Here's a scenario: say SquareTrade hasn't met it's monthly "sales target" - sales consist of getting sellers to have an official logo and "insurance / assurance" seal within their auctions and on their websites + $20 feedback removal charges. Why would there NOT be motivation for some bidding within auctions and then being REALLY picky and leaving a neutral or negative for someone that has A) Has a history of removing feedbacks or B) Looks like a good candidate because they have used the Squaretrade service before. What I'm getting at here is that I'm suspecting that Squaretrade is participating in fraud. I think employees or friends of friends at Squaretrade are bidding on what they need on eBay then HOPING that a few of those will PAY to have the feedback removed.

I have always suspected that this type of jail bond way of looking at feedback removal was problematic, but I have a few examples recently that almost confirm my accusation. Maybe an attorney will read this someday and want to contact me. I'll definitely route it through the search engines.

I go to the flea market every Saturday & Sunday morning & most times on Wednesday. I enjoy the walking and the feel of commerce in a capitalist market. I also can pick up a few small things I need like vegetables, boiled peanuts, Zip Disks, AC adapters, and an occasional cable. But this morning, something struck me when a "flea market salesperson" said, " Yeah, I bring everything I can't sell on eBay out here" Now what's particularly interesting about the comment coming from this selller was that he was selling "pirated CDs and DVDs" Does he sell music & movies on CDR on eBay? A swarm of people were buying from him. He sold two Matrix Reloaded DVDs while I was there. (yes, you read that right, Matrix Reloaded) I overheard the conversation in bits & pieces, so I didn't ask the seller to elaborate. What also struck me is that at this very same moment I was buying vegetables in a nearby area from a Latino. This Latino could barely speak English. I believe I wouldn't be exaggerating to say that more than 70% of the Latino population in my area are illegal immigrants.

Now, let's look at the 3 of these observations together. eBay= no taxes. I believe I may be the only eBay seller on the planet that pays taxes based on my eBay sales and the only one that actually pays the quarterly sales tax if I collect it from an eBay buyer in my state. Back to topic: eBay = no tax revenue. At 15 billion in sales on eBay last year, that makes a lot of lost tax revenue. Next: flea markets - I doubt I would be far off to say that Yard sales, Flea Markets, Swap Meets, etc account for 100 billion in sales each year. (probably a lot more) Next: latinos - (couldn't find a coherent link to REAL figures) By estimates from the dozens of charts, graphs, and studies I searched through this morning - it is estimated that there are 45 million illegal mexicans in this country. Each one, doesn't pay income tax, doesn't pay property tax, and doesn't pay sales tax in the majority of circumstances. (It is sort of hush hush here that Mexican markets around my area don't charge fellow Latinos state sales tax) They also do not pay or collect tax at Flea Markets. My local flea market is made up of about 25% Latino seller. It is obvious they aren't tax paying citizens. They pretty much rule produce at all flea markets in my area (of which there are 6 big ones that I know of - two - the largest in the country)

I would estimate that there is at LEAST 150 Billion in lost revenue/taxpayer redistribution due to illegal immigrants.

Where this hurts the economy is the less people that pay taxes, and the more people depend on government social programs, the more the "true taxpayer" is going to have to start paying.

Taxes are too high now ... but that's a whole other journal entry.

If you can add any coherency or addition to this journal entry - out of all the entries I have here, this is the one I want you to post on.

Here is one source I used for information:

http://www.theistudio.com/whois_online.html

I tried to Google most of my statistics but a lot are filled with racist diatribe or statistical bias.

This is the second most ridiculous statement I hear from people who are just plain disrespectful (to me and my livelyhood), ignorant, and well ... for lack of a better word ... silly.

(The other is: Apple is going out of business, arent they?)

First; games. The one thing I think about games is that consoles are much better to play games on. They are designed specifically for the purpose, have nice controllers of every type and are availible pretty much anywhere (PSX PS2 Nintendo, etc) I also feel that games tax video hardware and possibly add to hardware wear. They also take a lot of hard drive space (more intensely graphic games should be run from a hard drive image)

The other issue concerning games is availibility. Most 12 and under titles are Win/Mac. Usually the ones in this category that aren't cross platform, are cheap knockoffs or poorly coded crap. I have yet for someone to give me an example of a children's title or game of quality that is not availible on the Mac, or, that has a VERY close equivalent.

Concerning Win/Mac titles, as an Apple Rep for a marketting company called MarKet Source I discovered that places like Circuit City, Best Buy and Sears carried lots of hybrid titles. Myst, Diablo, Children's educational titles, Scrabble, etc were all hybrid - in Best Buy this amounted to 100 titles. In Circuit City it amounted to 25 titles. In Walmart ;25 titles.

Then there's emulation and clones. Most non complex games have a Mac counterpart. In my opinion, Solitare and Chess are better on the Mac. There must be a dozen different types of Tetris. There is minesweeper, etc as well.

One of the best "helps" to the Mac community and game/program use has been Connectix. Not only with Virtual PC (now owned by Microsoft) but through the ONLY legal Playstation emulator that made it to market; Virtual Game Station. CVGS as it was called, allowed Playstation game emulation. What was so great about it is that it worked on even the most modest of Macs. It works flawlessly on my main machine; a PowerBook Pismo G3 500. This opened the entire 4000 title playstation library up to Mac Users. This title is no longer (conventionally) availible (Sony bought it to cease development) For OS X there is a great emulator for Playstation games called FlareStorm that works quite well. It's requirements aren't as leanient though.

The best way to obtain software if you have a Mac is by download. The program Graphic Converter is my favorite shareware program. Close in photo manipulation capability to PhotoShop and easy to use and affordable as iPhoto, it is also VERY well supported by it's author.

The two best sites for downloads on the Mac are:

www.MacUpdate.com & www.versiontracker.com

Then, of course, there are all of Apple's iApps and Pro Apps. Each the best PERIOD for the intended purpose.

I have yet to find a title or type of program that doesn't have a superior Mac version or at the very least an equal. AppleWorks in my opinion is better than Microsoft Office especially with the addition of Keynote (A superior, but format compatible PowerPoint)