"Start your own auction site" was a facetious comment and for that I apologize.
Ah. No offense! And similarly, I am not suggesting I'd file a class action suit -- merely that someone inevitably will... and, sadly, that it will be the thing that finally gets the attention of the notoriously stubborn company. Long-suffering users are well aware of how legendary the company is at ignoring the hands that feed it...
Not yet... but eBay already owns the following: Half.com, Internet Auction, iBazar, HomesDirect.com, NeoCom and PayPal. And when feedback ratings start to impact your home-buying ability (via HomesDirect) or personal finances (via PayPal) people will start to care a little more. By then, enacting change will be far more difficult.
The part of your story I don't understand is that if you're so unhappy with the way eBay does business, then why do business with eBay?
Feel free to use another auction house or to start your own. It's not like eBay's a monopoly.
With an estimated 85-95% market share (no one bothers counting any more, one analyst says only it's "nearly 100%"), Ebay is as close to a monopoly as you can get! That's on par with Microsoft -- or really, it's worse than Microsoft; at least in the OS world you have some semblance of choice. Going over to Yahoo auctions or Amazon would be financial suicide. Start my own auction site? Might as well write my own OS while I'm at it, too.
Anyway my goal is not/was not to hold my breath until I turn blue while losing money. My goal is to encourage a change of policy at a site I frequent. If Slashdot started posting all text in flashing yellow on a black background, I'd complain. I wouldn't necessarily boycott. Ebay provides me with financial revenue -- and a stupid feedback policy injures that revenue; unfortunately switching sites or ceasing to sell injures that revenue far more.
Your comment is like the cliche from those people who are fond of saying: "Don't like income taxes/the death penalty/the war on XXXXX? Why don't you move to another country!" On the whole I'm happy to live in eBayLand. This is simply my form of protest to make it a better place. The current system is asinine and changing it (or at least putting in a better system of reviewing/rebutting negative feedback) helps the site.
"In his lawsuit, Grace demands $2.5 million in punitive damages from eBay and $100,000 from Neeley."
I'd like to see him prove that one bad feedback is going to cost him that much.
He doesn't have to prove anything, only that the comments were libelous and that eBay was responsible for them.
Punitive damages don't entail actual damages. They are asked for as a form of punishment to the defendant... and a little gravy for the plaintiff, of course. And there's no limit on what you can ask for.
This is why long-time smokers are awarded $60 billion when they get lung cancer. Because the jury felt the tobacco companies were just that bad. eBay is obviously an angel in comparison.
6 months ago I would have said this guy is a crackpot like everyone else on the forum -- but then a complete idiot left me negative feedback on my 200th or so sale on eBay -- the only neg I've ever gotten.
This is what happened: Newbie buyer provides mailing address (this is for a Half.com transaction BTW -- where Half is a huge middleman in the operation) of something like 100 North St., with ZIP code, etc. I ship the item Media Mail as specified... 2 weeks later it comes back to me No Such Address. I file a trouble report with Half.com. Hear nothing. File two more. Hear nothing. Eventually after 3 weeks have passed, the newbie tracks me down and angrily wants to know where his package is. I tell him what happened, and by this time I've already fully refunded his money. He is completely oblivious to what's going on -- does not believe I shipped the package (I even scanned the envelope and forwarded the original order with his bogus address -- "That's not my address!" he tells me...) All to no avail. He dings me with a negative feedback claiming I didn't ship the item.
Eventually I take this up with eBay but apparently the guy has been such a nuisance his account has been deleted. They won't do a thing about it, even though a dozen emails explain the situation... and after several weeks even the buyer says he FINALLY understands what happened and will remove the negative feedback. Alas, he's been deleted, so he can't remove it.
I sell a lot of junk on Half and eBay and though I have a 240something rating, there are some buyers who simply will not bid if you have a single negative rating. I can certainly understand that, and I may or may not take the time to dig down as to why negative points were received. I don't blame the idiot for giving me the negative point -- I blame eBay for not employing common sense in removing it.
The lawsuit is right in that the policy is totally unworkable and is abused frequently. His call for fictitious business names and tax collecting might be a bit much, and in the end I doubt this guy will win his case. What will have far more effect is when a similar case becomes a class action lawsuit -- and then eBay might finally realize how rife the system is with abuse.
