I could have let this one slide, but I have a few things to say:
1. Darl, Darl McBride, is that you? When will you be testifying against Mark Shurtleff and John Swallow?
Is that an African or a European Swallow?
Commercial airliners have no business overflying warzones
"Warzones" as defined by who? The FAA didn't include this area in the area they warned US carriers to avoid in April. Should the airlines monitor the media for reports of SAM installation sightings?
Too much of a coincidence for a plane to crash in a war zone where a fighter was shot down just the other day and a transport aircraft An-26 was shot down by a missile at 25,000ft couple of days ago. And by the way, why would a commercial airliner fly through such an airspace anyway?
No U.S. carrier has been allowed to fly over certain parts of Ukraine since the end of April, due to an FAA order.
Certain parts, apparently not including the area this plane was flying over.
Now please send your $50,000 worth of research grant funding to my bitcoin address: FJi2seXY2jf9eYEDoit4ScienCEFiJSfj82jfiffj
You could at least use a real BTC address, in case someone accidentally you some coin. That's not even a Grøstlcoin address (they start with an F).
(By reading the above, you agree to send a random amount of BTC to 1Guy1JarSpEhxb94VYMYRvTMhqbAgdnCtL as a consultation fee. Thank you.)
That doesn't matter. He's saying that if the "EC Econoboxes" were driven like US cars are, the fatalities would be much worse. Around here, a lot of people commute on the Washington Beltway, which is a pretty crazy road to commute on. I once had someone pass me on the left when I was in the left lane. In other words, I was doing 60-ish mph in the left lane approaching a left exit and someone was so impatient he passed me on the shoulder. Do as many people in the UK drive on these massive and complicated interstate-style highways? That would make a difference. If I'm driving 1000 km back and forth to the market, it's probably going be less dangerous than 200 km in 120-kph rush hour traffic and rampant road rage.
I'm not saying he's necessarily right, but he didn't disprove him own point. Maybe the UK just has much, much safer drivers and cars than the rest of Europe (since most of the worst countries listed are in Europe). Maybe it's driving on the left. Maybe it's the better beer. [shrug]
Yet TradeMe still exists and people use direct bank transfers than any other payment method on the site. If your claim (that business this way is not practical) was true then people would not use direct bank transfers. But they do. Ipso facto your claim can't be true.
My claim was and still is that using cash eliminates many of the scams - your claim was that scamming was too infrequent to matter. I provided evidence that it was frequent enough that the marketplace warned you against handing over money via bank transfers (other than their own special bank transfer that still had no guarantees). Please read those links I posted - they actually specifically warn against bank transfers.
I did read those links and they did not warn against bank transfers except overseas (and overseas transfers are quite different anyway - I can't simply entering an overseas bank account number in online banking to initiate a transfer as I can with domestic accounts). In fact both links are primarily concerned with phishing, not the sort of fraud we've been talking about. Obviously that is because the scamming you've been claiming is such an issue is not actually significant - it is phishing that catches people. My bank also warns me against phishing, yet they don't warn me against using direct transfers. What does that tell you?
If your claim is as minor as you're now saying, my response is "so what?" You might as well say that you can't be scammed in a transaction if you don't enter into private transactions at all. It's true, but it's irrelevant. Of course I concede that cash is less vulnerable to certain types of fraud than other payment methods. But the theoretically higher incidence of scamming with direct bank transfers is still so low that it doesn't matter. The fact remains that if scamming was as widespread as you make out then people would not use TradeMe or similar markets. Those markets exist, and are massive, ergo scamming is not the problem you think it is.
But the system still works. You haven't provided any evidence that it doesn't. You haven't even provided evidence that the incidence of fraud is higher with direct bank transfers.
I don't need to provide evidence that it doesn't work because I never made the claim that it does not work. I claimed that untrusted transactions are best with payment and possession taking place at the same time, hence cash works best for this. The sites you pointed me to warn specifically about doing bank transfers.
Cash doesn't work best for this because it is only practical for transactions in a limited geographic area. How far are you prepared to travel to gain this protection you rate so highly for a $20 transaction? $100? $1000?
Again, those links you provided do not warn against direct bank transfers. Did you actually read them?
You're saying "it can't possibly work, because scams". I'm telling you it does actually work here.
You're claiming "It works, because there are no scams", and I'm telling you, right now and right here, there are scams in all the classifieds. You're relying on the fact that people are honest; I'm comfortable being skeptical. You're asking me to trust "because it doesn't happen", and I'm saying that over here it's a daily occurrence. I actually don't know how to make it any clearer - if you're buying something off of craigslist, or whichever classifieds, the damn site itself warns you to be skeptical! Even the marketplace itself is telling you that there are scammers out there!
No, you're misrepresenting my position. I never claimed there were no scams. I said it was not a significant problem in practice. Perhaps that is due to a difference in the cultures of our countries. But the fact remains that the system works here. When you claim that a system that is in widespread use doesn't work, that's not skepticism. It's simply denial.
