No direct links to the.mp3's to minimze Slashdotting.
Perhaps the two.mp3s could be mirrored somewhere else to save the guy's bandwidth?
Enjoy!
P.S. Not a shill, I just thought mentioning a movie which depicts using computer software to grade feminine beauty was appropriate. And the 'Looker Mix'.mp3 track mentioned above is great!
Now I am unemployed and want to earn money writing software again.
In another thread, it is convincingly argued that software SHOULD cost $0.00!
If nobody is willing to pay even a small token amount to me to access the download link to software I spend time writing that may help them earn money, save money, or is a self-improvement tool (the ONLY 3 reasons people pay hard earned money to buy ANYTHING over and above the necessities of life), why should I bother to write software for the public at large if I won't get any money for it? It's a waste of time for me if I don't get any tangible benefit out of it.
The Internet is FLOODED with software written by people of various skill levels.
How much of that software is good enough to run a business on? I used to co-write proprietary software businesses depended on for their day-to-day operations -- and did it by understanding the problem at hand, thinking up code or adapting other freely available code found on the net, and typing it in.
Linus Torvalds was 'lucky' to give the world a viable alterative to Microsoft's software and became world-famous as a result--along with a (cushy?) job at Transmeta.
I'm just tired of being underpaid and empty handed because nobody wants to pay 'good money' for the services/software of a 'good programmer' like myself.
You need CASH or the charity of others to live within the law in the 'first world' like I do....
Without a source of income or the necessities of life, artists will truly 'starve' like any other human being will.
Why should artists create and share the art they create if they get NO tangible reward out of it?
In the old days, artists had patrons who paid/supported their endeavors -- both parties benefitted from such arrangements.
Nowadays, the patrons willing to pay for art are big 'soulless' corporations who will only back artists who can generate the most money for them -- NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!
Artists not willing to 'sell out' to earn their keep will have a tough time building a large enough audience willing to support them with more than just words of encouragement.
I know I shouldn't feed the troll, but I can't let that one pass. Do you actually know of a single case anywhere of a murder committed by an atheist because the victim believed in god?
...we have devised a formal system that attempts to preserve this idea: if I have obtained an iPod, it is not yours to take away. It's mine. And when this system falls apart, then things are not so bright; people are less willing to work to make their lives better or get nice stuff if the money and stuff is simply going to vanish,...
With P2P and the internet, the monetary value of downloadable content is ESSENTIALLY $0.00!
This person said it best...if you could call it that!
No, I would not bite... (Score:2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 16, @03:08PM (#18042216) >If Apple rolled something like this out to the service, would you bite on it? >What would it take you to move to this over Tivo or MythTV?
I will not pay for any "service" above and beyond my normal ISP fee in order to receive content. I can get all the content I want for free just by having a connection to the internet.
The only way I would subscribe to this service is if it was free.
But seeing how cheap 'big business' is nowadays, they'd try to leave you with the the working modem with the broken indicator light, wouldn't they?
But then I was a real-life 'victim' of such cost-cutting. There was nothing I could do about it at the time--it was with a public utility and it was 'policy' for them to do what they did to fix the problem I had that needed their attention.
"It's theft. Your contract with the network when you get the show is you're going to watch the spots. Otherwise you couldn't get the show on an ad-supported basis. Any time you skip a commercial or watch the button you're actually stealing the programming" -Jamie Kellner, CEO of Turner Broadcasting
Sorry Jamie Kellner...
Nobody able to will watch interrrupt-driven, ad-supported broadcast TV in ANY form in real time anymore as it is a royal waste of time!
And pitchmen like Billy Mays just make advertising as a for-profit communications medium worse!
The way I see it, the TV ad industry at large can do one of 3 things in their struggle to remain relavent and in busines.
1) Give up and go out of business. This should drastically lower the costs of goods and services as their prices are no longer needlessly inflated by wasteful TV advertising anymore.
Get rid of ALL interrupt-driven TV ads and replace the lost time with program content and do one (or both) of the following:
2) Increase in-program product placement. This doesn't work on me as I notice it anyway. Right now it seems to be restricted to 1-2 placements per show that I watch that has it but that can increase.
3) Squash the 'content window' a bit and run text ads ticker tape style across the bottom of the screen. I'll ignore those as well as I have NO interest in what would be sold there.
The only real benefit I get out of TV ads nowadays is finding the catchy background music in them online in full length to listen to in WinAmp.
