Brad Ideas - Random Ideas - Comments

sla batterys

Anonymous — Fri, 02 May 2008 23:01:31 -0700

only come in increments of 1.5 volts how ever the voulume to engey racial of sla is prety high and u can release it pretty quick take7.2 ah 12 volt and u can pull a 30 amp short a 200 ah 12 vilt sla will start a car and that is what u will find in a wheelchair

so i dont think souces of large amounts of power are a concern

or maybe a cripple could never be a terrorist

how ever it is possable to make a battery out of a bottle of diet rite and with out saying how it could be used as a bomb just by containing an internal short circuit and containing the resulting sodium build up from the high salt content but u could still take a bottle of diet rite on board just not a bottle of deit rite configured as a bomb

the amount of electrical power from a diet rite battery would be less than a aa battery

air port security is a tricky bussness ask why you cant have toe nail clippers but can have a pistol in your checked loggage

I want one

Investment Books — Tue, 08 Apr 2008 16:41:00 -0700

Cool idea, Brad. I was thinking that you could just use something like one of those ocr pens that reads as you swipe text across it and you could swipe the titles, but your way is way better, and doable to some degree. If people can crack Captchas right and left, they should be able to crack a bookshelf.

Peace,

Joshua Gulick

projectors in the back

JHessick — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 20:57:42 -0700

I used to work for a distance learning program, that would connect through the internet to other DE sites. The setup we ran was two projectors in the front (one showing the presentation, one showing whatever DE site was currently active) and then two in the back (same thing). It did allow the speaker to both look at the audience while still looking at the slides and look at the camera while looking at the image from the other DE sites. Otherwise the presenters have a tendency to turn around and look at the de site on the front screen, which gave the camera at the site the back of their head.

Cats, Bells and Predation

Doc — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 20:25:24 -0700

As a person who has worked as a wildlife biologist and is currently a veterinarian I think I may bring a unique perspective to the issue. First off, bells do not make cats crazy, although their owners may drive them crazy. Having grown up with cats that were belled whenever they went outside and lived to the ripe old age of 20 years I can testify that bells do not harm cats. It is true that many cats can learn to walk without making much noise with the bell but it is still the best way to protect birds that I know of. Secondly, lets stop trying to humanize cats. Cats are predators and like other predators have been killing for thousands of years to remain alive. They also happen to make great pets. Cats were initially domesticated to control rodent populations so lets not damn the cat for being itself. As to the accusation that cats kill strictly for fun I would respond that 1) almost all predators at one time or another have been accused of the same, 2) we are judging cats by our human values and 3) it is not fun but a hard wired hunting instinct that poeple are observing.

If you can keep your cats inside that is great. They are safer and less likely to kill birds and rodents. Many cats, especially older cats , can be difficult to keep inside. If your cat goes outside have them microchiped at you veterinarians office and place a collar with an identification tag and bell on them.

So what

brad — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 11:26:12 -0800

Against this type of buyer, negative feedback is not relevant. They will just get neg feedback and get a new buying account. You don't get to pick your buyer based on feedback.

Neg feedback on a buyer only hurts them when they become a seller, and if I'm a dishonest buyer, or seller, I will buy with a different account than I sell.

FEEDBACK

Anonymous — Sat, 16 Feb 2008 10:21:48 -0800

What about when a buyer recieves an item says its not working and sends back the item missing parts then wants 100% payed back. You think this is fair NOT. This is why sellers hold back on there feedback. I just recieved a clock back that was missing parts on the inside and half the case screws were missing buyer said his jeweler took it apart and cant be fixed. Well now i have a clock oh buy the way it still runs and keeps time but is missing parts off the alarm part of it and case screws. I expect him to neg me even thow i paid him back the auction closing price but not the shipping.

Some speculation...

brad — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 09:57:49 -0800

Concert promoters and venues aren’t idiots. They know how much they are leaving on the table to the scalpers. And they could stop it. But they don’t. The question is why?

Are they just stupid, or rather hidebound and monopolistic, and too resistant to the change computers could bring them?
Do they secretly like what the scalpers do — assuring sellouts while letting true fans wait in line for cheap tix — enough to turn a blind eye?
As one person suggested, is there a secret conspiracy? Ie. do they take kickbacks from the scalpers or get a portion of their gross, allowing price differentiation without taking the blame for it?

As a regular concerts

alan — Tue, 12 Feb 2008 08:26:36 -0800

As a regular concerts attender I find that the selling tickets policy is a real mess and people like me share the same opinion. There shouldn't be allowed buying a large number of tickets by the same person, we all know what happens next and it's very frustrating. Personally I think buying online tickets is much more convenient.

Whiney Sellers? Whiney buyers!

Mike S. — Fri, 08 Feb 2008 18:06:25 -0800

The person above who commented:

"I get so tired of the whine sellers. I have just made my THIRD sale to a seller who requested that I, as a buyer, post feedback first. Just to test the above assertion that sellers want assurance that buyers are "HAPPY", I have sent them emails saying "THANK YOU! YES! GREAT DEAL! THANKS FOR LISTING!". For the third time now, I have received an email back from these unscrupulous sellers, thanking me for my note, but NONE have given me any feedback. This clearly demonstrates that most people who withhold feedback do so for RETALIATION purposes. They simply can't trust the community. I won't give them any more excuses."

has no clue.

