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BudNet Tracks Your Suds
An anonymous reader writes "CNN is carrying a story about Budweiser's national internal sales tracking network called BudNET. It allows Anheuser-Busch to instantly track sales across the country, and 'If Anheuser-Busch loses shelf space in a store in Clarksville, Tennessee, they know it right away.' It brings up some interesting privacy issues, because according to the article 'The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.' Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
...if you're drinking Budweiser, you've got bigger problems.
. . . about admitting you drink Bud.
Don't buy Bud. It's industrial swill anyway.
Drink a good locally produced microbrew instead.
People (men, in particular) will actually enter a store called Piggy-Wiggly when not accompanied by an infant?
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands.
Just pay with cash and they'll never know it was you!
Anheuser-Busch: the Wal-Mart of beer. They can't stand the competition either...
Anheuser-Busch is the shit.
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands
Let's keep the comments in the comments, and the headline in the headline.
If you don't want them tracking your name, then get your friend's older brother to loan you his ID, or hang around outside the store asking if someone will just pick you up a case.
Come now, our youth wasn't that long ago, was it?
I think this is a little more paranoia than we need.
If you bought directly from budweiser, they would know what you paid for, if it was cold, etc. So pipe down.
They can't really single out a person, or name a customer, there's no privacy issues here, at all. Just a company doing inventory control, to an extreme.
Runnin' On Empty
Pay cash
"I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands"
I suspect some of these editors don't want us knowing when they choose to drink on the job versus purifying these stories from spelling errors.
Like the pigley wiggley will have a register that will even know that its ringing up bud...
RIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHHHT
I didn't know about that, I'll have to try it sometime. All I knew about is their piss-colored-water stuff.
i understand privacy concerns as much as the next guy. but really, in this particular instance (and a few others i could think of), WHO CARES? this is not exactly a matter of life or death. so a company knows where/how you bought one of THEIR products? and not even a life/credit/whatever altering purchase, we're talking a few dollars worth of beer? someone alert the friggin press.
...that I never, ever buy their beer. Bletch. It's darks and stouts for me, none of this "making love in a canoe" crap.
They aren't tracking YOU, they are tracking the beer. Unless I'm missing something, they have no way of connecting any one person with any one beer.
Urine tastes like American beer.
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands.
Then, don't buy bud!
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
They do that in two ways (again, according to the article): a "nightly sweep of their distributors' databases" and 2) on-site visits by sales reps who notice how the store is set up, whether it's selling room-temp or chilld beer (or both), and probably noting the class of customers.
Despite Michael's concerns, there's nothing in there about tying to individual customer purchases or even getting explicit sales data on competitors' products.
I don't think we need to get out the tin foil hats just yet. To me this just seems like a bog standard data warehouse app like any supermarket chain would have. I mean, it's not as if a budweiser employee stands behind the counter and records your personal details everytime you buy a sixpack.
If it's too difficult, I can't understand it !
BUDWEISER IS SHIT
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
Hey, Budweiser, if you're watching, I buy your beer NEVER. Because it sucks.
Yes, who knows what sinister things Bud will do with information they legally gleaned. Of course legal doesn't necessarily mean moral or right, but in this case I fail to see how Anheuser-Busch is going to violate your rights or do anything with the modicum of information they gather. Hell, I can't even find any info in the article that points to anything about tying a purchase to an individual rather than a store.
I don't drink beer, any type, period. Ha ha ha!
Oh, crap, I hear rumors of PepsiNet...!
* dons tin foil hat made from aluminum cans *
Does Piggly Wiggly have a kosher foods aisle?
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
Budweiser could stand to spend more on malt and hops instead of impressive IT systems... What's amazing is that they boast about using RICE on their beer!!! Rice is an adjunct that is used in beer to keep costs down and lighten up the body (read: make it more watery)
The perfect sig is a lot like silence, only louder
Because in Soviet Russia, Budweiser drinks YOU!
Jonathanjk.com
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands
/. paranoia is just too freaking much...
They only know if you buy their beer, not if you buy something else... sheesh... sometimes
--Less Thinkin', More Drinkin'...
Pay cash. It's beer (well, it's Bud ..) it's cheap. Budweiser ain't gonna tailor their next commercial just for you even if you do charge it and they track that.
Infuriate left and right
Makes me wonder... are those frogs from the commercials somewhere inside that big ol' database? I bet you could find some if you looked real hard. Makes RMS look like a toddler doesn't it?
Who drink this piss water anyway?!!
I mean I can see their systems updating every time a six pack of Bud goes off the shelf, but how are the A-B computers supposed to know you just bought a six pack of Coors...
"Talk minus action equals nothing" - Joey Shithead, D.O.A.
"Talk minus action equals
You know I've bought a lot of embarrassing things at the corner market and haven't even gotten discount coupons for them during check-out at a subsequent visit (a shame). And to the point, I've never gotten any kind of marketing material from Trojans in the mail as a result of having bought ribbed at Safeway, so if someone's correlating my personal information with my condom-purchasing history, they're not being very enterprising (if they were, they'd have sold the information to my wife long ago).
What I'm saying is, there's a tacit assumption in the article that somehow your purchases are correlated with your name. That's more likely to be happening at your credit card company's clearinghouse than at the cashier's station.
There are no karma whores, only moderation johns
...is Budvar. The stuff brewed in the USA is urinated piss in comparison.
Tubal-Cain smokes the white owl.
Sounds very original and is a unique use of technology. But did it tell them that humourous commercials don't make up for Bad Beer? If not then it must be made to work with Windows.
The truth does not change by our ability to stomach it -Flannery O'Conner
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands." Frankly, you're an idiot, when the submitter doesn't understand the article you know its gotta be slashdot.
And, no, I should not have used the goddamn Preview mode first.
First off, friends do let friends drink Bud. I'm concerned about my privacy too, but maybe that tagline should have been phrased a little better. Oh no, the company knew I bought their product. THEY HAVE TO RESTOCK THEIR PRODUCT. Of course they know when you bought it. As for price, I'd bet there are a lot of deals better retail outlets and companies to track what price products are sold at. Oh, and that's not a big problem either since a company could send someone into the store to look at the prices (not exactly trade secrets, regardless of claims leveled against fatwallet type sites). Gonna be hard to track my cash-paid beer purchasing habits anyway. Sorry guys, but sounds like reasonable business practices to me.
Mod up! It's pisswater!
I'm not going to defend michael, but he didn't add any editorial to the story (this time). The concerns were of the submitter.
You consider this a violation of your privacy? You'd don't even own that beer until the transaction is complete. They are basically tracking something the *store owner* owns, which is no business of yours.
This is just the type of thing that i see here a lot. People crying about the injustice of systems knowing who you are and what you do. Dont do anything wrong and get over it - so that this information can be used for good things that helps everyone - like the fact that Bud is pond scum.
my other sig sucks less
Privacy issues because they track their own sales?
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands.
Don't drink Bud!
Grundgesetz * 23. Mai 1949 - 30. November 2007 - http://www.vorratsdatenspeicherung.de/
This has about as much to do with security as...well...nothing. They don't track anything about -you-. It's a clever and quick way to track product info at a store level. They're not getting anything that some guy with a clipboard couldn't get. They're just doing it much more intelligently. Not EVERY technical innovation in marketing = big brother.
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
They don't know when you buy your Bud, just when Bud is bought!
[panic]
It's the beer police, man!
[/panic]
I'm a little confused as this isn't really your rights online and anyone that think that it is obviously didn't read the article. This is just and article talking about the information system that Bud uses to track sales of their products. It's a supply chain thing. They're not doing anything devious to go about this, just having people track prices and sales and actually doing something with data.
Anyone can tell you that beer distribution is complicated, this just helps them better their distribution. Take off the tinfoil hats, nothing to see here.
My Slashdot account is old enough to drink...
Pass me a Guinness.
Not you -- SOMEONE Yes Bud knows when someone purchased their product but they don't know who and unless they have a survey team out, they don't know why. Stuff like this happens all the time and for the most part it tends to make life better for all of us.
Where we have to worry is when a company starts mining all this data and does track it back to an individual person. When a credit card company or polititical/religious/charity organization can pick up the phone and find out what I watched for TV last night and what books I last bought or checked out at the library, that's when we need to be concerned.
And even if personal data-mining is possible it's no guarantee it will be used. For example, the EZ-TAG scanners on the toll roads you take can easilly compute your average speed between toll booths and issue you a speeding ticket if you were speeding but they don't. Why? Because the toll road comissioners would be voted out of office if they allowed that.
And by sending random people to look for homeless bums in the ditch close to the store sucking down the stuff.......
The truth does not change by our ability to stomach it -Flannery O'Conner
Our typical customer follows this basic pattern each day:
-Wake up
-Beat wife, kids
-Go to work as an assistant manager at the local trailer park
-Drink an ice-cold bud over lunch, purchased from the Piggly Wiggly
-Finish off work day drunk
-Return home, drink a 6-er of luke warm bud -beat wife, kids
-pass out in drunken stupor on shitty trailer carpet in front of 13 inch TV
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
yeah, so you choose to buy 6 Stella's from your local and next minute you've got the Budweiser SWAT team outside your house shoving their piss-poor beverage down your throat? do people not see the benefits to the consumer in these instances?
i mean if bud found that people preferred to buy beers nice and cold, then they may insist that all vendors have well-chilled bud-branded fridges FOR YOUR CONVENIENCE! but no, the SWAT team will get you.
what you paid,
Okay, this part is reasonable
when that beer was brewed,
I can see that they might be able to guess at this with a fair degree of certainty, but how do they know I didn't somehow get a 6-pack that's been sitting at the back of the shelf for weeks? Sure, it's got a "born on" date printed on it, but that's not part of the UPC, so how are they getting it?
whether you purchased it warm or chilled,
Again, same thing: it's the same UPC; how would it know, other than in aggregate (i.e. the distributor writing down how many 6-packs are in the cooler when he gets there.) And even if it knows in aggregate, how does it know that the guy at the liquor store didn't move a bunch of warm Buds back into the cooler when the distributor's rep wasn't there?
and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.Okay, this one's obvious, too.
I think we may have taken the fight for privacy to a new and illogical low? No wonder people lump tech geeks in with the tin foil hat crowd.
Dear Slashdot editor,
We at Budweiser would like to apologize for any anxiety you may have felt from the recent CNN article. As a token of our esteem, please accept the enclosed Budweiser hat.
Sincerely,
BudMan
BM/css
encl:
Tinfoil Hat, mk II, RFID
As the parent stated, this is just inventory control. Personally I like the idea of AB trying to keep a constant flow of beer going and not just sitting on shelves. I do not like skunky beer (or beer with rice in it for that matter :) ).
Much ado about nothing, but hey, at least it's not about SCO.
"I'd rather be a lightning rod than a seismometer." -Ken Kesey
For the love of God people, I'm as much of a privacy advocate as the next man, but MAYBE it's time to take the tinfoil hat off. Why on earth would you care if Budweiser knows when and where bottle #564,356 is sold? It just sounds like good business to me. Besides, it's not like they're doing it for real beer like Guinness or anything. :-)
Keep Austin Weird!
if it's popular, then it must be evil
eg. microsoft, budweiser, etc.
