I think the main problem with peoples' view of CERN is that they think CERN is doing something completely new. The fact is, Fermilab has been doing the same thing for 30+ years. CERN is just going to slowly up the energy level to about 10x what Fermilab topped out at.
The other problem is that people don't understand the terms flying around. Words like tevatron, large hadron, high-energy particle accelerator and 'energy level of the Big Bang' lead people to think that this is the next step past nuclear bombs. What they really need to understand about colliding protons at energy levels of a trillion electron volts is that an electron volt is pretty much the smallest way to measure energy that we use, and the collisions only involve two protons. Seriously, you should be more worried every time you get your teeth x-rayed.
It's absurd to think that they'll hit a tipping point where the energy being put in will be enough to blow up the Earth. It's absurd to think that they could create a micro black hole that would engulf the Earth (if micro black holes are actually possible, AND could engulf a planet, then the universe would be dominated by them).
But it sounds like a ripe case for trespassing, tampering or vandalism. It should certainly be illegal to do this without a warrant, but not on the grounds of search or siezure.
Or they're running crappy hardware. Most people blame Windows when their hardware is constantly running on the edge of failure. They have a computer that works fine out of the box, but crashes when the PSU can't keep up with the fifth USB device plugged in. Maybe some heat sinks are clogged with dust.
The OS running on the cheapest hardware with the most clueless user base has the highest failure rate? You don't say!
During the initial broadcast, NBC announced that the flyover shot of the 'footsteps' fireworks walking back to the Bird's Nest stadium was actually pre-rendered CG (it looked nice, but was obvious). They didn't mention why at the time, but I think they just didn't want some ugly, mis-timed, shakey-cam footage mucking up their HD visual-orgasm. And I certainly wouldn't want to be in or below the helicopter that's chasing fireworks across the city.
If it's one of the stationary shots that was faked, that might be a story. CHINA is the last country on Earth that needs CGI to pull off a pyrotechnics display.
/Best use of my HDTV to date. I hope they sell it on Blu-Ray.
LDs weighed a ton, were huge, suffered from 'edge rot', cost 2-4x the price of VHS and had to be flipped or changed every 30/60 minutes. I rented a bit, but only bought mine when places started clearing out the players and discs at bargain pricing.
Super high video quality only sells at a premium in movies that are about the scenery or visual effects. Very few people want to pay extra to see Superbad in HD. Lord of the Rings or Batman, sure. Why would I pay $10 extra to see Will Ferrel's ass in HD? *shudder*
The DRM means that you may get downconverted to 480p with no notice or explanation.
Early adopters of HDTV got burned by lack of HDMI connections to hook up their Blu-Ray players. I can watch my DirecTV in HD, but have to roll the dice with every Blu-Ray movie I would buy. They intentionally made their HD player incompatible with my $2000 HDTV, so screw them.
I can watch a lot of movies in HD on DirecTV instead.
Until BD+ gits cracked, I'm unlikely to buy movies. Any DVD I watch repeatedly usually gets re-ripped so I don't have to watch all the commercials (often for stuff I've bought), studio logos and FBI warnings. Or even DVDs that take over a minute to start playing anything (assuming I don't eject it a few times and reset the DVD player thinking something is broken). I understand Blu-Ray usually takes even longer to get to the movie.
Most of my rental locations (prefer RedBox) only stock DVD.
Discs aren't playable on my laptop, in my car or at my friend's house.
Expensive players. I'll have 7 DVD players (3 laptop, 1 car, 3 TV) that will need upgrading to maintain compatibility.
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If they want Blu-Ray to take off, then they should make dual-sided discs (DVD/Blu-Ray) of new titles and sell them at about $2 over the current price structure of current DVDs. I'd likely pay that much extra to have both versions before actually buying a Blu-Ray player. Then they need to let players output ALL content at full 1080p over component and ignore non-skipable content flags.
In the absence of all that, I'm waiting for BD+ to get fully cracked and PC Blu-Ray burners & blank discs to become somewhat affordable.
It's fairly simple: the Euro price was set a long time ago based on the exchange rate then. At the time, the price difference was mostly because of taxes. As the dollar has tanked, the prices in their respective currecies have stayed the same, but the comparative prices have doubled since the US$ has lost half of it's value in the past eight years. It's not that Euro customers are paying more, it's that American customers are getting the product at half price to make up for the 50% pay cut we've gotten while living under George Bush.
I was actually going to post the exact same thing about the separate buyer/seller feedback scores. Myself, I use a second account for buying from overseas or anyone who doesn't have stellar feedback, or any auction I feel the least bit uneasy about.
OTOH, delaying the display of feedback until both parties have commented is a bad idea. Prompt feedback is essential to stop scammers from raking in more cash and victims.
I also think Ebay should allow feedback comments on less than perfect scores to be much longer than 80 characters. You really can't give an adequate warning in a single line of text. And the positive - neutral - negative scale is pretty inadequate. They should have a five point scale and require a short explanation of any score lower than a five.
Have a time limit of 60 days to leave feedback. If you haven't left any by that point, all feedback left will show up and you can't retaliate.
If I'm running bogus auctions to rake in money before anyone notices, this could give me an extra 80 days before new victims get any warning.
When tossed haphazardly into a bag with some stray pieces of metal, a lithium battery becomes FAR more dangerous than 3 oz of water.
I don't think this rule has anything at all to do with terrorism. It's about not having stupid people causing airplane fires.
WRONG!
