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Using the internet for free food?
GreyOrange writes "With all the offers for free food on the internet how can a hungry person differitiate between the bogus ones and the ones that fill the tummy? One legitimate offer I've found so far is from www.jellybelly.com were they give you a free sample. But theres a tremendous amount of websites that are missleading and offering food in exchange for credit application and other horrible things like spam and never living up to their end of the deal. Got any good websites for free edibles, how about other things that might be of equal value that are not bogus. How about some methods you have picked up for all you veterans out there. Is there a directery out there that is true to its word, how about a wikipedia page?"
I already get lots of delicious spam in my inbox every single day! What more can one ask for?
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
This was one of the dumber and less funny April Fool's postings. Bleh.
I wonder if they have red herring flavor yet
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
What makes me even sadder is that we can look forward to a duplicate of this story tomorrow.
God help the poor slob that first discovers slashdot on today of all days!
Nothing to do with food, but there are several car dealers that have ads like "If you don't get approved, we'll pay you $100!"
Step 1) Ruin Credit Horribly.
Step 2) Go around town applying for car loans.
Step 3) Rake in the free dough!
Sure, it's not a steak, but com'on, it's free? What did you expect?
Socialism: A feeling of discontent and resentment caused by a desire for the possessions or qualities of another.
Someone fetch me when it is April 2nd.
Not exactly what you're asking about, but one way to scam free food out of a fast food joint is to order a small quantity of something, then come back in an hour claiming they left out some of a larger quantity. For example, order the 6 pack of tacos, then come back claiming to have ordered the 10 pack, and they left out four. Usually if they remember you were there at all, they turn over the grub.
My mom used to do this. Of course, she's an evil being who is currently serving 25 years for a hire-to-kill for insurance money, so I'll let you decide whether to emulate her or not...
:::The Spear in the heart of the Other is the Spear in the heart of You; You are He - Surak of Vulcan:::
Jokes about http://Eat<any vulgarity that will trip an obscinity filter>.com in 3, 2, 1...
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Ethernet Cable is quite tasty. I'm currently chewing on some right now.
rejected (19) accepted (0)
Is there a psychological term related to getting your stories rejected on slashdot?
I often get free food from computers by inverting the keyboards on public use terminals and shaking them. Usually there is a great variety of crumbs from many different kinds of cookies and crackers.
I metamoderate, therefore I am
You can't forget FreshMeat.net
Come on...every slashdotter should know that site.
The anti-salmon
I cast my vote for Fruit Rollups. Best thing about them is you don't have to order them, you can just print them. Taste about the same, too!
I remember a few years back (99-01) during the internet boom/desperation days there were lots oc sites giving away stuff. The best way to fing free stuff is from "free stuff" websites. I got lost of stuff:T-shirts, samples... My favorite was a train whistle (huge 9" wooden thing that sounds just like a train) and a very nice box of chocolates.
Unfortunately the're no longer many money burning web ventures.
Mouse powered Chips, Open source Processors and Lego
Want free food? (Yes, and I know this is an April Fools bullshit story, but I couldn't resist.) If there's a store called Costco in your area, get a membership there (like, 100 bucks a year) and go there on Sunday. They hand out free samples of all kinds of stuff. You can walk around for a few hours and basically get a full meal for free. If you consider 100 bucks a year free. But suppose you go there every weekend, that's like 100/50 or 100/52 or so, which makes it like 2 bucks for a meal, which isn't that bad of a deal and shit.
And no, I've never done this. Ever. Not even when I was a poor student. Really!
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I usually am a troll (I try to get upmoderated, as opposed to the lamer crapflooding, though), but I actually have to admit that I like the "real submissions unedited", if they truly are real submissions.
It is a pretty good way to see some of the lamest submissions that make it into Ask Slashdot - the ones that get posted are often lame, but these are orders of magnitude beyond that.
I vote to keep it.
That's why I propose we name tomorrow, April 2nd, "April Bitch-Slap Day", where we get back at all the pathetic losers who play pathetic jokes with an old-fashioned slap upside their head, followed by an ass-kicking if the joke was especially bad.
