everyone knows the lack of 'people' is only heather having cut back her troll quota
Guilty as charged. JesusCrux's disappearance : demise of the boards = not a causal relationship, but there is a correlation. My work got busy.
Anyone complaining about foal's posts can go jump. There's nothing outlawing politics on the forums, and if the quota of political content is high, it's only because foal's making the effort when few else are.
I'm staging a comeback. It's gonna be a doozy.
The ad is Air New Zealand, the band (The Zephyrs with a y) is fictional, the song (Something New) was written by a couple of guys from the Screaming Meemees, and due to popular demand the single got released exclusively through Sounds, which is now defunct. Good luck with that though.
Oh, given australia's still included, and that they've cut off overseas traders like wainuiomata with what I assume are decent track records, I bet they're acting on legal advice.
& FWIW, it is crappy, and I can sympathise. I'm just playing devil's advocate because of the "how DARE trademe not sell to me!" sentiment. ;)
It's not even about stolen credit cards - I don't imagine many traders are actually registered to accept credit cards. No paypal either.
//but the point is that it's a personal decision,
Actually, it's not. I can choose who I buy from, but I don't have much control over who wins my auctions.
Granted, you're right about ebay making it work, & the only response I can think of is that it's probably a matter of scale. I don't know what kind of resources trademe would have/need to expand into a worldwide market. And if they're just catering to a handful of expats, again, I think you're just unfortunate that it's not a big enough market to justify the cost of a world of internet pranksters & 419ers. I also think you're making it unnecessarily personal suggesting that trademe think the rest of the world are "not good enough". I imagine the cold fact is that the overseas market proved not nearly lucrative enough to justify the extra costs of "focussing on bogus users" or perhaps "addressing the complaints of local traders dealing with people overseas". As for "us vs the rest of the world", there's probably an element of truth in that, but I imagine it's more the idea that trademe serves as an alternative to ebay - not a competitor. There's no need to go international because ebay already has it covered. Granted this is all entirely conjecture.
I have to say, my very first reaction to this thread was "...why would you want to?". Trademe's great for flathunting, buying cheap-as cars, & peddling your second-hand furniture & computers, but if you're overseas then .. making a payment that could potentially cost you 20 euros in bank processing fees, waiting a week for a delivery (meaning that it's over a week before you've worked out that there's been a fuckup), not to mention risking the occasional possibility that the merch was broken (in transit or beforehand), or not at all what you ordered? Meh.. I guess you'd have to pay duty & sales tax on merch purchased from any international site, but ebay's "global buying hub" does go into graphic detail about that sort of thing, and has many stern warnings about checking customs regulations.
Also, can I just ask - does trademe screen you by your IP address, or do they just require you supply a NZ-based address & phone number? I could imagine someone merrily trading away on the back of a friend's / their mum's contact details & out of their old university bank account without too much hassle. Is that feasible? That's what I'd do.
I'm doing some work for an e-commerce site that's had ongoing problems with an overseas "customer" persistently trying to buy merchandise with stolen credit cards. At the moment, the company is small enough to be able to spot the bogus orders before delivery, but obviously they want to reduce that burden on their staff, and are considering blocking an entire country's worth of IP addresses to prevent it. They don't really have the option of cutting off the entire rest of the world, nor would they want to.
In trademe's situation, and I'm purely guessing here, their much larger market would suffer these problems on a more widespread scale, and every dodgy customer directly affects another of their customer base. Not only do they then have a bunch of upset customers, the high activity on the site makes it very difficult to trace bogus accounts until after the damage is done.
Also, the nature of their business has always been vastly more conducive to trading with other people in the same vicinity. That's where the bulk of their market is, and speaking as an occasional trader, I wouldn't consider buying from an overseas trader, nor would I be particularly happy about selling to one. Even where both parties are genuine traders, the scope for error increases significantly, both in payment and delivery.
With all that in mind, I wouldn't be surprised if their percentage of valid overseas trading activity was actually lower than that from bogus overseas accounts. If that's the case, without putting too fine a point on it, it's kind of a no-brainer.
why use sport to grandstand political agendas?
This is exactly my opinion. The only comments I've heard from sportsmen on this also reflect this sentiment. One guy made a comment that if this particular Olympic games becomes a political no-holds-barred, then the athletes start coming under pressure to comment, or run the risk of being drawn as not caring, or even supporting whatever political issues they're refraining from commenting about. Most of them just want to train, travel, & compete.
