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Thursday, October 05, 2000
It has such possibilities -- sports fans throughout the country being able to purchase a bit of history by buying pieces of Three Rivers Stadium online. When I first heard that FreeMarkets was planning to auction off the stadium on the Internet, that's what I expected.
Unfortunately, that's not the plan. The online auction is aimed at sports franchisees, stadium operators and other professional organizations that might want to make bulk purchases of Three Rivers fixtures and apparatus. Everyday sports fans will have to go to the stadium if they want to get in on the action (although they will be able to plan their purchases by viewing the list of items online).
I applaud the Sports & Exhibition Authority and FreeMarkets for taking that first step by putting together the online auction for business. But they did not go far enough. The follow-up auctions should also be done online. As it stands, Steelers and Pirates fans who live far away from Three Rivers are left out. Not only are these distant fans penalized, the sum raised is likely to be less. Simple rules of supply and demand suggest that the more people bidding on a limited number of items, the higher the price. So the millions of sports fans (not only transplanted Pirates and Steelers fans) would bid up the prices of the items auctioned, raising more money. Besides, we've already seen that sports collectibles are successfully auctioned every day on the consumer auction Web sites.
FreeMarkets is in the business of business-to-business auctions, so it makes sense it doesn't conduct the consumer auction. But it could have worked with one of the consumer auction Web sites to conduct a consumer auction online. The company tells me that they aren't doing so because they want people to carry away the goods that day. Haven't they ever heard of shipping services?
Consider this one step forward, and one opportunity lost.
Q: All of my screens have been enlarged, so I can't see the whole screen, making the images very rough. How do I shrink my screens?
Have a question for David Radin? Contact him at his Web site
A: You've probably changed your monitor resolution to a lower setting. Your monitor is able to show a finite number of pixels (dots). The higher the resolution of your monitor, the more pixels you can see. If you have set up your applications and desktop for a high resolution, you'll see more on the screen, and all of your images will be crisper -- and smaller. If you then lower the resolution, anything you have placed toward the right or bottom will be pushed off the screen as the top left corner expands. You'll see fatter dots, making your images look rough.
To adjust your monitor resolution, close or minimize all applications. Then right click on a blank spot on the desktop. Select [Properties] from the resultant pop-up menu. When the "Display Properties" dialog box appears, click the [Settings] tab. Here, you'll be able to adjust your screen area to the best resolution for you. If you see a test button on this tab, click on it to make sure that you're getting what you expect.
Then accept the change. Important: If you adjust your monitor resolution to a setting that your monitor doesn't support, you will not be able to recognize anything on the screen, making it almost impossible to use your system. So, if you can't test the resolution before you accept the changes, make sure you look up your monitor's specifications before you try to adjust your resolution.
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