Comment On Classic WTF: Saved By The Burst

Is it any coincidence, that the ‘managers’ of the economy had done the same thing?

Oh btw, FIRST!!

A 'virtual' story?

Everyone knew that with technology, all things were possible

I had a boss once who would often say, "Anything is possible - with a sense of humor and a checkbook"

this one's a bit boring, guys. it's not a wtf, it's how management works.

oh, and.. THRID!!!

Virtual Current Exchange....like, ocean currents?

We must get our technology advisors on this idea and monetize off it.

FIFTH!

Classic Sixth!

Dekker3D:

this one's a bit boring, guys. it's not a wtf, it's how management works.

How management "works" isn't a WTF? You're kidding, right?

This is a total WTF. It just happens to be one we've seen hundreds of times in scores of different guises.

If you've been in the business for 5 years or more and DON'T have a story like this of your own, consider yourself very lucky.

Decent story I suppose, although I was hoping for the system to get off the ground and then spectacularly crash when inevitably the corporate card ran into an issue

The (mis)management story that I ran across a while back that gave me a chuckle:

http://www.weldreality.com/ehauststraighpole.htm

Disclaimer: I am more closely related to the welding/fabrication business than the IT business, so this story may not actually make sense to someone else.

/I'll go ahead and say TRWTF is the guys website.

Yeah, that Virtual Currency Exchange called PayPal sure is sucking....

To bad the company scrapped the project--it might be nice to be able to book travel at a site that didn't require my credit card.

Nodody:

Dekker3D:

this one's a bit boring, guys. it's not a wtf, it's how management works.

How management "works" isn't a WTF? You're kidding, right?

This is a total WTF. It just happens to be one we've seen hundreds of times in scores of different guises.

If you've been in the business for 5 years or more and DON'T have a story like this of your own, consider yourself very lucky.

Or very inexperienced.

6x6x6 Rubik’s cube:
http://www.olympicube.com/pr_6.php

Say what?:

To bad the company scrapped the project--it might be nice to be able to book travel at a site that didn't require my credit card.

Yeah, because Beenz is so much more convenient than a credit card.

(You know what else would be convenient? Using your CueCat to visit the Beenz site.)

CRNewsom:

The (mis)management story that I ran across a while back that gave me a chuckle:

http://www.weldreality.com/ehauststraighpole.htm

Disclaimer: I am more closely related to the welding/fabrication business than the IT business, so this story may not actually make sense to someone else.

/I'll go ahead and say TRWTF is the guys website.

I enjoyed this guys story, but I have to wonder why he thinks this kind of thing could only happen in America?

It's enterprise software. You can never have too many features, layers of abstraction, virtual things, or middlemen in enterprise software.

By the way, I still have a CueCat. Does it work on Web 2.0 websites?

Say what?:

Yeah, that Virtual Currency Exchange called PayPal sure is sucking....

To bad the company scrapped the project--it might be nice to be able to book travel at a site that didn't require my credit card.

Paypal is NOT NOT NOT a virtual currency exchange. It is a service to e-businesses...especially ones like ebay shops, and small businesses that cannot afford the overhead of providing every imaginable payment method to a customer.

They provide transactions in real time, without any contrived monetary exchange system. That is like mixing up the credit card reader at Home Depot for a currency exchange.

And as far as the travel booking sans credit card...keep dreaming. As sure as the sun rises, you will need a credit card to travel anywhere these days. And even if you didn't I'm sure that a virtual currency exchange wouldn't be the answer. There's a reason they were gone with the likes of NetGrocer and WebVan. It's contrived, it's inconvenient, it's counter-intuitive...and it there are a million easier ways to solve the presented problem.

First thing I would have done if I used these guys would be to raid the mini bar and wash down a $15 bag of peanuts with those little $20 bottles of scotch. Nice little system they have there.

Marc B:

First thing I would have done if I used these guys would be to raid the mini bar and wash down a $15 bag of peanuts with those little $20 bottles of scotch. Nice little system they have there.

My thoughts exactly.

Voodoo Coder:

Paypal is NOT NOT NOT a virtual currency exchange. It is a service to e-businesses...especially ones like ebay shops, and small businesses that cannot afford the overhead of providing every imaginable payment method to a customer.

They provide transactions in real time, without any contrived monetary exchange system.

Is that why it takes them four to six days (real time eh?) to actually transfer money from my account, while Home Depot can do it in a half hour or less? And if they don't do any sort of monetary exchange, why was I able to pay one ebay seller 4.99 GBP and another 25 AUD the other day, while transferring USD from my bank account?

"consumers were perfectly content with using real money for online transactions. That meant credit cards"

credit cards = real money?

"credit cards = real money?"

Careful with the sarcasm. People will look for any reason to believe it's not.