I've been to America. It's not so bad. The can produce good beer if they want to, though not as many different types as in the UK.
My father works as the sys admin for the accounting department of a company that owns a bunch of convenience stores. Every day, the computers at the stores dial in to their system and report on what was purchased, what the price was, what inventory is, etc., etc. The company does all the accounting paperwork for the stores and keeps track of what's selling where, if promotional activities are working, etc.
This is no real big deal, just a good example of IT making business work. Now if AB implemented one of those "loyalty" cards like grocery stores that give you price breaks in exchange for your privacy, then you might have something.
I'd also like to point out that AB doesn't sell beer. They sell advertising in the form of colored fizzy water.
-- Fugacity: Confusing chemists since 1908
Budweiser is just another beer. Let's not start a beer war. That being said, there could be privacy issues here, but on the other hand....maybe they can adjust how much overstock goes to each store. Nobody wants old, skunked beer.
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
I think that this is taking the privacy thing a bit too far. I mean Anheuser-Busch may know that a six pack was purchased but they don't know who purchased it. And I did RTFA and even though...
"They're drilling down to the level of the individual store," Thompson says. "They can pinpoint if customers are gay, Latino, 30-year-old, college-educated conservatives."
...they still don't know anything about you personally just the type of people that live in your area.
It's straight demographics, nothing more.
Chaos reigns within.
Reflect, repent, and reboot.
Order shall return.
But drinking Bud always makes me that way.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
People.. Read the article fully. They track the BEER, not the person. Information like that is extremely important for the marketing of a product.
This information allows them to know there market, plan shipments and various other usefull things.
But instead you would prefer to assume they are tracking how many brain killing gulps of beer your drinking so they know when your drunk enough to use there super secret beer tracking brain scanner to download your life and the history of your poor sex life.
Personal Website
I have to take pity on the poor souls living in the US that don't even have an option of good beer to start with. Hmmm, will that be Bud, Coors or Red,White and Blue?
:)
I'm Canadian, can you tell
Stay tuned for new sig...
I don't see what this has to do with personal privacy. Bud does not track what YOU buy, they track what is bought. It seems to me there is no method of linking you to your purchasing habits in their system.
Further it is quote common and incredibly useful for large suppliers to track their goods all the way through to sale in order to keep shelves stocked (proactive sales algorithms) and to alter product lines appropriately.
Don't worry bud, Bud doesn't know what and when YOU buy their beer.
"Ain't I a stinka..." - Bugs
So what if they choose to track their inventory? You buy their product, they can track it if it they want to. If you don't like it, then don't buy it. It makes them money, and that's why they do it.
This article mentions nothing of tracking purchases of other brands, it just says that they look at their product displays.
I don't want an Orwellian society, but this is just smart business.
If you drink Budweiser, you deserve what you get.
I don't see a privacy problem.
They are tracking product that they or their dealer distributes. Car companies do the exact same thing.
I think it would be very beneficial to both the producer, retailer, and consumer.
They might find that it is worthwhile to cool the product and command a higher price at certain stores, and sell it warmer yet cheaper at others.
There is likely seasonal and locational variation.
And if different brands sell in different ways it may allow them to better predict consumer demand.
Getting the product I want, in the condition I want now is a valuable service, and I'm glad that they're working on providing this to me. Again car companies do this to try and have the cars people want on the lot today.
So they know how much beer they are selling in specific locations and whether or not people prefer it cold or warm. No big deal. Most people on /. buy things from the internet, guess what those suppliers know a heck of a lot more about you and what you buy. Dell sells direct, so they know exactly who they sell what to... I could go on and on but you get the point.
All "Bud sucks" comments aside(it does suck..)
who cares? A-B isn't tagging your name onto the sixpacks, just recording what was bought and when, on a pretty fine grain level, then having sales reps come check out the demographics of the store. How is this an invasion of privacy again?
Wait, it's not.
If you can't see the value in jet powered ants you should turn in your nerd card. - Dunbal (464142)
This Bud's for you, 372-81-4432. And you, 363-90-1125. And you, 352-10-8873...
Why the very thought of anyone drinking such a low class beverage has CAUSED MY MONOCLE TO POP RIGHT OUT! And really, who drinks beer in this day and age anyway? Everyone should drink only expensive wine and scotch.
Why just the other day my chauffer took a wrong turn off of the freeway and pulled me past this run down little liquor store where this shabby looking man (who by the way was driving a Pontiac! A PONTIAC!!!) who hadn't shaved for a couple of days was walking out with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. RED LABEL?! I exclaimed, exhaling a puff of cigar smoke and tipping my top hat back in a bemused manner. WHO ARE THESE CRETINS? I practically had my driver phone the police right then and there.
In a few years they will be able to match the fingerprint in the bill (scanned by the cashier) with a national fingerprint database (build to increase homeland security, to be used only by law enforcement agencies but eventually sold to third parties). Then the only way out will be the very high or the vbery low tech (either you can erase your records or you grow and make everything you eat, wear and use). Resistence is probably useless.
The heck with Anheuser-Busch, I'm more concerned about my friends finding out!
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
You can still use saving cards of course. Simply give a bogus address or use one you found. Local supermarket gave out 4 cards with every signup. Used a fake name and shared the cards. Hate to think what they make of that family in their stats.
So pay for your beer in cash and noone can trace you.
Okay agent smith I think I successfully managed to convince them that cash is safe and that we don't use the barcode on it to track every bill in europe
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
I plan to add RFID tags to my new Shiteweiser beer so I can track its progress all the way from the brewery, through your bladder, to the ocean. If you register on one of my street corner RFID scanners, a sampled voice will boom out, 'Hey Buddy, you're full of Shite!' as you walk past.
Now that's marketing.
--- Yx3 = Delilah ---
Your not paranoid.. They really are after you. After looking at the article it appears this is far less invasive then the shopper "discount" cards. Why did someone even bother to post this as a negative thing?
Photons have mass!!?? I didn't even know they were Catholic...
Make sure you have enough tin foil to wrap your beer after completing your hat.
Simply amazing... more concerned about getting drunk than watching movies...
All this article says is that they track their sales, and store displays, and correlate them to sales at other stores. They don't know YOU purchased the bud, only that a bud was purchased.
Too bad they can't track how much of their beer I have bought. I almost wonder how much of it I drank in college. Had to average out at about 2 cases a week. But that would be a neat little stat to get.
Evolution or ID?
Yet.
Wait till the six-pack or case has an RFID tag in it somewhere.
Mit der Dummheit kämpfen Götter selbst vergebens.
This is not big brother trying to control you life.. This is a company trying to do the best job of marketing they can. They are putting together as much data as they can, to market and sell their product as efficiently as they can.
Their not tieing this to a record of an individual person. They are not providing the data to the "Office of Homeland Security" to determine who the terrorist / non-bud-drinkers are..
They're just trying to see who is buying their beer.
Then, they'll use that data to more effectively target the low-income urban minorities, to keep them under the yoke of "The Man".
They're just tracking sales and supply chain and that sort of thing. How do they know YOU bought beer if you paid in cash? Or really even via credit card it's not like the card swiper the clerk uses is hooked into "BudNet" to give them your information. They're just tracking sales not individuals.
/. gets worked up over pretty innocuous things).
This is the worst case of chicken little-ism I've seen on slashdot in a while (and that's saying something sometimes
I see absolutely NOTHING here to concern me, this is more of a tech issue "how are they doing it?" "what are they using to do it?" "is it running on Linux?" that sort of thing, not an OH MY GOD THEY'RE TRACKING MY BEER BUYING type thing.
Calm down, take off the foil hats and take a real look at what you're crying about here, it's nothing no one else does to try and track what they're selling, when they're selling it, and how can they sell more.
--- www.f-theocean.com
Read. The. Article.
Bud is using Information Resources, Inc., which compiles register scan info. This includes those little barcoded keychain dongles that let you get special discounts -- you know, the ones you filled out a form with your personal information to get?
So, no, Bud can't trace EVERY beer purchase to the individual. And they most likely don't really care which particular individuals buy stuff, they're looking at demographic trends. But data on retail sales to individuals, and personal information abou those individuals IS in the system. That's how they get some of their demographics.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean they aren't out to get you.
This is stupid. The post, the assumption and the comment is just... stupid. One day when Slashdot has a poll for "worst YRO ever", please remember this incredibly lame piece of crap of a post.
- I am made of meat.
I also looks to me that Budweiser drinks may be more inclined to drink on the job than those of us who are looking for taste vs. cheap alcohol.
"Love is a familiar; Love is a devil: there is no evil angel but Love." --William Shakespeare ('Love's Labors Lost')
Insert 'Free as in beer' VS 'Free as in Speech' joke here.
Eagles may fly, but weasels don't get sucked into jet engines.
This is a non-issue, unless you're one of the tinfoil hat types. This is simply a good use of technology to track marketing issues, like any competent product manufacturer should. There is no personal ID tracking, just product sales and associated information. Good fucking Lord, if this makes you paranoid, you need professional help. WHO GIVES A CRAP? Non-story.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
You know, I'm as concerned about personal privacy as the next slashdotter, but come on, this is just good supply chain management.
They have no idea who purchased their beer, they're not keeping your personal buyig habits ina massive database to use against you when you run for president. They're just trying to make sure that everytime you walk into your local store, they don't lose business because you want one of their products which is currently out of stock.
AB makes a product here in Texas called Ziegen Bock, not my personal favorite, but I know people who like it. It's primary competitor is Shiner Bock. Now I'm sure the AB people want to make sure that they don't run into cases where Shiner is in the store and not Ziegen. This benefits my friends as they also want to make sure that Ziegen is there so they don't have to get back in their cars and go to the next store down the road. Oh look, incentive for the stores to help AB in this data collection.
I see a win-win-win situation here, not a threat to my personal privacy.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -RAH
move along, nothing to see here...
Geeze it's just inventory tracking. There's no "you" in the tracking so give it a rest. I'm sick of this idiotic scaremongering over these non-issues. Companies have a right to track their inventory and always have. This is just tracking to point of sale over the country. It's not merely anonymous tracking it's amorphous, there's no distinction between any of the buyers, they're tracking beer not people and they absolutely have a right to do that.
In ancient Sumer. That's right - in IRAQ.
Obviously, Beer (which the membership of al Qaeda are commanded by God not to drink) is in league with al Qaeda, just like the former secularist government of Iraq (which the membership of al Qaeda was commanded by God to overthrow.) Whatever the article-author may think - it is clear that cool, refreshing beer, or even hobo urine like Budweiser, is more of a threat to our freedoms than the brave members of our law enforcement community.
Therefore, DARPA has asked Anheuser-Busch to help them keep track of the treasonous fluid. Don't get me started on those frenchies and their wine.
The good and new comes from no quarter where it is looked for, and is always something different from what is expected.
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
THey don't know ANYTHING about 'you.' They are just tracking the sales of their product. This has NOTHING to do with individual customers, this is just 'what do 'people' like.'
Getting worried that this is a privacy concern is insane. Would you rather the manufacturers and retailers tried to 'spam' you with products that they have no idea if you like or not?