Last year, Red Herring reported a fascinating tale of using the water pipes of the Netherlands as an IP medium. Of course, this was an elaborate April Fool's joke....
Like most interesting journalism, this is largely wishful thinking. EA will need to prove it's more than just a game company to become the player it wants to be. The company is largely beholden to other media companies for its content (LOTR game, James Bond game, Harry Potter game) and sports games are really a dime a dozen. Only The Sims has long-term promise as a stand-alone franchise... and once they try to make a Sims movie (and you know they will!) that will be the end of it. (Anyone remember the Wing Commander movie? Still trying to forget it, huh...)
But really, EA needs to look beyond gaming if it really wants to challenge Disney or any other major media concern. Sure, it's a powerhouse in the gaming world, but my mother's never heard of Electronic Arts, while she sure as hell knows who Disney is.
You actually stand vindicated! The numbers are in, and Nemesis brought in a dismal $18.75 million this weekend, making it the cellar dweller of the series. Beaten by J. Lo!
I went through this whole thread and -- being a former IT director that has dealt with 3 dead RAID controllers over the years -- you are by far best off with the above solution.
In other words: Get another HighPoint controller, reconfigure it the same way the old one was, and see if it works. If it doesn't, you are most likely screwed and will need to restore from backup. Good luck.
Oh, and the official word from Trekkies who haven't seen the movie yet is that it is awesome and I am an idiot who is "going to hell" for panning a Star Trek movie, per my hate mail.
Sadly, the correct pronunciation of the title is the most interesting part of the movie! Anyway, as you noted, per the trailers and commercials (which presumably SOMEONE involved with the film has approved*), it's so-LAH-riss. And they're right.
And yes, Sun Solaris is pronounced So-LARE-iss, per numerous Sun employees I deal with all the time at my day job.
* Yes, I realize marketing people unrelated to the film produce the trailers for a movie based on early footage (which is why you often see shots in the trailer that aren't in the final cut of the film), but Steven Soderbergh is so anal that I can't imagine him letting something like the incorrect pronunciation of his film get by... hmm, unless it's pronounced "DEE another day"
Riff's solution is the only thing that has ever worked for me to combat severe speaker hum. Simply moving cables around until it goes away is the only way I've gotten around it. My current setup has all the power cables twist-tied together and segregated from the speaker wire. I also notice that if the speaker wire touches something metal -- like the wheels casings on the TV stand, etc., the effect is just as bad. Experiment with the wires before you shell out a lot of money and break your equipment open.
We've been considering vertical space, of course (read the thread) -- but the original point here was how much of the earth's SURFACE was being used, which assumes two dimensions. Cities take up a tiny portion of the footprint, and no one's raising cattle in skyscrapers... yet.
Try selling M$ software... I dare ya
on
Ebay vs. Musician
·
· Score: 3, Interesting
I once tried selling a used copy of Office on eBay (the original CD with the hologram and everything)... got the same note as this guy. Now I wonder if Microsoft really complained or if eBay killed the auction out of fear of any possible litigation.
If you want to try to sneak one by: I highly recommend using a 3-day auction. It usually takes several days for them to troll the site to search for any such scandalous items!
(errata: 1184 square feet per person, not the other way around)
In 2000, Manhattan had 2.3 million residents living on 23 square miles of land. That works out to 270.4 square feet per person -- only 1/4 of the put-everyone-in-Texas rate, and actually not bad considering the average building size in Manhattan has got to be AT LEAST 5 vertical floors...
Of course, this presumes Manhattan is strictly residential and does not take into account the homeless population which only requires 12 sq. feet. per person.;)
That statistic usually comes from anti-abortion activists in response to the claim that the world needs no more people on it. It is of course true (barely) but extremely misleading.
Texas comprises 262,000 square miles. Putting (circa) 6 billion people in that space gives 1184 square feet per person. Not entirely comfortable considering your house would butt up against someone else's on all sides but certainly livable.
Unfortunately, this is just LIVING space. Where are you going to get food? Growing enough crops for one person to sustainably survive requires at between one and six acres of land -- one acre is over 43,000 square feet! Cattle ranching and other "meat farming" requires far more space, because you have to feed the cattle. Then you need a water source. Power generation. Transportation systems. Buildings in which to work/create things. Modern conveniences.
