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Don't Click Here For A Free iPod
fermion writes "Do you wonder what all those free iPods links are about? Do you wonder why apparently rational Slashdot users would use their .sig line to push an offer that seems little more than a thinly veiled pyramid scheme? Answers to these questions can be found in this NYT article (personal information, with no free iPod, is required). The plan itself seems simple. Rat out your friends to advertisers, and get a free gadget. The firm in question, Gratis, Inc, gets a bounty on each customer. The firm claims to have a revenue of $15 million in 2004. They claim to give away 500 iPods a week. If, as the article claims, each contact earns a bounty of around $50, we might presume that 1 in 12 contacts get a free iPod. This firm seem fairly upfront. Another firm mentioned in the article, Consumer Research Corporation, seems much less so. As always, read the fine print."
I want you all to read this very carefully: Nothing is free , except true charity and this is decidedly not charity. Somebody (Gratis Inc.) is making money. Let me tell you a secret.....your identity and demographic information is valuable. Individually, it means very little, but when you sell out your friends to get in on this scheme, numbers start adding up and marketing firms and companies are paying big for this information, thus the 500 iPods/week adding up to $6.5 Million US/year and the company is decidedly making a tidy profit on top of this expenditure.
Visit Jonesblog and say hello.
They even showed it on techtv and I know several people who got their's... Shameless plug Now if anyone wants to refer me I'll give them 7 bucks through paypal!
It seems common sense [to me anyway] that to get a "free" iPod from some company or person that is giving one away, they stand to gain something in return. Since I don't know precisely what they are gaining, since it isn't money from me, and I have to assume they aren't doing it in the Christmas Spirit and giving for the sheer joy of it, then it only stands to reason that they are going to loot me in some way.
Some people might not mind having their personal browsing or comsumer habits monitored at every turn or click, but I'd rather keep some anonymity. Especially from companies which are quite obviously associated with spamming, and pyramid scheming.
Saskboy's blog is good. 9 out of 10 dentists agree.
I can easily see this thread degenerating in to hundreds of 'rational' slahdotters begging for refs. We'll see...
Jerry
http://www.syslog.org/
Do you wonder what all those free iPods links are about?
No, not really.
"Individually, it means very little, but when you sell out your friends to get in on this scheme..."
"(http://prometheus.me...b/pubx_pubx_bwj.html)"
Hmmm...
When I see them.
From now on , a sig with "Free xxx" == -1 Troll.
freeipods.com has been talked about before. There was even an article on wired about it a while back; http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,64614,00.html From everything I have read, it seems legit as far as people getting their ipods.
I know several people who got free iPods by signing up for the offers involved and then cancelling. If they paid anything at all, it was certainly a lot less than the cost of the iPod.
I guess if this company is making money, then not everyone bothers to get out of the offers they sign up for, but even they aren't getting ripped off.
BTW, there have been a few sites that set up referal pools, where people basically just got together and refered each other with the people in the pool.
It's that it's a nasty scheme to harvest contacts for junk mail, telemarketing, etc.
The company I work for partners with a lot of these companies, offering one of the things you can sign up for as part of your work toward a free whatever. The companies we work with are legit, but the idiots that sign up for this shit don't read the agreement details and then they wind up getting deluged with legally clear spam, junk mail, and telemarketing.
It's not really free, it's just that you don't pay for what you get with cash. You pay for it with your time. You have to sift through legit spam, junk mailers, hassle with telemarketers who can now legally call you even if you're on the DNC list.
So, hey, if you sign up and didn't read the agreement, too bad. You're an idiot, and you deserve all the crap that you get deluged with. Hope all that extra advertising was worth the free iPod.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
Maybe there's a way to set up an automated way of "creating" email accounts and referrals?
...is to get hired to work in one of Apple's retail stores! All permanent (i.e. not seasonal) employees get their very own iPod for "business" uses -- ostensibly, this is to help familiarize the Mac Specialists with the product, and also to give you a "reference" to look up data (stored as notes in the iPod). But you're completely free to store your own music on there and use it for your own purposes, too.
(I suppose this might be too much "work" for some people, though, plus it doesn't have the fun of selling out your friends to spammers...)
couldn't they find something a little cheaper and make even more money?
did you forget to take your meds?
Disclaimer: No links to sites will be given, so people don't think I'm spamming referrals. I don't plan to do any referral-based offers in the future anyway. Additionally, I'm not affiliated with any of these sites.