The fed artificially lowered interest rates by way too much. This allowed people to either drastically lower their monthly payments or be able to buy a much more expensive home for the same monthly payment. This became a national trend.
In areas with a limited housing supply, home prices rose drastically so that the higher price with the lower interest rate yielded the same monthly payment. Some people cashed out massive profits, but at the expense of the buyer who would see their home value plummet to it's previous value in five years.
In areas with plenty of builders and land to put homes on, people began building huge quantities of larger, more lavish homes. Individual home prices didn't go up, but median home prices did. Fueled by low monthly payments, people bought homes that they could never afford at the rates from just a few years earlier.
This, in turn, LED to the incredibly lax bank lending standards in some areas. Previously, banks required hefty down payments, good credit and proof of income to give a loan. But with homes appreciating at double digit rates (again, caused by artificially low interest rates), it looked like a sure thing that the outstanding loan would be under 80% in two years. Fifty year, interest only, reverse amortization, it didn't matter, the house would out-appreciate ANY loan.
Then the fed comes back in, raises the rates back up and BAM, people default like crazy because they can't refinance their ARMs at anything close to the old rate.
Yes, there was bad business practices and greed all around, but the root cause of the whole thing was bad interest rate manipulation by the federal reserve.
Gold standard: US currency is now backed in NOTHING but the credit of the US government. Prior to 1913, the dollar was backed in gold and silver. Adjusted for inflation, the prices of gold and silver (and most other commodities) have hardly changed. Personally, I think that the dollar should be backed in gold, silver, steel, copper, oil, cotton and a bunch of other commodities. But the current system where the reserve prints up money out of thin air is ridiculous. Why? Because if the US government defaults on it's $9Trillion debt, then the $US will collapse completely.
SEC: The SEC is to prevent fraud. Without the SEC, employees would not be accountable to the investors who own their company.
WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA: Managed trade favors big companies who can work out the deals and regulations required. Small companies can't get through the beauracracy. It's full of corrupt beauracrats who have the power to decide if you get to sell internationally or not.
Healthcare: Medicare/aid has destroyed affordable healthcare. The government forces hospitals to accept state patients and then only pays them about 30% of the retail price. To compensate, the hospital has to raise the retail price by over 200%. If you're insured, your plan gets to pay a discounted rate. If you're paying cash, you get to pay 2x-3x what the hospital charges the other guy's insurance company. Thank the government.
Foreign Policy: He's not an isolationist, he's a non-interventionist. North Korea is isolationism. Sweden is non-interventionism.
Social Security:
In the 1930s, Social Security was started solely to keep the unemployable elderly from ending up homeless and starving to death. The tax rate was 1%, and the retirement age was identical to the life expectancy of 65 years old. The program collected contributions for five years to build up a buffer before paying out a cent.
Now, SS is considered a retirement plan for the able-bodied. The tax rate is 13% (your employer matches the 6.5% FICA you see on your paycheck). The retiremend age is 67, or you can retire early at 62(!!!). The life expectancy is 78 (SEVENTY- EIGHT!!) years old. The program is projected to be bankrupt in 40 years, so if you're under 38 years old, it will run out before you die; if you're under 27, you'll never see a penny.
My belief is that for SS to survive, the tax needs to be cut back down to 1-3%, and the retirement age set to float at 2 years under the average life expectancy. Encourage people to save cash on their own if they really want to retire to Florida. Only children (and maybe the truly disabled) should be entitled to live off someone else's labor for 16 years (age 62-78).
Your link goes to a bill that tries to clarify when a sperm and egg shall constitute a human being. At the moment, it's a zygote or a baby depending on the whim of the mother or prosecuting attorney. There's no consistency. It's NOT a ban on abortion, though it could lead to Roe v Wade being overturned, putting abortion law back to the way it was before then.
As a congressman, he often brings bills to the floor to force a vote and close a debate that is eating up time. Dr. No votes against many of his own bills.
As a congressman, part of his job is to secure money from the $27billion earmark fund for his own district. It's a dedicated part of the budget, every congressman is obligated to get their share. He still votes against the bills that contain the earmarks. He even voted against the bill that contained his own earmark for shrimp marketing.
Internet... He wants it untaxed and unregulated. What does a/. poster dislike about that?
Withdrawing from international organizations... We have many of our laws dictated to us by multinational organizations. It's an attack on our sovreignty. Ron Paul is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Economics... He got into politics because of his interest in economic theory. He's been on the House Banking Committee, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Committee on Financial Services. He delights in dragging the federal reserve chairman to the House to berate him for the secretive manipulation of the US$. And the Wall Street traders cheer him on.
Paul and gay/black/jewish/other minorities:
My understanding is that Ron Paul is against ANY laws that divide people into certain sub-classes and then grant those specific groups additional rights based on their minority class. He believes that all people are individuals with equal rights and that there should be no laws that give extra protection or financial benefit to specific groups.
Think about the following hypothetical statements:
Crimes against white people by non-whites should be punished more severely in order to reduce crime against them.
White people should be given preference in hiring and admissions over other people of greater qualification in order to raise their socioeconomic status.
We should assist in the defense of and ally ourselves with white nations who are threatened by non-white nations.
White people should be allowed to form organizations that exclude non-white people from joining.
Tax dollars should be used to help fund organizations specific to white people.
Of course, to vote for the above ideals would be considered the height of racism in America. But if you change 'white' to some minority, you run the risk of being labelled as a racist for being against them.
