My point of contention was your assertion that it was not PayPal's responsibility. PayPal does not accept (or at least didn't last time I checked) as proof of delivery a non-physically signed delivery confirmation. This is a point of much lament for sellers on eBay.
Fair enough. But I don't see anything defining appropriate proof in their terms: "If the claim involves non-delivery of goods, the seller must present appropriate proof of delivery to the buyer's specified address." There's a clause about signatures, but that seems to be specifically when a buyer returns an item to the seller, not the original shipment. And certainly, sellers can spend $1 for Delivery Confirmation Signature Required (DCSR) to avoid this problem.
IMO delivery confirmation with signature and insurance should be a mandatory part of the transaction (once the transaction exceeds a certain $$ amount) as it protects both the buyer and seller.
Well, this more or less happens anyhow, as both buyer and seller of expensive items realize their increased risk, and tend to use FedEx or UPS anyhow, which supply both insurance and signature.
And then there's the risk of receiving (with insurance and signed receipt) a box full of old newspapers (assuming you didn't buy a box full of old newspapers)...
Oh, man, how pissed off would you be if you got that?! LOL. I think PayPal/ebay would look into a claim like that though.
I agree it sucks. I've had a similar problem, except the seller never sent anything, and never responded to inquiries. The value of the item was so small that cancelling the money order would have cost more than the money order itself. I understand your frustration, and should be more sympathetic, but it happened like 3 years ago, so the anger has worn off...:)
If you truly feel PayPal is negligent, you should write a letter to PayPal's CEO, and CC the Better Business Bureau. You'd be amazed how quickly some things get fixed this way. I'm sure there's somewhere you can write a letter to complain formally to the post office. Phone calls and emails almost never solve these kinds of problems.
This reply was modded insightful?! Since when is ignorance insightful? PayPal offers 'Buyer Protection'. PayPal SAYS that you are PROTECTED against FAILED DELIVERIES.
1. Not all items are covered by buyer protection. 2. The shipper has proof of shipment, and the post office claims it was delivered. It's really up to the buyer to come up with evidence that it was never delivered. 3. The item was probably shipped with delivery confirmation, which is a cheap way for the seller to prove he shipped it. NO SIGNATURE IS REQUIRED AT THE TIME OF DELIVERY. The postman scans the package and leaves it. Odds are, it WAS delivered, and someone with access to his mailbox/stoop/whatever just grabbed it. If he had gotten insurance, or delivery confirmation with signature, or FedEx, he'd probably have the package now. If not, he'd have some recourse, or at least a way to track down the issue through the shipper. As it is, he took all the risks and his neighbor got his stuff.
Besides what people have written about Google, the only place I can find anything where they specifically state their stance on "evil" is number 6 in their list of http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html">10 things that describe their philosophy. In it, they seem to narrow down on a specific kind of evil: pop-up ads and other annoyances in web advertising. Can someone point me to an interview or other direct source where "don't be evil" has broader implications?
How is failed delivery PayPal's responsibility? The buyer and seller appear to have held up their end of the agreement, which is where PayPal's responsibility ends. What on Earth do you expect them to do, call the Post Office for you and hound them until they find your book? Give you your money back on an item that was shipped uninsured? It sucks to lose stuff in the mail, but you take that risk whenever you ship without insurance.
1. A mechanic already knows how the car works before lifting the hood. Every car works more or less the same. This is fundamentally different from software, where even two word processors will be implemented entirely differently, nevermind pieces of software that implement entirely different functionality. 2. Electronic fuel injection and other uses of non-mechanical components make it so that purely mechanical observation can not fully describe the car's functionality. This might be analogous to software that has invisible components that function without a CPU. 3. The motion of the cylinders, pistons, transmission, etc. can't be seen directly in most cases. Source code allows you to use a debugger to analyze the dynamics of a program at a fine granularity. In this way, the car is somewhat like software for which you have the source but it refuses to be debugged.
About 6 months ago, I switched from a Netgear WGT634U to the Linksys WRT54Gv5. The Netgear hardware was horrible. Ran very hot, and needed frequent reboots, which took about 1 minute. Whenever I connected with my Buffalo bridge, the Netgear box would die within 20 minutes. Since I've had the Linksys, I've never had to reboot it. It has been rock solid, using WPA, DHCP client/server.
Now, I don't run bittorrent or other peer-to-peer software that opens many sessions, so that may be the reason I haven't run into trouble. But I couldn't be more happy with it.