I've bought 5000 items over eBay and sold 50,000. The buyer holds most of the power:

a. feedback (over-emphasized)
and
b. chargeback

Any seller who does not perform gets charged back. Yes, it is right for the seller to leave feedback after the buyer leaves feedback. I always leave feedback first as a buyer because it is the buyer that closes the transaction by saying "it worked, I won't charge back."

The seller has some powers:
a. refund
b. feedback
c. Block

But other than those three, he is powerless after being paid.

Mike

I have another post on it, but really, what was the value?

brad — Tue, 05 Feb 2008 08:45:58 -0800

What was the point of feedback to buyers? You usually don't get to do anything with buyer feedback. A buyer with poor feedback can win your auction in the last second. Sellers could get hardlined about voiding wins by low feedback buyers, but then buyers would just discard and recreate accounts regularly if this became a problem.

No, the only real value in giving neg feedback to a buyer was to punish them when they want to _sell_, and largely in particular it was to have the threat of revenge feedback to keep the buyer from doing a negative. And that was not a productive system at all. So I'm glad it's gone.

Anybody else notice the

Mike — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 23:37:35 -0800

Anybody else notice the trend of BUYERS NOT READING THE DESCRIPTION for the item they are buying? I'm a powerseller and have noticed a huge increase over the last year or so. They seem to be reading the titles, clicking buy, and then complain when they get the item that it's not what they expected... when, if they would have read the first sentence in the description they would know right away exactly what they are getting.

Morons.

Then there's the buyers who CAN'T EVEN READ OR SPEAK ENGLISH who are buying and then complaining because they didn't understand the terms of the sale.

Or the Buyers who Buy a whole bunch of items from you.... then don't pay, and when you file a NPB against them they have some story about how someone got on their account and bought stuff and blah blah blah.....

A FOOL AND HIS MONEY WILL SOON BE PARTED, READ THE DESCRIPTION, DON'T BE RETARDED

And now ebay is making it so buyers can ONLY RECEIVE POSITIVE FEEDBACK!!!!

WTF is that!?!?!

So when Joe Buyer comes and takes his sweet time paying for an item, then once he gets it and leaves me a negative because he didn't read the description and thinks he should have gotten more than what he paid for, and used EXTREME vulgarity in his emails towards me... he can leave me a neg and I can't do anything to show sellers what an ass he is?!?

But hey, atleast ebay is lowering their fees by a nickle and giving us free gallery... right?

negative feedback

Anonymous — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 04:03:32 -0800

I fully agree i just got two negatives from idiots that failed to pay after i gave them 58 days to do so, they both promised to pay me several different ways on several different occasions yet when after almost two moths of waiting i posted non paying bidder reports to ebay i got negative feedback off them both in which one accuses me of banking his postal order and the other suddenly decided that my description was false. in the first case i never got any payment to bank and in the second he never got the item so how does he know the listing is false he didn't pay so i didn't post it so he has nothing to go on, the problem is even though i've been slandered in feedback by both buyers ebay refuses to remove their comments without a court order!!!, both buyers are now threatening me in e mails with court action for not sending the items out yet both buyers have failed to pay, now ebay sends me a stroppy email saying that my sellerrating is too low because i got two negative together, my 500+ positives count for nothing.
ebays non paying bidder process is a joke i think its best described as a toothless gaurd dog makes a lot of noise but has no effect on the non paying bidder at all. my rant anyway

While it's absolutely true

Anonymous — Tue, 22 Jan 2008 22:04:46 -0800

While it's absolutely true that the people who run airlines know that all sorts of problems can happen, it's even more true that they don't care enough about their paying customers to waste good money on the non-value-added resources necessary to handle the problems. They know that airline passengers have no real alternative to flying, and that their competitors care as little about their customers as they do. So their solution for dealing with the inevitable problems is to let passengers stand in line for hours at optimally-lean-staffed counters. The Security Police can deal appropriately with any passenger who displays any inappropriate lack of respectful docility when, after waiting for hours, the optimally-lean-staffed counter clerk informs him or her that the next available flight is in three days, and until then you're free to stay in a hotel and buy meals at your own expense since the airline has no liability or responsiblity for the delay-- NEXT! Airline executives know that no matter how furious a passenger may become as a result of such shabby treatment, that passenger will almost certainly be back in line in the near future to wait with resigned docility for another round.

Airlines exist exclusively to provide their shareholders with an attractive return on their investment, and particularly to provide their top executives with millions of dollars of well-deserved annual bonuses. That is best accomplished by running a lean, efficient operation in which every airplane is fully packed on every flight. Any margin for the inevitable glitches is best fully borne by the passengers, since any money wasted on unused capacity for handling surge or error conditions is money stolen from the pockets of executives and shareholders.

This link is more to the

Carlos Alloatti — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 12:07:01 -0800

This link is more to the point, as this standard seems to be in use in Japan:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/QR_Code

I appreciate all your

gordman — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 05:02:57 -0800

I appreciate all your article, they are all very practical and quite useful for many of us. Rethinking the electrical system might be one of those ideas that can generate a new start. As the matter of fact this should be the main line for our protection and for the environmental protection. I don't see this happening any time soon but the least the we can do is to act smart when it comes to energy consumption. Household appliances have a major importance here, people need to understand how thing go. I just bought myself brand new washer parts and I can tell the difference on my electric bill. But it's not all about energy consumption it's also about radiations and many other factors that can harm us. Now I am thinking to replace all my appliances with "smarter" ones.