PayPal Blocks Hurricane Relief Funds
By
Nate Mook, BetaNews
September 4, 2005, 8:40 PM
It's no secret that the widespread destruction of Hurricane Katrina was exacerbated by delayed relief efforts, but the latest victims of bureaucracy are those individuals simply trying to help out. Humor site Something Awful raised almost $28,000 in less than 9 hours - right up until PayPal froze the funds.
Something Awful's dedicated community may call themselves "goons," but they have historically been quick to respond when needed. The site previously raised $22,000 to fund armor plating for soldiers in Iraq. And the disaster unfolding in New Orleans and the rest of the Gulf coast was no exception.
With its main Web servers located in downtown New Orleans and offline due to flooding, Something Awful founder Rich Kyanka asked visitors to donate to the Red Cross from a temporary page explaining the situation.
"Some people are emailing me, asking if they can donate to SA to help with our server move and downtime and temporary hosting and stuff. Don't worry about us, we'll be fine," Kyanka wrote. "If you really want to make a difference, donate to the SA Red Cross Relief Fund link above. They need it more than we do."
Unable to take credit card payments directly due to his site being down, Kyanka set up a PayPal account specifically to handle the effort. Donations poured in at a rate of almost $3,900 per hour - an astounding number from any perspective.
That is, until PayPal shut down Something Awful's donation account late Saturday evening. Because PayPal's customer support was closed for the night, Kyanka was unable to discover why $27,695.41 in Red Cross relief funds were locked. PayPal's automated system explained that it had received "more than one report of suspicious behavior from your buyers."
In the interim, Something Awful directed visitors to donate directly to the Red Cross. Kyanka said he originally setup Something Awful's own fund so he could send free merchandise such as hats and t-shirts to those who donated.
Explaining the situation on Something Awful's temporary Web site, Kyanka exploded: "It's not me you're hurting; it's the thousands of goddamn people with no homes, no money, and no hope fleeing a burning, flooded wasteland they used to call "home." I wasn't going to take a single cent of the donations, unlike PayPal, who decides that when people send money to help victims survive a national disaster, their company should still make over 2.35% of everything sent in."
Kyanka reached a PayPal customer support agent Sunday morning and was asked to fax in a driver's license, bank records, credit card records, and a written request to unlock the account. He was told it generally takes 3 to 5 business days to process the documents.
Another PayPal representative called Kyanka Sunday afternoon, offering to help resolve the problem. However, she also delivered some bad news: PayPal was unable to directly donate to the Red Cross. Due to prior agreements, the United Way is PayPal's relief organization of choice.
After initially agreeing to the charity swap, members of the Something Awful community questioned the United Way's record. And with no word of when the donations would be freed, Kyanka contacted PayPal and "asked them to refund everybody's money."
"All I tried to do was raise money and personally reward people for donating in a time of need, and it turned into a smoldering, twisted, burning car wreck along the highway. I'm beyond apologetic this did not work out the way I planned, but the pure hassle PayPal has given me trying to raise money just isn't worth it, especially when it could take over a week for the money to be unfrozen," Kyanka wrote in a final update.
"Please donate using the Red Cross link up top. I can't send you guys any free stuff, but I promise I'll sit here in my basement with the lights off, drinking a beer by myself and thinking of you."
source : betanews
Microsoft-Google battle heats up
Microsoft's chief executive vowed to "kill Google" in an expletive-laden tirade against the firm, according to US court documents filed by Google. The claim was made in a sworn statement by Mark Lucovsky, a former Microsoft employee who quit for Google in 2004.
Microsoft chief Steve Ballmer has denied the claims, saying they are a "gross exaggeration of what actually took place".
The statement is the latest salvo in a bitter legal battle between the firms.
In his sworn statement, Mr Lucovsky - a key Windows architect - alleged that Mr Ballmer hurled a chair across the room when he informed him he was moving to Google, before launching into an abusive tirade against Google's chief executive Eric Schmidt.
However, Mr Ballmer has dismissed the claims.
"Mark's decision to leave was disappointing and I urged him strongly to change his mind. But his characterisation of that meeting is not accurate," he said in a statement.
For more source: bbcnews
16x DVD-RAM specification nearing approval
While DVD+R(W)/-R(W) formats have raced ahead in the speed of which they can be written, DVD-RAM has lagged behind at the 5x limit. This nearing specification by the Recordable DVD council gives the DVD-RAM format a boost and allows it to play catch-up with its rival formats.
While the new 16x media will be compatible with new DVD-RAM drives people with older 1-5x compatible drives will not be able to read or write these new discs. Of course the new 16x DVD-RAM compatible writers will be able to read and write older 1-5x DVD-RAM media. Along with this the DVD-RAM format writing strategy will be changed from Constant Linear Velocity to Constant Rotational Speeds (CAV) due to the increasing rotational speeds. While the new format has not been approved yet it is hoped to be approved soon.
Once the new DVD-RAM format has been approved then companies such as Hitachi , Panasonic and others can start shipping both optical drives and media. This is expected to happen before the end of 2005, but availability may mean it will be an early Q1 2006 release date for the media and hardware.
