the table, rubber feet that Apple supplied with it. Go to Radio Hack and get some REAL rubber feet* with peel-off sticky on the back of them, and then decide where they should go (they come 8 to a package, so you have enough for either two computers or a lot of mistakes). Now (and this is important!) take a paper towel and some rubbing alcohol and clean the target areas before carefully applying the feet. Mine have been on for a little over a year and have yet to fall off, despite some hard lateral forces. You can't expect marketing to pay attention to the real world when it affects computer measurements.:^/
In addition to keeping your PB (or other computer, I guess) cooler, it keeps the damn thing a little further up out of the spill-zone, which is worth the extra space and weight any day, and it still (barely!) fits in my Brenthaven (the BEST! Buy one! Lifetime guarantee!) backpack.
JMR
...Once artists become well known, it may be that they can bypass the major media outlets and go to their audiences directly. If so, the marketplace will sort all of this out without the need for government involvement. That would be the more desireable path...
Of course, Stephen King practically defines well-known, yet he is using Amazon (my personal boycott precludes any link to them until they get a clue about how to get themselves out of the red) and Mr. King probably isn't even AWARE of the fact that -- thanks to my customers in the Netherlands -- he's going to his audience directly. Unwittingly, he's allowing the marketplace to sort all of this out without the need for government involvement, which I agree is a far more desireable path.
Nobody using the e-gold system even has dollar-one. e-gold is GRAMS, not dollars, and if you want to get rid of e-gold and buy coins, you can go to a coin dealer, like the one at the top of our news section, (or me). I repeatedly offer 1/10th oz gold Eagles, silver dimes, etc. to those who rant about this (anonymously, or otherwise) for e-metal, to 0 effect. JMR (Who wonders why he even responded, it's not like I *want* ignorant customers, even from/.)
Re:How the rights of artists can be protected, tod
on
Helping Artists Online
·
· Score: 1
The rant was informative, but it was stolen from someone else. ...
Interesting, I had not heard that. Do you (anyone?) know who the original non-famous author was? I'd be interested in a link, if anybody has one.
Indeed, I don't worship her -- Jim Ray worships gold!, everyone knows that;^) and her music is...um...not my style. I've tried without much success to get more familiar with it, but only out of distilled greed -- ask anyone who knows me.
What first caught my attention about Courtney Love was not her rant or her music, it was her performance as Althea Flint in the movie about Larry Flint, which I saw by accident. JMR
How the rights of artists can be protected, today.
on
Helping Artists Online
·
· Score: 1
Thanks. It's rumored that if/. readers ask the right guy, they'll get a tiny smidge of the filthy yellow metal for NOTHING.;^)
In fact (careful, self, there is math ahead here) I'm told that accepting e-gold can be cheaper than plastic for MACROpayments -- even if you don't do the smart thing and sell it in direct competition with OmniPay, the major wholesaler of e-metal.
I do not have a bank account because I don't need one, if I want cash checks I sell e-metal & buy one or the other. I prefer using it over my wireless-web phone, a story that was (finally) recently broken by a West-African(!) dead-trees paper. JMR (Disclaimer: I work for OmniPay, which pays me in e-gold and ok! I'll stop posting on this thread now!)
I won't bore everyone with my rants about trying to contact Courtney Love. *sigh* -- Even email saying "go away, and leave me alone!" would be nice.
I can even click/. readers who email me with an account number enough for Stephen's tip, as long as the ol' e-gold promotional account holds up!:^) The hard thing is to think in grams instead of dollars (where the Casino helps). JMR
I do this same thing. If everyone did it, they'd get a lot less pitches in (as it is, nobody has EVER called me and sold me something -- 39 years and you'd think they'd learn). I used to get angry and yell at them, but this method is far more effective, at the minimal cost of reducing your connectivity. Besides, it gives the poor schlub who took the job a bit of time to think about where he's going in life. Further, the phone company alerts me with that horrid noise when they've finally caught on to the fact that nobody's ever coming to the phone (cyberdonny and I are far from the only ones who use this trick). JMR
Slashdot Mirror
Is here. This guy really looked into Ponzi, and his site is the best I've found for explaining what a Ponzi scheme is in detail.