Founder, Americans Allied Against Alliteration
I think you missed what they're probably doing. I'm pretty sure that what we're seeing is a flood of stories that they normally reject. I doubt that they made up a single story today from what I've seen so far (except the poll).
I think you may be missing the point. The posts aren't supposed to be the funny part - it's the fact that people actually submitted these that IMHO is hillarious.
/. - I'm sure you'll survive.
Maybe it's not a real good fit for April Fools, but I think it's as good a time as any, and I for one enjoy the opportunity to look at some of the submissions that we otherwise wouldn't have the opportunity to.
If you honestly have that much of a problem with it, take a day off from
666-607: 6th floor apartment of the beast
I think they should provide an april fools day filter.
love is just extroverted narcissism
The offer's genuine at www.jellybelly.com. However, clicking on the link for the free sample gives a page about there being no free slots.
/.'ed the jelly bean supply :)
Congratulations, we may have
I've got a fever and the only prescription is more COBOL.
You know what's even worse? Slashdot rejects funny submissions. Here's the text of my submission that got rejected twice(!):
In one of the oddest moves yet, Guillaume Desnoix (head of the JDistro project) has ported the open source Kaffe Java Virtual Machine to his Apple ][c. When asked why he did it, he said, "The main reason was to fasten my programming daily work. I felt a little limited by the 6502 instructions and wanted to enjoy the highlevel bytecode of Java." Read the full scoop over at JavaLobby.
Javascript + Nintendo DSi = DSiCade
Those people out there that don't think today's April Fools posts are funny is because you fail to realize that these are normal submissions the editors have to deal with on a daily basis.
Please take note of the from the real-submissions-unedited dept. subtitle under each post. These posts were submitted as serious questions and that's what makes them so funny. I think it's great that the editors are sharing with us some of the lamest posts that they've had to read through.
Keep 'em coming!
infested with jello like fishes no melotron wishes
That doesn't make any of it funny.
irb(main):001:0>
Please don't laugh. This is a true story. It happened to the sister of a friend of a colleague of someone I know.
She logged onto a web site, expecting to find some innocent pop-up p0rn and dialer windows. Instead, she got a popup reading "Click here and get a free pizza!" Like a fool, she clicked on the popup. A few minutes and a registration page later, she got an email titled "Read this, activate your free pizza delivery!".
You know what she should have done. Delete the email. Just delete it and forget about it. But no, what did she do? She opened it and read it. The email read: "Thank you for opening this email. Through the magic of Outlook Security we have run a software agent that has activated your PC's modem and dialed our central computer. Using called-id we have identified your telephone number and we now know your name, street number, and postal code. The pizza you have ordered is SPICY BEEF and will be delivered to your door in TEN MINUTES".
You could tell from the capitals that SOMETHING TERRIBLE was going on.
The pizza arrived. Inexorably, like a hangover on Sunday morning, a small white van drove up to the house and a man stepped out, dressed in white and carrying a flat pizza tray.
What could she do? "Run!" I hear you scream. "Hide", perhaps? "Release the hounds?" No, she calmly opened the door and accepted the pizza box.
Open... the... box...
Open... the... box...
The smell of warm pizza did a BDSM on her conscious mind and she found herself opening the pizza box...
What did she find?
( ) A Hot'n spicy Beef pizza for four
( ) A CD-ROM labelled "Do Not Play"
( ) A mercedes, a portable phone, and a laughing Dutchman
( ) CowboyNeal
( ) Yes
( ) I'm a vegetarian, you insensitive clod!
Well, the answer is stranger than any of these. She found a small piece of paper. Printed on it were the words: "Missing field! Please click back and enter full name!"
Ceci n'est pas une signature
The poll was submitted by a slashdot user, not made up by an editor.
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
I realize it's an April Fool's story.
But if you are really interested in free stuff, may I suggest FatWallet's Free Stuff forum. FW is "known" for its Hot Deals forum so I imagine the Free forum would be of substance as well.
I would guess sites like Anandtech and bargainshare.net would have similar forums.