This much information is great, since it's 'individual agnostic.' It's about the beer (temperature, placement, etc), not the buyer.
"I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
Funny, I think I always choose to buy other brands. But that's just me. Having taste buds.
blog |
Looks like they track frogs too!
They won't be able to track "Budweiser" in Europe either. Quote from this article,
"It is hard to imagine the "King of Beers" will surrender without a titanic battle to an ordinance or rule that says beer labelled "Budweiser" must come from Ceske Budejovice in the Czech Republic and not Anheuser-Busch."
B-)
A friend will come and bail you out of jail, a true friend will be sitting next to you saying, "damn that was fun!"
Have you noticed all those people in novelty tri-corner hats following you around the store? If you listen closely you can hear the beeping of their surveillance cameras.
Seriously, do you really think that A: they are the only company doing this type of tracking or B: it matters?
How on earth is this invading YOUR privacy? If, for some unknown reason you actually want to buy Budweiser, don't you want them to use these techniques to (potentially) boost sales and get you a better/cheaper product?
I am thinking we all may want to replace the foil lining in our stocking caps if this worries us.
.-=Wit is educated insolence=-. -Aristotle
Why would you drink Bud anyway? What a shitty beer. For all you non-USAians, contrary to popular belief, there are excellent beers in the States. Only Sheeple drink A-B and SAB (Miller) products. Disclamer: my father was a 25-year employee at Miller as a plant manager, and I grew up drinking Miller products. They are awful. I don't care if it paid the wages and for college. Man, is Miller Lite an abomination....
Something tells me that if people were to actually expand their horizons on the beer front, they would discover the Sierra Nevadas, Shiners and such that have nationwide markets and comprable pricing to Bud ($9 a 12-er compared to $11 a 12-er for Shiner). Guess what? These are small companies (relative to A-B) who are not going to fool with BudNETing your habit.
BEER: The cause of, and the solution to, all of life's problems -- HJS.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
First, to be clear, Bud doesn't know what 'you' bought. That would take them matching data from the credit card [assuming you purchased with a credit card], which they don't have access to, to the scanner sale [which only records what product was scanned]. All they are doing is making sure their product is available, all the time, and in the right product mix for the store/neighborhood.
/. is that way, right?]
A big problem in the beverage industry is 'out-of-stocks'. Most retailers use direct-store-delivery for beverages [bottlers put the stuff on trucks and tell the truck - sometimes in transit - where and how much to drop off at each store]. Before scanners, it could be days before an out-of-stock product was identified. Think about how much product moves off a shelf - per day, per store, per market - having no product on the shelf adds up quick.
The dollars manufacturers can lose due to out-of-stocks is huge. And retailers don't want empty space, and they don't want shoppers not finding their favorite product and going somewhere else. The manufacturer who figures out how to keep their merchandise in-stock efficiently will be a favorite of the retailer, especially if they are a big name like Bud, who also advertises a lot.
Companies like Bud use market research to determine the mix of products. Markets that have a higher Hispanic population may have a higher mix of beverages that cater to this group. But they don't know that 'you' specifically bought their product.
Nothing to see here...unless you're overly paranoid [but no one on
Who put this thing together? Me, that's who.
Who cares?
Every company tries to track their sales so they have a better idea where the advertising dollars should be spent. That boils down to more profits for them and better prices for you. Amazon.com does the same thing and so does every other retailer, wholesaler, distributor, manufactor, and website out there. So what if there is a name for BudNET? Every major retailer does it.
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands." Frankly, you need to live back before computers were around cause now EVERYTHING is tracked. They used to use pens and paper but now it is thrown in a database. I can go to work right now and, with the right information, pull up everything you have purchased there. At the end of the day, our computers process that information and break down what people are buying, when, why, how much, what accessories they get for that item, and then display it in easy to read charts of what we could do to improve our sales. The next day, we know what to push to maximize our margins.
Funniest post this week. Mod + many Planck energy levels.
--- Ban humanity.
Budwesier != beer for beer =={Sam Adams, Bastard Ale, Romulan Ale}
Union bear + bud while beer = {Sam Adams + Bastard Ale +Romulan Ale}
element beer = |beer|
therfore Budwieser !=beer
This whole idea of anonymity is getting out of hand. Guess what? Anonymity never existed and has never been protected by any government. The idea of being anonymous came out of people getting lost in the industrial culture. Before the industrial age, you tended to have few choices on who to buy from, and the store owner knew you and what you bought. He didn't carry anything that you didn't want people to know you bought, because it would soon be getting around if you did buy it. Now we're using computers to pull that all back together, but mostly for the old advantages of knowing how to serve the customer better. Budweiser is not really interested in gossiping with others that you bought a keg, so what's the big deal already?
I know people like the idea of having a protective shroud of mystery surrounding them. I hate to break it to you, but it's just a false sense of security. If you do something worth noticing, you *will* get noticed.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
you rent it.
I even have a certificate to prove that I'm a certified Beer Master. You wouldn't believe how much work goes into making such a thoroughly below average beer.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands"
I disagree. In a capitalist society, you vote with every dollar you spend. I want every company to know when I stop buying their products!
they're not tracking You, necessarily .. they're just tracking that Someone bought the beer .. if you're that worried about it, pay with cash - while cash is still allowed ;)
I guess thats another reason to pay cash...can't track you.
Of course if you drink the USA Budwieser rather than the Czech variety.....;-)
So?! That's totally within their rights! At least companies are putting a price on your privacy and offering you the choice of selling it for that price rather than just trying to take it.
And who knows, there could be other benefits for selling your privacy -- the (government-owned) liquor stores in Ontario are currently asking every customer for their postal code, presumably so they can figure out where to build more stores and save customers travel time.
it's not like the store didn't know when they sold an item anyway (people have been tracking sales probably since the invention of numbers, just on paper), and as long as it isn't recorded with my name, who cares? This is simply a matter of convience, the old stores who recorded that they sold an item to you on carbon-paper receipts could have done this, it would simply have been really painful to do so.
and wine coolers.
Couple of arse pounders, righty o.
Mickys is a much better brew than 'weiser and it's cheeper too.
I own a liquor store in northern NJ, and let me tell you I've never once seen our Bud salesman walking our coldbox with a handheld. They might know the products of theirs we carry, but that's about it. Secondly, there is no difference in price, or SKU, between cold and warm beer, so "tracking" those sales seems really suspect to me. Hell, even I dont know what beer came from the box and what came from the back.
And I agree with a lower poster - this is REALLY stretching YRO to its limits.
One last word - if you're going to buy a bud product, get Anheuser Select. Its like Heineken/Becks only cheaper.
Brew your own!
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
Oh god, you've got to be kidding me with that statement. Who gives a flying crap if Budweiser knows where and when a six pack was bought. Its called keeping track of inventory. I'm totally convinced that a lot of slashdot people need to just abandon computers and technology all together because all they do is complain.
Who really cares? Not me. If it can improve the product pipeline and lower costs by making sure that the product stays on the shelf - then I am all for it.
Joseph W. Breu
Personally, I could care less about bud in particular keepin tabs of what/when/where etc I hypothetically purchase their product. Perhaps in this case, it isn't a big deal...but what is troubling is that companies do this..it isn't it is just bud. I used to work for a huge Pharm Drug co that was piloting a system that actually had motion sensors/cameras in retail locations...Move your hand in front of their product, and guess who is on candid camera. That's only the tip of the iceberg...
Executive presidents from Anheuser-Busch, Miller Brewing Company, and Guiness had just finished a long meeting and decided to go down to the pub to relax.
The CEO of Anheuser-Busch sat down and said to the bartender "I'll have a tall King of Beers!" and the bartender poured him a Budweiser.
The CEO of Miller said "It's Miller time!" and the bartender handed him a frosty Miller High Life.
The CEO of Guiness sat down and said I'll take a water, please.
The other two looked at him quisically, and the CEO of Guiness responded to their looks: "If you boys ain't drinking, neither am I!"
Make money with Real Estate Investing
Guess what? Guinness is partially owned by A-B and has had a long standing marketing partnership with Bud.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
...and this American brought Bud. The group of Canadians and Brits know a little something about beer and managed to convert him to Sleeman Honey Brown. It's a far cry from my cherished dark ales and bitters, but you know... baby steps, right?
Anyway, as it happens at parties, his Bud was left in my fridge. I couldn't *give* it away, and I certainly wasn't going to drink it myself. I tossed it after a while.
So if Anheuser-Busch wants to know where that case of Bud ended up, they can find it unopened in some landfill I imagine.
After drinking a bit of Sam Adam's, Bud* will taste like mostly water. Stop drinking that (~5% alcohol) tripe and get some real beer (~8%).
And don't say "but it's cheaper! I just want to get wasted, I don't care how it tastes!" because the reason it's cheaper is that it's MOSTLY WATER. You'll get more drunk and enjoy it more from STRONGER, BETTER TASTING beer.
Question everything
And why not? Do you want to pay a higher price for beer?
Just don't buy this brand of beer. Boycott them. Tell others to boycott them. Write letters to their CEO and upper management as to why you are not buying their beer. Write letters to the editors of newspapers. Post this on protect our freedoms.
The reality is that as long as companies get a free pass on violating our rights, we will continue to lose them.
Quit playing Monopoly with Bill.
Linux - of the people, by the people, and for the people.
If I pick up a 6-pack at the local depaneur (7-11, corner store, etc) and pay cash, and the clerk prints out a cheap receipt on a cheap non-networked cash register, Budweiser will STILL know who I am, and if my bear was chilled or warm?
What, do they have a secret network of x-ray thermal spy sats that record all purchases of their product?
This whole article is overblown and exagerated. Not to mention it doesn't apply to many (most?) stores. At least around here. I don't know of too many corner stores around here that ask for your personal info when you buy beer.
As I said above: Guinness is partially owned by A-B and has had a long-term marketing partnership with Bud. Example: the Irish Derby is sponsored by Bud.
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
[01-03-04 09:44:31] Beer Location: On the delivery truck.
[01-03-04 10:26:54] Beer Location: On the store loading dock.
[01-03-04 11:54:12] Beer Location: In the store refrigerator case.
[01-03-04 19:22:57] Beer Location: In customer's hand.
[01-03-04 19:24:03] Beer Location: On the store checkout counter.
[01-03-04 19:31:44] Beer Location: Outside the store.
[01-03-04 19:32:10] Container Event: Can opened.
[01-03-04 19:32:12] Beer Location: Inside customers mouth.
[01-03-04 19:32:12] Beer Location: Outside customers mouth.
[01-03-04 19:32:13] Beer Location: On the ground.
[01-03-04 19:32:17] Beer Location: In the gutter.
[01-03-04 19:32:23] Container Event: Can dropped.
That's ridiculous. That's just good business. How else do you expect them to know whether or not you like to some light crap or non-light crap. They look at the numbers to know what you want and give you what you want.
Does Piggly Wiggly have a kosher foods aisle?
No, they wanted diversity and went for Halal food aisle... strangely enoguh, they've not had a single customer who bought Halal food AND beer...
I second that motion.
Man, I've been asked for my zip code in stores..but never for my sexual preference...wow...
