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Comment by p_trumpet | Hacker News Reader

I can confirm that the email is the one I passed on to Jacques. The PayPal account is a legit one I have used in the past and is registered under the business name Tattam Software. If I encounter any problems I will look into the other option.

Thanks all... I had honestly thought the Internet had forgotten about me.

Peter

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> Thanks all... I had honestly thought the Internet had forgotten about me.

I don't think anybody can forget Trumpet. Trumpet is one of those pieces of software that is unique in that everybody has a warm memory about it, as evidenced by some of the great comments sprinkled throughout this thread and the previous one.

Since a Winsock implementation isn't really in need these days, what else have you been doing to keep yourself busy? I'm genuinely curious, and I'm sure a lot of other people stopping by the thread will be too.

(There was a comment about you in the previous thread that sounded fairly grim. If it's even a little accurate, I'm just all the more glad this happened.)

I have no idea about the demand (I didn't use PC:s back then, so I never used Trumpet WinSock), but the product seems to be still on offer: http://www.trumpet.com.au/index.php/downloads.html.

I am probably too young to have used your software. Just one piece of advice, please keep withdrawing amount from your paypal account, on timely (probably daily) basis, there are way too many horror stories about it.

With Paypal's history, I normally keep clearing them to my bank as they keep reaching a certain limit of say $1000. I mean I know it is stupid and misses the entire point of Paypal, but I would rather do this than my account being frozen.

1000? How 'bout a hundred?

Sorry if that sounds being paranoid. I normally use Paypal to handle client payments for mu UI design stuff and hence they are not normally in the range of $100 (thankfullly). :)

I meant that I would not trust paypal with amounts over 100, and would transfer amounts over that quickly.

After you clear to the linked bank account, you need to be sure to move the money into a second account, as they are permitted by the terms of service to attempt to withdraw from your linked bank account any and all money they deem necessary up to the total amount received for all transactions for a good deal of time. I strongly advise you link a non-primary account for this reason.

Oh! I did know that but never looked at it from that angle. Thanks for the reminder.

Wouldn't they just attempt to withdraw it from a now empty bank account, leaving you with overdraft fees?

EG let's say you have $100 in your paypal account, which you send to bank account A. From there, you send it to bank account B, leaving bank account A empty. Paypal decides to withdraw $100 from bank account A, leaving you with -$100 on A, and $100 on B?

I /think/ this may depend on the mechanism used to move the money. Do ACH transfers incur NSF/Overdraft fees, or do they simply get rejected?

Is it's a big US Bank, assume you'll always get hit by some fee...

Yes, it's similar to a check at least that what I understood from my bank when it happened in the past.

Could someone with a deeper knowledge on this comment on if this is possible or the clauses around it?

Banks don't do negative balances. Some banks will automatically turn overdrafts into loans or withdraw them from another account, to prevent you from having a withdrawal or debit denied, but you can generally disable that "feature". In the absence of that, an attempt to withdraw more than an account contains will result in a denial of the withdrawal and possibly a fee (either to the withdrawer or the withdrawee or both, depending on the circumstances and what the bank thinks it can get away with).

In any case, moving the money to an account PayPal doesn't have access to puts you in the much better position of PayPal having to ask you for money, rather than you having to ask PayPal to give your money back. At that point, at most they can lock your PayPal account (which still screws you out of any more donations made before you can say "stop sending money to this PayPal account, you're donating to PayPal").

This can happen with Australian banks. However, the process used by Paypal to clear funds to Australian banks (known as the Direct Entry Payment System) is actually easily blockable at the bank level (ie, you can tell the bank to block all future direct debits from an individual merchant, assuming either they've already done it once, or you know their Direct Entry Code). Blocking it in this way won't even cause fees at your bank, although it might with Paypal...

I should know - I do this for customers at my bank every day. I'm not sure, however, whether this would also stop Paypal paying money into the account. I'm fairly certain not, but I've never had to stop someone paying money into an account before...

I'm curious about something. I remember paying $25 to some store at BYU to get Trumpet Winsock. Did you get anything from those type of purchases? If not, I'll donate. I might donate something anyway. :)

This little gem of software enabled me to get online with my first PC at college, so thanks for writing it!

Ah, these kids today don't know anything - rest assured that Trumpet will never be forgotten, and I find it just flabbergasting to be able to say hi to you, and thanks.

Hi back!!

Peter, I distinctly remember the first time I installed trumpet and I realized that I could use more than one application over the same connection at once. Until then, I had been using BBSes or dialup connections that used Lynx for web accesss so there was no notion of using email and a web browser concurrently. Trumpet gave me the first "real" Internet connection. Thank you sir, for creating such a wonderful product. I was genuinely saddened to hear your story the other day. Hope this goes a little way toward correcting some past wrongs.

While Trumpet was not the first access I had to the net, I am happy to say that Trumpet was [representative of] the first good access that I had to the net. It was easy to get running and did not intimidate.

Like all great tools, no news was always good news!

Checking in from Toronto, Canada to say a hearty "thanks, Peter!"

Forgotten? Never! You're one of my tech heroes. Thank you so much.

Not forgotten. I still remember your PetrOS project -- the premise made me quite excited at the time!

As a fellow Tasmanian, I can only tell you the awe I felt when I realised way back then (I used to dial into the University of Tasmania using Trumpet) that this great bit of software that _everyone used_ was written and developed by a person living in the same city as me.

Thanks!

Likewise. I can remember using WinSock at UTAS. I've got a mate that works opposite Peter's office in Bellerive and upon spying the office it almost felt like some sort of pilgrimage!

Peter how could we forget you. For a lot of us you were the one giving us a head start in our careers!

Thanks! didi

Sometimes you pay it forward, but sometimes you pay it back.

Thank you.

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