Pretty soon you're up to 20-30 acres per person required in the US to keep things moving. America comprises 2.3 billion acres... do the math and you'll see we don't even have room in the US for the measly 250,000,000 residents we already have, much less the entire world!
Just a thought... it bugs me when people (and I don't blame you) overgeneralize how much space one person REALLY takes up.
Anyone ever read BF Skinner's 1973 treatise Walden Two in highschool? The big draw to this synthetic community would be a 4-hour workday, though chances are a lot of that would be plowing and washing dishes in the cafeteria.
Kind of a neat idea but sustainability is iffy. The only surviving Walden Two community I can find via Google is Los Horcones, in Mexico. Other Walden Two communities have failed (understandably) due to lack of human and economic resources.
This story reminded me of a similar tale about a Las Vegas company (of course) trying to set up a launch pad for space tourism in the Nevada desert. Here's one of the earlier pieces on it - http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/199 9/sep/10/509288711.html (from 1999) -- though googling for NDS Development Corp. takes you to press releases, et al. all the way back to 1996, at least.
Too bad this idea looks stillborn, though it's not terribly surprising. If anyone can figure out whatever became of this idea, I'd love to hear about it.
No, I believe the movie was actually shot before 9/11/01 -- it's been gathering dust while someone (namely Steven Soderbergh) stepped forward to fund its release.
FYI: Yes, we have a lag between print and online editions (kind of a bonus to those of you who fill out the form and shell out the $0 for a real subscription). In any event, we did indeed receive dozens of letters about Bret's column and we printed as many as we had room for. Those that made the cut will be on the page linked below by tomorrow morning.
Slashdot Mirror
"Start your own auction site" was a facetious comment and for that I apologize.
Ah. No offense! And similarly, I am not suggesting I'd file a class action suit -- merely that someone inevitably will... and, sadly, that it will be the thing that finally gets the attention of the notoriously stubborn company. Long-suffering users are well aware of how legendary the company is at ignoring the hands that feed it...
EBay isn't the public at large
Not yet... but eBay already owns the following: Half.com, Internet Auction, iBazar, HomesDirect.com, NeoCom and PayPal. And when feedback ratings start to impact your home-buying ability (via HomesDirect) or personal finances (via PayPal) people will start to care a little more. By then, enacting change will be far more difficult.
The part of your story I don't understand is that if you're so unhappy with the way eBay does business, then why do business with eBay?
Feel free to use another auction house or to start your own. It's not like eBay's a monopoly.
With an estimated 85-95% market share (no one bothers counting any more, one analyst says only it's "nearly 100%"), Ebay is as close to a monopoly as you can get! That's on par with Microsoft -- or really, it's worse than Microsoft; at least in the OS world you have some semblance of choice. Going over to Yahoo auctions or Amazon would be financial suicide. Start my own auction site? Might as well write my own OS while I'm at it, too.
Anyway my goal is not/was not to hold my breath until I turn blue while losing money. My goal is to encourage a change of policy at a site I frequent. If Slashdot started posting all text in flashing yellow on a black background, I'd complain. I wouldn't necessarily boycott. Ebay provides me with financial revenue -- and a stupid feedback policy injures that revenue; unfortunately switching sites or ceasing to sell injures that revenue far more.
Your comment is like the cliche from those people who are fond of saying: "Don't like income taxes/the death penalty/the war on XXXXX? Why don't you move to another country!" On the whole I'm happy to live in eBayLand. This is simply my form of protest to make it a better place. The current system is asinine and changing it (or at least putting in a better system of reviewing/rebutting negative feedback) helps the site.
"In his lawsuit, Grace demands $2.5 million in punitive damages from eBay and $100,000 from Neeley."
I'd like to see him prove that one bad feedback is going to cost him that much.
He doesn't have to prove anything, only that the comments were libelous and that eBay was responsible for them.
Punitive damages don't entail actual damages. They are asked for as a form of punishment to the defendant... and a little gravy for the plaintiff, of course. And there's no limit on what you can ask for.
This is why long-time smokers are awarded $60 billion when they get lung cancer. Because the jury felt the tobacco companies were just that bad. eBay is obviously an angel in comparison.
6 months ago I would have said this guy is a crackpot like everyone else on the forum -- but then a complete idiot left me negative feedback on my 200th or so sale on eBay -- the only neg I've ever gotten.
