Your whole test is flawed from the start because there is no 0-cent option. You assume that every web page has some value to everyone who visits it. The reality is that most pages on the web have zero value to most people who visit them. That is particularly true of pages visited from a search engine or a link from another web page.
I'm sorry, but politicians are exactly the people we should be holding to absurdly high standards. I get sick and tired of politicians and their political monkeys whining every time they do something that they should have known better than to do, get caught, and get taken to task for it. I get sick and tired of politicians and their political monkeys saying that they are only human.
When you represent the people, when your choices and decisions affect people by the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, or more, then you should not be one of the boys (or girls). You should stand over and above them all - morally, intellectually, ethically, and at every step along the way you should ask yourself if what you are doing is good, right, ethical, intelligent, and so on. If you don't know you should ask, learn, and explore. You should constantly strive to improve your best, not just be your best.
That's a big part of what's wrong with this country (USA) and others, we repeatedly elect good old boys, like-able folk, charismatic fools, and then repeatedly forgive them for their repeated low-life, immoral, indecent, irresponsible failings. The people we elect to represent us should be the best of us, not the best at bs'ing us.
My people are taught that it's a fluid, not a fabric. When particles pop into existance, or exist as matter, in our dimensional space their probability function becomes highly localized and creates a "void" between dimensions and a pressure density gradient at that point in space. This pressure forces the fluid of space to flow into these voids and it's this flow of space fluid that creates and explains the drag known to us as gravity.
We are also taught that if enough matter is brought together in a region of space the flow of space fluid into other dimensions becomes so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape the currents. We call these objects deep blue holes. Technically they are black because no light escapes, but we're smurfs and we think we're cool, so since cool blacks are bluish blacks we call them deep blue holes.
I'm pretty sure I got that explanation right. Brainy lectures on and on about it but it's hard to pay attention when the discussion is about deep blue holes... Smurfette sits next to me... droooooool....
You obviously don't farm in the midwest though. Farmers have to spend as much time in the fields as possible to tend their crops. They can't spend 50% of their summer sitting inside because the national weather service radio says there's a thunderstorm watch covering a few hundred square miles in their area. They can't spend 20% of their summer sitting inside because there's a thunderstorm warning covering a portion of the same. If severe storms are cropping up during a critical week of harvest they can't afford to run inside every time an isolated thunderstorm cell or a tornado comes within 20 miles of them. Those local weathercasters that endlessly interrupt our favorite shows with detailed radar and storm tracks annoy the heck out of us, but they help the farmers that grow our crops to safely stay in the fields long enough to grow and harvest their crops and stay in business.
I struggle to conceive of a situation where it would actually be useful
It will print an image across multiple pages - something that a surprising number of "better" applications won't do. I hadn't ran, much less actually used, paint in years until my 72 year old largely computer illiterate father told me about this. Now I use it several times a month to "blow-up" web graphics and crochet patterns large enough that my mom can see to use them as guides in her hobbies and crafts.
I assume you're making this claim on a per person basis? On probably any other basis most of the modern world is rural and is no-where near close enough to a city to be connected to a sanitary sewer.
Opera browser and NO Silverlight here. That said there is no article to read but an interview to watch and the summary is wrong - it only requires Silverlight if you're using Internet Explorer. It streams video (.wmv) just fine to me.
Perhaps cows possess extra sensory perception akin to esp. They sense that a mysterious device high in orbit is photographing them so they turn to MOOn it... or maybe just look at it, depending on location.
When possible I use long passwords too but admittedly they are much simpler than yours for convenience. Should one of mine be compromised I'm certain at least some parties could learn enough about me to compromise others, but there's little anyone could gain from breaching any of my accounts so I gladly accept the minimal risk. Mine are simple dates and events like IWasBornOnNovember11th1967, WeGotMarriedOnJuly1st1987, OurSonWasBornOnDec3rd1990, ColumbusSailedTheOceanBlueIn1492. If someone learns one they know the format of others but still must chose from myriad dates and events that may or may not be specific to my life.
Your experience is very interesting because mine is the opposite. I make (at least) quarterly backups of my data and have since mid 1993 (CDs since 98, floppy before that). This spring I got bitten by the curisoity bug and started going through all my old backups looking for forgotten and interesting things. Every CD older than two years had at least one unrecovereable read error. Every CD older than five years, except for one, was completely unreadable. Between two and five years the number of read errors grew with many files being lost and several CDs being unusable. The 3-1/2 floppies were all 100% readable.