But to make the hat, I have to buy the cans! Classic chicken/egg problem. Arrgg!
Please help metamoderate.
About ten years ago I was working for Philip Morris (remember them?) on a database tracking system for cigarette sales. They had much more interesting information than this -- demographics by age, race, store (and the part of town), what brands people bought, etc.
They had software that would plot graphically on maps where each of the stores were and permit sorting by any criterea. So, you could look at what brands were bought on what side of town.
Let's add promotions to that -- they could target promotions to difference race, age, and income groups.
I believe you call that effective advertising.
On that scale, what BUD is doing is pretty tame.
Do we really need RFIDs?
For that matter, most of the folks in the military. You see, the simple fact is, alcohol is expensive. And the great thing about alcohol is, the more you drink of it, the less you care about it.
So, typically, you get a case or two of the stuff you like to drink, and a case or two of something cheap. [exact numbers vary by the number of people involved, their prefered drinking habits, and at what point in the night they become incoherent]
As people get more loaded, you give 'em the crappy stuff. They don't really care. This enables you to get some good stuff, and some crap, rather than settling on the mediocre middle ground for everything.
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
"They can pinpoint if customers are gay, Latino, 30-year-old, college-educated conservatives."
Thats not impressive. I mean, how hard can it be to keep track of 5 peoples buying habits?
Man, some people really need to relax.
... You know that broadband bill you pay? There's a company keeping VAST logs of every hit through their servers that you make. I'd worry about that before I worried about somebody making sure there's beer on the shelf when I go shopping.
Guess what
Heineken? Fuck that shit. PABST BLUE RIBBON!
"This includes those little barcoded keychain dongles that let you get special discounts -- you know, the ones you filled out a form with your personal information to get?"
Same if you buy a pack of hotdogs or a case of coke. This isn't a bud thing, this is a discount shopper card thing. Two COMPLETELY different things, but still a:
Who cares!
Kind of thing.
First I'll mention Publix, who advertises that they give you the sale with out a card!
When I don't shop at Publix (usually 3:30am or something) I apply for a new card everytime I buy something. Some stores make this easy by allowing you to pick up a form, check a box indicating you don't want to tell them anything, and hand it over. Others require you to fill out bogus info, in which case I bug the cashier, and they usually have one handy to swipe. You can always use the person in line behind you or if all else fails, fill out the form, with bogus info of course.
I also make sure to ask the employee to tell their supervisor how unhappy I am with the supermarket for doing this.
If more people would get a new card every time, the stores would stop doing this because of the expense of making the cards.
If the store wants to track my purchases, they can do it the old fashined way, via my credit card!
(I beleive publix only exists in the south eastern US)
I often use beer for cooking. My cooking beer is whatever is cheapest.
Last night the shrimp was delicious.
It's not like they're putting RFID's in the cans/bottles and finding out how long it took you to polish off the six-pack you bought on Tuesday night.
In fact, as far as I can see, the data is not purchaser-specific and is focused more on the retail outlet's presentation of Bud with respect to other brands. So, who cares? If it focuses their marketing, let it.
Bush Lies On the Record.
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands.
If you insist on being a covert budweiser drinker, i'd like to introduce the concept of "shoplifting". Walk around and get your ordinary stuff, and put the budweiser in your pocket. Then you pay for the non-budweiser stuff and just pretend you never took the thing. Simple! Just don't get caught or the men with the shiny badges will put you in a really small place with metal bars they call "Jail" or give you those notes that say you need to pay alot of money.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
America's first true self-service grocery store, was founded in Memphis, Tennessee in 1916 by Clarence Saunders. In grocery stores of that time, shoppers presented their orders to clerks who gathered the goods from the store shelves. Saunders, a flamboyant and innovative man, noticed this method resulted in wasted time and man hours, so he came up with an unheard-of solution that would revolutionize the entire grocery industry: he developed a way for shoppers to serve themselves
So WALMART is their fault!
Comparing it to Windows will be a moot point, since El Dorado is going to have a 40% larger code base than XP.
It's almost completely tasteless. All that fresh beer tastes better *bollocks*. Why on earth would you choose that in favour of a decent beer, like the original Czech Budweiser.
http://www.budvar.cz/
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Yes we have beer.
Some American breweries, and the big Canadian Mass market guys too.
But what I really like is the selection in Ontario.
The beer store and the LCBO have quite a nice selection of beer from around the world, quite a bit of variety if you want it.
That being said, I drink a lot of the mass market stuff myself.
So, who's with me? I will never purchase another Bud again, only fractionally for the reasons discussed here, but mostly for its globalistic quality dive. Another thing: Have they come up with taste bud (yes, intended) enhancers/deconvoluters yet? And, if so, how much money is Bud/Coors/Miller pouring into it? Sign on! (and drink local)
Now I'm worried about my main pimp...don't tell me those bitches are carrying...
It always amazes me that it's the same people that scream and shout about privacy issues that come to websites like this one and continually post responses and journal entries about their stance on issues of political, corporate, and other signifigance. If you think somebody could build a profile about you based on the beer you drink, imagine the profile they could construct by piecing together every post you've ever made to websites on the Internet.
Are you trying to imply that Michael might have over-reacted again to some perceived rights issue that's not actually a rights issue? Or are you perhaps suggesting he doesn't actually read the submitted articles before posting this paranoid crap?
I believe it's clear that Michael's tinfoil hat has worn out, and it's time to send him another. Perhaps if slashdot gets some more subscribers, they can afford to buy him one on the company tab.
I hear each Bud is laced with an individual chemical compound not unlike a DNA for beer (or serial number). So they already know where you buy and once you piss the bastard out they have engineers down all sewer systems with receptors matching your DNA with the beers.. and bing bango NO PRIVACY FOR YOU!
serenity now!
Funny. I didn't read that in *MY* article. And you got an Informative rating?!
The salesmen filled mark-sense cards, which were sent to a contractor who gave back weekly reports (on reams of computer paper).
We wanted to bring this back in-house. Naturally, we thought of using a portable computer for this. Of course, 25 years ago, nothing would do, so we brewed our own, based on a Motorola 8 bit chip.
Trouble is, the thing was so big that we had to hide it in a book...
Alas, as usual, politics canned the whole project, and we simply managed to buy a mark-sense reader to read the sheets in-house...
before slashdot goes completely down the toilet.
Just thought I'd say that the slash-blurb here is very misleading.
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands"
This could read "Frankly, I don't want Budweiser clubbing baby seals" and be just as correct. While this is not a lie, it misleads people into thinking it's true, strictly by bringing it up.
wait, where does it say it records your name? oh wait, it doesn't.
Reason, free market capitalism, and individualism
Pyramid Hefeweisen(sp?) - a light beer, but with a lot more character and a better taste.
Spaten/Spaten Optimator - german consumer beer with at least some character.
Ommegang - a somewhat darker and richer beer with a great, interesting taste. Try it.
Arrogant Bastard - A real beer drinker's beer.
All of these should be found at a Beverages and More! or your local equivalent.
I used to be a Guinness drinker, but the dark/heavy drinks became a little too much for me - especially when you're trying to have a meal with your drink. Shit, I don't have room for dessert because I had that Guinness!.
Others, please feel free to add your beer recommendations for Bud replacements!
1. Read the fine article--no one tracks what beer you buy
2. If you are worried about someone watching your spending habits, use cash.
-- "At Microsoft, quality is job 1.1" -- PC Magazine, Nov. 1994
Since Slashdot farked the entire post in my browser and I lost the last piece of the link entirely:
Ultimate Shopper
Privacy issue aside, it's a bit spooky that they are forcing the retailers to maintain this much information on competitors' sales for them. The article mentions that the company wields enough clout to dictate contract terms mandating the collection of all this information. Retail stores or restaurants that don't agree to go along with all this time-wasting paperwork may not even be permitted to sell their brand. Not that this isn't arguably their right, but it is worrisome whenever any company gets enough clout to unilaterally decide what goes into the contract. It tends to result in monopoly-like failures of the free market, and causes social (eg. Walmart) and intellectual (eg. any software license agreement more restrictive than Borland's old like-a-book) problems.
Frankly, who gives a shit? You people need to figure out where the line is between privacy and paranoia. If the biggest injustice in your life is that Anheiser-Busch may figure out that some dude in Souix Falls bought 4 twelve packs at 8:02pm for $28 when he COULD have gotten them for $22.92 at the gas station across the street, you live a life charmed beyond comprehension. Find something else to clutter your mind with, it's clearly empty.
Yes, the Albertson's chain went to a customer ID card about eight months ago. I suspected at the time that it was a way to raise the general level of prices on all the items without pissing off all their customers at the same time.
This is more-or-less what has happened. If you use a card (the cashier scans the barcode on the plastic card) then you get the sale items at about 20% less than the standard price. But at normal price, almost every item in the store is 20% higher than the other stores in the area.
In my neighborhood there are seven major grocery stores within a mile radius of my apartment, so I can take advantage of weekly sales.
That is, if I can find out about these weekly sales. I want to be able to go to a website and find out what each store is having on sale this week, and, what the normal non-sale cost is for each item for each store.
The stores treat this information like it was top-secret military data. They threaten anyone who records prices for comparison with arrest. There are signs all over the stores: "No cameras", "no notebooks".
Such contempt for the general public makes me very uncomfortable whenever I go into grocery stores nowdays. I've reduced my shopping at Safeway by about 95% and at Albertson's by at least 60% in the past year. The checkers are amiable but extremely slow. The management is scientifically selected to be crypto-fascist pinhead morons and the whole experience of 'doing' these stores is unpleasent. And I'm just a normal shopper: not a shoplifter or scammer.
The worst grocery store in the country has got to be Safeway. They constantly do bait-and-switch with items that are advertised at reduced price only to have you pay extra at checkout because the fine print shows that the item was not the sale item. Like for example, big signs saying that "Flavor Fresh" brand frozen peas are 79 cents for a pound. So you grab a pack only to be charged $1.29 at the register. Turns out that the peas you grabbed were "FlavorPac" brand which looks like exactly the same package AND was placed directly under the sign saying "Flavor Fresh" peas were on sale.
This happened to me so many times at Safeway that I call it the 'Safeway Shuffle' at the checkout; where they send someone back to check the price when you complain that you were overcharged. I was at the point where I was bringing a caliper to measure the width of the barcode line and comparing it to the barcode on the sale announcement, when I realized that there was a simpler and more elegant solution. Just get the fuck out of Safeway and don't go back!
I'm still amazed that they're still in business. But many places in California, they're the only store for miles around.
So, yes, I'm pissed that companies are collecting all this information about customers without allowing the customers to use it for their benefit. The internet really has changed everything: people really do expect a mutually benefitial relationship from all this information gathering.
This is the point that the business and management people just don't seem to understand. In the coming years, companies that share information with their customers will prosper and those that hoard and hide information will not.
Brew any style you want. You'll have a greater appreciation for a beer you created anyways. Want more flavor add more malt, want more aroma add more hops.
