Buying a Used Car (General)
My father's car broke down a few month ago. The car was more than 15 years old and hence it was economically senseless to repair it again. So, we checked the online databases to find a new car for my father. First, we thought about to buy a Smart ForTwo, but essentially, it was too expensive. Then we thought about to buy a Golf V, however, we decided to buy a used car, because a used car is quite cheaper than a new car. Finally, we decided to buy a Golf IV. My brother and I own a Golf IV as well. So, we knew what we could expect from a Golf IV. ;-) After we have checked a few used cars we selected one. And today, my father and I visited the owner and we bought the car. As I told you, it is a Golf IV. The car was produced in 2003 and it contains 75 horsepower engine. We got it for a reasonable price. Hopefully, we will not regret that we bought a used car. ;-)

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 01:11 2006-01-31 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

Workshop on Intelligent Transportation (Ph.D. studies)
Since a few days, I am busy working on a paper for the "Workshop on Intelligent Transportation (WIT)". The extended abstract was accepted a few weeks ago, however, I hadn't managed to write the full paper before the submission deadline for the extended abstracts has expired. As usual, you can find the announcement of the paper here.

I am going to take a few days off after I submitted the paper. Hopefully, I will find enough sparetime to start the Nokia 770 development of Safe 2.0 again.

Cheers,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 01:19 2006-01-23 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)

Ebay is f**king expensive (General)
Today, I received the bill for my activities on Ebay of the last few weeks. Okay, this fact alone is nothing special. The point is that Ebay is asking for 8.89 Euros for a single auction. In this auction I sold a cellphone for 200 Euros, so Ebay is requesting 4.5 percent of my revenue. This is f**king expensive. Think about the benefit Ebay is drawing every year. Why is there only one online auction marketplace? As we have seen in the past, a monopolized market is neither benefitable for the consumers nor is it improving the technology progress.

I call for at least another online auction platform! There should be enough terrain for another online action company in this market, because there are so many people worldwide, who want to sell their stuff. ;-)

Lets see what will happen in the future? Perhaps, I will start a project called Ebay2????

Greetings,
Thomas
Posted by Thomas King at 01:11 2006-01-05 | Trackbacks (0) | Comments (0)