While the DVD-RAM format is waiting for approval the DVD+RW alliance will be getting ready to finalise and launch the 16x DVD+RW format which is expected sometime soon, though there is no roadmap for its release yet.
source : cdfreaks
Computer engineer fired for eating leftover pizza
A COMPUTER engineer who was sacked for eating pizza left over from a company meeting, has won a competition for the most outrageous firing.
The competition, run by Simply Hired, said that Jim Garrison was chosen as the most bizzare sacking from more than 1,000 entries.
He will win a free Caribbean cruise with passengers famously fired by Donald Trump on his popular television show, "The Apprentice".
Garrison, ate two of the six pieces of pepperoni pizza left over from a company meeting, although he didn’t work in the department that held the meeting.
He thought that since the company had bought it and it looked like it was going to be wasted if it wasn't eaten he would have it.
However, several of the employees from the right department had apparently hatched out plan to take the pizza home with them and moaned to management like big girl's blouses.
It took the company a month to fire Garrison, but the pizza was given as the reason. Simply Hired have refused to release the name of the employer other than to say it was a large mortgage company.
Garrison now works at a satellite TV company and does not touch leftovers. I should have entered, I was once fired from my computer operator job by the Queen because she was not amused by my sense of humour. [And who can blame Her Majesty. You're fired, Ed.]
More
here.
source:
theinquirer
Playstation 3 Blu Ray drive will cost Sony $100+
BLU RAY drives for the Playstation 3 will cost Sony a small fortune. It turns out that at the release of the console in the first half of 2006, Sony will have to pay more than $100 per drive it builds in Playstation 3. This is a lot of money, because even in retail you can buy a DVD +RW drive for less than $50 now. This means that Microsoft can get it much cheaper than $50, maybe even half that price, due to the enormous quantity it needs to buy for millions of XboX 360 consoles.
Blu Ray marchitecture looks great as its backward compatible with DVDs and CDs, and you can store 25GB per layer on the Blu Ray media. This will provide you with an amazing 50GB for two layer drives at some point in the future.
Nevertheless, it's a very expensive step that Sony is willing to take as it will increase cost of Playstation 3 unit dramatically. Sony said Playstation 3 is going the be expensive and this is one of the reasons why.
Microsoft is playing a safe game here, it will launch with DVD+RW but in some point in the future might release a new Xbox 360 version with HD-DVD or a Blu Ray drive. We don’t expect that this will happen anytime soon, but we are sure it will happen at some point in the next few years.
At least Sony will push the mass availability of Blu Ray drives and medias as it plans to ship hundredes of thousands of consoles in 2006
source:
theinquirer
DirectX 10 Coming :D
MICROSOFT finally saw sense and decided to drop Windows Graphic Foundation (WGF) and replace it with the more easier and logical DirectX 10 name for its nexgen API.
It gave some details to the developers officially about its upcoming API and we know that it plans to release this API together with Longhorn. Or Visa, as we must learn to call it.
The DirectX 10 API will have completely new and faster dynamic link libraries (DLLs) and is supposed to run much faster. The company decided to cut the backward compatibility with DirectX 9, 8, 7 and lower in this API but there will be a way to use games programmed for those APIs. Microsoft will enable support for DX 9 or lower games through a software layer, meaning it might run slower.
The company did this to make the next API faster, it said, and at the same time will take some burden of the CPU runtime. At the same time we learned that DirectX 10 will have support for Shaders beyond Shaders, model 4.0.
It's coming with Longhorn but we learned that Shader Model 4.0 might come even before Vista. µ
source: theinquirer
Sharp shows new dual-view LCD
John Blau, IDG News Service
05/09/2005 07:54:33
Sharp has begun mass production of a new LCD (liquid crystal display) that can simultaneously display different information depending on which direction the screen is being viewed from, the company said Thursday during a news conference at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin. The Japanese manufacturer also named its first customer: General Motors.
Adam Opel, the German arm of the U.S. car manufacturer, plans to test the dual-view display in its Vectra Caravan model, according to Michael Kurpies, director of marketing at Sharp's German subsidiary.
The plan at Opel is to use the left side of the screen as a navigation system for the driver and the right side as an in-car entertainment center to show DVD movies.
The new LCD, which is on display at Sharp's booth, uses a number of proprietary technologies. One of them is a means to superimpose a so-called "parallax barrier" on an ordinary TFT (thin-film transistor) LCD. This and the other technologies enable the dual-view system to send light from the backlight into right and left directions, making it possible to show different visual content on the same screen depending on the angle.
Sharp sees the new dual-view LCD finding applications in other areas, such as PCs.
At the IFA show, the Japanese manufacturer also unveiled a 4GB hard disc MP3 player. The product, with the less-than enlightening name HR-MB35, measures 57 millimeters by 106 mm by 17 mm, supports MPC, WMA and WAV files and promises 18 hours of playback from one charge.
The IFA (Internationale Funkausstellung) will run in Berlin through Sept. 7.
Source: pcworld
