Experiments In Photography

From time to time I will be posting some of my photography here. I hope you enjoy this series of images in light and form, any feedback as well would be great.

ZDnet Runs Afoul with Reader's with comments on The release Of Tecnorati's WTF

Tecnorati's new WTF feature is an interesting way to catch attention, most people know it as an acronym for What The F%&# So using WTF on Tecnorati is just a way to generate attention, and controversy, but don't feel to bad ZDnet fell afoul of it when they commented on it here http://ct.zdnet.com/clicks?t=2… and some readers took exception with it, so I guess WTF is doing it's job and generating the controversy that it was most likely meant to do. So at least now I know WTF to go and you are all welcome to Tell me WTF to go, with WTF. Can you Digg that?

Unearthed: The wild town next to Stonehenge where the builders partied like it was 2500 BC

Now this is a really amazing discovery, I'm going to be looking forward to finding out more as they release more information.

Unearthed: The wild town next to Stonehenge where the builders partied like it was 2500 BC

By Cahal Milmo

Published: 31 January 2007

By any standards, it was a wild party: piles of half-eaten pig bones were flung to the floor by revellers who then smashed their food bowls into a "filthy" mud floor.
Add to that the fact that this bash took place 4,600 years ago, less than two miles from Stonehenge, and the result is a dramatic step forward in the quest to trace the origins - and purpose - of the world's most famous standing stones.
Archaeologists have revealed the discovery of a huge ancient settlement in Wiltshire used by the builders of Stonehenge and their descendants to celebrate life and death with lavish feasts of freshly slaughtered livestock.

Excavations at Durrington Walls, situated to the north-east of Stonehenge, have uncovered the largest Neolithic village in Britain.
Experts, who found vast quantities of pig and cattle bones along with broken pottery, believe it would have held up to 100 houses adjacent to a wooden monument mirroring Stonehenge and formed part of a "religious complex" surrounding the stone circle.
The dwellings, which were about 16ft square and contained built-in beds and wooden dressers, are the first evidence of human habitation close to the stones on Salisbury Plain.

The team also excavated an imposing 30-metre avenue between Durrington Walls and the river Avon, about a mile to the south, where Ancient Britons may have deposited their dead.
The new avenue mirrors another wide pathway, discovered in the 18th century, which leads from the famous stones to the river.
Professor Mike Parker Pearson, from Sheffield University, who co-led the excavations, said: "We believe Durrington was a complementary site to Stonehenge. It was a place for the living to come to celebrate and bring the ashes and bones of ancestors, I think, to be deposited into the river. The village was more than houses. There was a clear sequence between the sites. People would come to mark the winter and summer solstices, using the avenue to reach the river and then walk back up the other avenue to reach the sacred site."

The houses at Durrington Walls, which contained a separate wooden timber circle similar in design to Stonehenge, have been radiocarbon-dated to 2600BC to 2500BC - the period in which the stone circle was built.
The British team, whose work was funded by the National Geographic Society, believe the dwellings were therefore used by those who constructed Stonehenge.
But further evidence suggests the site was much more than a builders' dormitory. The avenue leading from Durrington is aligned with the sunset for the midsummer solstice while that from Stonehenge would have given a perfect view of the sunset.

Similarly, the Durrington circle was aligned with sunrise for the midwinter solstice and Stonehenge would have framed the sunset, suggesting that generations of inhabitants made twice-yearly pilgrimages along the routes.
The Durrington avenue ends at a four-metre high cliff. Professor Parker Pearson said: "My guess is that they were throwing ashes, human bones and perhaps even whole bodies into the water, a practice seen in other river settings."

The result, according the archaeologists, is evidence that the Durrington village attracted Neolithic tribesmen from across the region for vast midwinter bacchanals. Enormous piles of pig and cattle bones were found along with shards of pottery which contain chemical traces of a milk and meat stew consumed by the pilgrims.

Professor Parker Pearson said: "It is the richest - by which I mean the filthiest - site of this period known in Britain. We've never seen such quantities of pottery, animal bone and flint.
"The dating of the pigs' teeth suggests they were killed at nine months in time for the midwinter solstice. It would have been a sort of Neolithic Christmas - they had a really good party

Bill Gates: Microsoft vs. Google Checkout, eBay PayPal

This could get interesting hopfully it will make things better for the end users of these sevices. I'm also wondering though, at what point would these services be cosidered a Monoply? All Comments welcome.


Bill Gates has done a lot of thinking about the online payments market.

At Microsoft’s “Think Week,” a development plan was set for an online payment system “that will be cheaper than credit card transactions, making it possible for companies to charge small fees for Web-based content and services they now offer for free,” according to Dow Jones reports.
Speaking at the Davos World Economic Forum, Gates said:
If you want to charge somebody $0.10 or $1 a month, that will just be a click…you won't have to manage some funny thing or pay some big credit charge, where half of it goes to the clearing.
By undercutting credit card fees, the Microsoft offering would enable an online newspaper to profitably charge small fees for individual articles, Gates put forth as an example.