There are a lot of well-intentioned laws passed every year that aim to prevent minority abuse. But in protecting one class of people at the expense of another, you just expand the problem. Ron Paul consistently votes against laws that grant additional rights to a particular class of people at the expense of the rights of the rest.
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - Justice Clarence Thomas
Paul has raised over $10 MILLION in just the last two months from about 100,000 supporters. That's more than any other republican in the third quarter.
RP's opponents can't find any actual scandal or issue to smear him with, so they've resorted to 'don't waste your vote on him because he can't win'. Or saying he's not a real Republican just because he didn't follow the recent GOP policy shifts that have them hemmoraging voters and congressional seats.
You need to stop watching CNN and FoxNews. They think if they keep claiming he doesn't have a chance, then it'll be true. He's raised 10 MILLION dollars in the past two months from about 100,000 donors. For a GOP this year, he has a LOT of support.
The cost of creating the physical media IN NO WAY represents the full production cost of the product.
Except that the label bills the artist for the full cost to record the album, do the artwork and advertise it (includes music videos). They'll 'front' them something like $50k to a million, but this is an advance against future royalties minus all of the label's 'costs'. About the only thing that labels don't bill to the artist are per-unit manufacturing costs (about $1 ea), and the accountants/lawyers that they hire to screw the artists.
So a good artist might get advanced $500k for their album. They run up $200k studio costs to record the album. The label spends $200k in advertising. Two music videos run $500k each to make. Now the artist 'owes' $1.9m. The artist likely gets 10% royalty of each CD sale, so $1.50 ea (optimisticly). At this point, the album has to sell well into platinum territory just to pay off the advance and 'costs'. Except that if the album gets this far, the label will just do more advertising and videos, since they come out of the artist's wallet.
If an artists ever sees a royalty check, it just means that someone in accounting screwed up. About the only upsides for the artist are that they can make big money touring, and if an album tanks, they get to keep the advance and walk away.
Something tells me that the rest of the world has already figured out that a quiet propeller would have more blades and a twisting shape to them. I think the exact shape of the propellers would be what they want. The photos would have to be detailed enough for a computer to generate a very exact topography from.
The whole thing has a certain Cold War aspect to it. If they're so far behind in quiet propeller technology that a 20 pixel high image would help them, then they're never going to catch up with what our fluid dynamics researchers are testing for the next generation.
The article says that the media (presumably rewritable) will be sealed in bulk in a cartridge that allows you to put 470GB in a space roughly the size of a DVD drive. Sounds potentially nice if full cartridges sell for the price of a spindle (100) of DVDs. Otherwise, anyone with a brain will just buy a 500GB hard drive. This tech would likely be ungodly slow, full of moving parts to break and prone to jamming. Considering all of the super specialized tech required to make this happen, it would probably be much more cost effective to just build a larger system that shuffles off-the-shelf DVD-rw media and can be upgraded to higher density media later. Speaking of which, isn't blueray or hddvd already pretty close to the 47GB/mm spec that the article implies.
12: You have to steal it and keep the owner from noticing it. Someone with a valuable account will notice when the password gets changed or $100k worth of items get listed.
12a: 50 is nowhere near enough to run this scam. 50 means you're a mediocre buyer, not a good seller. People who have run this scam have 2k-10k feedback and have typically been running as a legit business for a year or more. They wake up one day and realize they can probably make it to Mexico with $500k. Unfortunately, it harder than you think to not raise red flags when you suddenly want to withdraw half a mil in cash when you've previously been doing only $20k/month in sales with a balance of less than $10k.
Ebay's policies specifically prohibit inboarding outrageously inflated shipping rates. Eg. BiN price of $1 for an iPod plus $300 'shipping'. People do this because Ebay just charges a percentage of the final price without shipping, and they want to keep the extra 5% for themself. Ebay tends to ignore this because it's very difficult to police, and there's a gray area like when someone charges $4 to ship a CD, and mails it for 75 cents via media mail. If you're the iPod guy charging $300 shipping, ebay will cancel your current auctions and send you a harsh letter to stop (with no followup). If you're charging $4 to ship CDs and don't combine shipping, Ebay won't do anything. Ultimately, these people shoot themselves in the foot anyway, because they get massive (relatively) amounts of negative feedback, causing their auctions to close at lower prices, that more than offset the amount they save on reduced ebay fees. This is in addition to the people who see the practice as a blatant ripoff attempt and shy away from the auction.
As an Ebay seller with lots of experience, I agree with everything you said and just want to add a bunch of things:
no lots... I've won several auctions where the seller bundled in some other crap I didn't want. They have always ended at the lowest price I saw all month for just the item I wanted. The corrolary to the no-lots rule is that you should auction stuff in large batches if they are related items. Each auction is an ad for all of your others. I've found that I get about 15% less for items that I auction alone instead of with a large (25+) group of other related items.
large pics...
Everyone who uses ebay's image hosting gets the same small, downsampled image size. Hosting your own LARGE (700-900 pixels wide) images really stands out. Up the compression a little to get the image size down to 50-75k. Also, make sure they're well focused and brightly lit (they should be so well lit that you don't need the flash on your camera). And for many items, you should go buy a flatbed scanner for $50. Books, DVDs, coins, jewelery, trading cards and many other items come out much nicer looking when scanned instead of photographed. Crop your images, you're selling your ipod, not your table.
detailed descriptions...
Have a standard, reusable description of your policies. If a question gets asked more than twice, you should add that info to the description permanently.
auction length...