Slashdot CAPTCHA: epitaph How apt!
P.S. to Slashdot: Please turn off the proxy IP check to speed up the posting process. That's what the CAPTCHA is for to stop automated posting anyway.
Assuming greed as the motivation for every action is as foolish as assuming altruism.
Understood but consider this bleak fact:
If you are employed, but not self-employed, you are being taken advantage of by your employer!
You are creating MORE value for your employer than (s)he pays you in wages for the work you do.
If this was not the case, capitalism couldn't work.
All non-fraudulent non-profit and charitable work is eminently commendable.
It's just that it is 'drowned out' by all for-profit business taking place worldwide...:(
I did computer programming as a unpaid hobby before I did it for a living.
Now I am unemployed and have been unable to get a job doing things I did before I got the computer programming job!
Any suggestions on how I can make money with my computer programming skills WITHOUT working for someone else EXCEPT for any 100% telecommute computer programming jobs that are free to apply for that do not require people with degrees but have paid experience like I do?
I agree with your parent post, Blizzard is in a bind in their effort to protect their IP.
Nobody with money-paying data on a computer would install such intrusive software--why risk it.
If you gotta have your World Of Warcraft fix, do it from a 'throwaway' PC with no valuable data on it. PC's are cheap enought to do something like that. However be prepared to pay BIG BUCKS for system performance if you want the 'throwaway' PC to be an ACTUAL online gamer PC 'rig'....
P.S. OT reply from iamcf13 to torvaun - please reply
Sorry, I didn't reply before the topic was locked...
Sadly, money is required to get ANYTHING 'worthwhile' done in a capitalistic society like the USA.
Look at how the media showers the financially successful and lucky money winners with LOTS of attention and accolades.
Open source has it's place in the world but all it does is 'open doors' for those who contribute to it (if it does at all)--not pay the bills they have to pay RIGHT NOW....:(
The 'black hatters' that spread malware for free are either outright antisocial and/or psychopathic or are otherwise on somebody else's payroll getting paid IN CASH for their 'skills'. If you get a chance, watch the NUMB3RS TV episode 'Backscatter' for a GREAT example of the dangers of for-profit black hat 'hacking' (really cracking).
Now get people and free email services like Hotmail and Gmail to turn off their URL signatures in the bottom of their outgoing emails and you will stamp the spam email menace out in one bold stroke.
Moves the spam back to USENET which is already spammed-out already....:P
If people you don't know want to start a meaningful email conversation with you, they WON'T try to get you to visit the URL of some 'paysite' contained in their email.
Then something has to be done about spammers bouncing their crap 'back' to their victims as 'undeliverable email'. Can something be done about that without too much overhead or breaking the SMTP protocol?
Extend the URL-in-unsolicited-email ban to email addresses and you can quash '419 spam' as well.
Good luck doing something IT-related that people are WILLING to pay you for.
Big business has succeed and turned the Internet into 'online television' where everything is free^Wsubsidized by big business.
This makes it all but impossible for IT-pros to make a living online WITHOUT being in somebody else's employ.
The anti-capitalistic mentality here at Slashdot doesn't make matters any better yet (likely) everyday there is another PR piece^W^Wstory showcasing some for-profit company here.
All this site seems to be good for anymore is occasional INTERESTING, NON-COMMERCIAL news stories and the noteworthy comments that go with them.
I would suggest that if we could develop our humility and humanity to the same level as our technical skills, we would benefit from a more gratifying life.
That won't happen as long as greed, advertising, inflation, and 'consumer culture' exist in this world.
All 4 are chiefly responsible for the extreme wealth disparity in this world.
The people that suffer the most are the 'working poor' / unemployed in 'first world' nations.
Abundance surrounds them but they don't have the opportunity or resources (if at all) at hand to take advantage of them.
Is it no wonder that the USA leads the way at having the most people per capita in jail due to crimes motivated by the 4 factors mentioned above?
Same thing was done when Carl Macek and Harmony Gold brought 3 unrelated anime series to the USA in the mid 1980s and called it ROBOTECH http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotech....
Though Carl got savaged for stitching the 3 animes into 1 'story', I saw them years ago, and liked them, which opened the door to my appreciation of anime that I have today....
A search for Ford should yield Ford Motor Co., as the correct first answer, Wales said.
Why are companies more important than people?
Why not a page about former U.S. President Gerald Ford as the 'correct first answer'?
