Unlike other online auction sites like eBay or TradeMe, BidRivals is a bidder-only site for popular items such as MacBook, Nintendo DSi or 40" Sony Bravia TV. The big difference is that in BidRivals every single bid costs the bidder money (roughly NZ$1.00 each). It is required for someone to buy bid package from the site (e.g. NZ$20 for 20 bids) before they start any bidding. So why would anyone want to participate? Well, the items in BidRivals are always started with a 1c or 2c price tag, and each bid will only raise that by another 2c. For example a Sony Bravia TV is asking for 2c to begin with; if we assume after 1000 bids in total the auction stops and the winner has only placed 100 bids for it, then the total cost for the winner would be 100 x $1.00 + 1000 x $0.02 = $120. Of course that sounds like a bargain for a TV which may cost over $1500 in the shop!
But there is a catch. Every bid would also increase the length of the auction for roughly 4-8 sec. That means there is no official end time for an auction! As long as the price looks attractive (which they always will be), some random people can come in and place a bid, then the auction will extend and continue to attract further bidders to do the same. Since each bid only change the price of the item by 2c, it creates an incentive for previous bidders to bid more, even thou each bid actually costs them real money. What will happen to bidders who have spent hundreds of dollars to bid for something but eventually they lose to others? Well, they get nothing except a lesson I suppose.
No doubt this is a great way to make a lot of money for the site. I have seen a 13" MacBook being bid continuously for more than a day now (and it is still going on at the time of writing) at the price of almost NZ$300.00. Yes it is still a very cheap deal because normally the 13" MacBook is selling for NZ$2000.00 in this country. However, $300 price tag = 15000 bids = NZ$15,000 income for the site! The owner of the site does not even have to own any of the items they are auctioning right now because as soon as the auction finishes, they could just buy them at retail price and send them over to the winner.
So what are we seeing here? Gambling, period. How is this different from lottery when everyone is buying a ticket for NZ$6.00 hoping to win a million out of it? How can we afford not to regulate this type of online business? This type of lottery business model exists in many other forms before, but packaging it as a legit online auction business for consumer items is way too unethical. Especially if they intend to allow some people to win goods with a really low price as part of their word-of-mouth marketing scheme, then it will mislead a lot of consumers to think this is a really good idea to buy cheap stuff. Not to mention we never know if they would or would not manipulate any of the auctions. I urge the NZ Govt to take this matter seriously, before we either see more of these sites appear, or all a sudden they disappear with the money they collect from their members.
Tuesday, July 28, 2009
Friday, July 17, 2009
Anthony Healy
He is the director of Australasian Performing Right Association, and this is what he says about his view on Section 92A after being accused of seeking special treatment from the law to protect their own interests:
"Absolute nonsense. Without the content industries, the internet would be empty. We want to ensure that the people who make the content are rewarded.'' (full article is here)
This is just typical lobbying with falsified facts, or what Professor Lessig refers to as tobacco science. I mean, who the hell he thinks he is? The Internet would be empty if all paid content is gone? I don't even think a 3-year old would believe that. He needs to understand one thing: not every single person wants to be rewarded by money. As long as that assumption is true, then the Internet will NEVER be empty because money is off the table. Actually it is a lot better if money is off the table when it comes to journalism because then we can develop more trust on the independence of the content, at least we won't have to constantly worry if the author says certain things because of their own thoughts or they have been paid for. If Anthony is talking about other media format like music or video, I wonder if he has EVER watched anything from YouTube at all. Look at the top 10 most viewed videos, how many of them are made by people intent to be rewarded financially?
Heard of user-generated content or Web 2.0? No? What about blogging and twittering? I guess he is absolutely nonsense.
"Absolute nonsense. Without the content industries, the internet would be empty. We want to ensure that the people who make the content are rewarded.'' (full article is here)
This is just typical lobbying with falsified facts, or what Professor Lessig refers to as tobacco science. I mean, who the hell he thinks he is? The Internet would be empty if all paid content is gone? I don't even think a 3-year old would believe that. He needs to understand one thing: not every single person wants to be rewarded by money. As long as that assumption is true, then the Internet will NEVER be empty because money is off the table. Actually it is a lot better if money is off the table when it comes to journalism because then we can develop more trust on the independence of the content, at least we won't have to constantly worry if the author says certain things because of their own thoughts or they have been paid for. If Anthony is talking about other media format like music or video, I wonder if he has EVER watched anything from YouTube at all. Look at the top 10 most viewed videos, how many of them are made by people intent to be rewarded financially?