At least 5 days? No, just make it 7. People often need time to think it over. Some people only browse Ebay once a week.
If the item is rarely listed, spring for a 10 day auction. I agree completely with ending on Sunday (I end mine around 5pm CST). Largest audience of people bidding and they can likely have their items by the end of the week. They only downside is that Monday is always your biggest workday.
super bowl...
Also, if you find yourself abnormally tuned to CNN or FoxNews, don't bother listing anything new. 9-11 resulted in final bids down about 25%. Katrina, the tsunami, the start of the Iraq war and Israel's recent tangle also knocked prices down about 10%. People glued to the news don't bid, and the cycle lasts all week.
Your workweek should look something like this:
Sunday: Upload new auctions you made in TurboLister last week, hit the 'send invoice' button on Ebay for auctions just ended. Answer stupid question from people that can't add $2 shipping to the item total for the total payment.
Monday: Work like a dog packing and mailing out the freshly ended auctions.
Tuesday: Moderate pace packing and mailing auctions.
Wednesday: Ship a few items, start putting together next week's auctions.
Thursday: Ship a few items, finish up the batch of auctions to upload Sunday, look into acquiring new items to sell.
Friday: Ship a few items, look into acquiring new items to sell.
Saturday: Go have some fun.
1. Contrary to what they would like you to believe, Ebay is not the place to make fast, easy money. Not unless you have a stable of minimum wage lackeys doing everything for you. If you have a PhD, you're much better off doing something in your field. Perhaps the professor has bankrolled a CD resale business and has his students work it as a 'learning' experience. I'm sure he has nothing to do with listing, packing and shipping.
2. The writer is only knowledgeable enough to speak on this matter because of his 'research', which is what he is able to call it because of his degree status. Anyone who has an Ebay feedback score (from selling) of over 1000 could easily write the same article with minimal 'research' (eg. checking other listings against their own) into the exact percentages. Whether they would willingly share this information is debateable.
3. Anyone who claims to be making a fortune on Ebay is fishing in quite a few other lakes as well. If you only sell on Ebay, then your business model can and will easily be stolen and undermined as everyone else rushes to eat at your table.
By 'can', I don't mean 'will'. I've had 3 negative feedbacks and gotten them all removed. I had one that left me negative within minutes of the auction ending. I had similar one who was bidding on lots of items and leaving negs a few days later for everyone. I had another person buy the same item from another seller for less a few days later; he hadn't paid me yet and left me a neg as soon as the other auction ended.
You have to lay out ALL the problems with the transaction, not just the biggest one. Present a timetable detailing every action you and the other party took. You should have focused on how he lied about the shipping time as well as not answering your e-mails. Make it clear that his only replies to you were the very late shipped item and the retaliatory neg feedback. Anyone who has time to reply to feedbacks, but not e-mail, is dropping the ball.
Also, as the buyer, you have much less leverage room than you do as a seller. You're not the one paying the bills for them.
The problem with ebay is that most sellers don't make their own product. So if you find something that sells at even a $5 profit after all expenses, you either kill your own sales by flooding your own market, or someone else undercuts you at a $4 profit. Any way you slice it, there is usually someone else willing to sell the same item for a smaller profit; eventually, everyone reaches a profit margin of zero or less.
I've told the following to many, many people who wanted to sell on ebay as a primary source of income:
1. Find alternate sources of cheap product (e.g. buy used cars locally and sell them on ebay) or deal in unique/collectible items (e.g. movie props from the studio you work at or jewlery from your pawn shop). You can't make money buying at wholesale because your competitors are doing the same thing. Before you know it, you'll be listing at $1 over cost and spending 12 hours a day packing items and wondering if McDonalds is hiring.
2. Have a secondary revenue stream with reasonably profitable addons. e.g. If you sell electronics, have model specific batteries, memory cards, cables, etc. that you offer at 50% over your wholesale cost.
3. If you're doing enough sales to reach powerseller (even bronze) status, you should quit ebay and sell directly through your own website.
4. Your reputation is your only valuable asset. Even 98% is a terrible feedback score. Buyers only leave negatives when they've been badly screwed or to be jerks (these can be removed). If you lose 10% on your selling prices because of your feedback, that's probably your entire profit margin. BTW, don't overcharge on shipping, it just pisses people off and reduces your final selling price by an equal amount.
5. Don't openly connect your local store to your ebay ID. People will expect you to take returns at the shop, and your shop customers will expect you to sell to them at your ebay prices. This assumes that you're selling regular inventory rather than closeouts.
6. Be overly descriptive in your item descriptions and check your spelling. I once sold a used soundtrack CD for an obscure Anime title for 3X the going price (reg $15, new) because I listed the composer. People searching to expand their collections will pay top dollar. Typos will cost you a ton of money because prospective buyers won't see your item. Ur l331 $p33|{ |$ @ L1@b1L1TY.
7. Even after all of the above, you'll quickly realize that ebay is only good for two things: liquidating excess product at cost or building your customer base.
I used to sell on ebay a LOT. I built my feedback score up to over 1000 100% positive with bronze power-seller status, and eventually quit ebay alltogether. I quickly realized that between paypal and ebay, my fees on a $10 item were about $1.50 for a no-frills listing. I was then adding about $0.20 for a service to streamline my auction listings. All this for the privelage of selling at rock bottom prices. I now consider ebay useful only as a glorified garage sale (it's original intent).