Or a page about actor Glenn Ford as the 'correct first answer'?
Aren't people more important than companies which are nothing more than legal constructs created by people to facilitate commerce amongst themselves?
Anyway, I belive a 'fair' search engine would not use linking to determine popularity and authority. The 'spamdexing' and 'Googlebombing' of Google proves that is possible.
Why not have the results page return 10-30 links at random from all the available links for a given search term entered by a user?
On top of that, use people (not software algorithms) to prune out all the spam pages submitted to it. This could be done with editors who visit submitted pages before adding them to the search engine (time consuming, can be 'gamed'), or accept ALL links and us a 'thumbs up/down' method to inform the user how useful the link is (also time consuming, can be 'gamed').
The lightbulb made round-the-clock commerce possible worldwide. (Thanks Thomas Edison!)
The integrated circuit made computers smaller, faster, more efficient, and networkable--generating a huge amount of commerce and revenue worldwide. (Thanks Bell Labs!)
Now, less affluent people can't stand to live under these conditions--they are considered only to be a resource to be exploited by 'the corporate machine' who got to be that way thanks to the light bulb and integrated circuit.
Seriously, I know Slashdotters are anti-social and hate talking to people,
They also hate anything where somebody ultimately gets 'gets paid'.
Which is strange when you consider known 'adblogger' Roland Piquepaille always seems to get his stories on Slashdot.
I tried a few times without success in the past--once to get the word out about a pice of software I wrote. Becuase I was trying to sell it (earn my keep), I was shouted down here--yet nobody bats an eye to the endless parade of stories from established computer hardware and software manufacturers.
So why the double standard?
Is Roland exempt from any sort of editorial guidelines?
So now I just ignore all the stuff Roland links to and almost all news stories here 'backed' by any for-profit enterprises as 'product placement'. Some of these 'placements' are genuine news that can have a long lasting effect on people -- I read these and ignore the others.
It then becomes a buyer's market with no pricey auction BS games like with eBay.
Do your research and name your price (range) WITH SHIPPING for anything (legal) that you'd want to buy from such a site. Making your price low enough will only leave merchants willing to deal on YOUR terms -- not theirs (the 'WAL-MART' effect). Something I read online said the U.S Dollar today (2007) is only worth about 7 CENTS in money from the 1930s? Blame it on greed, inflation, and copious unwanted advertising in all its forms and content.
Registered sellers would look up such requests and send the buyers their best prices for stuff via such a site.
Buyers look through the list and pick the best merchant to buy the item from via such a site.
The site that does this can charge a single, modest transaction fee to the sellers for every closed transaction. This fee, subject to increase to allow for inflation and capital investments in the website and infrastructure, is the only thing such a site gets -- they are middlemen bringing buyers and sellers together just like eBay.
If a buyer doesn't complete the sale in a timely fashion -- Ban them!
If a seller fails to deliver the product sold in a timely fashion -- Ban them! (unfortunately their shipping service might be at fault and not them)
Any type of fraud or chicanery commited by buyers or sellers on such a site -- Ban them!
No more feedback BS like on eBay -- it ultimate just wastes both parties time to leave feedback and increase storage costs for such a website. It's obvious such a system can be gamed by shills working for the seller.
But then all Priceline.com has to do is make this all possible (if they can) and they can 'kill' eBay.com
Slashdot Mirror
The movie Looker (1981):
.mp3's to minimze Slashdotting.
.mp3s could be mirrored somewhere else to save the guy's bandwidth?
.mp3 track mentioned above is great!
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0082677/
Great 'cover version' of 'Looker Theme' from Looker:
http://medievalfantasy.com/downloads.html
If Looks Could Kill (Looker Mix)DeVorzon/Schulte
also another Looker 'track' there:
The Final Battle(Donovan Mix) DeVorzon/Schulte
No direct links to the
Perhaps the two
Enjoy!
P.S. Not a shill, I just thought mentioning a movie which depicts using computer software to grade feminine beauty was appropriate. And the 'Looker Mix'
I used to write software for a living.
My employer was my patron.
Now I am unemployed and want to earn money writing software again.
In another thread, it is convincingly argued that software SHOULD cost $0.00!
If nobody is willing to pay even a small token amount to me to access the download link to software I spend time writing that may help them earn money, save money, or is a self-improvement tool (the ONLY 3 reasons people pay hard earned money to buy ANYTHING over and above the necessities of life), why should I bother to write software for the public at large if I won't get any money for it? It's a waste of time for me if I don't get any tangible benefit out of it.