In that time period I've been through probably a dozen CD burners, both expensive varieties and cheap ones, and I've used at least as many brands of media. All the CDs have been kept stored in dark, dry, clean places. I tried reading the "unreadable" CDs on multiple computers and met some limited success accessing additional data. I didn't try any recovery software.
Fortunately for me I kept most of these backups out of habit and I didn't really care about much of the older ones outside of curiosity.
I installed SP3 Sunday and three problems immediately cropped up that I haven't seen in the years since I first installed XP. First is a stop, BAD_POOL_POINTER 0x00000019 (0x00000020,0x8a231120, 0x8a231158, 0x1a070000). Second is a problem with the HID service not starting. Third is that PaintShop Pro (V7) now cancels all attempt to enter standby mode. Sigh...
I don't know why I, and others, have to keep point this out - Ebay uses a proxy bidding system. If a bidder puts in their maximum bid the very first second an auction listing appears and I put in my snipe bid the last second before the auction ends the other bidder will win if his maximum is more than mine.
No one needs to snipe to win, especially against a sniper. Sniping doesn't guarantee a win. Sniping ALWAYS raises the final price of an auction. Sniping gives only one advantage - it increases the odds that the sniper will pay less than his maximum price.
Why is it that this "advantage" is so wrong when every single bidder on an auction can defeat it simply by bidding their maximum?
You honestly think the rest of the planet would enjoy that auction format? Most people, certainly not all, but most bidding for items on Ebay hope to save a few dollars rather than pay their maximum. That's a big reason people go to auctions instead of directly to markets and retailers.
What do you think everyone's going to do when they put in their bid and it suddenly becomes a 1,2, 5, 10, 15 minute nibble war with all the bidders trying to up it by the minimum amount? They're going to get tired and frustrated and turned off very quickly. Then, after all that frustration, they watch as the item goes over their max, even over the retail price of a brand new item, as a couple of emotional bidders keep bidding the price up. "Why the hell do I even bother," they'll ask and after a few times they WILL quit bothering at all. Now please don't tell me people won't bid that way because tens of thousands do that every day as it is. Please don't tell me people won't walk away from Ebay for that reason because I know plenty that have and I suspect you do too.
Another reason? Would you bother to bid for an item you know you can't possibly win? I've sniped and lost over 50 auctions for items that always go well above my price range. Many, many, bidders wait until the last 5-10 minutes for this reason. Why? Because there was a slim possibility that we might have won - either because another bidder wasn't vigilant, another sniper didn't put in their true max, or someone else might have a slow connection or last second problem. Take away that possibility of a win and we quit trying altogether. We quit trying and the price doesn't go up as high.
Regarding snipers being the minority of buyers - 200 people bid on an auction and one is a sniper, if the sniper wins or comes in second, does the percentage of snipers matter? No, because in those cases the sniper set the final price and it's higher than it would be if he wasn't there. If any, absolutely any, of the bidders willing to pay more had put in their maximum they would GUARANTEE their win - but they were greedy too, they didn't want to pay their maximum. You suggest I'm bad because I researched, decided upon, and then bid my maximum price in then last 15-30 seconds but they're not because they did none of this and bid maybe 1-5 minutes before me? Please, who's kidding who here? If there's anyone causing items not to sell for "fair market value" it's not the snipers its the people not bidding their max who'd win if they did.
Once again, as people repeat over and over, you as a bidder can render me as a sniper completely impotent by doing that one thing - bidding your maximum at any point during the auction. Bid $1 day one and bid you max in the last ten minutes if you need time - you can't possibly lose unless someone outbids you. Don't feed me that line of crap about bidders needing to decide whether they want to change their bids - they've had 3-10 days to decide what they're willing to pay so a series of one minute extensions isn't going to help them.
BTW- The vast majority of auctions are not done that way because the vast majority of auctions are on Ebay. I realize you're talking about auctions outside of Ebay, but they are two very different things. Outside Ebay I can inspect the item, I can eyeball and evaluate the competetion, and I can't turn around and bid on any of another 2-200 identical items.