So far, I've received:
$170 check from a free green xbox offer (now closed)
Xbox, from another free xbox offer. (Anyfreegift)
ipod, from freeipods.com
$700 check, from freelaptops4you.
Only freeipods.com required referrals. The other grand worth of money/stuff didn't. I'm currently working on a deal for a laptop from another site.
Are some of the sites scams? Yeah. But some of them are legit, or close enough for you to get your stuff.
No drop-of-blood-required link here generated via this generator
--"I have had two friends sign up for this promotion. Both got five friends at the same time and one was told her iPod was being shipped and the other was denied for mysterious reasons. So even if you fulfill the requirements, you'll only get super-spammed instead of an iPod."
--"I know several people who completed the offers, had their friends complete the offer and never got anything. Not to mention they got signed up for every mailing list in existence."
posts like that are enough for me to declare they're a scam.
my karma will be here long after I'm gone
Why do people bother asking me why I have this in my sig? Nobody seems to be able to put 2 and 2 together and see why I spend my mod points this way. So now, if you advertise your freeipod link, you're spamming people directly and indirectly.
I got my iPod thru Gratis. Signed up in september and had my link wh0red on my website and a couple others then 1 month or so later I open my door and there is a package from UPS. Got mine in October I believe. Took about a month to process it but I cannot complain since I got a $300 item for FREE!
http://seanism.com/
You may have won 1,000,000 dollars.
sound familiar?
-haffi
I've also seen web sites promising free Nintendo DS's. And then there are those e-mails I get from Nigerian doctor M'Bala Nbutu about getting $20 million. Just a reminder: If it sounds to good to be true, it is.
People always seem to cite something being a pyramid scheme as the obvious reason we should fear and run away from something. However there's one important thing to remember: it's good at the top.
Like the article says getting your free ipod is presumably as easy as ragging out your friends. So it comes down to what's more important - friends or a shiny new ipod.
While I don't know the validity of this particular offer just beware that the only losers are the guys on the bottom row. Just make sure that isn't you.
I don't know of anyone who ever got one of those "free iPods" from these guys. Harvesting emails and personal info for marketing is one thing but doing it by making false promises is another one. I honestly hope that the Department of Justice will be looking into that.
Among the things I read:
1) The company isn't responsible if you're not ellegible for the free ipod list.
2) The company doesn't guarantee that if you're ellegible, it will send you the free ipod.
3) The company doesn't guarantee that when they send it, it will arrive.
In other words, the company doesn't guarantee A THING.
It's a scam. Just a SPAM frontend.
http://www.bugmenot.com/ offers a way around this stupid registration requirement for this and many other websites. For example, I just got in thanks to them using the following:
user: suckerdj
pass: suckerdj
If enough people start using bugmenot, these bastards just might stop requiring us to give them our life history to access a bit of information.
bash: rtfm: command not found
I swear, those people with the free iPod links will be FIRST up against the wall when the revolution comes.
Well if all the people who said "is it worth your time?" can actually afford paying 300 bucks for an mp3 player. Go ahead. You are not selling of your information to some shady company. These are companies like blockbuster, AOL and Earthlink. They get you info from others anyways. They are just giving these people money for sending them "potential" customers. Most other people just give them email addys and names. Gratis is giving them people who are trying out their product. Which is why they are getting big bucks in return. And if I can get a free ipod by just signing up for a free blockbuster trial and asking 5 friends to do the same, I don't see how that is a bad deal at all! -Aditya
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AOL is a reputable company that won't start charging your credit card on whim?
If you've ever tried to cancel an AOL subscription, you've probably noticed that their employees are likely fired if they cancel a single subscription. AOL has been the target of numerous class-actions, and I don't think I'm the only one who's had this experience
Now the ipod spammers on livejournal and elsewhere will point out this article as absolute proof that ITS NOT A SCAM and its totally free with no strings attached.
http://saveie6.com/
Anything else sounds shady to me.
Anyone who has any common sense would read the terms/conditions for these things and see its not very hard to follow the *rules*. I've already gotten my free ipod. I of course, used a brand new yahoo account in order to prevent my mail email account from being spammed. I don't understand why articles come out about these things blasting them to pieces because a few people feel screwed over cause they didn't get something for FREE.
Thats right, FREE. Unless you want to count the time it takes (sure sure, time is money, but when its your free time, its just that. Free. Or hell, do it while at work.. back to main post) then you really don't have a lay down a damn penny. I signed up for the free AOL trial and canceled my account within 20 days, after my referral had gone through. I got 5 of my bestest friends to help me out. a month later a nice brand new ipod was sitting on my desk. Sure, it took a bit of time to get it, but hell, I paid nothing for one of the hottest gadgets around.