If the political issues are so important (and for all the talk about "the spirit of the olympic games", it's always endeavoured to be politically neutral) then the athletes should boycott. I think refusing the invitation is a far more appropriate means of action than to accept the hospitality of the host, then attack them about matters entirely unrelated to sport.
Can someone please tell me what the exact wording is that we're complaining about? Is it the standard olympic policy, or are there additional restrictions demanded by China, and/or additional restrictions voluntarily introduced by NZ?
Adrian doesn't listen to music, he just stares at the cat sitting on his keyboard. I don't think it's moved in three weeks, & he's gotten grumpy from having to type around it.
It's "pyrrhic", and you've got the usage right. However, we at nzm hq strongly encourage you to keep posting. Post it, and they will come. would be nice if your topic starters were a little clearer, but. ;)
Nope, I don't generally watch the games, I just fret over the scores. But 2-0 against Arse is a perfectly respectable score. Well done.
Heh. Still in computers, web development. My old job wasn't really indulging my desire to develop some 1337 hacka skillzorz. So not really worth dangling your suspenders, sorry.
My life was a bit out of balance for the bulk of last year - too much to do, not enough time in which to do it. I felt like I had to drop one of my hobbies just to feel like I was even dawdling in a forwards direction. WELL, I realised that I wasn't getting anything out of my job except for a good paycheck, and with a bit of encouragement I lined up a new job that has hella more to do with what I actually want to be doing. My mum always said "never make your hobby your job", but if you've got a whole lot of hobbies, then it sure makes sense to get paid for at least one of them.
Upshot is, now I've managed to cover a couple of hobbies in my job description, and have more a/h time to fit in the rest. Touche! If I'd actually made any resolutions this year, I would've achieved them all before before the Jan 1st hangover wore off.
I remember on news seeing Cliff Richard complaining that he is outliving the 50 year copyright expiry date on his early hit singles and wanted it extended to 100 years or so, made me laugh..
errr... doesn't copyright extend for 50 years after the death of the composer? Perhaps Cliff Richard made a foolish pact with someone to keep his youthful good looks?
T-DUB!!! Wainui! I've missed you. Search'll be back soon(ish). Best option for the moment: use the google site-specific search, go to google, and type in your search followed by site:nzmusic.com
Give people some credit, we aren't all vacuous spunges absorbing whatever advertising is thrown our way.
I agree with this. I'm all for crazed & indignant fatcats spending all their discretionary income on attack-dog pamphlets that I throw straight in the bin, or quietly slipping laundered millions to the national party's champagne breakfast attended by people that were voting national anyway, or billboard campaigns that I scorn...
After all the brouhaha that the EB pamphlet caused, how much of the labour & greens' voter base did it undermine? Really? I think Labour are doing a good enough job of that themselves.
my kids like the Kiwi girl/band(?) "just a song about pingpong" it's pretty catchy and I like her angry voice.
Band is Operator Please, & they're australian. They'll be playing BDO.
...but for serious, we're on it. Just I think everyone capable of fixing the problem has day jobs and a fair whack of major lifestyle adjustments at the moment. Sorry for the delay.
Hello, and thankyou for dialling the nzm helpline. Due to the high number of calls we are experiencing, you have been transferred to an automated helpdesk system. Your call is very important to us...[click]
sorry, been a bit snowed under
will be in touch after mania extreme fight night, saturday december 1, transmission room, 7pm
I'm the second-to-headliner attraction
Auckland: walk down K Road and check out the posters to see if there's any gigs you like the look of. The good rock gigs will likely be on at the Dog's Bollix (this is where you'll get the loudmouths, but there are some pretty decent gigs), King's Arms (loudmouths all outside), Whammy Bar (scenesters, but friendly), Rising Sun (see whammy bar), Space Bar (loudmouth status unknown), Shadows (university students).
Coherent = scenester pop DJs, Wine Cellar = folksy stuff, Rakinos = jazz cafe. 4:20 does a mix of different gigs.
There are some other popular spots, like Khuja Lounge (jazz/hiphop) & Fu Bar, but they're more dance-oriented venues, so their drunken-bozo count is quite significantly higher.
Hmmm... that firstmonday links to a placeholder site. Do you mean www.firstmonday.org?
I think someone posted a zip file of old heads for download... however, you're allowed to upload any pic you want now. Just make sure you like it, at the moment there are a few problems with changing a pic once it's uploaded.