Heard of user-generated content or Web 2.0? No? What about blogging and twittering? I guess he is absolutely nonsense.
Wednesday, July 15, 2009
Section 92A
According to the newspaper, a new re-worked draft of Section 92A as part of the Copyright Amendment Act 2008 is returning. Without a doubt that the new draft has bits that are significantly better than the old one, like the introduction of a third party Copyright Tribunal to handle the infringement allegation between copyright holders and ISPs; and also the possibility of imposing fine instead of disconnection to the accused ones etc. But why were we opposing Section 92A in the first place - was it only because of the details of the implementation of the law?
Without repeating what a lot of people have said and debated already regarding how copyright has been misused to attack online sharing, I recommend policymakers of this country to watch this presentation from Professor Lessig which was given last year here in New Zealand. Then try to answer this question raised by him: why do we want to criminalize our children for what they do normally online (which we did the exact same thing offline before the Internet comes along)?
Without repeating what a lot of people have said and debated already regarding how copyright has been misused to attack online sharing, I recommend policymakers of this country to watch this presentation from Professor Lessig which was given last year here in New Zealand. Then try to answer this question raised by him: why do we want to criminalize our children for what they do normally online (which we did the exact same thing offline before the Internet comes along)?
Tuesday, July 14, 2009
Obesity
Officially New Zealand is ranked number 3 in the world for having the fattest population, just behind Mexico (2nd) and the US (1st) from the OECD's new obesity report.
Why are people getting so fat? Either they don't know the consequence when they eat (maybe they don't have a mirror) or they know but they don't care enough or don't have the will to change. Of course genes defect can always be a possibility too. But whatever the cause of this, as a country we are suffering heavy costs associated with obesity.
What do we do about this? So-called experts suggest that we should impose taxes to junk food or sweet drinks; other insists we should ban advertisements of unhealthy food. Sure there are more cries for better education, better infrastructure for walking and cycling, or encouraging the parents to have meals with their children more often. To be honest, I don't think any of these would solve the problem but instead they just create business opportunities for some selected industries. The worst part is that it penalizes normal people who may want to eat junk food from time to time. I mean what is the problem here: unhealthy food or people not controlling themselves?
Maybe we need to ask ourselves, is obesity as bad as alcoholism or drug addiction? Yes this is a tough question with lots of viewpoints to consider, but if we don't change our social acceptance and perspective on people being overweight, we will never solve this issue at all. I totally agree with airline companies to charge extra for overweight passengers, or insurance companies to charge higher premium for these higher risk people. On the other hand we should have equivalent clinics or associated programs like AA for them. We don't care about those who don't care about themselves, but we do care about those who want to change. The quicker we can divide among the overweight population (i.e. separating the savable ones with the hopeless ones), the more effective we can solve this problem with appropriate policy and incentive mechanism.
I hope the government will be sensitive about this and act sensibly, instead of focus too much on the fast food chains or soft drink companies.
Why are people getting so fat? Either they don't know the consequence when they eat (maybe they don't have a mirror) or they know but they don't care enough or don't have the will to change. Of course genes defect can always be a possibility too. But whatever the cause of this, as a country we are suffering heavy costs associated with obesity.
What do we do about this? So-called experts suggest that we should impose taxes to junk food or sweet drinks; other insists we should ban advertisements of unhealthy food. Sure there are more cries for better education, better infrastructure for walking and cycling, or encouraging the parents to have meals with their children more often. To be honest, I don't think any of these would solve the problem but instead they just create business opportunities for some selected industries. The worst part is that it penalizes normal people who may want to eat junk food from time to time. I mean what is the problem here: unhealthy food or people not controlling themselves?
Maybe we need to ask ourselves, is obesity as bad as alcoholism or drug addiction? Yes this is a tough question with lots of viewpoints to consider, but if we don't change our social acceptance and perspective on people being overweight, we will never solve this issue at all. I totally agree with airline companies to charge extra for overweight passengers, or insurance companies to charge higher premium for these higher risk people. On the other hand we should have equivalent clinics or associated programs like AA for them. We don't care about those who don't care about themselves, but we do care about those who want to change. The quicker we can divide among the overweight population (i.e. separating the savable ones with the hopeless ones), the more effective we can solve this problem with appropriate policy and incentive mechanism.
I hope the government will be sensitive about this and act sensibly, instead of focus too much on the fast food chains or soft drink companies.
Monday, July 13, 2009
FM95.8
According to them, they are the only Cantonese radio channel available in New Zealand. Oh well, we always have problems associated with monopolies due to lack of competitions, and apparently this is no exception for FM95.8, and they can be quite bad sometimes.