Of course, compared to many offers on the web today, Ponzi's supposed rate of return was downright conservative, but you can tell that Charles Ponzi would have LOVED the web. People are stupider these days, I guess...
JMR
I like your idea, and I've told at least one /. editor that moderation points are a currency. Considering my job, you'll hopefully pardon me if that's how my brain works naturally.
I think it might help to make mod points more persistent (or perhaps just make the gold variety behave that way) and in that way encourage later moderation of interesting comments. I know that CmdrTaco has argued that they should be even more fleeting, but maybe it could be tried both ways? I think that if the points were more-persistent, a market in them might develop, with interesting results...("Half a gram of e-gold if you mod this comment up, anyone?")
JMR
...Lends more credibility to the disposable credit card concept.
/. readers who create an e-gold account and send me the number applies, as does my usual "I don't care if you moderate this comment down because you think it's 'spam' because I'm self-interest personified," and "my opinions are mine alone" attitude(s). Thanks.
That's not the only concept that should be considered (and neither is e-gold, I'd just like to see better/deeper thinking on payment options here).
Western Union has objected to e-gold-selling market makers in the past, ostensibly because some interesting sites use the currency for gram-based gambling. Of course, Western Union is owned by First Data, a giant credit-card payment processor, which I'm sure would NEVER process payments related to plastic-using-gambling on the internet, since I'm convinced that they're the very model of moral decorum compared to venal exchange-providers using the filthy yellow metal as a currency. (smirk!)
I want folks to play with our system, especially Slashdot readers, so my usual offer to click a bit to any
JMR
(Speaking only for myself!!!)
For starters, I'd get my idea to http://cryptome.org/, even though that's guaranteed to get it law enforcement attention, because John Young is a better and more trustworthy newsman as a part-timer (he's really an architect!) than 99.9% of the full timer$. Good people look at Cryptome, and I'm guessing if it upsets authority your project will interest him. You might also post it to cypherpunks, or Usenet, as has already been suggested here.
Of course, you may need to find a way to pay for it somehow, and there's a pretty good chance that some of what you're thinking of has already been done, anyway. Good luck!
JMR
Absolutely true (I'm the marketing-guy, but I'm impaired, I can't lie very well). That's why I said "go away" in the other message, though not in so many words. Allow me to elaborate:
JMR
Delivered-To: jray@e-gold.com
Date: Wed, 30 Aug 2000 23:52:42 -0400
Subject: Explanation of the outage and slowness
To: "e-gold Discussion"
From: "Steve Foerster"
List-Unsubscribe:
List-Subscribe:
List-Owner:
Sender: bounce-e-gold-list-147@talk.e-gold.com
Status:
First, from all of us at G&SR, let me apologize for the inconveniences
that you have endured as e-gold's technical resources catch up to its
popularity. In the last few days a large network of e-gold customers
dramatically increased its activity, catching us just a few days before we
complete major hardware and software upgrades.
However, in the next few days we will be moving our database from our
paleolithic dual Pentium II 200MHz clunker to a new HP NetServer LH 6000.
A comparable upgrade in web server will be made at the same time.
While that alone would eliminate the lingering systemic lethargy, we're
also deploying a maintenance release to the current e-gold system that
will dramatically improve its design. As many people know, one of the
principle reasons for the issues that have been plaguing us has been that
the design of the original system -- now four years old! -- has
suboptimalities in its code and its database design. This maintenance
release will take advantage of a number of the current system's
opportunities for improvement.
Please note that this maintenance release is *not* the new e-gold system
that is coming later this year. That will be a completely new system,
written from scratch and using a different set of technologies.
I've established a new public list called "e-gold-tech" for discussing
this and other aspects of e-gold's use of technology, such as SSL
decryption boxes, geographically distributed servers, and so forth. To
see this and other lists, please visit . If you'd like to respond to this
message, please subscribe to the tech list and do so there, rather than on
this "list" list.