Trickery? No, everyone else doesn't see it as "what the market will bear." Greedy sellers who think they always deserve to get the absolute maximum price that some sucker might possibly offer see it as that. Most intelligent people realize that while everyone has a maximum price they'll pay NO-ONE wants to pay that much if they don't have to.
Help myself? Hell yes I snipe to to help myself. Apparently you're not only greedy but you're not very bright. I'll repeat -just because a person is willing to pay X dollars for an item doesn't mean they should want or have to. That's why people shop around. That's why people bargain. That's why people go to Ebay to begin with. Do you go through your life paying the absolute maximum you'd be willing to pay for everything or do you try and save a little money? Do you own a car? Did you go in and offer the dealer the maximum you'd pay? Did you automatically write a check for the car because the sticker price, or his fist offer, was within the range you were willing to spend? Do you own a home? When you saw it was for sale did you automatically offer the maximum you'd pay? Did you automatically offer the owner what he was asking just because it was in the range you'd pay for that house? Or, in those cases, did you wheel and deal, bargain, offer a counter offer, and so on? Yeah, that's what I thought...
You think snipers are bad? You're worse. People like you try and take advantage of the truly ignorant, those who don't research, who get emotionally involved, who act before they think - all in the name of "fairness." You're no less greedy, no less deceiptfull, no more fair, than I am. You're just trying to turn things from being in my favor to being in yours.
Finally, if you had anything behind your argument beyond greed you'd have stopped and realized that your very own argument works against you. Anyone and everyone, yes absolutely anyone and everyone, who bids against a sniper will win against that sniper if they had bid more than the sniper did. They could bid anytime between the first second the auction appears to a split second after the sniper bids. If I'm not there, if I'm not sniping, then the auction goes for what it was at before I showed up. All those people who were nibbling bit by bit or not bidding at all... they could've bid it like you're suggesting... but they didn't and wouldn't.
Sellers, even the fools like you, don't deserve people like me but they damn well benefit from people like me. No, people like you deserve groups like the RIAA - those who are always trying to extract the most from everyone, feel cheated if they get a penny less than some rediculously inflated ideal, then try and make it mandatory.
This is one case where you, as an Ebay member, can make a difference. Ebay is very good at pulling those auctions where the sellers are trying to cheat Ebay out of fees. Each and every time I see such an auction I report it, and I even view the seller's full list of auctions and report any of those too. They're cancelled pretty quickly. If the seller keeps relisting like that then Ebay will get rid of them.
You shouldn't be rediculous about it though. It's usually pretty obvious when a seller is trying to cheat Ebay and when they're just charging enough to be sure they cover their material/shipping/handling costs.
Wrong, wrong, wrong and a large number of sellers will tell you the same. I'll speak from my perspective though. I snipe at every auction I bid on. I decide what my maximum is and I bid it at the last minute. I win about half the time and I lose about half the time. In EVERY single case however the seller got more, sometimes far more, for their item than they would if I hadn't bid. If I couldn't snipe and thus were forced to bid against people who get carried away and overbid in a bidding war then I wouldn't bother to bid at all - EVER. I'm far from the only one either. That means huge numbers of auctions would end at fractions of the prices they do now.
Would that be offset by the higher prices morons in bidding wars bring? Maybe in general or maybe just for some sellers or some items. It most certainly would irritate a huge percentage of Ebay bidders who could no longer get a deal on an item because there'd always be one moron who got caught up and kept nibbling up to overbid the item. Watch buyers run from Ebay then because most come for deals. Watch sellers run from Ebay then too. Why? Aside from the scam artists (who are unaffected by format) the people who bid, win, and fail to pay are almost exclusively those who get caught up in bidding wars and overbid. Snipers rarely win and run because they know exactly what they're willing to pay and bid that at the last second.
I'm not totally against your idea though. I think Ebay should offer this auction format as a no additional cost option to sellers. Let the market decide that way. I'd put my money on a temporary increase in revenues due to buyers getting surprised by the change in format followed by a huge drop in revenues as buyers learn to avoid said auctions (or Ebay altogether) in droves.
I've never visited Facebook so I have to ask, how do they control what photo is on your profile? Suppose I sign up and put Brad Pitt's photo up, are they manually checking photos to be sure they don't accidentally use Pitt's? Suppose I sign up and put my brother's photo up as mine, or my sister's, or a friend's, or another? How could anyone, much less any algorithm, at Facebook verify that the photo they are using is one they have a right to?