The Internet is FLOODED with software written by people of various skill levels.
How much of that software is good enough to run a business on? I used to co-write proprietary software businesses depended on for their day-to-day operations -- and did it by understanding the problem at hand, thinking up code or adapting other freely available code found on the net, and typing it in.
Linus Torvalds was 'lucky' to give the world a viable alterative to Microsoft's software and became world-famous as a result--along with a (cushy?) job at Transmeta.
I'm just tired of being underpaid and empty handed because nobody wants to pay 'good money' for the services/software of a 'good programmer' like myself.
You need CASH or the charity of others to live within the law in the 'first world' like I do....
Without a source of income or the necessities of life, artists will truly 'starve' like any other human being will.
Why should artists create and share the art they create if they get NO tangible reward out of it?
In the old days, artists had patrons who paid/supported their endeavors -- both parties benefitted from such arrangements.
Nowadays, the patrons willing to pay for art are big 'soulless' corporations who will only back artists who can generate the most money for them -- NOTHING ELSE MATTERS!
Artists not willing to 'sell out' to earn their keep will have a tough time building a large enough audience willing to support them with more than just words of encouragement.
Got $9,900.00 -- $14,000.00 and a bunch of black vinyl records?
Get a turntable here:
http://www.elpj.com/
Even plays warped and broken records! (within reason)
"ELP Laser Turntable: plays vinyl records with CD quality sound. No Needle, No Wear!"
(Not a shill, just a guy who stills remember analog records and thinks this gadget is cool but PRICEY!)
This MIGHT be one such case....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassie_Bernall
With P2P and the internet, the monetary value of downloadable content is ESSENTIALLY $0.00!
This person said it best...if you could call it that!
http://apple.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=222812&
So what will people REALLY pay money for on the net nowadays?
1) Advertising (via Google).
2) Non-downloadable products and services (via eBay, Amazon, for-profit website).
Everything other for-profit endeavor is essentially 'shameless' promotion.
Slashdot CAPTCHA: resigned How apt!
Can you REALLY trust the OS on the PC you encrypt data on?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Backdoor
Backdoor'ed C compilers
If not, all bets are off!
...a cheap(?) way for Google hire REAL SOFTWARE PROGRAMMERS (in the end)--not posers with slick, misleading(?) resumès.
I heard they waded through 1,000,000 resumès to fill 5,000 jobs there in 2006.
Saying tha competition is fierce to work at Google is a GROSS UNDERSTATEMEMT!
I understand and see your point.
:p
But seeing how cheap 'big business' is nowadays, they'd try to leave you with the the working modem with the broken indicator light, wouldn't they?
But then I was a real-life 'victim' of such cost-cutting. There was nothing I could do about it at the time--it was with a public utility and it was 'policy' for them to do what they did to fix the problem I had that needed their attention.
DOWN WITH BEAN COUNTERS!
No one ever came back from the dead to tell us "There is NO life after death" for very obvious reasons :-)
Then what about this guy, then?
You science types agree that matter can't be created or destroyed, only changed into another form, right?
If there is no afterlife, why bother being a 'good person' in this life?
It would make believers the most miserable of creatures.... (verses 12-19)
Slashdot CAPTCHA: dismiss - How apt!
I mean, if your stupid ADSL modem has no power light, don't tell me to reboot my computer...
Suppose just the modem power light bulb ONLY is broken but otherwise the modem still works fine.
You won't know if the modem works or not unless your computer is on and running.
Slashdot CAPTCHA: clinical How apt!
Sorry Jamie Kellner...
Nobody able to will watch interrrupt-driven, ad-supported broadcast TV in ANY form in real time anymore as it is a royal waste of time!
And pitchmen like Billy Mays just make advertising as a for-profit communications medium worse!
The way I see it, the TV ad industry at large can do one of 3 things in their struggle to remain relavent and in busines.
1) Give up and go out of business. This should drastically lower the costs of goods and services as their prices are no longer needlessly inflated by wasteful TV advertising anymore.
Get rid of ALL interrupt-driven TV ads and replace the lost time with program content and do one (or both) of the following:
2) Increase in-program product placement. This doesn't work on me as I notice it anyway. Right now it seems to be restricted to 1-2 placements per show that I watch that has it but that can increase.