Silly boy, don't you know that we fully cost more than a kid?
Not if you take into account the aggregate long term environmental effects.:) Vhemt!
Oh, and do you think you could pick me up something to eat? I'm busy playing WoW, and it'd be *so* great if you could pick something up, because I'm just too busy with MC.
Sure. Indian OK? And I assume MC = Missile Command?
Fortunately, there's an easy solution to this problem. It turns out that these toads can be made sterile if they eat enough kudzu, which they find to be extremely tasty. Just plant enough kudzu and this problem goes away completely.
I'm claiming that a given mass of H20, in a body of water displaces the same volume of that water at both solid and liquid temperatures.
And you are wrong, because you assume ice always floats. Do a google search for Antarctic anchor ice for one particularly relevant example of subsurface ice. There are quite a number of others.
No one's going to tell me I can't rewire my blender to make it operate past spec, or cram together my own water filter out of parts I find in the store.
I own the electrical system inside my home, but I'm legally required to hire a licensed electrician to modify it. I can't perform home renovations (even purely internal ones) without a building permit. I can't cut down my own tree in my own yard that's over 6 inches in diameter at chest height. I can't legally inhale the wonderful fumes from my own aeresol can, or melt down that Sudafed and make meth with it.
Now, I don't agree with any of these laws. I'm just saying that there are already laws that limit what you can privately do with your own stuff.
The original poster wrote, "Frozen water expands, taking up more room. When the ice melts, the volume it takes up reduces, lowering the sea level." I think that strongly implies they were talking about the expansion and contraction of water, not material trapped within the ice. In any case, even if they did not, they are still wrong. The ice does not take up less space, (being water by definition) but materials trapped within it might be more dense.
Indeed, they were referring to the expansion and contraction of water, in particular during phase changes. Are you claiming that a given mass of H2O has the same volume at solid and liquid temperatures? If so, you are mistaken.
That's not actually ice though, but a conglomerate of ice and other materials.
Right, but the fact doesn't change that if the ice within the conglomerate melts, the containing body of water will have a decrease in sea level.
In addition, there are also plenty of ice conglomerates that contain lighter than water organics and trapped air pockets.
Interesting point. Indeed, buoyant ice with trapped air and other low-density contaminants can also melt and reduce the sea level.
In any case, I think it is clear what the poster intended to express and that it was flawed. It is an easy mistake to make.
I disagree. They simply pointed out that ice decreases in volume when it melts. The assumptions about the "purity" of the ice and the fact that it's not somehow trapped under the surface (see "kettles", for instance) were your own.
"Heavy" ice, that is ice that is weighted down by rocks and other debris so that it doesn't float, will do exactly as the parent post suggested. The same with undersea ice caverns, etc. I'm not postulating that it's the cause here, but lower sea levels could result from the melting of subsurface, non-buoyant ice.
Take a glass and fill it halfway with ice. Then cover the ice with rocks. Then add water until it reaches the rim of the glass. Let the ice melt. What happens?
And from that same article, adding a little thought of your own, you would see that if the ice were originally sitting on the sea floor, and it began to melt, the sea level would indeed decrease. This would be the case with large masses of ice and/or ice with large amounts of debris either mixed in or on top of it.
"Flickr member Eric Rice, who regularly podcasts from Second Life and covered the virtual Vloggercon, suggested Flickr's actions could have a detrimental effect on legitimate reporting. As of Monday, Flickr showed more than 1,600 photos associated with Vloggercon, but only seven screenshots from the virtual version of the event."
See, it's clearly a violation of freedom of the press. The world must hear of the important events that transpired at virtual Vlobstercon!
Thinking back a few years, iirc the first Apple Mac had the Quickdraw graphics package written in machine language, didn't it? Not assembler, but instructions made of hand-mapped binary digits. It's the reason why those early Mac GUI's were able to extract such amazing graphic performance out of the Motorola 68000.
Assembler isn't slower than machine code. The two are isomorphic.
Slashdot Mirror
My point of contention was your assertion that it was not PayPal's responsibility. PayPal does not accept (or at least didn't last time I checked) as proof of delivery a non-physically signed delivery confirmation. This is a point of much lament for sellers on eBay.
Fair enough. But I don't see anything defining appropriate proof in their terms: "If the claim involves non-delivery of goods, the seller must present appropriate proof of delivery to the buyer's specified address." There's a clause about signatures, but that seems to be specifically when a buyer returns an item to the seller, not the original shipment. And certainly, sellers can spend $1 for Delivery Confirmation Signature Required (DCSR) to avoid this problem.
