The Bridge is mine and i shall increase the toll charge in the new year.
Ying Yang your financial advice is noted.If something aint broke why fix it.istock>>paypal>>barclays bank>>>wallet>> brothel 

Please don't mix up paypal and ebay.I put my earnings from istock into my paypal account.I then transfer the funds from paypal to my curent bank account with NO charge over �50.
I happy with this  arrangment as most of the money i earn from my photos will be re-invested in camera kit.

Shank, Paypal is owned by ebay. Paypal is ebay. How do you not mix up paypal and ebay? I'd never use paypal to transfer funds because it is an unregulated financial company. It's like giving your money to Bernard Madoff, it's a black box and you don't know what will happen with your money.

it'll be even closer soon -- ebay will soon forbid payment by check or credit card [they eliminated cash sales last year]

Maybe check, but they'll never forbid payment by credit card. If they did that they'd lose a large chunk of their business.

I use to sell a few things every once in a while at ebay but then the fees they started charging became so outrageous that it wasn't worth.

The main reason that paypal decides most things in favor of the buyer is that most buyers buy with credit cards and with credit cards the customer is allowed to dispute charges and the merchant normally gets screwed (offline too). If they didn't side with the buyer then paypal would be stuck with the bill every time a customer disputed a credit card charge.

ADVICE:
I would never use paypal to transfer money or to get my microstock earnings because the way US laws are written, Paypal is not subject to the normal laws and rules for processing transactions. You're basically subject to the whims of eBay.

No, shank is wrong. Here's the stated IS policy:

While you're busy celebrating the holiday season this December, our accounting department will be doing the same. This means that you will be unable to make payment requests between 9 a.m. MST December 16, 2008 and 8:59 MST January 2, 2009.

... make sure to get your payment requests in before 9am MST on the 16th!

What part of shanki's statement is wrong?

As an exclusive with a small portfolio consisting of mainly old photos I have to say that I noticed a difference. The graph below exaggerates the effect of the best match change because I uploaded new images right before the change that account for 40% of my downloads for the last 3 months (more so in first part of September when new uploads were at the front of the best match), but even without the new uploads there would have been a noticeable increase in sales due to the new best match. BIG CAVEAT: I have a small portfolio that can't be used independently to draw any conclusions about the site as a whole.

Are you employed by one of the venerable financial institutions that is currently bankrupting the US economy?

Nope not employed by them, even worse, I have stock in a bank and a credit card company. I've always been one of those people that don't trust analysts or pundits that talk on tv so I've always looked at the actual data instead. For instance I read the quarterly SEC filings for any company's stock that I own or are about to purchase because it's the only way to see what companies are really doing without being an insider. I've read the Wall Street Journal every day since I was a teen, yet I'm a democrat that things pure capitalism is fundamentally flawed.

I don't blame the financial institutions for the current situation because they were just doing exactly what they were suppose to, pursue capitalist greed. I blame republicans and the constant calls for deregulation in all industries since Carter and Regan, even when every example of deregulation leads to corruption and ruin. Enron was result of deregulation in energy. Cable tv rates skyrocketed and service declined after deregulation in '96. Deregulation in airlines was the first to happen under Carter and has resulted in crazy fares, lower service, and bankrupt airlines. The savings and loans crisis of the 80s and 90s was a direct result of deregulation. And now the current crisis in the banks. The fact is that unrestrained/unregulated capitalism brings ruin because it is pure greed in its basic form that is a "tragedy of the commons".

Hadin in the 60's came up with the basic economic concept of the "tragedy of the commons". The basic illistration is to imagine a field (the commons) that is open to everyone's use. Everyone is a shepard that uses the commons to allow their flocks to graze. Individuals are motivated to add to their flocks to increase personal wealth. Yet, every animal added to the total degrades the commons a small amount. Although the degradation for each additional animal is small relative to the gain in wealth for the owner, if all owners follow this pattern the commons will ultimately be destroyed. And, being rational actors, each owner ads to their flock, thus bring ruin to all.

The only solution for this, and capitalism in general, is for the government to regulate the use of the commons. This is not the same thing as communism or socialism despite the constant cries on Faux News to the contrary.

Penelope, have you considered a credit union?  Usually they have much lower fees than banks, and probably less risky. 

Incorrect. All public banks in the US have FDIC insurance which mean that the US government guarantees your deposits up to $250,000. Credit Union are different and you can't be sure that they are actually federally insured through the National Credit Union Share Insurance Fund without checking with the NCUSIF to see if they're insured.

Once the fraud is reported, the funds are returned to the cardholders account, and the credit card company absorbs the loss of funds.

Actually what happens is a "charge back" and it is the merchant that ends up absorbing the loss in 99.9% of the cases, not the CC company. But you're right that I'm not sure why exactly the photographer is stuck with the loss when it should be the retailer.

We had big storms last night. Do you think this lightning has had some post processing done?

Yes it is completely post processed if I it correctly that the lightning is going through the crane.

You don't like bots starting threads about lesbian sex?

So how does a person become a member or elector of the college. How does that work.

It varies from state to state. They're basically prominent members of the winner's party in each particular state and are normally picked at their parties state conventions and are awarded the position for party loyalty.

Me too, I wonder why this system is so complicated if they can just use popular vote system?

It also must very frustrating for people from one party who live in "opposite party state" (like republicans in California). Does not matter what they do votes always go to one party :-)

I live in an "opposite party red state" and yet I see great value in the electoral college system over the popular vote. For one, it does a better job of sticking with one of our founding principals, protecting the minority from the majority. If we move to a popular vote then the issues of people in the midwest wouldn't be heard. For instance, even though I think ethanol subsidies are a bad idea they wouldn't exist if Iowa wasn't as important as it is in the primary season. And without Iowa we wouldn't be having a conversation about Obama being president because he would not have become the nominee. The other reason I think that the electoral college system is better than a popular vote as that it is much harder to rig an election in with the electoral college system, whereas it would be relatively easy to rig an election if we had a popular vote system.

Opps mistaken post