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I think the main problem with peoples' view of CERN is that they think CERN is doing something completely new. The fact is, Fermilab has been doing the same thing for 30+ years. CERN is just going to slowly up the energy level to about 10x what Fermilab topped out at.
The other problem is that people don't understand the terms flying around. Words like tevatron, large hadron, high-energy particle accelerator and 'energy level of the Big Bang' lead people to think that this is the next step past nuclear bombs. What they really need to understand about colliding protons at energy levels of a trillion electron volts is that an electron volt is pretty much the smallest way to measure energy that we use, and the collisions only involve two protons. Seriously, you should be more worried every time you get your teeth x-rayed.
It's absurd to think that they'll hit a tipping point where the energy being put in will be enough to blow up the Earth. It's absurd to think that they could create a micro black hole that would engulf the Earth (if micro black holes are actually possible, AND could engulf a planet, then the universe would be dominated by them).
But it sounds like a ripe case for trespassing, tampering or vandalism. It should certainly be illegal to do this without a warrant, but not on the grounds of search or siezure.
Or they're running crappy hardware. Most people blame Windows when their hardware is constantly running on the edge of failure. They have a computer that works fine out of the box, but crashes when the PSU can't keep up with the fifth USB device plugged in. Maybe some heat sinks are clogged with dust.
The OS running on the cheapest hardware with the most clueless user base has the highest failure rate? You don't say!
During the initial broadcast, NBC announced that the flyover shot of the 'footsteps' fireworks walking back to the Bird's Nest stadium was actually pre-rendered CG (it looked nice, but was obvious). They didn't mention why at the time, but I think they just didn't want some ugly, mis-timed, shakey-cam footage mucking up their HD visual-orgasm. And I certainly wouldn't want to be in or below the helicopter that's chasing fireworks across the city.
/Best use of my HDTV to date. I hope they sell it on Blu-Ray.
If it's one of the stationary shots that was faked, that might be a story. CHINA is the last country on Earth that needs CGI to pull off a pyrotechnics display.
LDs weighed a ton, were huge, suffered from 'edge rot', cost 2-4x the price of VHS and had to be flipped or changed every 30/60 minutes. I rented a bit, but only bought mine when places started clearing out the players and discs at bargain pricing.
Super high video quality only sells at a premium in movies that are about the scenery or visual effects. Very few people want to pay extra to see Superbad in HD. Lord of the Rings or Batman, sure. Why would I pay $10 extra to see Will Ferrel's ass in HD? *shudder*
The DRM means that you may get downconverted to 480p with no notice or explanation.
Early adopters of HDTV got burned by lack of HDMI connections to hook up their Blu-Ray players. I can watch my DirecTV in HD, but have to roll the dice with every Blu-Ray movie I would buy. They intentionally made their HD player incompatible with my $2000 HDTV, so screw them.
I can watch a lot of movies in HD on DirecTV instead.
Until BD+ gits cracked, I'm unlikely to buy movies. Any DVD I watch repeatedly usually gets re-ripped so I don't have to watch all the commercials (often for stuff I've bought), studio logos and FBI warnings. Or even DVDs that take over a minute to start playing anything (assuming I don't eject it a few times and reset the DVD player thinking something is broken). I understand Blu-Ray usually takes even longer to get to the movie.
Most of my rental locations (prefer RedBox) only stock DVD.
Discs aren't playable on my laptop, in my car or at my friend's house.
Expensive players. I'll have 7 DVD players (3 laptop, 1 car, 3 TV) that will need upgrading to maintain compatibility.
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If they want Blu-Ray to take off, then they should make dual-sided discs (DVD/Blu-Ray) of new titles and sell them at about $2 over the current price structure of current DVDs. I'd likely pay that much extra to have both versions before actually buying a Blu-Ray player. Then they need to let players output ALL content at full 1080p over component and ignore non-skipable content flags.
In the absence of all that, I'm waiting for BD+ to get fully cracked and PC Blu-Ray burners & blank discs to become somewhat affordable.
It's fairly simple: the Euro price was set a long time ago based on the exchange rate then. At the time, the price difference was mostly because of taxes. As the dollar has tanked, the prices in their respective currecies have stayed the same, but the comparative prices have doubled since the US$ has lost half of it's value in the past eight years. It's not that Euro customers are paying more, it's that American customers are getting the product at half price to make up for the 50% pay cut we've gotten while living under George Bush.
I was actually going to post the exact same thing about the separate buyer/seller feedback scores. Myself, I use a second account for buying from overseas or anyone who doesn't have stellar feedback, or any auction I feel the least bit uneasy about.
OTOH, delaying the display of feedback until both parties have commented is a bad idea. Prompt feedback is essential to stop scammers from raking in more cash and victims.
I also think Ebay should allow feedback comments on less than perfect scores to be much longer than 80 characters. You really can't give an adequate warning in a single line of text. And the positive - neutral - negative scale is pretty inadequate. They should have a five point scale and require a short explanation of any score lower than a five.
Have a time limit of 60 days to leave feedback. If you haven't left any by that point, all feedback left will show up and you can't retaliate.
If I'm running bogus auctions to rake in money before anyone notices, this could give me an extra 80 days before new victims get any warning.
When tossed haphazardly into a bag with some stray pieces of metal, a lithium battery becomes FAR more dangerous than 3 oz of water. I don't think this rule has anything at all to do with terrorism. It's about not having stupid people causing airplane fires.
WRONG!
The fed artificially lowered interest rates by way too much. This allowed people to either drastically lower their monthly payments or be able to buy a much more expensive home for the same monthly payment. This became a national trend.