From the trademe site, they warn about this specifically: http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust... So, they themselves think that if you hand over money you could lose it. Let me emphasise that for you: Trademe themselves think that you should use any protection you can when paying money and you should not rely on trust!
So the trust issue is not an insignificant problem, but it is one that is painlessly solved by using cash.
Yet TradeMe still exists and people use direct bank transfers than any other payment method on the site. If your claim (that business this way is not practical) was true then people would not use direct bank transfers. But they do. Ipso facto your claim can't be true.
Again, the system is widely used here. So the onus is on you to back up your claim that it can't possibly work with evidence.
I refer you to the trademe trust and safety blog (yes, it really is called that): http://www.trademe.co.nz/trust...
But the system still works. You haven't provided any evidence that it doesn't. You haven't even provided evidence that the incidence of fraud is higher with direct bank transfers.
You're saying "it can't possibly work, because scams". I'm telling you it does actually work here.
You're claiming "It works, because there are no scams", and I'm telling you, right now and right here, there are scams in all the classifieds. You're relying on the fact that people are honest; I'm comfortable being skeptical. You're asking me to trust "because it doesn't happen", and I'm saying that over here it's a daily occurrence. I actually don't know how to make it any clearer - if you're buying something off of craigslist, or whichever classifieds, the damn site itself warns you to be skeptical! Even the marketplace itself is telling you that there are scammers out there!
No, you're misrepresenting my position. I never claimed there were no scams. I said it was not a significant problem in practice. Perhaps that is due to a difference in the cultures of our countries. But the fact remains that the system works here. When you claim that a system that is in widespread use doesn't work, that's not skepticism. It's simply denial. Again, I am not talking theoretically - if you believe I'm wrong you can track down the crime statistics for New Zealand and prove that there is significant fraud on TradeMe. But you'd be wasting your time because there isn't. There are isolated cases, but not to the point where it's seen as riskier than any other private transaction, and certainly not to the point where the system doesn't work.
Again, the system is widely used here. So the onus is on you to back up your claim that it can't possibly work with evidence.
Someone dealing in cash can just as easily be robbed by the seller.
True, but if you're going to mug someone, why post on the classifieds first? You're just as likely to be mugged leaving a bank after all.
Your position is that direct bank transfers aren't safe essentially because the seller is not so easy catch if they decide to commit a crime. This is exactly the same as the difference between mugging someone in a public place ("leaving a bank") and luring them to some place private before mugging them.
And then you have scams arising where you pay your money and the "seller" vanishes. The only safe way to deal with a potential scam when trading through the classifieds is to hand over payment and take possession of the item at the same time. Not possible if one party has to wait to verify payment.
You're arguing hypotheticals against reality.
What are you talking about? What's not a reality?
You're saying "it can't possibly work, because scams". I'm telling you it does actually work here. The concerns you have raised are simply not a significant problem in actual fact. The system I've described is not some theoretical idea, it is how actual business is actually conducted in the country I live in. Not sure how I can say this any more plainly.
It's simply not a problem here. If it were it could be solved simply by requiring sufficient proof of identity to post the classified in the first place. A marketplace which gets a reputation for allowing sellers to get away with fraud is not going to last long.
Once again it comes down to trust - you trust that the marketplace has identified the scammer. What if you're the first person to respond to the ad? Regardless, you're still asking two parties who are unknown to each other to trust each other with no real evidence that the trust is warranted. My point still stands in this reality - transactions need to be completed when there is a lack of trust. Cash works for this. Waiting doesn't (hence the reason bitcoin is still less traded than actual toy money).
Someone dealing in cash can just as easily be robbed by the seller.
And then you have scams arising where you pay your money and the "seller" vanishes. The only safe way to deal with a potential scam when trading through the classifieds is to hand over payment and take possession of the item at the same time. Not possible if one party has to wait to verify payment.
You're arguing hypotheticals against reality. It's simply not a problem here. If it were it could be solved simply by requiring sufficient proof of identity to post the classified in the first place. A marketplace which gets a reputation for allowing sellers to get away with fraud is not going to last long.
give them your bank account number
What could possibly go wrong?
Actually very little. If your bank lets someone else fraudulently withdrawal from your account they are on the hook for the money. The main problem is if they get the account number wrong and the typo corresponds to a real account (which would require two digits wrong). In that case it can be difficult to get your money back from the unintended recipient (if they've already taken it out of the account). So not much risk for the seller.
And then there's the personal sale angle. I'm not going to take paypal or have the ability to process credit cards for a yard sale or some crap that I'm selling through the classifieds or craigslist. Given how I'm mainly just trying to recoup something in the process of a sale, adding more hoops or steps will just result in my not bothering to sell junk anymore.
In this country direct bank transactions are used for a lot of this. It's not quite as easy as taking cash when you hand over the item but it's not much harder: give them your bank account number when they agree to the sale and then check that the money is there before handing over the item. If you're going to bank the money anyway it's actually easier. Obviously it's not practical for yard sales but it works pretty well for classifieds and online sales.
Real programs don't eat cache.