[sig]www.masterslate.org[/sig]
Here's a interesting thread on just how legit this company is....
(read the last page)
http://www.scam.com/showthread.php?threadid=770
I think its free, my friend got one and he paid nothing.... I would say that was free, now I try to get one and I wont pay anything... http://www.freeipods.com/?r=8100213?
..I haven't tried it myself, but a fellow sys admin at work (who also happens to be an RA in our college) went through the hoops and did, in fact, receive his iPod. Me? I don't have the patience to go through with it -- besides, my iPod was free to begin with - I received it as a gift. :)
The PC Weenies: 11 Years of Online Tech 'Too
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Many times. And I think I'd be a very good Apple Store employee. But they hardly hire anyone, so good luck.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
Here is a site I found that has a calculator that suggest how much the bits of information about you are "worth".
They suggest you "refer" agencies which collect information about you to this site so you are properly compensated.
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Do you wonder why apparently rational Slashdot users ....
What slashdot have you been reading, exactly?
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
My friend came to me back in the summer, asking me to sign up under him at freeipods.com. At this point there wasn't much information about Gratis' operation on the Internet, so I did some back of the envelope calculations to figure out how the hell these guys could make money by giving away iPods.
I ended up posting my results here. Quick summary: It's economically viable. I wish I had thought of this first.
Note that this is no psuedo-pyramid scheme. You do not have to sign anyone else up. Reading the fine print, and adding up the fees, and taking into account the opportunity cost of having money in a lousy bank account instead of some good investment, it still looks to me like it only costs about $120-$150 to get a $250 iPod Mini.
As far as the psuedo-pyramid free iPod schemes go, they checked them out on The Screen Savers. Kevin Rose and Alex Albrecht both tried it, as did Alex's girlfriend. They all received their iPods. Kevin and Alex might have been recognized and treated specially, but there was nothing special about Alex's girlfriend, so it seemed that it really did work.
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Moderations are for the content of the posting, not the signatures. If you don't like what you see in signatures, turn signatures off in your Slashdot settings.
Pacifica Rocks!
BTW, without Pacifica, we wouldn't have ever contested the FCC censorship crap, then again, without them we wouldn't have had George Carlin's filthy words being THE LIST of words we can't say............
Video Production Support
Umm, you forgot step 0. Find a store that sells ipods that doesn't keep them in a locked cabinet.
Hey kids, there's only 5 days left 'til Yak Shaving Day!
I go to a 600 student art school and one of the idiots who I'm none too fond of spammed his link in all student email. I sent out a rather polite and intelligent email explaining why he shouldn't, how it was impolite, and what would happen when EVERYBODY started doing that.
I got a very nasty reply, but pretty much everybody else in school agreed with me.
The best policy for getting rid of these kind of scams is to create policies against them. They ARE technically spam.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I, for one, welcome our new iPod sharing overlords.
First off, I have done the free ipods deal through Gratis. IT WORKS. I just got my free iPod the week before last. It was brand new, factory sealed.
1) It's not a pyramid scheme (pyramid schemes are illegal, and Gratis at least is above board and totally legal)
2) You can technically get one for "free" depending upon the offer you choose. Some offers do cost you money, but in no case will any offer ever cost more than a few dollars or 1 month of Netflix of Blockbuster.
3) You DON'T have to rat out your friends. Using your sig line on forums is in no way ratting out your friends. If someone clicks on your link, that's THEIR choice. You aren't force feeding this to anyone. Gratis used to have a "refer" a friend program where you could mass email people with your link, "friends", but they have elimintated this feature as of about 5 or 6 weeks ago.
4) It took me a total of 6 weeks from start to finish to get my iPod. I completed one offer and had 8 (you only need 5) unknown people complete offers for me.
5) My spam has gone up 0 because of doing this. Some of the offers you can sign up for might send you a ton of email, but they have easy opt out options, your name is NOT being sold from what I can tell. I might be wrong about that point, but at this point it has not become an issue at all.
I found the entire process painless and easy. And now I am grooving my 20GB iPod.
....are sold to anyone "you" as joe consumer as being the bottom part of a pyramid. You have the producer/manufacturer, the wholesaler, the jobber, the distributor, etc, down to the retail store, each taking a cut, and that doesn't count the shipping guys,k insurance guys, accountant guys, tax boys, yada yada, who are always in the mix as well. This isn't a whole lot different, just using sources that aren't normally inside the pyramid, in a slightly different way. And as to consumers paying the cost,sure they do, no argument, same as you do anyway for every single thing that's advertised, no matter how it's advertised, the expense is shared by all the purchasers eventually.