Thanks,
-=Steve=-
================
Stephen H. Foerster
Chief Technical Officer
e-gold * G&SR/OmniPay
---
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To unsubscribe send a blank email to leave-e-gold-list-147S@talk.e-gold.com
Hi, I'm willing to click anyone from /. a spot of e-gold if they send an account number to me. Yes, we do charge storage fees (and at the moment, dammit, the site is down, by Murphy's Law this story came along when it did instead of next Tuesday). There is an active market for exchange of e-metals (the e-gold family of currencies includes gold, silver, platinum, and palladium, but gold is by far the most popular). The fees are higher than PayPal's 0 fees, but we ARE international, and safe, and (please come back next week, don't slashdot us now!!!) we're about to be very interesting. I'm sorry about the currently swamped state of the site, but I'll click Slashdot readers a bit of gold anytime, as I said, when it's back up, and I'd love to answer any questions if you have them, but basically PLEASE mess with e-gold. It's designed to be a foundation, and other currencies built on top of it will be cheaper and more interesting.
A good analogy would be a house on a granite foundation. Until the storm, it seems just like the house built on a sand dune. Thanks, and again my apologies for the state of the site, PLEASE come back next week when we can welcome you with new equipment and an interesting change in the system. We WANT free-software types to play with our system.
JMR
http://www.e-gold.com
./ readers who want to actually try it still stands.
(Not that any of the news media has much noticed, preferring either vapor or companies that bleed a sea of red ink.) My usual offer to click a bit to
JMR
Is that the user is almost-certainly using plastic at the site he's objecting to here, and I have my doubts as to whether many folks here have read through credit card user agreements. Whether or not the cat food store has it for sale, AFAIK the plastic companies still own and sell the information about you. They're too smart to sell it in a way that leads you to seeing that they sold it, but they sell it still.
Of course, there are many payment alternatives, and my usual offer to slashdot readers of a spot of the filthy yellow metal if they try mine still stands.
JMR
(Go ahead, mod me down as 'spam' -- see if I care!)
Thanks for the kind words. Naturally, like all internet startups, the Flying Rat project seeks money and -- while keeping to its .org roots -- would like to become a .com with a LOT more services, including (perhaps) an information and rating service. Contact me for details if interested & wealthy. :^)
JMR
(BTW. Blatant self-interest -- especially when I admit my own greed -- != "spam" if my avarice is more-or-less on-topic, as it was, whether or not it elicited a fine whine!)
yeah, but isnt she really stupid?
:)
Well, I don't think so (although it's been alleged-not-proven that her fine rant in Salon may have been lifted from another person's work). For one thing, she didn't OD or kill herself, and for another, I liked her performance as Althea Flynt in a recent movie.
If she isn't stupid, what's the problem? I think it's her webmaster being swamped with mail, and perhaps mistaking mine for spam even though it referenced holemusic.com and Courtney Love's rant repeatedly. At this point, I've given up on her webmaster and hope to get through to her by luck and persistence and other means.
When I first read the rant in Salon (which has another...um...int eresting article about gold in general, not e-gold!!! ) I felt her scream for a person to person payment system between the lines, and e-gold -- imperfect as it presently is -- fills the bill much better than the theoretical stuff the media loves to hype so much, despite absent fundamentals. *sigh* Anyway, my point is that I don't think she's stupid, and I'll refrain from comment about her webmaster.
JMR
I graduated with "Summa Cum Laude" honors from the Ferengi school of business ethics. ;^)
/. folks who manage to send me email with an account number a small spot of e-gold to play with, but only because there are lots of programmers who do cool stuff still hanging around here despite the trolls (whew, barely pulled naked self-interest out of that one!).
Actually, I'm willing (Argh! Charity!) to click
JMR
In my experience, small amounts of cash + Visa = skimming.
You're correct, but not because of the nature of administrators IMO. Even honest administration can't get around the fact that Visa makes very small transactions un-economic, and makes person to non-merchant-person transactions impossible.