In areas with a limited housing supply, home prices rose drastically so that the higher price with the lower interest rate yielded the same monthly payment. Some people cashed out massive profits, but at the expense of the buyer who would see their home value plummet to it's previous value in five years.
In areas with plenty of builders and land to put homes on, people began building huge quantities of larger, more lavish homes. Individual home prices didn't go up, but median home prices did. Fueled by low monthly payments, people bought homes that they could never afford at the rates from just a few years earlier.
This, in turn, LED to the incredibly lax bank lending standards in some areas. Previously, banks required hefty down payments, good credit and proof of income to give a loan. But with homes appreciating at double digit rates (again, caused by artificially low interest rates), it looked like a sure thing that the outstanding loan would be under 80% in two years. Fifty year, interest only, reverse amortization, it didn't matter, the house would out-appreciate ANY loan.
Then the fed comes back in, raises the rates back up and BAM, people default like crazy because they can't refinance their ARMs at anything close to the old rate.
Yes, there was bad business practices and greed all around, but the root cause of the whole thing was bad interest rate manipulation by the federal reserve.
Gold standard: US currency is now backed in NOTHING but the credit of the US government. Prior to 1913, the dollar was backed in gold and silver. Adjusted for inflation, the prices of gold and silver (and most other commodities) have hardly changed. Personally, I think that the dollar should be backed in gold, silver, steel, copper, oil, cotton and a bunch of other commodities. But the current system where the reserve prints up money out of thin air is ridiculous. Why? Because if the US government defaults on it's $9Trillion debt, then the $US will collapse completely.
SEC: The SEC is to prevent fraud. Without the SEC, employees would not be accountable to the investors who own their company.
WTO, NAFTA, CAFTA: Managed trade favors big companies who can work out the deals and regulations required. Small companies can't get through the beauracracy. It's full of corrupt beauracrats who have the power to decide if you get to sell internationally or not.
Healthcare: Medicare/aid has destroyed affordable healthcare. The government forces hospitals to accept state patients and then only pays them about 30% of the retail price. To compensate, the hospital has to raise the retail price by over 200%. If you're insured, your plan gets to pay a discounted rate. If you're paying cash, you get to pay 2x-3x what the hospital charges the other guy's insurance company. Thank the government.
Foreign Policy: He's not an isolationist, he's a non-interventionist. North Korea is isolationism. Sweden is non-interventionism.
Social Security:
In the 1930s, Social Security was started solely to keep the unemployable elderly from ending up homeless and starving to death. The tax rate was 1%, and the retirement age was identical to the life expectancy of 65 years old. The program collected contributions for five years to build up a buffer before paying out a cent.
Now, SS is considered a retirement plan for the able-bodied. The tax rate is 13% (your employer matches the 6.5% FICA you see on your paycheck). The retiremend age is 67, or you can retire early at 62(!!!). The life expectancy is 78 (SEVENTY- EIGHT!!) years old. The program is projected to be bankrupt in 40 years, so if you're under 38 years old, it will run out before you die; if you're under 27, you'll never see a penny.
My belief is that for SS to survive, the tax needs to be cut back down to 1-3%, and the retirement age set to float at 2 years under the average life expectancy. Encourage people to save cash on their own if they really want to retire to Florida. Only children (and maybe the truly disabled) should be entitled to live off someone else's labor for 16 years (age 62-78).
Your link goes to a bill that tries to clarify when a sperm and egg shall constitute a human being. At the moment, it's a zygote or a baby depending on the whim of the mother or prosecuting attorney. There's no consistency. It's NOT a ban on abortion, though it could lead to Roe v Wade being overturned, putting abortion law back to the way it was before then.
/. poster dislike about that?
As a congressman, he often brings bills to the floor to force a vote and close a debate that is eating up time. Dr. No votes against many of his own bills.
As a congressman, part of his job is to secure money from the $27billion earmark fund for his own district. It's a dedicated part of the budget, every congressman is obligated to get their share. He still votes against the bills that contain the earmarks. He even voted against the bill that contained his own earmark for shrimp marketing.
Internet... He wants it untaxed and unregulated. What does a
Withdrawing from international organizations... We have many of our laws dictated to us by multinational organizations. It's an attack on our sovreignty. Ron Paul is a member of the House Foreign Affairs Committee.
Economics... He got into politics because of his interest in economic theory. He's been on the House Banking Committee, the Joint Economic Committee, and the Committee on Financial Services. He delights in dragging the federal reserve chairman to the House to berate him for the secretive manipulation of the US$. And the Wall Street traders cheer him on.
Paul and gay/black/jewish/other minorities:
My understanding is that Ron Paul is against ANY laws that divide people into certain sub-classes and then grant those specific groups additional rights based on their minority class. He believes that all people are individuals with equal rights and that there should be no laws that give extra protection or financial benefit to specific groups.
Think about the following hypothetical statements:
Crimes against white people by non-whites should be punished more severely in order to reduce crime against them.
White people should be given preference in hiring and admissions over other people of greater qualification in order to raise their socioeconomic status.
We should assist in the defense of and ally ourselves with white nations who are threatened by non-white nations.
White people should be allowed to form organizations that exclude non-white people from joining.
Tax dollars should be used to help fund organizations specific to white people.
Of course, to vote for the above ideals would be considered the height of racism in America. But if you change 'white' to some minority, you run the risk of being labelled as a racist for being against them.
