Recent Posts

7476

Living Room / Re: Paypal: Censors in the name of Profit

« Last post by wraith808 on March 01, 2012, 12:08 PM »

https://cms.paypal.c...ID=marketing_us/fees

TRANSFERRING MONEY
Usually free

Sending money to friends and family is also free for you and the recipient when you fund the transfer with your bank account. You can also use a debit or credit card or make an international transfer for a small fee.

     
Debit/Credit Card Fee        
2.9% of total amount sent plus $0.30 per transaction (the sender decides who pays this fee).
 
Outside the US        
Small fee of 0.5% to 2% (depends on destination) when fully funded with bank account or PayPal balance. 3.4% to 3.9% if paying with a credit or debit card.

7477

Living Room / Re: Software Alliance's FRAND proposes to have Free software outlawed in the EU?

« Last post by wraith808 on March 01, 2012, 09:49 AM »

I thought we were far enough off-topic already

-tomos (March 01, 2012, 09:05 AM)

We're trying to make it into a circle? 

7478

Living Room / Re: Paypal: Censors in the name of Profit

« Last post by wraith808 on March 01, 2012, 09:49 AM »

I think the bottom line is Paypal does not want to be a generic money transfer service like Visa or Western Union. For example, from stories I have heard, if you try to send money "just because" or for charity, and they get wind of it, they will reverse the transaction. They started off as just an easy way to buy stuff on ebay, perhaps that explains things somewhat.

-daddydave (March 01, 2012, 09:27 AM)

That might have been true at some point, but from advertisements and e-mail communications that I have received, this is not correct anymore.  Did you know that personal transactions between individuals just to transfer money costs nothing?  This flies in the face of that explanation.

7479

Living Room / Re: Stiff sentence for sending child to wrong school district

« Last post by wraith808 on March 01, 2012, 09:47 AM »

One thing I don't see is why the system doesn't use these potential crimes as opportunities for creative sentencing- especially when there is a child involved.  Apparently there is low income housing in the district- the child can stay in school if the mother 1) gets gainful employment and 2) lives in a residence in the district, and 3) stays out of trouble.  Get her help in doing so- then if she doesn't, she doesn't put her child above her other activities and this should be addressed.

That would seem to be a sentencing that could bring her out of trouble, and reduce the upheavals in the child's life.

7480

Living Room / Re: Software Alliance's FRAND proposes to have Free software outlawed in the EU?

« Last post by wraith808 on March 01, 2012, 09:03 AM »

(spoilered argument on killing babies/after-birth abortions)

-Renegade (March 01, 2012, 08:52 AM)

Without quoting the text rendered in the referenced text (and having to add the spoiler tag), it would appear that it is an argument of semantics rather than substance, and that after-birth abortion is a euphemism on the same level as collateral damage.

7481

Living Room / Re: Paypal: Censors in the name of Profit

« Last post by wraith808 on March 01, 2012, 07:28 AM »

Tough call this story. I agree with PayPal not wanting to handle this type of business. But I also fault them for not having the kahunas to originally say what the real reasons for that decision were.

At any rate, this is a potential bellwhether that bears watching because of the opportunity it provides for future legal abuses.

-40hz (March 01, 2012, 06:35 AM)

I think this sums it up.  Their original letter that spoke to all erotic content was a heavy handed approach.  If they were targeting things of a specific legality, they should have said it up front.  And then they should apply it across the board, not just to small publishers like SmashWords.  The second thing I have a problem with is the monopoly in the online payment space.  They have actively cultivated said monopoly and because of that, there are few alternatives if you deal in things outside of the realm of their space.

And I can say for sure that this is not just in the space of questionable areas of content, but any areas of erotic content.  This case might have been able to be reduced to such- but their TOS censors a lot more than this, and I've always thought this a bit squirrely for a payment processor.

7482

FARR Plugins and Aliases / Re: New FARR wiki: BookOnAStick

« Last post by wraith808 on February 29, 2012, 08:56 PM »

^ Thanks for the heads up on Zim Desktop Wiki.  Looks like it might be an addition to my toolset! 

7483

Living Room / Re: Stiff sentence for sending child to wrong school district

« Last post by wraith808 on February 29, 2012, 08:53 PM »

We are all of us pieces in many different hidden games.

-40hz (February 29, 2012, 06:36 PM)

*sigh* 

7484

Living Room / Stiff sentence for sending child to wrong school district

« Last post by wraith808 on February 29, 2012, 05:24 PM »

Tried to make the title as neutral as possible...

Homeless mother sends her child to a school district different than the one in which they lived (I know personally several people who did the same thing).  For this crime she was sentenced to 5 years in prison, and has to repay the $6200 she 'stole' sending her child there.

