eBay's Ill-Timed Lifetime Achievement Webby 316
theodp writes "eBay CEO Meg Whitman will accept a special Webby Lifetime Achievement Award next month on behalf of the eBay Community, which has 'permanently changed the way people connect, discover and interact with each other.' Perhaps by then, people will have forgotten how eBay enabled buyer 'Blazers5505' to hook up with sellers like 'oneclickshooting' just weeks before the worst mass shooting in modern US history, prompting eBay to issue a gun-parts-don't-kill-students-guns-and-ammo-do statement that showed little evidence of its celebrated commitment to social consciousness. CEO Whitman, who received $11.1M last year for her leadership efforts, has kept a low profile since tooting eBay's trust-and-safety horn for Wall Street analysts two days after the Va. Tech rampage."
wow (Score:5, Interesting)
And yes, e-bay, the gun maker, the steal worker, and the gun did not kill. Cho did. And he could have done more had he made IED and used them. Are you going to stop selling gas or other fuels for that potential?
Shut Up Already (Score:3, Interesting)
A little more biased please? (Score:4, Interesting)
Seriously, Ebay has changed the way we interact. Why are we quibbling over this? Oh yeah people want to shame ebay for this and blame it on anyone other than the student who commited the murder. They didn't tell him to do it, they didn't pull the trigger, this is one sale out of a couple million?
Ebay and the founders deserve this award, hell they deserve another award for taking an idea from the dot com bubble and making a couple billion dollars off of it (kudos to them for that). Trying to throw dirt on them now is petty as hell, and Kdawson needs to figure out if he wants to keep posting biased and muck racking summaries or if he wants to actually post interesting news.
Re:Quibbling perhaps, but illustratitive (Score:5, Interesting)
> movement to try to completely ban guns every time limitations on gun ownership are brought up?
Oh I dunno, perhaps because there IS such a grand scale movement? There were only two things certain when the VT shooting story broke, that Sarah Brady was racing to the closest sat uplink and that it would be a mad scramble to see who would get to interview her first. Sen Schumer was even honest enough to admit he still wants more gun control but that since the Democrats have figured out they lose seats every time they try it that he wasn't going to start a new push and hose the chance to take the White House. So yes, they still want our guns; they just want the White House more.
> I think the great majority of the country (even the blue states) is okay with gun-ownership in the hands of responsible adults, but
> there should be certain barriers before being allowed to purchase a gun. Psychological evaluations....
Oh that makes me feel so much better. No I don't have the inalienable Right to Keep and Bear, but if I'll submit to hours of abuse at the hands of some government hack, pay out the ass, and generally jump through as many hoops as it takes for the last pantiwaist to feel 'comfortable' I'll be granted a License to buy a weapon... after I agree to keep it unloaded and locked away in a vault.
Listen up cornholio, that sort of unreason just doesn't fly. The 2nd is either just as much part of the social contract or the 1st won't hold either. Hell, look how much abuse #1 has been taking lately at the hands of the same preening pansy elitists. No, ordinary people aren't safe to be entrusted with Free Speech, only the government can decide who can speak near elections.
Or how about we just recast your silly statement:
I think the great majority of the country (even the blue states) is okay with media licenses in the hands of responsible adults, but there should be certain barriers before being allowed to purchase a purchase a newspaper or TV station. Psychological evaluations (especially for a license to blog or post anonymous), a background check, and a mandatory waiting period without any Internet loopholes seem perfectly reasonable to me. It's not something I feel particularly strong about, but I also don't see any reason media licenses should be 100% easy to obtain.
After all, the pen IS mightier than the sword... or the gun. Dan Rather with a gun might could cap one or two people before he was gunned down by the police as the mad dog he is. But with a irresponsible lying Pen he damned near got to pick the leader of the Free World. Tell me guns should be licensed while irresponsible journalists are free to operate without the slightest safeguards against the danger they can present to society.
But in the end it comes down to two competing visions of what society should be. In mine government derives it's just powers from the People. The People are generally sane, trustworthy people who are capable of self government. I trust my neighbor with a ballot so I have no problem with trusting him with a gun cabinet. And then there is the vision of the gun control gang.
Re:Human nature in action. (Score:2, Interesting)
It's a whole lot easier to place the blame on an inanimate object such as a game, or a gun, than to look for causes in human nature or societal issues that affect almost everyone.
Issues like morality, the breakdown of the family, parenting are almost taboo to talk about. People don't want to assign blame to these things because then they would have to face these same issues in their own life. In addition, these issues border on the religious for most people, and it's not in vogue to talk religion. Society wants all ills to be addressed by science and technology by banning or controlling everything with them, and not looking more to the heart of the matter.
I probably will get modded down for this, but most religion, including most of Christianity (wrongly so, I believe), believes man is inherently good and as a general rule, will pursue what is best. Science is not even willing to consider morally good/bad, for the most part. But perhaps we should consider the implications of man being inherently bad by nature. The problem is, this would be too humbling for most people to consider objectively.
Democracy vs Republic vs 2nd Amendment (Score:3, Interesting)
Remember that we are not a Democracy, we have a Constuitional Republic based on the idea that we have inalianable rights. Now with that out of the way we come to the core of your argument. Could We The People, acting through our elected representitves violate the 2nd Amendment? No. That is why we have a Constituition, to prevent us from descending into mob rule. If we were really hell bent on such a wicked and stupid notion though we do have the ability to amend our Constituition to remove the limitation. Doing so has a much higher bar than a simple majority vote, this is an intentional design feature, not a bug.
And I'd fight such a movement to amend any single article of the Bill of Rights tooth and nail. But if it were done through the proper channels it would be fair and I'd have no moral right to shoot politicians in the head over it. However, knowing the axiom that a government that doesn't trust it's people with arms shouldn't I'd realize the hell on earth that was coming and start looking for a new place to call home. Too bad there ain't any good candidates right now but if a few million Americans moved somewhere we might be able to get something going.... we did it once ya know.