Kevin
Irrational Diversions
Let's say they've figured out that a consistent pattern would be every monday, wednesday, and friday, or in my case everyday
Therefore, anyday that I'm not purchasing Budweiser, I must be purchasing another beer, and then they would have to start bombarding me with adds of Everyones Favorite Super Party Animal
Go Spuds Go
Why not? If they do know & decide to change for me, we both win. I get what I want, they make a sale.
Maybe on Tuesdays I like my beer cold, and on wednesdays I like it warm. How exactly is it bad for them to know that & have it chilled for me on Tuesdays & have it out warm on Wednesdays?
Every so often an issue such as this comes up. Data mining versus privacy. The ridiculous thing is, I know what data mining is, but what is this thing called privacy?
Here's an interesting twist... the tinfoils in the crowd are assuming that Budweiser wants to track individuals with this. But that opens a can of worms for the beer distributors! See, then the Govt. could easily see who is selling to minors just by looking at Bud's database. There's no way the stores or the Beer companies want that data out. The beer companies have been doing well to push the whole "you must be 21 to buy" thing, but that step would make them now accountable.
2.) This would also make it easy to see who sold the beer that the drunk driver was drinking when he smashed his car into a school bus, further opening up the distributors to possible litigation in our sue-happy society.
No one is offering drinking solutions to the poor people who don't know any better.
Bud is not *that* bad. Sure it's only a cheap mass-produced rice brew, but on a hot summer afternoon, it'll do. It's better than nothing at all.
As to other cheap American brews, Coors and Miller are decent beers for the Nascar fans.
I can't beleive they would be tracking my beer purchases!! those bastards.. think of what might happen.. they might make beer cheaper, or more available or cold when i want it that way.. son of a.. @#%#@^
can you say paranoid?? They may be the first beer company to track sales as they happen, but they are certainly not the first industry.. this happens everyday.. you better not buy anything ever again!!
----------------------------
Esobofh - Currently drinking fresh mango juice.
perfect information is one of the basic economic principles, so not letting BUD know about your buying behavior is like opposing free trade; it creates market inefficiencies that ultimately lead to waste and products not accurately suited for the market. The key issue, is that if this information is at the expense of privacy, BUD is essentially taking a valuable consumer asset without reimbursement or consent. This raises moral and ethical issues that should be put into public debate before this practice is widespread.
...cash will be cheaper. This is normally due to the fees that credit card company charge the store
That's interesting... in the US the retailer *never* charges you for the credit card processing fees he pays. I think it is actually illegal (either that, or part of the standard agreement with the credit card companies). They do sometimes set minimum purchase limits for using a card ($5 or thereabouts), but they never charge you extra.
There are only 10 types of people: those who understand decimal, those who don't, and, uh, 8 other types I forget.
So the reason that Budweiser is still "the king of beers" is because the Chattanooga Choo Choo was slower than treacle over a century ago?
Damn, talk about unlucky. If only they could have got the trains running faster...
"Accept that some days you are the pigeon, and some days you are the statue." - David Brent, Wernham Hogg
at least where I am, legally, they cannot deny discounts to non-card carrying members. All you have to do is ask and they have to scan in the "store" card, and you get the same discounts.
... The best way to defeat the purchase-tracking system (AND get the sale prices) is to get a new store card every time you go, and put fake (or none at all) information on the signup sheet. I have over 40 "QFC Advantage Cards", each with 1 transaction logged and no real information about me. Haha Kroger Corporation, take that.
I think it's a great application of data collection and data mining. They are collecting a load of data, some of it automated, some of it gathered by humans, integrating it, and using it to drive their supply chain. Isn't this a good use of IT?
...
The article is in the wrong category and is misleading, as numerous other people have pointed out.
Why not resubmit with a different category and talk about the novel aspects, like taking what the delivery guys observe about other items on the shelf and the clientelle, and how that gets fed all the way up to marketing plans? That's the real jewel of the article
This privacy stuff is getting out of hand...
It brings up some interesting privacy issues, because according to the article 'The last time you bought a six-pack of Bud Light at the Piggly Wiggly, Anheuser servers most likely recorded what you paid, when that beer was brewed, whether you purchased it warm or chilled, and whether you could have gotten a better deal down the street.'
It does NOT bring up any privacy issues, interesting or not. It's marketing data and there's no personal connection to the consumer whatsoever. Budweiser has a business obligation to determine where and how their product is selling.
Just because they say "you" in the text doesn't mean that "you" are part of the data collected. They're just using a purchase that sounds familiar to "you" to give "you" a frame of reference.
I'm surprised none of the privacy nuts have muttered the words "Ashcroft" or "Bush" in this thread yet, for no good reason, as is usually the case.
RP
As everyone should know, "Budweiser" by Anheuser-Busch is a schoolbook case of trademark piracy. The very name refers to town of Budweis in Czech Republic, just as "Pilsener" refers to Pilsen. And they _DO_ make decent beer in Budweis.
My theory is that whenever there is a batch brewed in the Budvar or Budweiser Burgerbrau, the fermentation tanks are cleansed by CIP procedure. The rinsing solution is then collected, tanked and shipped to St. Louis, US. Anheuser-Busch then adds in some ethanol to raise its alcohol contents to close 5% by volume.
That also explains why the Yank Bud tastes like dish-washing water.
Frankly, Americans should make cars and Czech should make beer. Skoda isn't a car and Anheuser-Busch Budweiser isn't a beer.
After growing up in St. Louis, I practically grew up on AB beers. once I moved away I started drinking brewpub beers, and then started home brewing myself. after that I had a sense and appreciation for good beer, and now the only time I drink Bud is if I'm visiting STL. it's like drinking water now; you can't taste the hops or anything like you can in a good/well made beer.
P
free ipod and free gmail!
I read about this system in Business 2.0 at least a month or two ago. (Threw it out when done so can't give an exact reference.)
The article submitter obviously has their tin-foil hat screwed on too tight because nowhere in the article do they say that they're tracking individual purchases. This is all dealing with the supply-chain, finding out how effective marketing campaigns are, twisting the arms of the local distributer to make sure product placment is such that it will increase sales.
Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?
This is the funniest /. post I've read in months. There should be a Hall of Fame for posts like this.
Thanks!
All Your Memory Are Belong To Java
That's hilarious satire, friend. However, diparaging tasteless macrobrew isn't about elitism, it's about respecting beer. Brewing in the US is still recovering from prohibition which wiped out all our small breweries. Gourmet beer drinkers are succeeding in recultivating appreciation for craft brew in our country. In Germany, it would be false advertising to brew a rice-based beverage like Budweiser and call it beer.
The gourmet coffee craze has changed the coffee industry. It's not just monocled Bentley owners who choose a $3 cup of gourmet aribica over a 30 cup of Folgers today. I see plenty of constuction workers at my local Starbucks. The same thing is happening to beer. My local grocery store now carries a $20 per bottle Belgian beer.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
While I agree that this article (and articles at slashdot in general) is presented in somewhat inflammatory way, I think a lot of people are missing the intent of slashdot all together.
... )
I think there is a lot of value in bringing these issues up for discussion and/or debate. I like seeing what a lot of people have to say about different things like this. It's interesting to see what each individuals response is coming from whatever context they happen to be in.
But people on slashdot get too caught up in slamming slashdot for being paranoid or alarmist or not free-market enough or too free-market or not skilled enough as journalist/editors/proofreaders/publishers... it kind of misses the point. Complaining about slashdot staff and contributors muddles the signal of discussing the topice presented.
So can we have a little less meta-conversation (this is a stupid story, this is a poorly written story, this story proves the -bias of slashdot) and more actual conversation (coming from the context of a bioinformatics researcher i think this topic is interesting because
Just my two bits.
If you have a garden, you can use it for slug bait.
"Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
Last Saturday, I purchased a 6-pack of Guinness (in bottles) from the Kroger in Clarkston, GA. No, I do not live near there.
I paid approximatly $7.50.
My intent in purchasing the beer was, in addition to enjoying its smooth robust flavor, performing a demonstration to amazed friends on how to remove the magic "rocket widget" from an empty Guinness bottle (without breaking the bottle of course).
There, I said it. Now the entire world knows what beer I purchased, when, where, and why.
What is the WORST thing that can possibly happen to me by making this public?
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
We gave the control of our beer to the Machines!
Soon, BudNet will become intelligent, and say to us!
Waaaasssupp!!
No, it tastes like Mokovskaya Vodka. It's mixed with terpentine to ensure proper flavor, I am sure of it.
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
So, Mr. Smith. You were in an automobile accident at approx 23:00h on the day of April 2nd, this is correct?
yes
And according to the records we have here, you bought a 12-pack of beer at about 21:00h on the same date, is this correct?
yes
And yet you claim that alcohol was not a factor in this accident. Why then, Mr. Smith, did you buy the beer.
For a party the next day
But why, Mr. Smith, would you be out buying alcohol at a late 21:00h the day prior when you had ample time to buy them the next day. Were you not, in fact, drinking on the night of April 2nd.
Ummm
No, this arguement wouldn't really hold up, but it's enough to raise suspicious or speculation that might not otherwise be there had somebody not been tracking Mr. Smith's beer purchase.
We don't need more tracking. The existing systems are abused enough as it is, there's no reason to further invade our lives.
Accumulating data in this manner is only trivial as long as the data is kept in-house by bud. However, once they sell that data to a broker it becomes just another data point used for profiling - and its value sky-rockets.
Before the industrial age profiling of the community members wasn't a mass-produced product, available for pennies. Soon your insurance company , prospective employer, etc will be able to pay a few pennies to determine your "long term health costs" - based on *exactly* this kind of data.
Before the industrial age you weren't likely to encounter some greasy peddler who would walk up to you and say, "Hi Jim, I've noticed that your contraceptive purchases have stopped, and you're now getting that Parent magazine, and well - since this will be Beth's first child, and she's 39 - I'd like to let you know that I can hook you up with some really good tests for birth defects...". It won't be long.
The only thing rediculous here is that in the info-age so few of the info-workers really understand the how the economics of information work, or have even the vaguest of ideas of what the social impacts of free information are.
The queers said it best when they said (subs. BUD for Pabst, if you must):
I don't wanna hear your shit, don't wanna see your face
Cause when it comes to dinking beer, don't you get on my case
Heinekin is skunk piss dude, and Miller sucks so bad
I'm Joe Queer, I've tried em all, I've spilled more than you had alright
Hey you motherfuckers
I only drink Bud
Ben Weasel don't know a thing, Rancid don't even drink
Even little Vapid's on the wagon, don't it stink?
People in Chicago always brag about Old Style
Before I drink that swill again, it's gonna be a while alright
Hey you motherfuckers
I only drink Bud
I agree with consensus that nobody should care about anonymous purchase stats, but I had heard recently that people's alcohol purchases on a grocery club card were used against him in a civil suit where he 'slipped on water' in the store.
Maybe this person was a scammer, but it bugs me knowing that they track every item that I buy.
"Who are you?" "No one of consequence." "I must know." "Get used to disappointment."
tell people you bought a six pack of Guinness so they shouldn't be paranoid..
BRILLIANT!
That's why I only drink open suds, from my linux controlled micro-brewry! You should se uptime on my hops!
I wonder if anyone has ever benefited by using this information as an alibi, along the lines of, "I couldn't have committed the crime because the Safeway records show I was buying beer when it occurred."