To make ends meet, the woman may also have resorted to selling drugs, which was "considered in her sentencing."

http://www.alternet....ter_school_district/

7485

General Software Discussion / Re: I seek calendar software to suit a specific requirement.

« Last post by wraith808 on February 29, 2012, 11:47 AM »

The second only applies if you are using a commercial calendar product.  I'm happy with the 30%, as I've not been using a commercial product for a while...

7486

General Software Discussion / Re: Superboyac is throwing in the towel: I'm going to transition to Linux

« Last post by wraith808 on February 29, 2012, 09:55 AM »

And maybe a complete transition isn't the right idea.  Perhaps it should be a gentle expansion of my computing habits.  I'll just add it to my ecosystem.  Use it as my second computer, or backup computer, or media server.  Heck, if I can learn how to set up a decent file server easily, that's worth it right there.

-superboyac (February 29, 2012, 09:32 AM)

From my experiences, I'd suggest this.  I started trying a Linux transition years ago using flavors of SUSE.  Though I found it an interesting exercise, and had it pretty much in the setup that you talk about- on my server, in a VM, and on a throwaway machine, I found myself transitioning them out as I came to an interesting conclusion:

Please be aware that Linux is not perfect either.  It does give you the opportunity to get very involved in the details of your OS, but it has it's own pitfalls*.

-Rover (February 28, 2012, 11:02 PM)

And I'd even extend that to his *'d note.  I use Linux more in a server environment also- but it has its ups and downs, which is why I maintain two servers.

Have fun.. and you'll definitely learn a lot!

7487

Living Room / Re: Amazon pulls thousands of e-books... and the SFWA strikes back

« Last post by wraith808 on February 28, 2012, 08:02 PM »

Looks like Amazon management may have just demonstrated an inability to adapt their own business model to the flexible and dynamically changing nature of the value chain in the market that they have de facto been largely responsible for developing from its infancy right up to this point. Maybe the management are prone to serial execution errors - this looks to be almost certainly an error in any event.

-IainB (February 28, 2012, 06:53 PM)

I think they thought they had learned from the consummate masters of this... Apple.  But in comparison, Apple was a lot more deft, and only went after corporate interests, so they looked to be on the side of the angels in comparison.

They're in a critical time to be sure... they have a very short window in which to backpedal and do the requisite mea culpas to reverse in part the effects of their maneuverings.  But do they see that?  Especially with the fact that a lot of their revenue doesn't come from books and there's no solidarity behind this movement?

7488

General Software Discussion / Re: I seek calendar software to suit a specific requirement.

« Last post by wraith808 on February 28, 2012, 07:59 PM »

the following links can be used to purchase the Pro or Ultimate versions

-vuesoft (February 28, 2012, 06:33 PM)

Thank you very much   

-cranioscopical (February 28, 2012, 07:44 PM)

Wow, thanks!  I'll be doing this as soon as I get paid!

7489

Living Room / Amazon pulls thousands of e-books... and the SFWA strikes back

« Last post by wraith808 on February 28, 2012, 02:21 PM »

The thing as an indie publisher, you don't have a lot of leverage in negotiations, as shown in the recent Amazon dispute with the Independent Publishers Group.

Amazon.com removed more than 4,000 e-books from its site this week after it tried and failed to get them more cheaply, a muscle-flexing move that is likely to have significant repercussions for the digital book market.

But the Science Fiction Writer's Association didn't take that lying down.  SFWA is now redirecting Amazon links.

While Amazon has the right to decide with what company it does business, its removal of many of our authors’ books from its ordering system will have an economic impact on them. Our authors depend on people buying their books and a significant percentage of them have books distributed through IPG.  Therefore, SFWA is redirecting Amazon.com links from the organization’s website  to other booksellers because we would prefer to send traffic to stores where the books can actually be purchased.

Since online retailers are at the mercy of traffic (which is one of the reasons online advertising is so messed up), this could be a valid way to hit back at companies that engage in such practices.  Imagine something on the scale of the SOPA blackouts that affected Amazon.  They pay (a pittance to be sure) for those links, because they need/want that traffic.  But how do you get such solidarity in place?  Especially when we're talking short term vs. long term gains, i.e. associate revenue vs. the management of an industry?

7490

Living Room / Re: Paypal: Censors in the name of Profit

« Last post by wraith808 on February 28, 2012, 01:59 PM »

^ Exactly.  Especially in the case of these distributors for a lot of indie authors- all are affected because of any blip, so the distributor is going to err on the side of the many, instead of the few, no matter how they feel about it.

They say the reason is the same as the reason they won't let you use paypal for anything close to porn, including erotic nudity, etc.: because the number of chargebacks is increased on such business.  In reality, especially because of the haphazard enforcement, it appears to be censorship masked by fiduciary responsibility.