Also many rural areas aren't served by cable. They're very prone to outages due to downed lines (cable) or rain (satellite) too. Not fun if you're in the middle of tornado alley and all satellite and cable goes down for the community because of wind or rain from the approaching line of thunderstorms.
Digital stations don't yet have the coverage of their analog cousins either - same station but different signal and different coverage area. That's common through much of this, mostly rural, country.
Having read the article I have to ask, how do you prove that you don't get satellite or cable? I can claim, state, attest, etc. that I don't get it, but how do I prove it? I hope that's an error in the article.
On another note, this is all is short sighted. We have analog tvs and we subscribe to satellite. Satellite goes out during heavy rain and storms - meaning we lose all the severe weather alerts and radar. The local station's analog broadcasts reach 30-40 miles beyond us, but only half the digital broadcasts reach us (our neighbors) at all. The digital converters won't cut the mustard for us and especially for those beyond us, because the signal isn't there.
Those shatter cones are interesting. Are there any amateur geologists out there who can tell me if there are other geological structures that closely resemble those? I'm seen many fragments that look just like that in Kentucky, near the town of Hawesville.
Have you posted on the Ebay Want it Now boards? They don't get a lot of action, but you never know when the right person might look, see you post, and say "I have one of those."
Do you have any competitors, or are there any companies offering reasonably similar services? Visit their support or forums or Google for complaints that they don't support particular browsers. Also install the various browsers and visit their site(s). Just like features, the more they support the more you probably should. Likewise, if they have big holes in browser support it means something... it could be that you could fill a void for potential clients...
I've had this happen to me a few times although I'm not certain shill bidding was involved. In every case I wrote back to the seller, informed them that I wasn't interested in a second chance offer because too often shill bidding is involved, and said that I'd probably rebid if the item was put back up. In almost every case the seller got a little too offended and defensive.
I usually did rebid when the items were relisted, although I watched the bidder list like a hawk, and absolutely bid at the last moment.
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Your whole test is flawed from the start because there is no 0-cent option. You assume that every web page has some value to everyone who visits it. The reality is that most pages on the web have zero value to most people who visit them. That is particularly true of pages visited from a search engine or a link from another web page.
I'm sorry, but politicians are exactly the people we should be holding to absurdly high standards. I get sick and tired of politicians and their political monkeys whining every time they do something that they should have known better than to do, get caught, and get taken to task for it. I get sick and tired of politicians and their political monkeys saying that they are only human. When you represent the people, when your choices and decisions affect people by the tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, or more, then you should not be one of the boys (or girls). You should stand over and above them all - morally, intellectually, ethically, and at every step along the way you should ask yourself if what you are doing is good, right, ethical, intelligent, and so on. If you don't know you should ask, learn, and explore. You should constantly strive to improve your best, not just be your best. That's a big part of what's wrong with this country (USA) and others, we repeatedly elect good old boys, like-able folk, charismatic fools, and then repeatedly forgive them for their repeated low-life, immoral, indecent, irresponsible failings. The people we elect to represent us should be the best of us, not the best at bs'ing us.
Press cmd+r, type taco. Get goatse on some versions, a nerd on female hormones on another.
My people are taught that it's a fluid, not a fabric. When particles pop into existance, or exist as matter, in our dimensional space their probability function becomes highly localized and creates a "void" between dimensions and a pressure density gradient at that point in space. This pressure forces the fluid of space to flow into these voids and it's this flow of space fluid that creates and explains the drag known to us as gravity.
We are also taught that if enough matter is brought together in a region of space the flow of space fluid into other dimensions becomes so strong that nothing, not even light, can escape the currents. We call these objects deep blue holes. Technically they are black because no light escapes, but we're smurfs and we think we're cool, so since cool blacks are bluish blacks we call them deep blue holes.
I'm pretty sure I got that explanation right. Brainy lectures on and on about it but it's hard to pay attention when the discussion is about deep blue holes... Smurfette sits next to me... droooooool....