Jim Leonard:

"consumers were perfectly content with using real money for online transactions. That meant credit cards"

credit cards = real money?

Card processors are at least regulated. I don't know what the hell Paypal is.

1)
"...There is no wealth, just representations of wealth..."

2)
I am very conservative with my money which is why I'd never buy into enterprise software unless i was the one coding it :-)

3)
There are enteprise stories like this about everyday, we know that. The "entprise solution" vendor promises their software will fix or automate everything but what is funny to me is the smaller companies that follow that fix/patch the orignal software to make it what it should have been. For a fee of course.

kastein:

Voodoo Coder:

Paypal is NOT NOT NOT a virtual currency exchange. It is a service to e-businesses...especially ones like ebay shops, and small businesses that cannot afford the overhead of providing every imaginable payment method to a customer.

They provide transactions in real time, without any contrived monetary exchange system.

Is that why it takes them four to six days (real time eh?) to actually transfer money from my account, while Home Depot can do it in a half hour or less? And if they don't do any sort of monetary exchange, why was I able to pay one ebay seller 4.99 GBP and another 25 AUD the other day, while transferring USD from my bank account?

None of that makes them a virtual currency exchange. The same thing is accomplished when you use a CC machine at the store. Any store in the world, and the Credit Card company handles the currency exchange.

I don't think you're clear on what a virtual currency exchange is in this context. In the literal sense of the words, sure...paypal is an exchange of currency, in the virtual world. But there are some big differences between that and what is being referred to in this article. The latter business model was destroyed with the bubble.

If you want to split hairs all day, I'm sure there are plenty of people around here who'd be more than happy to humor you.

My point is that comparing paypal to the concept in today's WTF is comparing apples to baby wolverines.

And "real time" may not have been the best descriptor, I was getting at the fact that you are exchanging money, not credits, through paypal.

Neil:

CRNewsom:

The (mis)management story that I ran across a while back that gave me a chuckle:

http://www.weldreality.com/ehauststraighpole.htm

Disclaimer: I am more closely related to the welding/fabrication business than the IT business, so this story may not actually make sense to someone else.

/I'll go ahead and say TRWTF is the guys website.

I enjoyed this guys story, but I have to wonder why he thinks this kind of thing could only happen in America?

Because only in America can you be as dumb as you want to be and still get ahead.

Voodoo Coder:

My point is that comparing paypal to the concept in today's WTF is comparing apples to baby wolverines.

They are both really tasty in a pie.. er i mean... nevermind. Poo.

Voodoo Coder:

Say what?:

Yeah, that Virtual Currency Exchange called PayPal sure is sucking....

To bad the company scrapped the project--it might be nice to be able to book travel at a site that didn't require my credit card.

Paypal is NOT NOT NOT a virtual currency exchange. It is a service to e-businesses...especially ones like ebay shops, and small businesses that cannot afford the overhead of providing every imaginable payment method to a customer.

They provide transactions in real time, without any contrived monetary exchange system. That is like mixing up the credit card reader at Home Depot for a currency exchange.

And as far as the travel booking sans credit card...keep dreaming. As sure as the sun rises, you will need a credit card to travel anywhere these days. And even if you didn't I'm sure that a virtual currency exchange wouldn't be the answer. There's a reason they were gone with the likes of NetGrocer and WebVan. It's contrived, it's inconvenient, it's counter-intuitive...and it there are a million easier ways to solve the presented problem.

I don't know if Paypal is virtual currency or not. What I do know is Paypal acts exactly like an online bank except that they swear up and down they're not a bank. In order to use their service, you have to agree as part of the TOS that they are not a bank.

Wtf is "virtual currency" anyway? Money is already pretty darn virtual these days. Every time you incure a debt to a credit card company and don't pay it off at the end of the month, new "money" is created through the debt that you owe to the cc company.

It's probably a Good Thing(tm) that the dot-com 'sploded when it did taking with it the VCE. Otherwise it would just be one more thing dragging the economy down right now along with credit default swaps and Mortgage Backed (in)Securities.

--
Furry cows moo and decompress.

Don't forget that PayPal merged with X.com early on. X.com was a marvelous real .com bank with some insane .com-era deals (like a free S&P-tracking mutual fund; I made back enough to break even on all my inevitable overdraft fees in my college days). Whichever company was healthier or had better systems, PayPal got an important boost to its credibility by association with a Real Actual Bank Doing Banking Stuff With Regular Currency at an important point in its growth.

Of course, soon after, they killed the X.com banking business because the PayPal business was far more profitable with none of the downsides of being an actual bank. [All X.com accountholders were swept into being PayPal users during the merge, adding at least a bit to PayPal's critical mass.]