7491

Living Room / Paypal: Censors in the name of Profit

« Last post by wraith808 on February 28, 2012, 01:38 PM »

Should censorship in the name of profit and limiting chargebacks by a company with an undisputed monopoly in online payment processing be tolerated?

Summary: PayPal has forced its merchants that publish and distribute e-books to censor erotic literature.

http://www.zdnet.com...-erotic-content/1097

7492

General Software Discussion / Re: I seek calendar software to suit a specific requirement.

« Last post by wraith808 on February 28, 2012, 10:05 AM »

Maybe we can get a DoCo discount... I know I'm interested in the pro version...

7493

General Software Discussion / Re: So, it has come to this. Pick an ecosystem -- Google, Microsoft, or Apple

« Last post by wraith808 on February 28, 2012, 09:51 AM »

*I just pulled that number out of the sky.

-zridling (February 27, 2012, 01:32 PM)

Whew - I was afraid you might have pulled it out of somewhere else!

-mwb1100 (February 27, 2012, 01:50 PM)

It is a bit smelly... 

7494

Living Room / The copyright to birds singing is apparently owned by Rumblefish..

« Last post by wraith808 on February 27, 2012, 11:57 AM »

http://yro.slashdot....as-copyrighted-music

http://www.google.co...c8372461a6&hl=en

How ridiculous is this?  Just to get a bit of ad revenue?  And how many people click anything other than the 'x' in those youtube videos anyway?

7495

Living Room / Re: @mouser, I have a small quibble about your donation system ...

« Last post by wraith808 on February 27, 2012, 08:11 AM »

This is what you are talking about.

-mouser (February 27, 2012, 05:23 AM)

From reading and re-reading his post, I don't think this is what he's talking about.  I think he's talking about a system acknowledgement when a donation is successfully received at all, i.e. if the person donated to does not send a response, the donator would still receive something when the donation was claimed.

7496

General Software Discussion / Re: Help me choose an online backup service

« Last post by wraith808 on February 25, 2012, 10:33 AM »

* sugar sync - an interesting mix.

-iphigenie (February 25, 2012, 06:51 AM)

If you're trying it out, there's something to be aware of that I covered in my trial of sugarsync.  I'm not sure if they fixed it (they never responded to my queries), but, from the review:

During the uninstall, it stated that "no files would be removed".  [Expletive Deleted]!  They removed *everything* from my machine.

Full post of that experience is here.

7497

Living Room / Re: Another internet lowlife

« Last post by wraith808 on February 24, 2012, 12:10 PM »

In the case of "sponsored blog posts", the deception is similar. I'm not really interested in how legal or illegal that might be wherever you or I live. It is unethical to the max and it makes the world significantly worse for all of us. A healthy dose of hate for these guys is entirely warranted.

-tranglos (February 24, 2012, 04:08 AM)

Oh... I wasn't referring to the blog posts.  I was referring to the idea that someone would actually sponsor a blog for posts with limited audience.  If you just started the blog, you don't have an audience yet... so this whole e-mail is actually a scam in all likelihood IMO.

7498

Living Room / Re: OpenDNS updates their censorship policy

« Last post by wraith808 on February 24, 2012, 11:58 AM »

The only thing I don't like about OpenDNS is that though it touts that the community polices the filters, the mods can put a filter in place with no recourse for the community.

But yes, it is a great service, and this is an excellent statement.

7499

Living Room / Re: Another internet lowlife

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2012, 03:15 PM »

Why the !@#$% is it so easy to be evil?

-tranglos (February 23, 2012, 02:00 PM)

I refer you to two quotes:

"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it."

"Power without responsibility — the prerogative of the harlot throughout the ages."

Basically, to restrict the ability to be an asshat on the internet, you'd have to give bigger asshats more power, i.e. SOPA, PIPA, etc.  Once you have a site, you have to be able to deal with these, and recognize them as your own responsibility, IMO.

I hate unsolicited advertising in my email as much as the next guy, but in this situation I think they took the high road

-Innuendo (February 23, 2012, 03:00 PM)

If you believe they're serious, then yes.  It's more than likely a scam.  Just like there aren't Nigerians with a lot of money waiting to hand it out if you give them your bank account, there also aren't invisible investors willing to give you money on your blog for a few posts, especially if you don't have traffic.

7500

Living Room / Re: Today is Your Last Chance to Remove your Search History from Google's New Policy

« Last post by wraith808 on February 23, 2012, 08:32 AM »

I don't fully get this "last day" thing. As I understood it's the last day before Google combine all you data, but I've hadn't before heard that after this you can no longer delete anything.

-Eóin (February 22, 2012, 07:08 PM)

I think the "last day" thing has to do with your search history being integrated with all of the other services- including their social services.  So the bit where it tells you that someone else searched for this.  Or your search results have an effect on other things that you see.  Or other people see what you searched for.