3) Squash the 'content window' a bit and run text ads ticker tape style across the bottom of the screen. I'll ignore those as well as I have NO interest in what would be sold there.
The only real benefit I get out of TV ads nowadays is finding the catchy background music in them online in full length to listen to in WinAmp.
Slashdot CAPTCHA: epitaph How apt!
P.S. to Slashdot: Please turn off the proxy IP check to speed up the posting process. That's what the CAPTCHA is for to stop automated posting anyway.
Thank you for your comments.
:(
I heard that a 6% unemployment rate is necessary in the USA for the economy to remain stable.
100% employment wouldn't work in the American capitalistic system...
I don't have anyting more to say about this.
However I haven't given up in my quest for employment.
Thanks again for your response and input.
Bryan
Assuming greed as the motivation for every action is as foolish as assuming altruism.
:(
Understood but consider this bleak fact:
If you are employed, but not self-employed, you are being taken advantage of by your employer!
You are creating MORE value for your employer than (s)he pays you in wages for the work you do.
If this was not the case, capitalism couldn't work.
All non-fraudulent non-profit and charitable work is eminently commendable.
It's just that it is 'drowned out' by all for-profit business taking place worldwide...
I did computer programming as a unpaid hobby before I did it for a living.
Now I am unemployed and have been unable to get a job doing things I did before I got the computer programming job!
Any suggestions on how I can make money with my computer programming skills WITHOUT working for someone else EXCEPT for any 100% telecommute computer programming jobs that are free to apply for that do not require people with degrees but have paid experience like I do?
I agree with your parent post, Blizzard is in a bind in their effort to protect their IP.
:(
Nobody with money-paying data on a computer would install such intrusive software--why risk it.
If you gotta have your World Of Warcraft fix, do it from a 'throwaway' PC with no valuable data on it. PC's are cheap enought to do something like that. However be prepared to pay BIG BUCKS for system performance if you want the 'throwaway' PC to be an ACTUAL online gamer PC 'rig'....
P.S. OT reply from iamcf13 to torvaun - please reply
Re:Remove all financial incentives for malware...
Sorry, I didn't reply before the topic was locked...
Sadly, money is required to get ANYTHING 'worthwhile' done in a capitalistic society like the USA.
Look at how the media showers the financially successful and lucky money winners with LOTS of attention and accolades.
Open source has it's place in the world but all it does is 'open doors' for those who contribute to it (if it does at all)--not pay the bills they have to pay RIGHT NOW....
The 'black hatters' that spread malware for free are either outright antisocial and/or psychopathic or are otherwise on somebody else's payroll getting paid IN CASH for their 'skills'. If you get a chance, watch the NUMB3RS TV episode 'Backscatter' for a GREAT example of the dangers of for-profit black hat 'hacking' (really cracking).
Problem solved.
:P
Now get people and free email services like Hotmail and Gmail to turn off their URL signatures in the bottom of their outgoing emails and you will stamp the spam email menace out in one bold stroke.
Moves the spam back to USENET which is already spammed-out already....
If people you don't know want to start a meaningful email conversation with you, they WON'T try to get you to visit the URL of some 'paysite' contained in their email.
Then something has to be done about spammers bouncing their crap 'back' to their victims as 'undeliverable email'. Can something be done about that without too much overhead or breaking the SMTP protocol?
Extend the URL-in-unsolicited-email ban to email addresses and you can quash '419 spam' as well.
Slashdot CAPTCHA: forging -- how apt!
And malware will go away for good!
:(
Fat chance of that happening at all, huh?
Good luck doing something IT-related that people are WILLING to pay you for.
Big business has succeed and turned the Internet into 'online television' where everything is free^Wsubsidized by big business.
This makes it all but impossible for IT-pros to make a living online WITHOUT being in somebody else's employ.
The anti-capitalistic mentality here at Slashdot doesn't make matters any better yet (likely) everyday there is another PR piece^W^Wstory showcasing some for-profit company here.
All this site seems to be good for anymore is occasional INTERESTING, NON-COMMERCIAL news stories and the noteworthy comments that go with them.
I would suggest that if we could develop our humility and humanity to the same level as our technical skills, we would benefit from a more gratifying life.
That won't happen as long as greed, advertising, inflation, and 'consumer culture' exist in this world.
All 4 are chiefly responsible for the extreme wealth disparity in this world.
The people that suffer the most are the 'working poor' / unemployed in 'first world' nations.