Fairtunes is interesting, and anything's better than the RIAA as a middleman, but if Courtney Love would ever-in-hell listen to me about e-gold some really interesting things could happen. Yes, if e-gold is the tip jar, there's a small spend fee & storage fee, and you have to get used to a market with lots of merchants who have different bid/ask spreads. If Fairtunes uses e-gold properly, it should be good for both artists and me (just a guy who likes art).
It's easy to do things like my Dutch friends did with "The Plant" by Steven King even if artists have never even heard of e-gold (Thanks for covering only hype, instead of fundamentals, news media of the planet!).
JMR
(Ok, I'll try to stop posting on this subject.)
Because most people don't yet have a bit of e-gold to give, yet. :) I know Fairtunes has an account (and I could even make the balance publicly-viewable if any owner wants).
I have repeatedly tried to get Courtney Love (or any musician) to notice that we've been able to do micropayments or macropayments efficiently, cutting out the middleman and saving people money even if they keep using plastic. Wanna buy an animated gif (hey! it's PUSSY! WooHoo!) for ten cents worth of e-gold? It has been possible for over a year... Try it.
Step back and think about gold logically, even though it's the most emotional element on the periodic table. The stuff makes damn good money, and this e-gold bunch (me included) are NOT going away. We'll keep doing, keeping promises made about the internet and its possibilities instead of hyping the theoretical. Journalists interested in fundamentals (if that's not an oxymoron anymore...) should contact me. Thanks.
JMR
(My main point is that Dave Barry is a far better writer than Paulina, who seems to have the gift of mindless attraction from /. editors regardless of um...challenged writing ability, but let's get to Ted's ostentatious gift.)
I disagree that the whole point for Ted of giving the UN money is/was (or could be) shaming the US. I doubt that's even his main point (as far as how he actually feels, not what he says). Hell, the man has an entire television network! There are FAR more effective ways to get people's attention than by annoying misanthropes like me with ostentatious do-goodery if you own a TV network and have a BILLION dollars to toss down the crapper!
The reason the USA denies UN funds is because the UN is INCREDIBLY wasteful and corrupt, to the point that even someone as unpopular as Jesse Helms can regularly (and forcefully) prove it, easily, to more than 50 senators. The rest of the UN is free to kick the USA out and leave (with NYC parking tickets still unpaid!) or come up with another way to raise dues if they're determined to continue to be so wasteful & corrupt. IMO.
But if the Ted Turner example still bothers you, please insert another instance of ostentatious giving. I think we'd both agree that "anonymously" is the only way to give without possible suspicion from Jim Ray. I'm always thrilled by stories like Krugerands* getting dropped into a Salvation Army donation bucket. Sounds like the person just dropped in a little bit of change, but I just like it.
Not everything about giving is recognition, and (as I implied/said before) not all gifts are designed to make for easy stories for Paulina to write about, in her annoyingly-scatter-brained, simplistic style. [Question: Will this woman ever in hell come up with any topic other than "why-I-hate/how-to-date those eeevil libertarians"??? She might be even more annoying if she didn't do so much recycling, but I'm willing to chance it!]
JMR
(Yeah, with me, it ALWAYS gets back to gold! I'm a dangerous "cybergreedy" libertarian)
(Bonus! He's alive!)
Dave Barry. The Falwell piece was especially amusing, but he covered the Republican convention and has plans to cover the Democrat convention the same way shortly. He tends to do a better job on the conventions than some of the "serious" journalists, and all of his recent convention columns are at that URL.
For more about his libertarian politics (which tend to match mine) see:this interview. BTW, Dave Barry isn't just right & Paulina Borsook's wrong (although that's so, IMO) he's also a FAR better writer. I find Paulina downright tedious in her partisan, repetitive zeal to paint libertarians as all-one-thing. Wrong.
Mr. Barry also won't blow his own horn about it (and he has a right not to tell Paulina what he does with HIS! money) but I happen to know that he's a generous person, too -- as if that matters to this "debate." In fact, I find the spectacle of pre-announced, feted, giving (like Ted Turner's immense gift to the UN) to be distasteful for a number of reasons, and certainly every bit as political & ideological as a gift to the Boy Scouts or the NRA, whether or not the news media choose to paint it as such. I refuse to disclose or defend, to Paulina or anyone else who can't mind her own business, my charitable activities.