I haven't done or responded to any of the ipod offers, but I don't see it as much different than recommending a link to your favorite web vendor to go buy something, whether you get something or not from the deal, not in the grand scheme of things anyway. As to the privacy factor, you can't ever use a credit card for any purchase then, could you, either online or in meatspace, nor a personal check, it would have to be cash-ola in person at a brick and mortar store for every purchase of a good or service rendered to avoid "losing privacy".
"Government pension schemes (going all the way back to Social Security) were based around the fact that the first participants seemed to recieve whatever was promised (a quick retirment, "free" medical, etc). This was the bait used to lure in the next generation of suckers.
;)"
Know what "exponential growth" means?
http://tuxedojack.com/rants/rants-freeipod-pyramid SPAMscheme.txt
There are now freeipods, freeflatscreens, freedesktops, and more others than I can count. Obviously in a pyramid scheme like this a tiny fraction of participants receive the products, but there is a way to cheat the system (in, as far as I can tell, a completely legitimate and legal way).
If a group of 10 people or so got together and each chose an item they wanted (say I want a flatscreen, a friend wants an iPod, another wants a desktop pc, another wants a PS2), each of us could initiate an account and, with full participation of each of the other members of our "group", all of us would be able to receive one of the items that we wanted.
This only works if people have not yet signed up for the programs as Gratis tends to figure out if people make duplicate registrations.
So...anyone wanna jump on board?
audioLibre - freedom of music
I wonder hoy many people will change their sigs to post on this article... or perhaps even permanently.
It is always hard to have one of your habits criticized HARD by your peers.
Cheers,
Adolfo
You have been spaming here for the better part of this year and you still haven't got your items. please just stop.
Yep! When I first heard about the Gratis, Inc. offer to send a free iPod, I figured "Hey, I'll at least give it a try and see exactly what they're really asking me to do."
I got through the majority of the thing before I realized it was going to be a huge waste of my time to proceed further. At the beginning, they don't really make it clear that you need to get at least 5 referrals to *sign up for the offers they're emailed* (and I believe, keep them for at least 30 days, too). They make you think that YOU simply have to do so with one (of many) offers you click through, and then give them 5 valid email addresses of friends.
From my browsing through all the "trial offers", I began to realize that almost all are a royal pain in the butt to get cancelled after you sign up. I might be willing to go through the hassle myself, but I sure don't want to make 5 of my friends do so (if I could even get 5 of them to sign up for these offers in the first place!).
I think one of the "simplest" ones to cancel was the offer to sign up with AOL, and as most of us probably already know - that's not usually the easiest thing in the world to cancel. (At the very least, you're gonna be waiting on hold for 20 or 30 minutes until you talk to some cust. service clown who keeps trying to give you more "free hours" rather than just cancel you.)
Worse yet, so many other people already know about these deals, you end up emailing friends who are already trying to get the free iPod themselves.
/. needs a category called "Duh!" for articles like this.
I will not even give my zip code at a store register. I always ask if they're going to give me a discount with it, and the answer is always no.
I can even remember when this started. The first time I was asked for one I spent 10 min in front of the clerk, who insisted I must give one to her. Granted, she was just following orders, but it took her way too long to call a manager over.
Any more, if you decline, they either enter in something and continue on, or just hit a key or two and continue. It's not as much fun any more.
When VCR's are outlawed, only outlaws will have VCR's.
I am not trying to be a troll or anything here, just to add my personal experience.
I signed up for the Gratis freeipods.com site a few months back, and successfully recieved my iPod. Visit my site below if you want pics, no direct links because my server will die. I have also done several other free items, including a free iRiver, $275 cash, a PS2 and a Harmony 688 remote worth $150-$200. I'm currently working on a photo ipod (see my sig to help me) and only need two more people.
So yes, these sites work. What's the catch? Time. It takes a decent amount of time to get started on these deals. Most people I ask to help me tell me it is a scam, but they're dead wrong. It's not a scam for any one person in particular. The companies I have dealt with (PrizeCube.com, Offercentric, and Gratis) are 100% legit. But they do make money off me, and I have no problem with that.