This is what happened: Newbie buyer provides mailing address (this is for a Half.com transaction BTW -- where Half is a huge middleman in the operation) of something like 100 North St., with ZIP code, etc. I ship the item Media Mail as specified... 2 weeks later it comes back to me No Such Address. I file a trouble report with Half.com. Hear nothing. File two more. Hear nothing. Eventually after 3 weeks have passed, the newbie tracks me down and angrily wants to know where his package is. I tell him what happened, and by this time I've already fully refunded his money. He is completely oblivious to what's going on -- does not believe I shipped the package (I even scanned the envelope and forwarded the original order with his bogus address -- "That's not my address!" he tells me...) All to no avail. He dings me with a negative feedback claiming I didn't ship the item.
Eventually I take this up with eBay but apparently the guy has been such a nuisance his account has been deleted. They won't do a thing about it, even though a dozen emails explain the situation... and after several weeks even the buyer says he FINALLY understands what happened and will remove the negative feedback. Alas, he's been deleted, so he can't remove it.
I sell a lot of junk on Half and eBay and though I have a 240something rating, there are some buyers who simply will not bid if you have a single negative rating. I can certainly understand that, and I may or may not take the time to dig down as to why negative points were received. I don't blame the idiot for giving me the negative point -- I blame eBay for not employing common sense in removing it.
The lawsuit is right in that the policy is totally unworkable and is abused frequently. His call for fictitious business names and tax collecting might be a bit much, and in the end I doubt this guy will win his case. What will have far more effect is when a similar case becomes a class action lawsuit -- and then eBay might finally realize how rife the system is with abuse.
Last year, Red Herring reported a fascinating tale of using the water pipes of the Netherlands as an IP medium. Of course, this was an elaborate April Fool's joke....
Life really does imitate art.
Like most interesting journalism, this is largely wishful thinking. EA will need to prove it's more than just a game company to become the player it wants to be. The company is largely beholden to other media companies for its content (LOTR game, James Bond game, Harry Potter game) and sports games are really a dime a dozen. Only The Sims has long-term promise as a stand-alone franchise... and once they try to make a Sims movie (and you know they will!) that will be the end of it. (Anyone remember the Wing Commander movie? Still trying to forget it, huh...)
But really, EA needs to look beyond gaming if it really wants to challenge Disney or any other major media concern. Sure, it's a powerhouse in the gaming world, but my mother's never heard of Electronic Arts, while she sure as hell knows who Disney is.
You actually stand vindicated! The numbers are in, and Nemesis brought in a dismal $18.75 million this weekend, making it the cellar dweller of the series. Beaten by J. Lo!
h tml
Source: http://movies.yahoo.com/hv/boxoffice/latest/rank.
(Of course, it's also the cellar dwellar by quality, but that's another issue.)
I went through this whole thread and -- being a former IT director that has dealt with 3 dead RAID controllers over the years -- you are by far best off with the above solution.
In other words: Get another HighPoint controller, reconfigure it the same way the old one was, and see if it works. If it doesn't, you are most likely screwed and will need to restore from backup. Good luck.
As the only film critic on earth who reads Slashdot regularly (not including Slashdot staffers, of course), here's my review of Nemesis.
And yes, it is worse than Solaris
Oh, and the official word from Trekkies who haven't seen the movie yet is that it is awesome and I am an idiot who is "going to hell" for panning a Star Trek movie, per my hate mail.
Cheers.
Apple should jump on this as a marketing tool but spin it the other way: Buy an iBook, get a scholarship to the third-rate college of your choice!
Sadly, the correct pronunciation of the title is the most interesting part of the movie! Anyway, as you noted, per the trailers and commercials (which presumably SOMEONE involved with the film has approved*), it's so-LAH-riss. And they're right.
Incidentally, my "it's largely crap" review is posted here at filmcritic.com.
And yes, Sun Solaris is pronounced So-LARE-iss, per numerous Sun employees I deal with all the time at my day job.
* Yes, I realize marketing people unrelated to the film produce the trailers for a movie based on early footage (which is why you often see shots in the trailer that aren't in the final cut of the film), but Steven Soderbergh is so anal that I can't imagine him letting something like the incorrect pronunciation of his film get by... hmm, unless it's pronounced "DEE another day"
Riff's solution is the only thing that has ever worked for me to combat severe speaker hum. Simply moving cables around until it goes away is the only way I've gotten around it. My current setup has all the power cables twist-tied together and segregated from the speaker wire. I also notice that if the speaker wire touches something metal -- like the wheels casings on the TV stand, etc., the effect is just as bad. Experiment with the wires before you shell out a lot of money and break your equipment open.