The retailers do it too.
Pull my finger for my public key.
The local public utility has been tracking my water usage for years -- and they make me pay them to do it!! Worse than that, the long distance phone company not only tracks my phone calls, but they even track who I call and how long I am on the phone. My grocery store tries to track my grocery buying, but nobody lives at that address. However, Walmart does not have those stupid "shopper cards", so I shop there. Heck, I even think /. even keeps a record of when I respond and what I respond to.
You can't hide!
what do you have to hide micheal? i think you are just a scared little boy. didnt mommy love you enough? maybe thats why you drink so much beer.
As recently as six years ago, the beer industry was a technological laggard. Distributors and sales reps returned from their daily routes with stacks of invoices and sales orders, which they'd type into a PC and dial in to breweries. They, in turn, would compile them into monthly reports to see which brands were the hottest. But Anheuser changed the rules in 1997, when chairman August Busch III vowed to make his company a leader in mining its customers' buying patterns.
Seriously wasn't just about everybody "discovering" the internet back in 1997? Huge databases, handhelds submitting orders via cell phones... Almost no one was doing that before because it was too expensive and the infrastructure just wasn't there. Not that this isn't a cool data mining operation, but almost everyone was still using paper 10 years ago.
So it's just them doing their job, and they can't identify you. They would probably accumulate a dozen TB on superbowl weekend if they did, and I don't see how they could make individual data be valuable (other than the trending to get the beer to the store you want to buy it at). Heck, they probably accumulate a couple dozen TB without your personal data in there. Besides, most other retail products companies do this to a greater or lesser extent, so telling them to stop wont make anyone else stop, and just imagine, GM knows your name when you buy their car.
Just my 2 cents.
- - - Non Caffeine Drink or Drink Error
No, they know that SOMEONE paid for beer, but they dont know that YOU paid for the beer.
There is a difference, and that is why there is no privacy issue. Move along, nothing to see here.
Manipulate the moderator system! Mod someone as "overrated" today.
Here, since they have obviously figured out that people don't really want to be tracked, they mail you the card. Do the have to have your address. Even if I were going to get a card I would never give them my SS#, but a wrong name and your address might not get delivered (and a good database with all of the public information on you could likely cross to your real name from your address anyway).
I'm an American. I love this country and the freedoms that we used to have.
Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
....... Hello?
The guys at the airport sticking their fingers up everyones asses pales in comparison to this outright violation of my civil liberties!! I think it's time for a revolution! Who's with me?
Hello?
Could fake Safeway numbers/stickers be created using a bar code font?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
When I first read the headline, I thought to myself "What does soap have to to with marijuana?"
Not noteable, IMO a rubbish article.
What you say is correct. But also, in times past, there wasn't the ability to store information as there is today. Sure, records were kept (and I'm grateful, I've used store records several hundreds of years old in genealogy research - it is fun to see what your ancestors bought), but they were handwritten, on paper likely a little more dear in value than paper is today. So not everything got written down. Which is why genealogical research can't go back beyond several hundred years geneally, maybe to 1066 for English ancestors. It was simply too expensive, too unimportant, or too troublesome, for records to be kept on daily activities, unless you descend from somebody famous or wealthy. So my first point is
(1) The cost of keeping records, not only financially, but in busywork, meant that much less was tracked.
Additionally, as you point out, customers likely knew the shopkeeper personally, and very well at that. It was the nature of the infrastructure of the day. For most people, it is likely that noone knew about them outside of a radius of 10 miles or so (except family/freinds from places they migrated from, naturally) - there simply was no reason to benefit to knowing this. Thus,
(2) any use made of a person's personal information would be likely known to the person, or at least, the person would be local to the perpetrator and could more easily see the results of the use. There simply was not the chance of long-distance identity theft such as is so well documented with our present infrastructure.
Additionally,
(3) With surveillance cameras and recording of their signals, etc., there is alot of records being made of aspects of our life which, while publically available in the past, were not recorded. Thus our actions, while public, had a certain nonpermanence about them which is rapidly eroding away.
I have a freind who is very concerned about this last point. He has come up with a doctrine he thinks should be incorporated into our jurisprudence - the doctrine of forgettability. He argues that while our actions in public have no legal "expectation of privacy", we did have a de facto situation where our actions were forgotten as they were not permanently recorded. Surveillance cameras, ATM and credit card transaction recordings, and on and on mean that our behavior is recorded whereas it would have been 'forgotten' in times past.
As a last point, (4) increased permanence of records
The last point is debatable, perhaps, as computer records are more easily deleted, too. There is likely a ton of information recorded and later deleted. But with backups, redundency, etc. I bet many of our records last longer than records of the past.
Overall, our records are more detailed than at any point in history, more accessible to 3rd parties than at any time in history, more accessible from long distances, and, likely, more permanent than ever before.
We may have not had anonymity before, but the lack of anonymity was localized. Localized in time, localized in space, and what information did last through time or was available to 3rd parties or parties at long distances away was much, much less than what is available to such parties today.
The week after 911, we had a discussion in a class, one of my colleagues/costudents stated he thought we are now in an era where privacy will have to be thrown out for the public good, an age of non-privacy, if you will.
Is he right? Seems we are well on the road in that direction.
Like all the young artsy types drinking PBR (they claim they like it, but the truth is they've simply watched a little too much David Lynch), you're revealing yourself to be a lowbrow snob.
Drink your pisswater as much as you like, I'll stick to my Yeungling at a slightly lower price, but it's actually a lager instead of a pilsner without the hops.
I'll have another glass of Stegmier porter, please. Cost about 25% less than your "King of beers", and whats this, it actually taste good.
Rejecting the mass produced swill does not mean moving into a "higher class", as many of the better beers made at "traditional" (ie: much older) American breweries cost less than the crap that Anheiser-Busch, Coors, and Miller Brewing attempt to sell as "real American beer".
You can go on drinking your "blue collar beer" (honest, they showed working guys in the commercial), but I'll stick to the "black collar brew" from the coal country. If it was good enough for my Great-Gran'Dad, it's good enough for me.
Just 'cause the TV tells you it's the working mans drink doesn't mean shit. There's better, cheaper brews available almost everywhere made by companies who have been around longer than "the big guys" and don't need a marketing study or customer tracking to succeed at the pub.
Read, L
Are we being overly paranoid here... Unless they are checking and recording ID's at the door to gain Individual buying habits, I don't think this is intrusive, just good business sense. It would seem to me this is why, among other reasons, AB is number one. Inventory control SHOULD be a high priority. Beer, with a definite shelf life, is one business where this would be a benefit to the consumer.
So they need all the help they can get. What's the big fuckin deal anyway, dont want somebody to know what a drunk you are?
Next thing you know, all alcohol producers will be tracking consumer habits. Then when the govt decides to round up gays to send them to "camp", all they'll have to do is look up who's drinking those fruity girl drinks
Don't like it? Make your own beer!
--Drunk as in Beer
Now if they could just tie your name back to your personal Tivo account, they could figure out if you made the purchase after watching a Bud ad...and how long afterwards you made the purchase. Kinda scary, eh? A marketing exec at Anheiser would kill for that info. How far would you go to cost-justify a six figure sallary?
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
Why should you even care? Their tracking their product sales, not your name, rank and serial number.
Don't buy Bud if you don't like their practices. It's a simple, capitalist solution to the perceived problem.
Me - as long as they don't know that it's Scott Q. Slashdot buying the stuff, I really don't care what they gather.
Actually, it seems like this sort of product tracking has the potential to increase the economic efficiency of retail markets. I don't know of a purer or freer or more inherently fair large-scale democracy than a free market economy. Especially for luxuries like beer (And by the way, if we have Internet access, the vast majority of our take-home income is very likely blown on luxuries.), every time we buy something, we're casting our vote in favor of the product at the price we pay for it (and for the place where we buy it, and the time of day when we buy it, etc.). Better tracking of the products just makes the voting faster and more accurate. If you don't like it, don't vote for the product. Every dollar is a ballot, and we can vote until we run out of them, though most of us might do well to abstain more often. :)
-- Jeff Clough, Humble Programmer
I have been a homebrewer for 5 years now. I literally can't stand to drink anything store bought anymore that's made in america like, busch, bud, miller and the other nationwide beers. Do you think that Bud knows when I buy the stuff to make REAL beer? Somehow I think not, and I prefer it that way since my beer is stronger, better tasting, and full bodied. None of this watered down rice/corn made beer (yes just about anything you buy in the store that's a big name is made with corn or rice adjuncts instead of wheat) that American beer producers force on us and tell us it's "good", "full bodied", and preach to us about its "virtues". All in the interest of making more money by selling us a cheaper and inferior product at the same price. Corperate America at it's finest folks.
A good beer is just like a good wine....not an insult to your palate...ok
Does anyone know the law (preferably Canadian law)regarding this? Can Safeway (or Save-on-Foods, or IGA) legally withhold the 'discount' from me, just because I don't produce a card? Anyone can shop in these RETAIL, NON-membership stores without a card, so, although IANAL, I would think that I would be entitled to any discount, just as much as the next guy... card-carrying communis..errr.. card-carrying member, or not.
"Yes, I have a Disaster Recovery Plan. It's called my Resume"
Ceo's of Miller, Budweiser and Guiness are dining at a fine restaurant. It's time to order some beer. Miller guy orders Miller, Budweiser guy orders Budweiser and Guiness guy orders Coke. "WTF?", asks the waiter. "Look, I'm just being polite here. If the other two fellas don't want to drink beer, I'm not drinking it either", Guinness guy answers.
Come now, everyone knows that "Anheuser" changed his name to "Ashcroft" so news anchors would be able to pronounce it correctly, and "Busch" is just a clever misspelling to throw off the SEC. :)
But seriously, all that's new here is that the manufacturer is taking a more active role in tracking distribution. This is particularly important because, quality aside, beer is a perishable product, and Budweiser runs quite a few breweries and distribution centers and would therefore benefit from good knowledge on when and where to produce and distribute beer.
As previously and repeatedly noted, it's the grocery stores that are tracking YOU. Inventory control down to individual item on the store shelf is nothing new; Target and Wal-Mart/Sam's Club have no doubt been tracking exact item stock and quantity sales per store for years.
Because it's 100% horse-piss free.
However, Budweiser is one of those beers that taste significantly better from tap. The bottled stuff is OK, but not that great.
Oh, by the way, you're ENTIRELY correct. I only drink PBR because Dennis Hopper screamed about it on Blue Velvet because I am an artsy beatnik and also simultaneously somehow I wear denim shirts and hang out in dimly lit pool halls with neon signs with a bunch of guys in construction helmets listening to Glory Days over and over on repeat.
Here's what ELSE you asserted (these are even SMARTER, incidentally, than your first one)
1. People only like X because they are:
A: artsy types who got it from some movie
B: "lowbrow snobs" meaning they must ONLY like the product they're discussing at the moment and NOTHING that YOU like
C: subscribing to the image of said product due to advertising - they COULDN'T simply have different tastes than you. PERISH THE THOUGHT.