Just because we're nerds and supposedly more intelligent than average hu-mans doesn't mean we're not still stupid as hell.
I really wish michael wasn't at the helm today. The crap that's getting posted is roll-your-eyes, "we're supposed to laugh because it's so stupid" humor, which most of us outgrew after 9th grade.
The April Fool's Days in the past used to be great because you never knew which was real and which was fake. A really absurd story might have this strange grain of reality in it, and it would turn out to be true. Then the seemingly benign announcement would turn out to be a great prank. People would still be referencing the April Fool's posts in their comments on April 2nd.
The point of an April Fool's joke is to actually fall for the joke. Not this lame, "it's stupid so we'll post it" strategy that michael is employing. Real-life l33t names? Usenet audio? Using the internet for free food? These barely even qualify as April Fool's jokes. Most of them aren't even trying to fool you with anything. Posting really stupid shit isn't funny, and it's not clever.
What's worse, I know of several groups that crafted well-done April Fool's jokes and submitted them for today, and they have been rejected. Their greatness was that some of them were half-true, some were false but had entire websites and everything set up, and some were completely absurd but totally true.
Instead, we get "Using the internet for free food?"
Back in the Good Old Days (1999), a chocolate company called Dan's Chocolates opened a web site, got some capital, and decided to create buzz by giving away free boxes of chocolates (I think they may have asked for a $1 token shipping charge). They got so many requests for chocolate that their ordering system choked and some people didn't receive any candy. It was a time of free-flowing capital and general goodwill, so to make it up to the folks who didn't receive their chocolate, instead of just offering a refund they sent everyone who had requested a box the first time around another box of chocolates.
.com bust, Dan's Chocolates is still in business.
The chocolate was pretty good, though I personally didn't order again (I still like See's better). What's amazing is that, even after that expensive publicity stunt and the
Your fantasies contain the seeds of important concepts.
I once proposed a P2P food sharing program. Imagine the possibilities. You're standing in front of your fridg and there's nothing that interests you. Sure, you've got half a carton of last night's curry chicken but that's not what you're looking for.
Go online, fire up "Snackster" and check what's out there. Oh look, via Snackster's geographic IP address location logic you see that a guy two blocks away has three two day old tamales and a six ounces of chips. With the click of a button you make your offer, yesterday's curry for Tuesdays's mexican food. A quick link from Snackster to mapquest get's you directions and twenty minutes you're eating something you'd like.
You avoid tossing out stuff that's perfectly good but not appealing, plus you can take advantage of the huge portions most restaurants serve by saving half for your Snackster catalog.
-dameron
I can almost here the servers melting as every fat-ass slashdotter tries to get his share of the free Jelly Belly Promotion.
....and yes it really is slashdotted.
Get your SCO loving hands off MY Jelly Bellys!!
weeklyfreebie.com They actually have a list of "free food" sites.
When I was 19, I landed a job working as a waiter on Amtrak (America's nationalized passenger railroad, in case you're overseas) as a Summer job. It was a good job with more money and benefits than anything I'd done before. Since railroad work has a history of being somewhat dangerous, the job came with automatic life insurance. Something like $10K from the railroad and $75K from the union. This was at a time when my family's home in suburban Los Angeles was assessed at about $80K (1988).
One day between trips, I had a bunch of buddies come over to the house and help me fix a fence. They got to joking with my Mom about her being the beneficiary of the policy and how horrible it would be if I had an "accident." Did my mother, the woman who brought into this world, defend me from these homicidal overtures of my so called "friends"?
No. She started to take bids to see which one of them could do it cheaper.
"Prepare for the worst - hope for the best."
Better to have a sucky sense of humor then none.
Oh wait this is slashdot, the domain of the superior geek. No laughs and sex.
The secret to getting modded up is to allways say i've got karma to burn in your sig..
they come over, and viola
He was using it as a verb. One of them distracts you by playing a musical instrument very badly while the others disappear your food, beer, and perhaps other things as well.
I see even classic Slashdot is now pretty much unusable on dial up anymore.