You obviously don't farm in the midwest though. Farmers have to spend as much time in the fields as possible to tend their crops. They can't spend 50% of their summer sitting inside because the national weather service radio says there's a thunderstorm watch covering a few hundred square miles in their area. They can't spend 20% of their summer sitting inside because there's a thunderstorm warning covering a portion of the same. If severe storms are cropping up during a critical week of harvest they can't afford to run inside every time an isolated thunderstorm cell or a tornado comes within 20 miles of them. Those local weathercasters that endlessly interrupt our favorite shows with detailed radar and storm tracks annoy the heck out of us, but they help the farmers that grow our crops to safely stay in the fields long enough to grow and harvest their crops and stay in business.
I struggle to conceive of a situation where it would actually be useful
It will print an image across multiple pages - something that a surprising number of "better" applications won't do. I hadn't ran, much less actually used, paint in years until my 72 year old largely computer illiterate father told me about this. Now I use it several times a month to "blow-up" web graphics and crochet patterns large enough that my mom can see to use them as guides in her hobbies and crafts.
I assume you're making this claim on a per person basis? On probably any other basis most of the modern world is rural and is no-where near close enough to a city to be connected to a sanitary sewer.
Opera browser and NO Silverlight here. That said there is no article to read but an interview to watch and the summary is wrong - it only requires Silverlight if you're using Internet Explorer. It streams video (.wmv) just fine to me.
Perhaps cows possess extra sensory perception akin to esp. They sense that a mysterious device high in orbit is photographing them so they turn to MOOn it... or maybe just look at it, depending on location.
When possible I use long passwords too but admittedly they are much simpler than yours for convenience. Should one of mine be compromised I'm certain at least some parties could learn enough about me to compromise others, but there's little anyone could gain from breaching any of my accounts so I gladly accept the minimal risk. Mine are simple dates and events like IWasBornOnNovember11th1967, WeGotMarriedOnJuly1st1987, OurSonWasBornOnDec3rd1990, ColumbusSailedTheOceanBlueIn1492. If someone learns one they know the format of others but still must chose from myriad dates and events that may or may not be specific to my life.
Your experience is very interesting because mine is the opposite. I make (at least) quarterly backups of my data and have since mid 1993 (CDs since 98, floppy before that). This spring I got bitten by the curisoity bug and started going through all my old backups looking for forgotten and interesting things. Every CD older than two years had at least one unrecovereable read error. Every CD older than five years, except for one, was completely unreadable. Between two and five years the number of read errors grew with many files being lost and several CDs being unusable. The 3-1/2 floppies were all 100% readable.
In that time period I've been through probably a dozen CD burners, both expensive varieties and cheap ones, and I've used at least as many brands of media. All the CDs have been kept stored in dark, dry, clean places. I tried reading the "unreadable" CDs on multiple computers and met some limited success accessing additional data. I didn't try any recovery software.
Fortunately for me I kept most of these backups out of habit and I didn't really care about much of the older ones outside of curiosity.
I installed SP3 Sunday and three problems immediately cropped up that I haven't seen in the years since I first installed XP. First is a stop, BAD_POOL_POINTER 0x00000019 (0x00000020,0x8a231120, 0x8a231158, 0x1a070000). Second is a problem with the HID service not starting. Third is that PaintShop Pro (V7) now cancels all attempt to enter standby mode. Sigh...
I don't know why I, and others, have to keep point this out - Ebay uses a proxy bidding system. If a bidder puts in their maximum bid the very first second an auction listing appears and I put in my snipe bid the last second before the auction ends the other bidder will win if his maximum is more than mine.
No one needs to snipe to win, especially against a sniper.
Sniping doesn't guarantee a win.
Sniping ALWAYS raises the final price of an auction.
Sniping gives only one advantage - it increases the odds that the sniper will pay less than his maximum price.
Why is it that this "advantage" is so wrong when every single bidder on an auction can defeat it simply by bidding their maximum?
You honestly think the rest of the planet would enjoy that auction format? Most people, certainly not all, but most bidding for items on Ebay hope to save a few dollars rather than pay their maximum. That's a big reason people go to auctions instead of directly to markets and retailers.
What do you think everyone's going to do when they put in their bid and it suddenly becomes a 1,2, 5, 10, 15 minute nibble war with all the bidders trying to up it by the minimum amount? They're going to get tired and frustrated and turned off very quickly. Then, after all that frustration, they watch as the item goes over their max, even over the retail price of a brand new item, as a couple of emotional bidders keep bidding the price up. "Why the hell do I even bother," they'll ask and after a few times they WILL quit bothering at all. Now please don't tell me people won't bid that way because tens of thousands do that every day as it is. Please don't tell me people won't walk away from Ebay for that reason because I know plenty that have and I suspect you do too.