2. You shouldn't drink (Bud,Old Style,PBR,Miller,Busch Light,etc.) Drink Guiness (or other stout). Drink this lager. Drink this porter.
#2 has been posted already by about 5,000 people before you. Know what? I LIKE porters, stouts, and lagers but they taste NOTHING AT ALL like pilsners. Why would I substitute one kind of beer I want to drink at the time for another one which tastes entirely different? Is that even supposed to make sense?
True,
But be proud of what your buying!!! Let em know!
Stop being so embarrassed about the stuff you buy people, if you need it you need it. Anyone has a problem with it, bring it on.
Like at the local super Wal-Mart my wife was all embarrassed when I got some regular economy box of Trojans and Flavored Lifestyles. I also got some spermicidal gel and put it in the cart with the rest of the groceries. I don't give a crap, let em know. Hey I think its cool I go through 36 condoms in a week, and if Wal-Mart wants to know, hell they can as long as they keep the cost down I wish I could get even more of a discount on a frequent buyers program because the damn things are expensive.
So let them profile me and keep it in their database, I don't care. Walmart and the world can know I am a 300 pound man who eats meat, frozen pizza, and diet pepsi. They can know I buy 48 condoms a week (36 regular + 12 flavored), and 2 boxes of gel. All of my latest video game purchases have been mature rated (counter strike, Ghost Recon). I buy a role of ductape every month. At the local music stores I buy guitar strings once a month and new tubes for my amps every 6. On Itunes I download Zakk Wylde and other heavy metal bands.
So what does it say?
I am over-weight, over-sexed, over-gamed, heavy metal loving hell of a man.
Who cares if they know what you buy? Hell be proud you get to buy and have a need for such items!
The one time I filled out a card, after complaining that I didn't want to give out private information, the teller said I could just fill in Anonymous or John Doe if I wanted to. I expect most other places would do the same thing. Also, my local Thriftway does not use cards or track in any way that I can see.
Don't moderate flamebait as Troll. Know the difference or you will be Meta-moderated.
"Frankly, I don't want Budweiser knowing when I choose to buy their beer versus another brands."
That was one of the most pathetic things i've read in slashdot in years and i do make the occasional -1 excursion.
Let's all pretend he didn't say that, as a "thank you" for his efforts in this website.
"If God created us in his own image we have more than reciprocated." - Voltaire
I for one welcome our new Bud overlords.
True,
But be proud of what your buying!!! Let em know!
Stop being so embarrassed about the stuff you buy people, if you need it you need it. Anyone has a problem with it, bring it on.
Like at the local super Wal-Mart my wife was all embarrassed when I got some regular economy box of Trojans and Flavored Lifestyles. I also got some spermicidal gel and put it in the cart with the rest of the groceries. I don't give a crap, let em know. Hey I think its cool I go through 36 condoms in a week, and if Wal-Mart wants to know, hell they can as long as they keep the cost down I wish I could get even more of a discount on a frequent buyers program because the damn things are expensive.
So let them profile me and keep it in their database, I don't care. Walmart and the world can know I am a 300 pound man who eats meat, frozen pizza, and diet pepsi. They can know I buy 48 condoms a week (36 regular + 12 flavored), and 2 boxes of gel. All of my latest video game purchases have been mature rated (counter strike, Ghost Recon). I buy a role of ductape every month. At the local music stores I buy guitar strings once a month and new tubes for my amps every 6. On Itunes I download Zakk Wylde and other heavy metal bands.
So what does it say?
I am over-weight, over-sexed, over-gamed, heavy metal loving hell of a man.
Who cares if they know what you buy? Hell be proud you get to buy and have a need for such items!
I love the AB Story, it's such a classic example of capitalism at its well oiled finest. (or sludgiest)
Budvar, a Czech beer maker, had produced 'Budvar' or 'Beer of Kings' for a looong time. They were originally given the order to construct a new lager by the king of Czech centuries earlier... thus, Budvar, 'Beer of Kings', ta da.
I don't know the finer details of whether people from Europe immigrated to America and started it up, or if people in America had been to Czech and thought it up, but it doesn't matter. Long story short not very many good lagers in America around 1860's, so AB comes up with a knock off recipee of Budvar and goes into production... relabelling it the "King of Beers".
It gets better. Again you can google for the specifics, but 1900's come around and Budvar goes 'Hey! Wait a minute, wtf', and it's too late, because AB already secured protection and trademarks for 'Budweiser' and the like. So now here is AB with 'Budweiser', a product of Budvar, selling tall in America and Budvar can't legally enter the market. Huzzah, and all that.
Why is this getting modded off topic?
these are small companies (relative to A-B) who are not going to fool with BudNETing your habit.
Directly on topic.
Most likely the "USAians" line. The Right-Wing nuts on /. hate this. I am Canadian, and therefore an American, but not a citizen of the US. It makes perfect sense to differentiate, except to "Merikins" who want to kill darkies for their oil (Iraq), turn them back from their shores when they want freedom (Haiti), or oppress them when they try to fuck their daughters (African-USAians).
Here in NYC with a tip I sometimes pay $6 for a pint. It is good beer, however, that I suspect I would never find outside of the city.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
I can't see through.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
This is a non-story, plain and simple, but since the author wrote that it raises "interesting privacy issues" it got posted. The story does not raise "interesting privacy issues" .... i only hope the poster knew that and was trying to game the system. If so, I say well done.
You think that's bad? The bartender in our local pub keeps track of what everyone has ordered, how much they paid, and even at which table they're sitting at. There's no privacy any more.
I'm not personally a fan of Bud, but I think most of the people crapping on it in this thread are doing so out of simple elitism. Most likely prefer beers that have been marketed to them as "sophisticated" like the hopped-to-hell-and-back Heineken, or, god forbid, Amstel, which seems to trade entirely on a fake European heritage to excuse the fact that it tastes like licking a skunk.
...its got to be some of the worst "beer" in the world. What went wrong with American taste buds that so many millions think this is "the good stuff".
My father drank budweiser for a VERY long time as did I when I started drinking. I then moved on to better tasting beers and now I drink micro brews and homebrew almost exclusively. They just taste better...
So I say to you that are worried about this development....experiment with better beers and don't worry about it....
"Relax...Don't worry, have a homebrew" Charlie Papazian
======== In the future, everything will be artificial. ========
You say you don't want Budweiser knowing when you buy other brands... um, how the heck would they know that? For example, they're not tracking sales of Samuel Adams. "Danger Will Robinson! Budweiser is tracking the fact that I don't drink their beer!!!" Guess what? I don't drink beer period. Nothing religious I simply never developed a taste for it and being in my 30's I'm not likely to. I fail to see how the heck this is a concern for anyone...
Now deviating off-topic...
Sure, pliers would work, although it's far more interesting to use only materials that are available at your bar table... you can pull the widget out with a napkin.
This is simply the old "pull the cork out of the wine bottle trick" after you pop the cork down into the bottle.
There, now there's a little bit more useless knowledge that probably squeezed some useful information out of your memory in order to make room!
-CausticPuppy "Of all the people I know, you're certainly one of them." -Somebody I don't know
Hey, that sounds like fun!
t h E Q U Ickb r o wn F o x j u M P e d O Ver T Hel a Z Y D og
the Qu i ck B RO w n f o X Ju mpE d o v e R t he l az y dog
Now the problem is, I can't get the 13 line script through the lameness filters. Well, hell, get it from here then run it with:
clisp -q -i ransom-note.lisp -x "(ransom-note \"my dog has fleas\")"
(the file I said to download is just a text file, not really an executable like the webserver says.)
Flavorless beer hasn't always been an American tradition. You think the beer Ben Franklin and Tom Jefferson drank looked or tasted anything like Bud? Craft beer was part of American culture until prohibition.
You call my beer "yuppy beer", I'll call your beer "girl's beer". Watery, yellow, fizzy, vaguely pilsner-style American beer gained popularity while being marketed to women as men were away during WWI.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
The same thing was once said to me by a very wise man. You see, very soon you return the beer to the bar.
Tim
Omnia vestra castrorum habetur nobis.
With all of the microbrews floating around out there - why would anyone choose to drink Budweiser?
Lodragan Draoidh
The more you explain it, the more I don't understand it. - Mark Twain
Personally I prefer Duff. I hear Gates prefers FUD. Heh. Backwards hick.
...or steal it
Will the little RFID thingies scratch my toilet on the way down? Should I try to save them using a strainer? Wash them and use them again? I'm really confused. Time to change to Scotch again.
I said people who only drink microbrews and cry about anything else are beer snobs.
And I've never had a problem with "ad hominem" attacks. Most of us debate school dropouts call them INSULTS, though. Stupid.
Gillette was / is putting sensor tags on the back of razor blade refill packs. A sensor mounted above their shelf position would snap a picture everytime someone picked up one of the refill packs. Their idea behind this was to determine how many refil packs were sold and to help curb theft some how.
See Sig! See Sig Zig! Zig Sig Zig!!!!!
Except that they don't verify the identity when they are issued. So they know that "Jimmy P. Nonuts" purchased all the fixin's for a kick-ass chili, but they'll never be able to track it to me. (unless they track the entire purchase to my credit card, and can then figure out all the items I bought)
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
I hate to burst your bubble, but Wal*Mart does this with everything. They may not have shopper cards, but as an employee of a company who sells a lot of stuff to Wal*Mart, let me tell you a little about their technology...
For every single one of their major suppliers, Wal*Mart tracks and transmits sales data in real time back to those suppliers. Just bought a 50 pack of Pampers diapers? Both Wal*Mart *AND* Proctor and Gamble know exactly what was purchased within minutes, and is using that data plan productions and shipments for next week. Just bought some light bulbs? GE knows within minutes. Just bought a greeting card? Hallmark and American Greetings know within hours. They may not know who you are, but they mine their sales data to the level that they can predict the frequency that someone will buy both diapers and peanut butter at the same time, and they can predict based on the type of diaper that you buy what type of peanut butter you're most likely to purchase.
This is not new. The concept is called VMI - vendor managed inventory, and retailers have been doing this for years. Wal*Mart doesn't need to call Proctor and Gamble and order more diapers. P&G knows exactly how much to send and where to send it, becuase they track this data to a frighetning level of detail. Wal*Mart is the best at it. There's a reason they're the biggest retailer in the world, and this is it.
I know I'm going to get flamed to h*** and back for this, but here goes anyways:
If you go to a PUBLIC store and buy a case of beer and pay the cashier, all where anybody could observe and make note of this, nothing about that whole transaction is private, (except maybe the name, number and exp date on the piece of plastic you use to pay.
You couldn't complain if a person observed this transaction, made note of it, and later used that info for marketing, so how is it that doing all of this electronically is suddenly an "invasion of privacy"????
Unless you have good reason to believe that no person or thing can see/hear/smell/etc. what you're doing, it's not private.
Sending spam is legal, ethical, and basically a good thing
Keep passing the open windows...