IMO delivery confirmation with signature and insurance should be a mandatory part of the transaction (once the transaction exceeds a certain $$ amount) as it protects both the buyer and seller.
Well, this more or less happens anyhow, as both buyer and seller of expensive items realize their increased risk, and tend to use FedEx or UPS anyhow, which supply both insurance and signature.
And then there's the risk of receiving (with insurance and signed receipt) a box full of old newspapers (assuming you didn't buy a box full of old newspapers)...
Oh, man, how pissed off would you be if you got that?! LOL. I think PayPal/ebay would look into a claim like that though.
I agree it sucks. I've had a similar problem, except the seller never sent anything, and never responded to inquiries. The value of the item was so small that cancelling the money order would have cost more than the money order itself. I understand your frustration, and should be more sympathetic, but it happened like 3 years ago, so the anger has worn off... :)
If you truly feel PayPal is negligent, you should write a letter to PayPal's CEO, and CC the Better Business Bureau. You'd be amazed how quickly some things get fixed this way. I'm sure there's somewhere you can write a letter to complain formally to the post office. Phone calls and emails almost never solve these kinds of problems.
This reply was modded insightful?! Since when is ignorance insightful? PayPal offers 'Buyer Protection'. PayPal SAYS that you are PROTECTED against FAILED DELIVERIES.
1. Not all items are covered by buyer protection.
2. The shipper has proof of shipment, and the post office claims it was delivered. It's really up to the buyer to come up with evidence that it was never delivered.
3. The item was probably shipped with delivery confirmation, which is a cheap way for the seller to prove he shipped it. NO SIGNATURE IS REQUIRED AT THE TIME OF DELIVERY. The postman scans the package and leaves it. Odds are, it WAS delivered, and someone with access to his mailbox/stoop/whatever just grabbed it. If he had gotten insurance, or delivery confirmation with signature, or FedEx, he'd probably have the package now. If not, he'd have some recourse, or at least a way to track down the issue through the shipper. As it is, he took all the risks and his neighbor got his stuff.
Besides what people have written about Google, the only place I can find anything where they specifically state their stance on "evil" is number 6 in their list of http://www.google.com/corporate/tenthings.html">10 things that describe their philosophy. In it, they seem to narrow down on a specific kind of evil: pop-up ads and other annoyances in web advertising. Can someone point me to an interview or other direct source where "don't be evil" has broader implications?
I guess that apparently there is some loophole that is exploited by dishonest postmen.
Or dishonest neighbors. Delivery confirmation doesn't require a signature.
How is failed delivery PayPal's responsibility? The buyer and seller appear to have held up their end of the agreement, which is where PayPal's responsibility ends. What on Earth do you expect them to do, call the Post Office for you and hound them until they find your book? Give you your money back on an item that was shipped uninsured? It sucks to lose stuff in the mail, but you take that risk whenever you ship without insurance.
1. A mechanic already knows how the car works before lifting the hood. Every car works more or less the same. This is fundamentally different from software, where even two word processors will be implemented entirely differently, nevermind pieces of software that implement entirely different functionality.
2. Electronic fuel injection and other uses of non-mechanical components make it so that purely mechanical observation can not fully describe the car's functionality. This might be analogous to software that has invisible components that function without a CPU.
3. The motion of the cylinders, pistons, transmission, etc. can't be seen directly in most cases. Source code allows you to use a debugger to analyze the dynamics of a program at a fine granularity. In this way, the car is somewhat like software for which you have the source but it refuses to be debugged.
Etc.
About 6 months ago, I switched from a Netgear WGT634U to the Linksys WRT54Gv5. The Netgear hardware was horrible. Ran very hot, and needed frequent reboots, which took about 1 minute. Whenever I connected with my Buffalo bridge, the Netgear box would die within 20 minutes. Since I've had the Linksys, I've never had to reboot it. It has been rock solid, using WPA, DHCP client/server.
Now, I don't run bittorrent or other peer-to-peer software that opens many sessions, so that may be the reason I haven't run into trouble. But I couldn't be more happy with it.
The same way a mechanic can look inside a car's hood and find out how a car works.
This is not how a mechanic finds out how a car works. The car analogy is so hopelessly flawed in this case, it's simply not worth continuing.
I guess I should have added a ;) to the Missile Command joke.
Silly boy, don't you know that we fully cost more than a kid?
:) Vhemt!
