Saturday, March 20, 2004

eBay's anti-fraud vigilantes. Interesting story in the New York Times today about individual anti-fraud crusaders on eBay. They bid up fraudulent listings until they are out of reach of possible victims, email people who have bid on suspicious items, and track down Romanian swindlers. But eBay apparently doesn't like this trend very much. Their opposition to vigilante action is understandable, but given the magnitude of the problem it is silly of them to reject volulnteer help. Instead, they should channel it -- perhaps by adding a Craig's List style "flagging" mechanism, where individuals could easily report suspicious transactions. [Purportal.com Headlines] 10:25:14 PM    comment []

A Question of Ethics: How to Teach Them?. As scandals ripple through the corporate world, some business schools have introduced ethics courses or tweaked existing ones. By Christopher S. Stewart. [New York Times: Education] 10:23:17 PM    comment []

Mark Cuban blogs inside NBA referee stats [bOing bOing] Referee Tendencies This data means absolutely nothing other than what it means. Here are updated ref tendencies. SInce all star break (relative to whole season) 3 seconds down 13% def 3 sec down 15% palming down 45% flagrant 1 down 18% Lane violation down 7% Off foul down 8% tech foul up 17% 10:20:31 PM    comment []

Quoticus. Quoticus is a tool for enabling video political speech: Clips of candidates which can be remixed as you wish. It is a brilliant idea, supported by Brewster's Internet Archive. With it, let the net capture and spread more stuff like this. [Lessig Blog] 10:12:43 PM    comment []