Around 3/4 of their programs are imported copies from various radio channels in Hong Kong, which is actually a good feature of them. On the other hand they are responsible for composing the news, ads and more importantly the morning program which I listen to during traffic jam in the motorway. There were a period of time when at least one of the hosts in that show was more experienced and relatively maturer (my guess is early thirties). But after a few change of hands at the current moment the show is occupied with three teenager-like twenty-something hosts, who are clearly having some hard time speaking, whatever the language is. I guess I am too harsh if I am summarizing my experience for the first week; but it has been a couple of months and there is no sign of improvement or anything.
Their main job is to report the headlines of the newspaper, and of course they try to translate whatever they read from the NZ Herald into Cantonese. This part I would have thought that they could prepare for it and so it shouldn't be too bad after all. But from what I hear, it is quite evidential that they improvise most of the time. Quite often they say a particular phrase in English, and a long pause occurs because they couldn't translate, then the other hosts jump in with an indefinite "arrrrrrrr" before someone finally spells out a wrong word which they sort of have to agree on that instantly in order to continue. This is constantly happening every 5 minutes, but still not the most painful part.
The stuff that really hits me to turn off the radio immediately is when they start to discuss and express their opinions, whether it is on any political issues or economic matters. I guess it is important for hosts to talk about their point of views, otherwise they become merely news reporters. But come on, do a bit of homework before opening your mouth. For example this morning (13/07/09 9:20am) they were discussing about the riot in Xinjiang, then Host A starts to say the audiences should read about the historical background between Uyghur and Han, and how this whole Xinjiang incident was related to Dalai Lama in order to appreciate what is going on now. Host B agrees and says this riot is related to the last one also in Xinjiang and it was about Dalai Lama as well. Host C comments that the US is attacking the Chinese government by exposing all these riots in their major news channels and so we should really stop all the riots.
Now, if you were me, how could you not turning off your radio?
This is bad not because the hosts mix up between Xinjiang and Tibet, or they have some radical concerns about some conspiracy of the US media; this is bad because they can get away with it. We all make mistakes and I believe it is okay as long as those mistakes are acknowledged and someone learns some lessons on the way. But a live show like this with no editorial or what-so-ever, ill-experienced hosts can speak freely with no fact checks or practically no knowledge of what they are talking about, and at the end no one or any agency is responsible, this is really not acceptable at all. I urge whoever runs the company that employs these yahoo to be more accountable here.
One thing the hosts always like to say before they actually talk about something in the show is - "I really don't know how to say/put this." My advice - if you really don't know how to say, then perhaps you shouldn't say it at all.
Around 3/4 of their programs are imported copies from various radio channels in Hong Kong, which is actually a good feature of them. On the other hand they are responsible for composing the news, ads and more importantly the morning program which I listen to during traffic jam in the motorway. There were a period of time when at least one of the hosts in that show was more experienced and relatively maturer (my guess is early thirties). But after a few change of hands at the current moment the show is occupied with three teenager-like twenty-something hosts, who are clearly having some hard time speaking, whatever the language is. I guess I am too harsh if I am summarizing my experience for the first week; but it has been a couple of months and there is no sign of improvement or anything.
Their main job is to report the headlines of the newspaper, and of course they try to translate whatever they read from the NZ Herald into Cantonese. This part I would have thought that they could prepare for it and so it shouldn't be too bad after all. But from what I hear, it is quite evidential that they improvise most of the time. Quite often they say a particular phrase in English, and a long pause occurs because they couldn't translate, then the other hosts jump in with an indefinite "arrrrrrrr" before someone finally spells out a wrong word which they sort of have to agree on that instantly in order to continue. This is constantly happening every 5 minutes, but still not the most painful part.
The stuff that really hits me to turn off the radio immediately is when they start to discuss and express their opinions, whether it is on any political issues or economic matters. I guess it is important for hosts to talk about their point of views, otherwise they become merely news reporters. But come on, do a bit of homework before opening your mouth. For example this morning (13/07/09 9:20am) they were discussing about the riot in Xinjiang, then Host A starts to say the audiences should read about the historical background between Uyghur and Han, and how this whole Xinjiang incident was related to Dalai Lama in order to appreciate what is going on now. Host B agrees and says this riot is related to the last one also in Xinjiang and it was about Dalai Lama as well. Host C comments that the US is attacking the Chinese government by exposing all these riots in their major news channels and so we should really stop all the riots.