We've been considering vertical space, of course (read the thread) -- but the original point here was how much of the earth's SURFACE was being used, which assumes two dimensions. Cities take up a tiny portion of the footprint, and no one's raising cattle in skyscrapers... yet.
I once tried selling a used copy of Office on eBay (the original CD with the hologram and everything)... got the same note as this guy. Now I wonder if Microsoft really complained or if eBay killed the auction out of fear of any possible litigation.
If you want to try to sneak one by: I highly recommend using a 3-day auction. It usually takes several days for them to troll the site to search for any such scandalous items!
(errata: 1184 square feet per person, not the other way around)
;)
In 2000, Manhattan had 2.3 million residents living on 23 square miles of land. That works out to 270.4 square feet per person -- only 1/4 of the put-everyone-in-Texas rate, and actually not bad considering the average building size in Manhattan has got to be AT LEAST 5 vertical floors...
Of course, this presumes Manhattan is strictly residential and does not take into account the homeless population which only requires 12 sq. feet. per person.
That statistic usually comes from anti-abortion activists in response to the claim that the world needs no more people on it. It is of course true (barely) but extremely misleading.
Texas comprises 262,000 square miles. Putting (circa) 6 billion people in that space gives 1184 square feet per person. Not entirely comfortable considering your house would butt up against someone else's on all sides but certainly livable.
Unfortunately, this is just LIVING space. Where are you going to get food? Growing enough crops for one person to sustainably survive requires at between one and six acres of land -- one acre is over 43,000 square feet! Cattle ranching and other "meat farming" requires far more space, because you have to feed the cattle. Then you need a water source. Power generation. Transportation systems. Buildings in which to work/create things. Modern conveniences.
Pretty soon you're up to 20-30 acres per person required in the US to keep things moving. America comprises 2.3 billion acres... do the math and you'll see we don't even have room in the US for the measly 250,000,000 residents we already have, much less the entire world!
Just a thought... it bugs me when people (and I don't blame you) overgeneralize how much space one person REALLY takes up.
Besides, I like to stretch out.
Anyone ever read BF Skinner's 1973 treatise Walden Two in highschool? The big draw to this synthetic community would be a 4-hour workday, though chances are a lot of that would be plowing and washing dishes in the cafeteria.
Kind of a neat idea but sustainability is iffy. The only surviving Walden Two community I can find via Google is Los Horcones, in Mexico. Other Walden Two communities have failed (understandably) due to lack of human and economic resources.
Here's Walden Two at Amazon.
This story reminded me of a similar tale about a Las Vegas company (of course) trying to set up a launch pad for space tourism in the Nevada desert. Here's one of the earlier pieces on it - http://www.lasvegassun.com/sunbin/stories/text/199 9/sep/10/509288711.html (from 1999) -- though googling for NDS Development Corp. takes you to press releases, et al. all the way back to 1996, at least.
Too bad this idea looks stillborn, though it's not terribly surprising. If anyone can figure out whatever became of this idea, I'd love to hear about it.
chrisnull.com - read my book, Half Mast - filmcritic.com - New Architect
Our review is here: http://filmcritic.com/misc/emporium.nsf/84dbbfa4d7 10144986256c290016f76e/97dd7b74d233c3d288256c1c007 0aeaa?OpenDocument ... a positive review, though my guy at the Telluride film festival thought it was pap.
That baby freaks me out.
chrisnull.com - read my book, Half Mast - filmcritic.com - New Architect
Over the lifetime of the Macarthur Grant,
12 people have won in the category of DANCE, while 11 people have won in the category of PUBLIC HEALTH
Dance, genius, dance!
chrisnull.com - read my book, Half Mast - filmcritic.com - New Architect
chrisnull.com - read my book, Half Mast - filmcritic.com - New Architect
- Christopher Null
chrisnull.com - read my book, Half Mast - filmcritic.com - New Architect
http://www.newarchitectmag.com/documents/na1002o/
Cheers,
Christopher Null
Editor in Chief, New Architect