Another reason? Would you bother to bid for an item you know you can't possibly win? I've sniped and lost over 50 auctions for items that always go well above my price range. Many, many, bidders wait until the last 5-10 minutes for this reason. Why? Because there was a slim possibility that we might have won - either because another bidder wasn't vigilant, another sniper didn't put in their true max, or someone else might have a slow connection or last second problem. Take away that possibility of a win and we quit trying altogether. We quit trying and the price doesn't go up as high.
Regarding snipers being the minority of buyers - 200 people bid on an auction and one is a sniper, if the sniper wins or comes in second, does the percentage of snipers matter? No, because in those cases the sniper set the final price and it's higher than it would be if he wasn't there. If any, absolutely any, of the bidders willing to pay more had put in their maximum they would GUARANTEE their win - but they were greedy too, they didn't want to pay their maximum. You suggest I'm bad because I researched, decided upon, and then bid my maximum price in then last 15-30 seconds but they're not because they did none of this and bid maybe 1-5 minutes before me? Please, who's kidding who here? If there's anyone causing items not to sell for "fair market value" it's not the snipers its the people not bidding their max who'd win if they did.
Once again, as people repeat over and over, you as a bidder can render me as a sniper completely impotent by doing that one thing - bidding your maximum at any point during the auction. Bid $1 day one and bid you max in the last ten minutes if you need time - you can't possibly lose unless someone outbids you. Don't feed me that line of crap about bidders needing to decide whether they want to change their bids - they've had 3-10 days to decide what they're willing to pay so a series of one minute extensions isn't going to help them.
BTW- The vast majority of auctions are not done that way because the vast majority of auctions are on Ebay. I realize you're talking about auctions outside of Ebay, but they are two very different things. Outside Ebay I can inspect the item, I can eyeball and evaluate the competetion, and I can't turn around and bid on any of another 2-200 identical items.
Trickery? No, everyone else doesn't see it as "what the market will bear." Greedy sellers who think they always deserve to get the absolute maximum price that some sucker might possibly offer see it as that. Most intelligent people realize that while everyone has a maximum price they'll pay NO-ONE wants to pay that much if they don't have to.
Help myself? Hell yes I snipe to to help myself. Apparently you're not only greedy but you're not very bright. I'll repeat -just because a person is willing to pay X dollars for an item doesn't mean they should want or have to. That's why people shop around. That's why people bargain. That's why people go to Ebay to begin with. Do you go through your life paying the absolute maximum you'd be willing to pay for everything or do you try and save a little money? Do you own a car? Did you go in and offer the dealer the maximum you'd pay? Did you automatically write a check for the car because the sticker price, or his fist offer, was within the range you were willing to spend? Do you own a home? When you saw it was for sale did you automatically offer the maximum you'd pay? Did you automatically offer the owner what he was asking just because it was in the range you'd pay for that house? Or, in those cases, did you wheel and deal, bargain, offer a counter offer, and so on? Yeah, that's what I thought...
You think snipers are bad? You're worse. People like you try and take advantage of the truly ignorant, those who don't research, who get emotionally involved, who act before they think - all in the name of "fairness." You're no less greedy, no less deceiptfull, no more fair, than I am. You're just trying to turn things from being in my favor to being in yours.
Finally, if you had anything behind your argument beyond greed you'd have stopped and realized that your very own argument works against you. Anyone and everyone, yes absolutely anyone and everyone, who bids against a sniper will win against that sniper if they had bid more than the sniper did. They could bid anytime between the first second the auction appears to a split second after the sniper bids. If I'm not there, if I'm not sniping, then the auction goes for what it was at before I showed up. All those people who were nibbling bit by bit or not bidding at all... they could've bid it like you're suggesting... but they didn't and wouldn't.
Sellers, even the fools like you, don't deserve people like me but they damn well benefit from people like me. No, people like you deserve groups like the RIAA - those who are always trying to extract the most from everyone, feel cheated if they get a penny less than some rediculously inflated ideal, then try and make it mandatory.