Not if you take into account the aggregate long term environmental effects.
Oh, and do you think you could pick me up something to eat? I'm busy playing WoW, and it'd be *so* great if you could pick something up, because I'm just too busy with MC.
Sure. Indian OK? And I assume MC = Missile Command?
My girlfriend does all that stuff.
Buy 2.5 laptops and join vhemt. http://www.vhemt.org/
Fortunately, there's an easy solution to this problem. It turns out that these toads can be made sterile if they eat enough kudzu, which they find to be extremely tasty. Just plant enough kudzu and this problem goes away completely.
I'm claiming that a given mass of H20, in a body of water displaces the same volume of that water at both solid and liquid temperatures.
And you are wrong, because you assume ice always floats. Do a google search for Antarctic anchor ice for one particularly relevant example of subsurface ice. There are quite a number of others.
No one's going to tell me I can't rewire my blender to make it operate past spec, or cram together my own water filter out of parts I find in the store.
I own the electrical system inside my home, but I'm legally required to hire a licensed electrician to modify it. I can't perform home renovations (even purely internal ones) without a building permit. I can't cut down my own tree in my own yard that's over 6 inches in diameter at chest height. I can't legally inhale the wonderful fumes from my own aeresol can, or melt down that Sudafed and make meth with it.
Now, I don't agree with any of these laws. I'm just saying that there are already laws that limit what you can privately do with your own stuff.
The original poster wrote, "Frozen water expands, taking up more room. When the ice melts, the volume it takes up reduces, lowering the sea level." I think that strongly implies they were talking about the expansion and contraction of water, not material trapped within the ice. In any case, even if they did not, they are still wrong. The ice does not take up less space, (being water by definition) but materials trapped within it might be more dense.
Indeed, they were referring to the expansion and contraction of water, in particular during phase changes. Are you claiming that a given mass of H2O has the same volume at solid and liquid temperatures? If so, you are mistaken.
That's not actually ice though, but a conglomerate of ice and other materials.
Right, but the fact doesn't change that if the ice within the conglomerate melts, the containing body of water will have a decrease in sea level.
In addition, there are also plenty of ice conglomerates that contain lighter than water organics and trapped air pockets.
Interesting point. Indeed, buoyant ice with trapped air and other low-density contaminants can also melt and reduce the sea level.
In any case, I think it is clear what the poster intended to express and that it was flawed. It is an easy mistake to make.
I disagree. They simply pointed out that ice decreases in volume when it melts. The assumptions about the "purity" of the ice and the fact that it's not somehow trapped under the surface (see "kettles", for instance) were your own.
"Heavy" ice, that is ice that is weighted down by rocks and other debris so that it doesn't float, will do exactly as the parent post suggested. The same with undersea ice caverns, etc. I'm not postulating that it's the cause here, but lower sea levels could result from the melting of subsurface, non-buoyant ice.
I'm just going to point out that the quote in the summary appears to be the words of the interviewer, not of Randy Smith, which seems to be implied.
Take a glass and fill it halfway with ice. Then cover the ice with rocks. Then add water until it reaches the rim of the glass. Let the ice melt. What happens?
C++ makes it difficult to use complex data structures, while scripting languages like Perl and Python make it a breeze.
Complex data structures in Perl? Such pain I wish to never endure.
And from that same article, adding a little thought of your own, you would see that if the ice were originally sitting on the sea floor, and it began to melt, the sea level would indeed decrease. This would be the case with large masses of ice and/or ice with large amounts of debris either mixed in or on top of it.
From TFRA: (The R stands for Ridiculous)
"Flickr member Eric Rice, who regularly podcasts from Second Life and covered the virtual Vloggercon, suggested Flickr's actions could have a detrimental effect on legitimate reporting. As of Monday, Flickr showed more than 1,600 photos associated with Vloggercon, but only seven screenshots from the virtual version of the event."
See, it's clearly a violation of freedom of the press. The world must hear of the important events that transpired at virtual Vlobstercon!
Unfinished requirements became "future enhancements". Non-working projects became "proof of concepts". Half-baked projects became "prototypes".
This reads like a summary of "eXtreme Programming Explained".
Thinking back a few years, iirc the first Apple Mac had the Quickdraw graphics package written in machine language, didn't it? Not assembler, but instructions made of hand-mapped binary digits. It's the reason why those early Mac GUI's were able to extract such amazing graphic performance out of the Motorola 68000.
Assembler isn't slower than machine code. The two are isomorphic.