In defense of the CTE, paying for hotel rooms with promo-bux is a lot more reasonable than my dot-com employer's strategy, which involved installing video-on-demand in agricultural combines.

I wish I was making this up.

Marc B:

First thing I would have done if I used these guys would be to raid the mini bar and wash down a $15 bag of peanuts with those little $20 bottles of scotch. Nice little system they have there.

Even better then having a company CC!!

Duke of New York:

In defense of the CTE, paying for hotel rooms with promo-bux is a lot more reasonable than my dot-com employer's strategy, which involved installing video-on-demand in agricultural combines.

I wish I was making this up.

Did you work for a p0*n startup???

Duke of New York:

In defense of the CTE, paying for hotel rooms with promo-bux is a lot more reasonable than my dot-com employer's strategy, which involved installing video-on-demand in agricultural combines.

I wish I was making this up.

I would so love to see that business plan; seems you could get 95% of the impact with dish network and a tracking satellite dish. (assuming that farmers actually want to watch HBO in the field).

credit cards = real money?

Well, virtually

Voodoo Coder:

Say what?:

Yeah, that Virtual Currency Exchange called PayPal sure is sucking....

To bad the company scrapped the project--it might be nice to be able to book travel at a site that didn't require my credit card.

Paypal is NOT NOT NOT a virtual currency exchange. It is a service to e-businesses...especially ones like ebay shops, and small businesses that cannot afford the overhead of providing every imaginable payment method to a customer.

They provide transactions in real time, without any contrived monetary exchange system. That is like mixing up the credit card reader at Home Depot for a currency exchange.

And as far as the travel booking sans credit card...keep dreaming. As sure as the sun rises, you will need a credit card to travel anywhere these days. And even if you didn't I'm sure that a virtual currency exchange wouldn't be the answer. There's a reason they were gone with the likes of NetGrocer and WebVan. It's contrived, it's inconvenient, it's counter-intuitive...and it there are a million easier ways to solve the presented problem.

Maybe not now, but back in '98 that's the direction it was heading. When I first heard about PayPal it was supposed to be a service where average people could make credit exchanges between each other.

A typical use case was where a group of people go out to lunch together and one person pays the bill. The others could then pull out their PDA's and perform a virtual currency transfers from their PayPal accounts to the account of the bill payer, which would be executed the next time they synched their PDA's (not much WiFi availability back then.) Each person would add virtual credit to their accounts with their own credit cards, etc.

Dirk Diggler:

Marc B:

First thing I would have done if I used these guys would be to raid the mini bar and wash down a $15 bag of peanuts with those little $20 bottles of scotch. Nice little system they have there.

My thoughts exactly.

I would think most people probably [wrongly] assumed they will be charged for consumed items. Too bad this fizzled out before it started so there are no real-life stories of empty-mini fridges and people lugging home free alarm clocks and lamps.

Marc B:

First thing I would have done if I used these guys would be to raid the mini bar and wash down a $15 bag of peanuts with those little $20 bottles of scotch. Nice little system they have there.

The part of this that has had me scratching my head since I first read it is this: Reserve a hotel room through travelocity or equivalent. You pay them directly. When you get to the hotel, they ask you for a credit card to cover any incidentals (but don't charge you for the room which you already paid for). I don't know how long hotels have had this capability, but I think I first experienced it ca. 2000. I suspect that hotels have been doing similar things for a long time.

Another reason you have to use credit cards for travel is it's a form of identify verification. Skynet likes knowing where you are all the time.

I would find the whole story funny had I not personally worked on a similar website for a long, long time.

The idea was very similar: build one huge website that incorporated data from all the other traveling sites out there, and to make it better, allow hotels and alike to signup as well.

Of course, having a dozen other traveling sites out there signed up meant that making a reservation had to go trough their reservation interface. If you think PayPal is a hassle, imagine implementing about 50 different API's and keeping them up-to-date.

To make matters worse, the directors had the same brilliant idea about virtual money and wanted to charge users directly, then pay the intervening companies (like booking.com or Maintrack) who in turn would pay the hotels. Or traveling agencies which would then pay the hotels.

With me so far?

Neither was the company - it went bankrupt shortly after the site was deliverd. As did the company I worked for shortly thereafter, having grocely underestimated the amount of work it would be to implement dozens of different interfaces and keep them all bugfree and working.

Wyrd:

I don't know if Paypal is virtual currency or not. What I do know is Paypal acts exactly like an online bank except that they swear up and down they're not a bank. In order to use their service, you have to agree as part of the TOS that they are not a bank.

Banks do two things:

1) Take deposits
2) Loan money

An institution that just does one of these, but not the other is, by definition, not a bank.

Duke of New York:

In defense of the CTE, paying for hotel rooms with promo-bux is a lot more reasonable than my dot-com employer's strategy, which involved installing video-on-demand in agricultural combines.