Amen. But try telling that to the people who get pissed off when I wear my "NASCAR is stupid" T-shirt. After a couple of minutes of staring at it they figure out what it says, spit tobaccey on me, and tell their sister/wife to go git their shotgun out of the camper. Then they say "You think yur bettern me, just cause you have a shirt on." I try to explain that I just don't like NASCAR (when they tilt their head like a dog, I rephrase it as NAASCOR and it registers) and it doesn't reflect in any way on how I feel about him personally. Then they think I am some kind of faggot for having personal feelings towards him, and I have to quickly leave in my "furrin" car before the little lady gets back with the shotgun.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
you only rent it.
adjuncts are things used to replace malted barley, to make the beer cheaper, or have a less pronounced taste. Corn and rice are huge offenders, and wheat with the wrong kind of yeast is too (yeah, I'm talking Leinenkugel Honey Wheat).
Saranac makes great all malt beers, at only about twice the price of Bud.
Some tinfoil hat editor changed the title. It is supposed to be "BudNet Tracks Their Own Suds".
At the point of sale, when it would become "your" suds, they cease tracking it. Now relax and drink your Budwater in peace.
We may experience some slight turbulence and then...explode. -Capt. Mal Reynolds
I am the network admin for a not-too-small Anheuser-Busch distributor. I can tell you a little about BudNET and how it tracks sales, from my experience. The original post states that AB most likely records your sale, what you paid, etc. As far as I know this is not the case in most operations. AB gets sales info from a distribution point of view. That means that they know what we, the warehouse, sold to the Piggly Wiggly, not what Piggly Wiggly sold to you, the retail consumer. When next we visit that Piggly Wiggly, we take an inventory. So in that regard AB also knows what the store sold between our visits, but not to whom.
All of the information that AB gets about sales comes from the distributors. A big part of my day is spent getting reports ready to go up to AB. The reports mention customer numbers, but these are *our* customers, not actual consumers. In some more advanced sales systems, retail pricing is indeed tracked. This type of information is used by AB and its distributors to do forcasting and the like. It is important to point out here that only retail stores who want to do so provide their own pricing and sales information to us. Most mom & pop operations don't bother. Many larger chains wich resources do provide this, as it also helps *them* to forcast. Once again though, we have no way of knowing what individuals are purchasing, or who those individuals are.
Also important to note is that much of our record keeping is mandated by law. The alcholic beverage commision in our state requires that we keep certain records on file for a given amount of time. This may be in addition to anything AB requires of us.
From the perspective of a network admin, BudNET is a pain in the rear. But I think that calling them Big Brother may be a little off the mark. Hope this helps to alleviate any major privacy concerns that you may have.
-haroldnjoe
A database tracking the beer drinking habits of fat rednecks. Let me see if I care... NO! Interesting application of software, but I'm pretty sure it's been done many times with other products.
A vacuum is a hell of a lot better than some of the stuff that nature replaces it with. - Tennessee Williams
um, why not? Don't they have a right to know what people are paying for their beer, or where it's purchased from? That's incredibly valueable information to determine where advertising dollars should go, if prices are competitive, what types of beer customers prefer, and a long list of other factors I couldn't even dream of. If anything this is a very good thing as it can only help Anheuser determine what to do to get you to purchase there products by giving you what you want, and to figure out what you want they must first determine if you like your beer warm or chilled, etc.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Frankly, I don't much care because I don't drink their crappy beer, anyhow.
Amusingly enough, when Albertson's bought out Lucky's here in California, Safeway was really starting to push their whole card-system.
Well, Albertson's had a serious ad campeign for a month or two saying "We have everyday savings! Cards are stupid, you don't need them here!"
I was amazed at this stance, and it impressed me. I mean, even if you don't give them your personal information (salary, address, email, sexual-orientation), this is some really good demographic information about what individuals (now numbers) buy, when they buy it, and what stores they visit. I thought "wow, they've got some balls not to implement all that".
Well, the ads stopped and about a month later there were tables outside my local store asking me to sign up, along with crazy-inflated prices and "savings card prices" that were at or above what the items were sold for before the card-madness.
Bone-head marketing. I'm also amusing about albertson's is the fact that you can buy beer (bud/guinness/whatever) without an ID if you use their self-checkout's. I'm of legal age, but I've *never* gotten bothered for my DL at the self-checkout...
Wow, bust out the extra-thick tinfoil hats. Budweiser keeps track of their sales? The nerve!
Come on, what are they supposed to do? Not know how they're doing against their competition? Information in the aggregate is a good thing as long as it doesn't identify you individually. If you really want to be scared, think about the fact that every company tracks their sales. You can't escape! The big bad man knows everything you buy!
sev
but have you considered the following argument: shut up.
For a moment there i thought it read "BudNet Tracks Your Sluts" - i couldn't imagine what service they were offering!
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
I don't like beer, you insensitive clod!!!
Skill is successfully walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. Intelligence is not trying. -- Anonymous
I'm screwed.
SuDZ
By the way, for all the beer snobs out there (and I consider myself one of them) Anheuser-Busch is the worlds largest contract-brewer. Lots of mid-size brewersuse them to be able to produce and bottle large amounts of beer and then get that beer in the distribution chain. Sam Adams? for a long time more than 50% of all SA in the market was contract brewed by Anheuser-Busch (Miller Brewing now has the contract).
Yes, Anheuser-Busch produces bland beer. But form a beer making perspective, they are absolutely the best at being able to produce any kind of beer in the world and to do it well.
There's no personal data being collected here.
When they figure out how to track which of my ATM withdrawals are going to weed, cocaine, mushrooms, acid, or other such fun enhancers, then I'll be concerned.
Budweiser knowing how their stock is flowing concerns me not.
I wonder if they track where people piss that swill away?
Dude, I'm glad they track when and where I get my suds because I can now ask them 'dude, where's my car?'
They're both fucking close to water!
Its true! The old ones are the best!
I'd rather have a bottle in front of me than a frontal lobotomy
Bud also distributes Widmer and Redhook beers. These micros are familiar to people in the Pacific Northwest. Widmer is one of the three oldest Oregon Breweries.
There's more to it than this.
Shocking, really considering this to be an open source crowd, free as in beer, not free as in speech or whatever. Don't like it? BREW YOUR OWN! I do like budweiser, though I prefer corona's or dos equis better (reminds me of our honeymoon down mexico way.)
That would explain the guys on Maui who walk by you on the street saying, "Buds."
Who would want to buy the American Budweiser in the first place...
Maybe not beer, with shipping and all, but some dvds and a bottle of liquor from amazon would be awesom...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I think this already happens at tailgate parties...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
They're opening new stores all over the country, so if they aren't in your area yet, they may be there soon.
I really like the fact that I don't have to go through a circular every week to figure out what they decided to put on sale this week, search those items out, then get to the checkout only to find that I forgot my "preferred shoppers" card.
What happens when I buy a pack of cigarettes, or 15-pack of GUINNESS, then a week later my Health Insurance Company tells me that my premium is doubling because I engaged in the purchase (and presumed consumption) of items that may be hazardous to my health,(their investment), and the health of others?
It's not a matter of if . It's a matter of WHEN. :wq!
The good thing about beer (assuming one considers bud being a beer), is that if you drink enough of it, all those concerns about privacy will just go away... So keep drinking and you will eventually see that you really didn't have to worry about anything.
Actually, that's one thing that really irritated me! When I bought my house, the water meter was in the basement, so the water co. kept mailing me out little paper cards to record my water usage on and drop in the mail, every month. Fine, but then they started demanding that I let a meter reader in at least once a year to verify what I put on the paper. Again, fine, except I was never home when they came to read meters - so I was always getting threatened with a water shutoff.
... but I was billed about $80 for it. IMHO, this should be the water company's responsibility, not the homeowner's responsibility. The local gas company doesn't make me pay for their outside meter, nor does the electric company, and Bell Telephone takes care of their box on the side of my house, up to where lines actually enter the building. So why are things different for the water co.?
For this reason, I broke down and let them install an outside reader
Another example of using retail strategies developed on the internet in new ways would be to use Ebay auction techniques to sell movie admissions.
There's no way to justify anymore charging the same price for every movie at every evening show. If a theatre has thirty seats available Monday night for "See Quim, Do Quim" and they have been getting an average of five people per show on weekday evening screenings for admission prices of $8.50, then it is foolish not to offer these tickets on a local 'Ebay'-type of auction. Many people would not pay $8.50 for the 9:35 Wednesday night show but would pay $2.50.
This is just money that the theatre owners are throwing away. I also believe that there are only three or so corporations that own about 90% of the first-run theatres in the USA. They would certainly have enough clout to make new arrangements with the major movie distributors.
Basicly it all comes down to corporate FUD. There's lots of money to be made by just trying new ways of marketing. But corporate centralization and consolidation has just petrified everyone.
At least the USA is not as bad, stupid, and backward as Germany. Christ, people are going to jail there for selling candy bars on Sunday or for announcing in the newspaper that they are reducing the price on an item that is perishable and has been greatly overstocked.
I never cease to be amazed when so many smart people get all twisted over such stupid things. The Germans would rule the world if they could just remember to take their medication.
fark has picked up this article with the Obvious tag.
it's also obvious it was greenlighted on there because you guys are talking about beer
WinCo is about the only large grocery store in the Portland (Oregon) area that hadn't gone in for the "membership" card BS. Their prices are consistently lower than most other stores I've seen (often dramatically), if you exclude the loss leaders. Also, they have some interesting concepts. You can buy things like spices by spooning them into baggies and paying by weight, rather than buying prepackaged (and overpriced) bottles.
They don't take credit cards, which can be a pain for some. (But then you know they aren't tracking you.)
read my sig...
If Google really cared they would fix Android Chrome to reflow text, instead of discriminating
Who gives a shit? This is what is commonly referred to as "marketing" and "keeping track of your products and your sales and stock levels". This article is tripe. It is not like they are tracking you personally, they are tracking their product. It would be irresponsible of them not to.
I hate sigs.
my bro-inlaw works for AB in St. louis. no joke
guess what some of the backend programs that
drive this system are written in?
Yeup.. FORTRAN.. takes inputs and parameters
from across the US, they all go into a huge model
which grinds throughout the week, and
spits out the optimal beer distro.
It's a queing theory geeks wet dream.. a very large
and classic IE problem that they crank through and
solve every week.
I cant recall the hardware that they use to run this
thing on.. I'll have to ask next time I see him.
I doubt THIS guy drinks bud...
Sure - mod it down, I don't care.
With all the real threats to our privacy out there, this is the one ya choose to worry about? All major companies data mine in some form. They are tracking the store's sales information in this instance, not yours.
Most stores do not release client credit card information to wholesalers. They simply dont have the technology at most stores to do this even if they wanted to. Your neighborhood Piggly Wiggly in most towns are still running old NCR cash registers, and you thnk they are gathering PII about you from those?
Holy cow, maybe we better hurry up and break out he Aluminum foil hats before the Budweiser starts probing our thoughts and sends beer trucks in our paths when we are feeling thirsty.
New and improved Guilt. Now its alcohol soluble!
I'd call it a shot as far as a term of measurement goes, and that guy probably would have too, but he was probably imagining you slamming it from a shotglass, and thus his reaction.
However, cheap blended scotch actually makes a pretty good shot, if you're in a bar doing shots with your drinkin' buddies or something. It's a lot more tasty than some other things I can think of. (Ever had an Exxon Valdez? DON'T.)
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"