There are a lot of well-intentioned laws passed every year that aim to prevent minority abuse. But in protecting one class of people at the expense of another, you just expand the problem. Ron Paul consistently votes against laws that grant additional rights to a particular class of people at the expense of the rights of the rest.
"The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." - Justice Clarence Thomas
Paul has raised over $10 MILLION in just the last two months from about 100,000 supporters. That's more than any other republican in the third quarter.
RP's opponents can't find any actual scandal or issue to smear him with, so they've resorted to 'don't waste your vote on him because he can't win'. Or saying he's not a real Republican just because he didn't follow the recent GOP policy shifts that have them hemmoraging voters and congressional seats.
You need to stop watching CNN and FoxNews. They think if they keep claiming he doesn't have a chance, then it'll be true. He's raised 10 MILLION dollars in the past two months from about 100,000 donors. For a GOP this year, he has a LOT of support.
The cost of creating the physical media IN NO WAY represents the full production cost of the product.
Except that the label bills the artist for the full cost to record the album, do the artwork and advertise it (includes music videos). They'll 'front' them something like $50k to a million, but this is an advance against future royalties minus all of the label's 'costs'. About the only thing that labels don't bill to the artist are per-unit manufacturing costs (about $1 ea), and the accountants/lawyers that they hire to screw the artists.
So a good artist might get advanced $500k for their album. They run up $200k studio costs to record the album. The label spends $200k in advertising. Two music videos run $500k each to make. Now the artist 'owes' $1.9m. The artist likely gets 10% royalty of each CD sale, so $1.50 ea (optimisticly). At this point, the album has to sell well into platinum territory just to pay off the advance and 'costs'. Except that if the album gets this far, the label will just do more advertising and videos, since they come out of the artist's wallet.
If an artists ever sees a royalty check, it just means that someone in accounting screwed up. About the only upsides for the artist are that they can make big money touring, and if an album tanks, they get to keep the advance and walk away.
Something tells me that the rest of the world has already figured out that a quiet propeller would have more blades and a twisting shape to them. I think the exact shape of the propellers would be what they want. The photos would have to be detailed enough for a computer to generate a very exact topography from.
The whole thing has a certain Cold War aspect to it. If they're so far behind in quiet propeller technology that a 20 pixel high image would help them, then they're never going to catch up with what our fluid dynamics researchers are testing for the next generation.
The article says that the media (presumably rewritable) will be sealed in bulk in a cartridge that allows you to put 470GB in a space roughly the size of a DVD drive. Sounds potentially nice if full cartridges sell for the price of a spindle (100) of DVDs. Otherwise, anyone with a brain will just buy a 500GB hard drive. This tech would likely be ungodly slow, full of moving parts to break and prone to jamming. Considering all of the super specialized tech required to make this happen, it would probably be much more cost effective to just build a larger system that shuffles off-the-shelf DVD-rw media and can be upgraded to higher density media later. Speaking of which, isn't blueray or hddvd already pretty close to the 47GB/mm spec that the article implies.
12: You have to steal it and keep the owner from noticing it. Someone with a valuable account will notice when the password gets changed or $100k worth of items get listed.
12a: 50 is nowhere near enough to run this scam. 50 means you're a mediocre buyer, not a good seller. People who have run this scam have 2k-10k feedback and have typically been running as a legit business for a year or more. They wake up one day and realize they can probably make it to Mexico with $500k. Unfortunately, it harder than you think to not raise red flags when you suddenly want to withdraw half a mil in cash when you've previously been doing only $20k/month in sales with a balance of less than $10k.
??? = How to evade FBI and postal inspectors.
Ebay's policies specifically prohibit inboarding outrageously inflated shipping rates. Eg. BiN price of $1 for an iPod plus $300 'shipping'. People do this because Ebay just charges a percentage of the final price without shipping, and they want to keep the extra 5% for themself. Ebay tends to ignore this because it's very difficult to police, and there's a gray area like when someone charges $4 to ship a CD, and mails it for 75 cents via media mail. If you're the iPod guy charging $300 shipping, ebay will cancel your current auctions and send you a harsh letter to stop (with no followup). If you're charging $4 to ship CDs and don't combine shipping, Ebay won't do anything. Ultimately, these people shoot themselves in the foot anyway, because they get massive (relatively) amounts of negative feedback, causing their auctions to close at lower prices, that more than offset the amount they save on reduced ebay fees. This is in addition to the people who see the practice as a blatant ripoff attempt and shy away from the auction.
As an Ebay seller with lots of experience, I agree with everything you said and just want to add a bunch of things:
no lots... I've won several auctions where the seller bundled in some other crap I didn't want. They have always ended at the lowest price I saw all month for just the item I wanted. The corrolary to the no-lots rule is that you should auction stuff in large batches if they are related items. Each auction is an ad for all of your others. I've found that I get about 15% less for items that I auction alone instead of with a large (25+) group of other related items.
large pics... Everyone who uses ebay's image hosting gets the same small, downsampled image size. Hosting your own LARGE (700-900 pixels wide) images really stands out. Up the compression a little to get the image size down to 50-75k. Also, make sure they're well focused and brightly lit (they should be so well lit that you don't need the flash on your camera). And for many items, you should go buy a flatbed scanner for $50. Books, DVDs, coins, jewelery, trading cards and many other items come out much nicer looking when scanned instead of photographed. Crop your images, you're selling your ipod, not your table.
detailed descriptions... Have a standard, reusable description of your policies. If a question gets asked more than twice, you should add that info to the description permanently.
auction length... At least 5 days? No, just make it 7. People often need time to think it over. Some people only browse Ebay once a week. If the item is rarely listed, spring for a 10 day auction. I agree completely with ending on Sunday (I end mine around 5pm CST). Largest audience of people bidding and they can likely have their items by the end of the week. They only downside is that Monday is always your biggest workday.
super bowl... Also, if you find yourself abnormally tuned to CNN or FoxNews, don't bother listing anything new. 9-11 resulted in final bids down about 25%. Katrina, the tsunami, the start of the Iraq war and Israel's recent tangle also knocked prices down about 10%. People glued to the news don't bid, and the cycle lasts all week.