Now, if you were me, how could you not turning off your radio?
This is bad not because the hosts mix up between Xinjiang and Tibet, or they have some radical concerns about some conspiracy of the US media; this is bad because they can get away with it. We all make mistakes and I believe it is okay as long as those mistakes are acknowledged and someone learns some lessons on the way. But a live show like this with no editorial or what-so-ever, ill-experienced hosts can speak freely with no fact checks or practically no knowledge of what they are talking about, and at the end no one or any agency is responsible, this is really not acceptable at all. I urge whoever runs the company that employs these yahoo to be more accountable here.
One thing the hosts always like to say before they actually talk about something in the show is - "I really don't know how to say/put this." My advice - if you really don't know how to say, then perhaps you shouldn't say it at all.
Friday, July 10, 2009
Chrome OS
It is a little too early to be bullish about this.
Okay, Google has released their plan for developing a Chrome OS and it is going to be open source. They want to create an OS which can load up in a few seconds on whatever devices, and redesign it in a way that fits with the current landscape of Web 2.0 and cloud computing in terms of supporting apps running inside a browser. People do wonder why Google does this, especially their effort in Chrome OS could be overlapping with the work in Android. One even speculates their major intention is to crush Microsoft so they just do whatever it takes.
Without reading much into details here is my take on this. First of all Chrome OS being open source and any variety of Linux OS being open source have similar means but different ends. Assuming Chrome OS supports mainly Google Apps and other applications running on the web, all the user generated data and information would be sent across and hosted by the infrastructure of the company. Yes I understand that with Google Gears all web apps can run offline and have the data stored locally as well, but we cannot deny the fact that the default mode of all the applications running on Chrome OS is to have every bit of data stored and managed by Google. Of course we get all the benefits of cloud computing no doubt on that, but we need to remind ourselves that cloud computing becomes the default rather than a nice option to have from this point onwards. Once again, Chrome OS is open source for the development but what about the infrastructure and the data, I mean our data?
Maybe I am over-reacting coz people did debate long time ago regarding GMail or other Google Apps on similar ground. But the different is, for GMail or Google Doc I can always have a choice to run some native apps no matter if I am on Windows, Mac OS or Linux, let's say if I am really paranoid about data mining and stuff like that. But if I am using Chrome OS, what choice do I have? Google Doc offline forever? I think the discussion should be on whether it is such a great idea to have cloud computing OS as a default for our computers and devices. If open source is about freedom, then trapping all my data to a single company does sound like the complete opposite. Yes I need to pay for Windows while Chrome OS is free, but I am paying Google the right to host my data. As a consumer, is it really a good thing for us to support companies to build their business model on top of our privacy, so that they can subsidize us some free software?
Okay, Google has released their plan for developing a Chrome OS and it is going to be open source. They want to create an OS which can load up in a few seconds on whatever devices, and redesign it in a way that fits with the current landscape of Web 2.0 and cloud computing in terms of supporting apps running inside a browser. People do wonder why Google does this, especially their effort in Chrome OS could be overlapping with the work in Android. One even speculates their major intention is to crush Microsoft so they just do whatever it takes.
Without reading much into details here is my take on this. First of all Chrome OS being open source and any variety of Linux OS being open source have similar means but different ends. Assuming Chrome OS supports mainly Google Apps and other applications running on the web, all the user generated data and information would be sent across and hosted by the infrastructure of the company. Yes I understand that with Google Gears all web apps can run offline and have the data stored locally as well, but we cannot deny the fact that the default mode of all the applications running on Chrome OS is to have every bit of data stored and managed by Google. Of course we get all the benefits of cloud computing no doubt on that, but we need to remind ourselves that cloud computing becomes the default rather than a nice option to have from this point onwards. Once again, Chrome OS is open source for the development but what about the infrastructure and the data, I mean our data?
Maybe I am over-reacting coz people did debate long time ago regarding GMail or other Google Apps on similar ground. But the different is, for GMail or Google Doc I can always have a choice to run some native apps no matter if I am on Windows, Mac OS or Linux, let's say if I am really paranoid about data mining and stuff like that. But if I am using Chrome OS, what choice do I have? Google Doc offline forever? I think the discussion should be on whether it is such a great idea to have cloud computing OS as a default for our computers and devices. If open source is about freedom, then trapping all my data to a single company does sound like the complete opposite. Yes I need to pay for Windows while Chrome OS is free, but I am paying Google the right to host my data. As a consumer, is it really a good thing for us to support companies to build their business model on top of our privacy, so that they can subsidize us some free software?
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