A new universal Microsoft online micro payments system could attract the legions of independent Web publishers, blogs and small ecommerce plays, with the potential to be a significant rival to eBay’s PayPal.

Google Checkout is not a competitor to PayPal; Google invests in the Google-centric formula as part of a strategy to continually increase monetization of AdWords. Google positions Google Checkout as undercutting credit card transaction fees but in reality it pays for them on behalf of merchants. It also subsidizes the consumer transaction.

As Google is losing money on its Checkout offering, it is not sustainable as a stand alone micro payments service, or for mass distribution on the Google publisher network. Google Checkout currently has no raison d'etre without its AdWords tie-in.
Google's AdSense business could potentially be disrupted by a well thought out Microsoft micro payments offering. In lieu of monetization by content "enhanced" by Google's "Sponsored Links," Websites could monetize their own content directly.

Direct monetization would enable Web publishers to keep users at their sites, without revenue sharing with Google and without need for the ubiqutous "Ads by Goooooogle."
Microsoft vs. Google in Website monetization options could test Google's assertion that Google ads enhance third-party Website content, rather than detract from it

Revealed: How E-Bay Sellers Fix Auctions

Hot off the Press into cyberspace, I thought readers would like this, it seems E-Bay is not as safe and fraud free as they would like us to believe, I welcome readers comments.


The Sunday Times
January 28, 2007Insight
Revealed: how eBay sellers fix auctions
Recorded excerpts of meetings with Paraskevaides: Clip 1 Clip 2

CUSTOMERS of the internet auction site eBay are being defrauded by unscrupulous dealers who secretly bid up the price of items on sale to boost profits.
An investigation by The Sunday Times has indicated that the practice of artificially driving up prices — known as shill bidding — is widespread across the site.
NI_MPU('middle');
Last week one of the UK’s biggest eBay sellers admitted in a taped conversation with an undercover reporter that he was prepared to use business associates to bid on his goods for him.
Our inquiries found evidence that a number of businesses — ranging from overseas property agencies to car dealerships — have placed bids on their own items using fake identities.
The cases raise questions about whether eBay, the world’s biggest auction site, is doing enough to protect consumers.

Shill bidding is against eBay rules and is illegal under the 2006 Fraud Act. However, the resulting higher prices on the site boost the value of eBay’s share of the sales.
Last November eBay changed its rules to conceal bidders’ identity — making it even more difficult for customers to see whether sellers are bidding on their own lots. Since its launch seven years ago, eBay’s UK website has attracted more than 15m customers. It sells more than 10m items at any given time.

One of the beneficiaries of the boom is Eftis Paraskevaides, a former gynaecologist, from Cambridgeshire. He has become a “Titanium PowerSeller” — one of eBay’s handful of top earners — selling more than £1.4m worth of antiquities a year on the site.
In a conversation with an undercover reporter last week, Paraskevaides claimed shill bidding was commonplace on eBay.

When the reporter asked whether he arranged for associates to bid on his own items, he replied: “Well, if I put something really expensive (up for sale) and I was concerned that it was going for nothing, I would phone a friend of mine, even a client of mine who buys from me, and say: For Christ’s sake, I sell you 100 quids’ worth of items a week . . . just put two grand on it, will you?” The reporter was posing as a seller of valuable antiquities. He inquired whether Paraskevaides could sell them on eBay and guarantee a minimum price.
He replied: “Leave it to me (laughs). Don’t call it shill bidding. Then I won’t be accused of shill bidding. Yes. I mean — I’ve got people.

“I’ve got some of my big clients who buy big items off me, I look after them. So I can get on the phone to America and say: Mr XXXX . . . you’re a multi- millionaire. You buy a hundred grand’s worth off me a year. Do me a favour would you. Just put — yeah. Exactly.”
He claimed eBay would never follow up a complaint against him for shill bidding because he generated about £15,000 a month in commission for the company. “Are they going to ban somebody who’s making them the best part of 15 grand a month? No,” he said.
After being told that he had been talking to an undercover reporter, Paraskevaides denied that he had ever shill bidded on eBay and claimed he was talking about clients who sometimes bid on expensive items if they wished to protect the price.

However The Sunday Times discovered businesses that have been bidding on their own items. One leading dealer from London admitted last week that that he had shill bidded in the past.
A spokesman for eBay said he expected that the company would now launch an investigation into Paraskevaides. Anyone caught shill bidding risks a permanent ban.
The spokesman added: “The change to the way bidder IDs are shown has already resulted in a safer environment for users.”