I wish I was making this up.

You just *have* to write that one up for us. What possible reason could anyone give for putting video-on-demand in agricultural combines?

Nodody:

Marc B:

First thing I would have done if I used these guys would be to raid the mini bar and wash down a $15 bag of peanuts with those little $20 bottles of scotch. Nice little system they have there.

The part of this that has had me scratching my head since I first read it is this: Reserve a hotel room through travelocity or equivalent. You pay them directly. When you get to the hotel, they ask you for a credit card to cover any incidentals (but don't charge you for the room which you already paid for). I don't know how long hotels have had this capability, but I think I first experienced it ca. 2000. I suspect that hotels have been doing similar things for a long time.

Most hotels don't require the CC though, they just suggest it and will often block incidentals like room service or pay-per-views without one. You're still free to raid the mini-bar and then the hotel is stuck chasing you down for a $50 bill.

Hi ever1
I found a game that’s fun AND free

Check it out!

http://www.lordswm.com/?rid=185193

Just to point out, PayPal "was" an e-money issuer (as regulated by the FSA in europe) for a very long time. You pay using your credit/debit card or bank account, which actually buys "e-money", they seamlessly transfer this e-money to your recipient, who then converts it back to real money when they withdraw. So it is exactly the same as the case in today's WTF (at least in europe).

However, PayPal is "now" a bank, so I'm not totally sure how they operate. I suspect they have an account for each user and all the AML and regulation stuff that goes with it. The reason? an e-money licence restricts you to certain types of business (e.g. you can't provide credit). I suspect PayPal wants to make money by upselling, exactly how the banks do.

Dave:

Neil:

CRNewsom:

The (mis)management story that I ran across a while back that gave me a chuckle:

http://www.weldreality.com/ehauststraighpole.htm

Disclaimer: I am more closely related to the welding/fabrication business than the IT business, so this story may not actually make sense to someone else.

/I'll go ahead and say TRWTF is the guys website.

I enjoyed this guys story, but I have to wonder why he thinks this kind of thing could only happen in America?

Because only in America can you be as dumb as you want to be and still get ahead.

Oh yeah, read the article on the same site about the chinese olympic stadium. That's just scary (there is a link from the text on his homepage).

ContraCorners:

What possible reason could anyone give for putting video-on-demand in agricultural combines?

At the time it was not socially acceptable to suggest that some things didn't really need to be "wired."

It's probably a good thing the bubble burst before they could implement this, once users realised that upcharges would end up on the agency's corporate account rather than the card they supplied the whole system would only have lasted until the next billing cycle. Effectively the agency was acting as a financial guarantor for every customer who booked with them... ugh. You'd have to have been insane to approve this design.

Voodoo Coder:

Paypal is NOT NOT NOT a virtual currency exchange.

Yes it IS IS IS.

  
货架racking.   仓储货架
南京货架设备要产品包括:重型货架
,阁楼货架,超市Shelf,重量型货架,横梁式货架,驶入式货架... 仓储笼
货架的形式与材料 · 立体仓库 · 货架厂
物流规划设计的步骤与程序（货架的设计... 中国物流行业呈现三足鼎立抢市场 · 亚洲第三方物流的现状和发展 ... 托盘
抽出式货架系列 · 重力式 货架/推入式货架钢托盘
移动式货架 · 阁楼式货架 · 悬臂式货架
系列 长件物料储存货架 货架公司。

随着我国物流业的快速发展，整个华东地区物流业的发展也正以物流服务提升到较国内其他地区更高的地位而推进。重视具有提升区域物流效率功能的专业化和标准化物流基础设施建设，打造整体物流服务平台。 南京海佩货架公司将积极推行物流业标准化战略，建立健全仓储物流服务标准化体系，加快推进物流装备设施、信息系统、经营管理、服务提供等的标准化，打造最 先进的仓储设备交易数码港，争取成为国内物流业标准化建设的典范。 近年来，我国物流业发展迅速，物流业增加值持续上升，已成为推动国家经济持续发展的重点产业。与此同时，物流业面临运输和仓储成本高昂、产业形态相互割裂等问题，亟需推行标准化战略，以降低成本， 提高效率提升服务质量，满足产业提档升级的需要。” 南京海佩公司是对物流标准化比较重视的公司之一，实施标准化的速度也块。在标准体系研究中注重与很多仓储笼公司进行合作，将重点放在标准的国际通用型上。目前，海佩已经提出了包括物流模数体系、 集装箱的基本尺寸、物流用语、物流设施的设备基准、输送用包装塑料托盘的系列尺术、包装用语、钢托盘大型集装箱、 塑料托盘用箱、平托盘、仓储笼，卡车车厢内壁尺寸， 铁托盘等。