Your workweek should look something like this:
Sunday: Upload new auctions you made in TurboLister last week, hit the 'send invoice' button on Ebay for auctions just ended. Answer stupid question from people that can't add $2 shipping to the item total for the total payment.
Monday: Work like a dog packing and mailing out the freshly ended auctions.
Tuesday: Moderate pace packing and mailing auctions.
Wednesday: Ship a few items, start putting together next week's auctions.
Thursday: Ship a few items, finish up the batch of auctions to upload Sunday, look into acquiring new items to sell.
Friday: Ship a few items, look into acquiring new items to sell.
Saturday: Go have some fun.
1. Contrary to what they would like you to believe, Ebay is not the place to make fast, easy money. Not unless you have a stable of minimum wage lackeys doing everything for you. If you have a PhD, you're much better off doing something in your field. Perhaps the professor has bankrolled a CD resale business and has his students work it as a 'learning' experience. I'm sure he has nothing to do with listing, packing and shipping.
2. The writer is only knowledgeable enough to speak on this matter because of his 'research', which is what he is able to call it because of his degree status. Anyone who has an Ebay feedback score (from selling) of over 1000 could easily write the same article with minimal 'research' (eg. checking other listings against their own) into the exact percentages. Whether they would willingly share this information is debateable.
3. Anyone who claims to be making a fortune on Ebay is fishing in quite a few other lakes as well. If you only sell on Ebay, then your business model can and will easily be stolen and undermined as everyone else rushes to eat at your table.
By 'can', I don't mean 'will'. I've had 3 negative feedbacks and gotten them all removed. I had one that left me negative within minutes of the auction ending. I had similar one who was bidding on lots of items and leaving negs a few days later for everyone. I had another person buy the same item from another seller for less a few days later; he hadn't paid me yet and left me a neg as soon as the other auction ended.
You have to lay out ALL the problems with the transaction, not just the biggest one. Present a timetable detailing every action you and the other party took. You should have focused on how he lied about the shipping time as well as not answering your e-mails. Make it clear that his only replies to you were the very late shipped item and the retaliatory neg feedback. Anyone who has time to reply to feedbacks, but not e-mail, is dropping the ball.
Also, as the buyer, you have much less leverage room than you do as a seller. You're not the one paying the bills for them.
The problem with ebay is that most sellers don't make their own product. So if you find something that sells at even a $5 profit after all expenses, you either kill your own sales by flooding your own market, or someone else undercuts you at a $4 profit. Any way you slice it, there is usually someone else willing to sell the same item for a smaller profit; eventually, everyone reaches a profit margin of zero or less.
I've told the following to many, many people who wanted to sell on ebay as a primary source of income:
1. Find alternate sources of cheap product (e.g. buy used cars locally and sell them on ebay) or deal in unique/collectible items (e.g. movie props from the studio you work at or jewlery from your pawn shop). You can't make money buying at wholesale because your competitors are doing the same thing. Before you know it, you'll be listing at $1 over cost and spending 12 hours a day packing items and wondering if McDonalds is hiring.
2. Have a secondary revenue stream with reasonably profitable addons. e.g. If you sell electronics, have model specific batteries, memory cards, cables, etc. that you offer at 50% over your wholesale cost.
3. If you're doing enough sales to reach powerseller (even bronze) status, you should quit ebay and sell directly through your own website.
4. Your reputation is your only valuable asset. Even 98% is a terrible feedback score. Buyers only leave negatives when they've been badly screwed or to be jerks (these can be removed). If you lose 10% on your selling prices because of your feedback, that's probably your entire profit margin. BTW, don't overcharge on shipping, it just pisses people off and reduces your final selling price by an equal amount.
5. Don't openly connect your local store to your ebay ID. People will expect you to take returns at the shop, and your shop customers will expect you to sell to them at your ebay prices. This assumes that you're selling regular inventory rather than closeouts.
6. Be overly descriptive in your item descriptions and check your spelling. I once sold a used soundtrack CD for an obscure Anime title for 3X the going price (reg $15, new) because I listed the composer. People searching to expand their collections will pay top dollar. Typos will cost you a ton of money because prospective buyers won't see your item. Ur l331 $p33|{ |$ @ L1@b1L1TY.
7. Even after all of the above, you'll quickly realize that ebay is only good for two things: liquidating excess product at cost or building your customer base.
I used to sell on ebay a LOT. I built my feedback score up to over 1000 100% positive with bronze power-seller status, and eventually quit ebay alltogether. I quickly realized that between paypal and ebay, my fees on a $10 item were about $1.50 for a no-frills listing. I was then adding about $0.20 for a service to streamline my auction listings. All this for the privelage of selling at rock bottom prices. I now consider ebay useful only as a glorified garage sale (it's original intent).