[rescue] SparcCenter 2000E on Ebay

[rescue at sunhelp.org]

It seems to me that they'd have decent luck using the human image-to-number
checking that I've seen a lot of sites do... they display an image file with
a number in it, and you type the number in to confirm. It's supposed to be
great for keeping the bots away...

Mike Free

-----Original Message-----
From: rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org [mailto:rescue-bounces at sunhelp.org] On
Behalf Of Phil Stracchino
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 3:26 PM
To: The Rescue List
Subject: Re: [rescue] SparcCenter 2000E on Ebay

On Fri, Jun 20, 2003 at 03:13:25PM -0400, Dave McGuire wrote:
> On Friday, June 20, 2003, at 03:02 PM, Phil Stracchino wrote:
> >>Looks like noone's bidding.  I'd certainly give it a home, if I had 
> >>the
> >>room.  :-|
> >
> >It frequently looks like no-one's bidding, until the last hour or two.
> >I've given up buying anything on eBay except for Buy It Now, because 
> >I'm
> >sick of getting sniped in the last fifteen seconds by some asshole with
> >an auction-sniping program and a cable modem when there's no time to
> >respond.  eBay these days is He With The Lowest Latency Wins.
> 
>   Phil, I snipe *everything* I buy on eBay for exactly that reason.  I 
> learned the "if you can beat 'em, join 'em" rule about eBay years ago.
> 
>   For the record, however, I have functional fingers and a functional 
> mouse, so I don't need a "sniping program". ;)
> 
>         -Dave


And how much bandwidth do you have?  That's my limiting factor.  I've
got to guess how much time to allow for latency and still get in too
close to the end to be sniped, and usually what happens is I just miss
the end of the auction.

I guess it's not the sniping *per se* that I consider unfair but the
automated sniping programs and the "we will snipe your auction for you, 
for a monthly fee" sites running on OC12s.  Hand-sniping is still an
approximately-level playing field, but having some commercial site with
bandwidth out the wazoo that you can tell to bid on your behalf two
seconds before the end of the auction is just unfair.

I seem to recall that at one time, eBay outlawed bid-sniping robots for
exactly that reason, but they couldn't make it stick.


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