JMR
Space Duel was the ultimate evolution of Asteroids -- it was like "Asteroids on acid!" (not advocating drugs here -though I don't oppose 'em either and think most should be legal - but that's the best description I've ever heard of the game).
The great thing about Space Duel was that you could cooperate with another player against the machine, or go it alone as a single/double ship, or compete with the other guy (while cooperating at the same time, to kill each-other and get new shields -- "kill me, dammit, KILL ME!!!"). The best was cooperation mode, especially once we figured out the "trick." Unlike the original Asteroids, where you stood your ground in the middle of the screen and blasted, in Space Duel you had to march to survive. Momentum was a life-saver, and keeping the march gave stability.
We generally marched left-to-right, with the only danger zone being the crossover from far-right to far left of the screen. If one guy got hit, he became a popgun, and generally took over navigation/thrust duties because the other guy still had full-auto shots available. Then once either of you got nailed again, the tie between the ships became a fuse, and the other guy had just enough time to bring weapons to bear and kill the fscking-saucer that had done this to us. We even developed a shorthand language for the game so we could warn eachother of rocks and other hazards, and if we missed them on the first few shots, we'd occasionally try to outrun the double-spaceships sent after us so that we came up behind them.
The game was never popular with arcade owners, for good reasons. We could make 2 quarters last from 45 minutes to an hour or more, and the problem was that once I bought the damn thing myself (which I should have done before I finally did) the video display had a habit of crapping out, and Atari was too busy screwing themselves over Apple-computer-style to ever either fix it or tell me how. In a cruel twist of fate, most of the shells of old Space Duel games (stand-up, not table) are now another, much less fun game, so I occasionally enter a video parlor and see one, only to be disappointed. It's sad...I haven't seen one in years!
Anyway, people who didn't love the game tended to hate it, as it was never as complex to play as Defender (9 out of 10 fingers!!!?!) or some of the others I was too fumble-fingered to play, or as simple as Battlezone (the tank game), but I REALLY miss it a lot, and if there are any arcades that still have it or people who can emulate it, I'd love to know about them! Thanks.
JMR
Not just conservative organizations (though they've obviously taken leadership in the problem at first, for various reasons). My Peacefire t-shirt of blocked links includes a link to "Peaceable Texans for Firearms Rights" -- hardly a left-wing bunch I'd guess. :) Anyway, ultimately, anyone with a political agenda of any kind who controls tax dollars is likely to soon learn how alluring blacklist-control is, and will naturally want more of it.
:^)
I used to have no objection to censorware as long as it wasn't tax funded, figuring (incorrectly) that parents would learn by experience how stupid it was, and the companies that made it and shamelessly lied about its abilities would go under like they should. I was wrong, though. All of these companies already knew that a market consisting of all-but-the-dimmest-parents is a losing proposition, and they ALL want tax money, every damned one of 'em.
What I don't understand about the phenomenon (and no lawyer, not even the estimable Mr. Tyre, has explained this to my satisfaction) is why we don't see taxpayer-class-action type lawsuits for fraud and misrepresentation against these companies. I'd sign on, because (as always) I object to penny-one of my taxes going to this crap in libraries instead of books, etc. and I'd object even if the invariably-crappy software were somehow truthfully represented as effective and accurate at blocking "bad" sites, which it's obviously not & never has been. Seems like an open and shut case to me, and far more questionable cases get settled every day (I'd like a percentage of that legal fee if this works!).
Or maybe I'm missing something?