This is one case where you, as an Ebay member, can make a difference. Ebay is very good at pulling those auctions where the sellers are trying to cheat Ebay out of fees. Each and every time I see such an auction I report it, and I even view the seller's full list of auctions and report any of those too. They're cancelled pretty quickly. If the seller keeps relisting like that then Ebay will get rid of them.
You shouldn't be rediculous about it though. It's usually pretty obvious when a seller is trying to cheat Ebay and when they're just charging enough to be sure they cover their material/shipping/handling costs.
Wrong, wrong, wrong and a large number of sellers will tell you the same. I'll speak from my perspective though. I snipe at every auction I bid on. I decide what my maximum is and I bid it at the last minute. I win about half the time and I lose about half the time. In EVERY single case however the seller got more, sometimes far more, for their item than they would if I hadn't bid. If I couldn't snipe and thus were forced to bid against people who get carried away and overbid in a bidding war then I wouldn't bother to bid at all - EVER. I'm far from the only one either. That means huge numbers of auctions would end at fractions of the prices they do now.
Would that be offset by the higher prices morons in bidding wars bring? Maybe in general or maybe just for some sellers or some items. It most certainly would irritate a huge percentage of Ebay bidders who could no longer get a deal on an item because there'd always be one moron who got caught up and kept nibbling up to overbid the item. Watch buyers run from Ebay then because most come for deals. Watch sellers run from Ebay then too. Why? Aside from the scam artists (who are unaffected by format) the people who bid, win, and fail to pay are almost exclusively those who get caught up in bidding wars and overbid. Snipers rarely win and run because they know exactly what they're willing to pay and bid that at the last second.
I'm not totally against your idea though. I think Ebay should offer this auction format as a no additional cost option to sellers. Let the market decide that way. I'd put my money on a temporary increase in revenues due to buyers getting surprised by the change in format followed by a huge drop in revenues as buyers learn to avoid said auctions (or Ebay altogether) in droves.
Or you could read about it on the Security Vunerability Research and Defense blog at http://blogs.technet.com/swi/
I've never visited Facebook so I have to ask, how do they control what photo is on your profile? Suppose I sign up and put Brad Pitt's photo up, are they manually checking photos to be sure they don't accidentally use Pitt's? Suppose I sign up and put my brother's photo up as mine, or my sister's, or a friend's, or another? How could anyone, much less any algorithm, at Facebook verify that the photo they are using is one they have a right to?
Also many rural areas aren't served by cable. They're very prone to outages due to downed lines (cable) or rain (satellite) too. Not fun if you're in the middle of tornado alley and all satellite and cable goes down for the community because of wind or rain from the approaching line of thunderstorms.
Digital stations don't yet have the coverage of their analog cousins either - same station but different signal and different coverage area. That's common through much of this, mostly rural, country.
Having read the article I have to ask, how do you prove that you don't get satellite or cable? I can claim, state, attest, etc. that I don't get it, but how do I prove it? I hope that's an error in the article.
On another note, this is all is short sighted. We have analog tvs and we subscribe to satellite. Satellite goes out during heavy rain and storms - meaning we lose all the severe weather alerts and radar. The local station's analog broadcasts reach 30-40 miles beyond us, but only half the digital broadcasts reach us (our neighbors) at all. The digital converters won't cut the mustard for us and especially for those beyond us, because the signal isn't there.
Those shatter cones are interesting. Are there any amateur geologists out there who can tell me if there are other geological structures that closely resemble those? I'm seen many fragments that look just like that in Kentucky, near the town of Hawesville.
Have you posted on the Ebay Want it Now boards? They don't get a lot of action, but you never know when the right person might look, see you post, and say "I have one of those."
Do you have any competitors, or are there any companies offering reasonably similar services? Visit their support or forums or Google for complaints that they don't support particular browsers. Also install the various browsers and visit their site(s). Just like features, the more they support the more you probably should. Likewise, if they have big holes in browser support it means something... it could be that you could fill a void for potential clients...
I've had this happen to me a few times although I'm not certain shill bidding was involved. In every case I wrote back to the seller, informed them that I wasn't interested in a second chance offer because too often shill bidding is involved, and said that I'd probably rebid if the item was put back up. In almost every case the seller got a little too offended and defensive.
I usually did rebid when the items were relisted, although I watched the bidder list like a hawk, and absolutely bid at the last moment.