Abundance surrounds them but they don't have the opportunity or resources (if at all) at hand to take advantage of them.
Is it no wonder that the USA leads the way at having the most people per capita in jail due to crimes motivated by the 4 factors mentioned above?
Same thing was done when Carl Macek and Harmony Gold brought 3 unrelated anime series to the USA in the mid 1980s and called it ROBOTECH http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robotech ....
Though Carl got savaged for stitching the 3 animes into 1 'story', I saw them years ago, and liked them, which opened the door to my appreciation of anime that I have today....
A search for Ford should yield Ford Motor Co., as the correct first answer, Wales said.
Why are companies more important than people?
Why not a page about former U.S. President Gerald Ford as the 'correct first answer'?
Or a page about actor Glenn Ford as the 'correct first answer'?
Aren't people more important than companies which are nothing more than legal constructs created by people to facilitate commerce amongst themselves?
Anyway, I belive a 'fair' search engine would not use linking to determine popularity and authority. The 'spamdexing' and 'Googlebombing' of Google proves that is possible.
Why not have the results page return 10-30 links at random from all the available links for a given search term entered by a user?
On top of that, use people (not software algorithms) to prune out all the spam pages submitted to it. This could be done with editors who visit submitted pages before adding them to the search engine (time consuming, can be 'gamed'), or accept ALL links and us a 'thumbs up/down' method to inform the user how useful the link is (also time consuming, can be 'gamed').
The lightbulb made round-the-clock commerce possible worldwide. (Thanks Thomas Edison!)
The integrated circuit made computers smaller, faster, more efficient, and networkable--generating a huge amount of commerce and revenue worldwide. (Thanks Bell Labs!)
Now, less affluent people can't stand to live under these conditions--they are considered only to be a resource to be exploited by 'the corporate machine' who got to be that way thanks to the light bulb and integrated circuit.
Seriously, I know Slashdotters are anti-social and hate talking to people,
They also hate anything where somebody ultimately gets 'gets paid'.
Which is strange when you consider known 'adblogger' Roland Piquepaille always seems to get his stories on Slashdot.
I tried a few times without success in the past--once to get the word out about a pice of software I wrote. Becuase I was trying to sell it (earn my keep), I was shouted down here--yet nobody bats an eye to the endless parade of stories from established computer hardware and software manufacturers.
So why the double standard?
Is Roland exempt from any sort of editorial guidelines?
So now I just ignore all the stuff Roland links to and almost all news stories here 'backed' by any for-profit enterprises as 'product placement'. Some of these 'placements' are genuine news that can have a long lasting effect on people -- I read these and ignore the others.
A hash function based on a mathematical problem doesn't provide enough muddle to use here.
:)
How about the Blum Blum Shub Sequence Generator? (see 6.3.2 in RFC 1750)
It apparantly can be used for cryptographic tasks but has the same factoring 'flaw' and size issues as SDLH. Your thoughts if any about this?
Thanks for your long reply to my earlier post, it was very informative.
'Kill' the shills in one bold stroke.
It then becomes a buyer's market with no pricey auction BS games like with eBay.
Do your research and name your price (range) WITH SHIPPING for anything (legal) that you'd want to buy from such a site. Making your price low enough will only leave merchants willing to deal on YOUR terms -- not theirs (the 'WAL-MART' effect). Something I read online said the U.S Dollar today (2007) is only worth about 7 CENTS in money from the 1930s? Blame it on greed, inflation, and copious unwanted advertising in all its forms and content.
Registered sellers would look up such requests and send the buyers their best prices for stuff via such a site.
Buyers look through the list and pick the best merchant to buy the item from via such a site.
The site that does this can charge a single, modest transaction fee to the sellers for every closed transaction. This fee, subject to increase to allow for inflation and capital investments in the website and infrastructure, is the only thing such a site gets -- they are middlemen bringing buyers and sellers together just like eBay.
If a buyer doesn't complete the sale in a timely fashion -- Ban them!
If a seller fails to deliver the product sold in a timely fashion -- Ban them! (unfortunately their shipping service might be at fault and not them)
Any type of fraud or chicanery commited by buyers or sellers on such a site -- Ban them!
No more feedback BS like on eBay -- it ultimate just wastes both parties time to leave feedback and increase storage costs for such a website. It's obvious such a system can be gamed by shills working for the seller.
But then all Priceline.com has to do is make this all possible (if they can) and they can 'kill' eBay.com