JMR
Don't rely on the crappy, barely off the table, rubber feet that Apple supplied with it. Go to Radio Hack and get some REAL rubber feet* with peel-off sticky on the back of them, and then decide where they should go (they come 8 to a package, so you have enough for either two computers or a lot of mistakes). Now (and this is important!) take a paper towel and some rubbing alcohol and clean the target areas before carefully applying the feet. Mine have been on for a little over a year and have yet to fall off, despite some hard lateral forces. You can't expect marketing to pay attention to the real world when it affects computer measurements. :^/
In addition to keeping your PB (or other computer, I guess) cooler, it keeps the damn thing a little further up out of the spill-zone, which is worth the extra space and weight any day, and it still (barely!) fits in my Brenthaven (the BEST! Buy one! Lifetime guarantee!) backpack.
JMR
*Thanks to my friend Dave Del Torto for this tip.
...Once artists become well known, it may be that they can bypass the major media outlets and go to their audiences directly. If so, the marketplace will sort all of this out without the need for government involvement. That would be the more desireable path ...
Of course, Stephen King practically defines well-known, yet he is using Amazon (my personal boycott precludes any link to them until they get a clue about how to get themselves out of the red) and Mr. King probably isn't even AWARE of the fact that -- thanks to my customers in the Netherlands -- he's going to his audience directly. Unwittingly, he's allowing the marketplace to sort all of this out without the need for government involvement, which I agree is a far more desireable path.
Nobody using the e-gold system even has dollar-one. e-gold is GRAMS, not dollars, and if you want to get rid of e-gold and buy coins, you can go to a coin dealer, like the one at the top of our news section, (or me). I repeatedly offer 1/10th oz gold Eagles, silver dimes, etc. to those who rant about this (anonymously, or otherwise) for e-metal, to 0 effect. /.)
JMR
(Who wonders why he even responded, it's not like I *want* ignorant customers, even from
The rant was informative, but it was stolen from someone else.
;^) and her music is...um...not my style. I've tried without much success to get more familiar with it, but only out of distilled greed -- ask anyone who knows me.
...
Interesting, I had not heard that. Do you (anyone?) know who the original non-famous author was? I'd be interested in a link, if anybody has one.
Indeed, I don't worship her -- Jim Ray worships gold!, everyone knows that
What first caught my attention about Courtney Love was not her rant or her music, it was her performance as Althea Flint in the movie about Larry Flint, which I saw by accident.
JMR
Easy. If the middleman is costing too much, cut the middleman out of the picture and take 100% of the compensation for your work yourself, instead of less than 10%. Think you're too small? Accounts are FREE.
She has already done the math, so I wish that Courtney Love would contact me. *sigh* We could help eachother a lot, IMO, and I liked her recent rant. Oh well.
JMR
Thanks. It's rumored that if /. readers ask the right guy, they'll get a tiny smidge ;^)
of the filthy yellow metal for NOTHING.
In fact (careful, self, there is math ahead here) I'm told that accepting e-gold
can be cheaper than plastic for MACROpayments -- even if you don't do the
smart thing and sell it in direct competition with OmniPay, the major
wholesaler of e-metal.
I do not have a bank account because I don't need one, if I want cash checks
I sell e-metal & buy one or the other. I prefer using it over my wireless-web phone,
a story that was (finally) recently broken by a West-African(!) dead-trees paper.
JMR
(Disclaimer: I work for OmniPay, which pays me in e-gold and ok! I'll stop posting
on this thread now!)
for "The Plant" by Stephen King (I'm blessed with some smart customers.)
/. readers who email me with an account number enough for :^) The
I won't bore everyone with my rants about trying to contact Courtney Love.
*sigh* -- Even email saying "go away, and leave me alone!" would be nice.
I can even click
Stephen's tip, as long as the ol' e-gold promotional account holds up!
hard thing is to think in grams instead of dollars (where the Casino helps).
JMR
I do this same thing. If everyone did it, they'd get a lot less pitches in (as it is, nobody has EVER called me and sold me something -- 39 years and you'd think they'd learn). I used to get angry and yell at them, but this method is far more effective, at the minimal cost of reducing your connectivity. Besides, it gives the poor schlub who took the job a bit of time to think about where he's going in life. Further, the phone company alerts me with that horrid noise when they've finally caught on to the fact that nobody's ever coming to the phone (cyberdonny and I are far from the only ones who use this trick).
JMR