I would like to say, however, that these three companies have not (to the best of my knowledge) sold my email or personal information. I have not gotten any spam in my inbox, nor have I gotten any increase in junk mail at my home address. The email account I used for all of the sites is a brand new Gmail account, and I only get one or two spam each week there. I have another Gmail account used for online purchases, subscription sites, and random other online crap...it gets about 20 spam every day. Thankfully, Gmail has a really good spam filter, and only 1 or 2 get through the filter at all. Also, I would like to say that there are some worthwhile deals on the sites worth trying. I signed up for Audible.com and Blockbuster online, both of which I still use. They are great sites, and great offers if you ask me. On the other hand, I cancelled a lot of deals that were not for me, but I gave them a shot. That's one important rule you should be ready to follow if you try these deals: Try the offer, and don't cancel the next day. They check, and will disqualify you if they suspect you are trying to cheat the system. It's their right...it's in the TOS.
When I started out on these deals, I spent about 30 minutes each night posting on random groups and forums advertising my links. That went pretty much nowhere, but it did get me my free iPod from Gratis after about 3 weeks (so about 10-15 hours total). So the return on my time was pretty low in most of your eyes...it is less than I make per hour at work, but it was more or less in the process of reading forums I would have read anyway (like here at Slashdot) because I had the links in my sigs.
The "profit" started coming in once I started working on some of the other deals. I was getting hits at my web site by then, because it was also in my sig. I whipped up a web page, and pretty soon I was well on my way to some more stuff. I'd say another 5-10 hours and I had my free iRiver and my free PS2. Since then, I try to never advertise in any way other than my sig on a forum site, or on my personal web site. Rarely do I draw attention to my links, and no one has to read my site, but once they are there they will more or less be reading about my free deals.
So now, there is little to no work on my part. I spend 5 minutes each day checking my email for people contacting me about the deals, and I spend 5 more minutes posting on my website updating my deals and whatnot. So now, I can honestly say that the ~$1500 worth or stuff I have gotten is well worth the 30 or so hours I have spent on it. It's nothing to write home about I guess, but I have never felt obligated to work on it. It's just something I do every day or two at this point, and I enjoy it.
So would I recommend signing up for a site or two? Yeah, if you want to spend some time on it. But you'll start to break even on the time/money tradeoff if you do more sites. If you try only one, it may or may not be worth your time. It would be faster for some people to go get a part time job at Best Buy and use the employee discount to just buy an iPod. These deals are not for everyone
I hate asking my friends to sign up for crap like this, so I joined http://www.smartcongaline.com/. It took a little while, but I got my ipod and I didn't have to nag anybody I know.
Someone makes money, but if you jump through their hoops, you will get a free iPod, if you stick with it (free shipping too). Granted it was easier in the early days (I think I may have been one of the first with it in my /. sig) as I got my signups in 4 days. I have it in my sig now to help those that signed up through me; I think it's only fair. I participated in a trial I was interested in (stamps.com) and found that it was windows client based, with no Mac or Linux option. I called to cancel, told them to make a web option (the rep agreed, said they were looking into it, and that was that. Look, I didn't think I'd fall for a thing like this, but hey, I did, and I got a free iPod out of it. I would not have paid for the iPod, it's too much for me, but to get it free, cool!
/. posts of late.
Now, as for marketing, I use my own mailserver, so I made some dummy aliases that got spammed right away. No matter, I used them to help my Spamassassin rules, and then just cut them off when I was done. Yes, I told the others the same thing, so there would be no surprises. Would I do the same for the other free offers out there? (computer/pvr/money/etc) prob not, just cause I don't have the time to spend on it, and a new Dell isn't as 'sexy' while requiring 10 recs. But people calling me scum and other names just don't know the whole story; if you're not interested move along, go back to spamming the GNAA posts and all the other crap that's filled up
Now, back to my 20G iPod...
BCb
free ipod and free gmail!
I see what you're doing there.
;)
You dirty dirty little sly poster
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These nifty little DIY projects are not to save money. Most IT people (meaning US on Slashdot) are both addicted to gadgets and generally have disposable cash. That's not the reason we are interested in them. We may do them and it's for the fun of it not the pricetag. If we wanted to save money we would be ranting on a Mother Jones website.
After all it's News for NERDS!!!
Honestly, when did you last see a Pumpkin webserver for sale?
Sorry about the writing. Robot fingers, you know? Cliff Steele in DOOM PATROL #23
I seriously got mine from freeipods.com. I documented the entire thing (play by play) on my blog:
:-D ).
Free iPod Posts
That query will display just my free iPod posts. I posted as quick as I can, so the dates are very accurate to the actual events. Even a few photos posted at the end.
I did sign up for a freeflatscreen, though haven't completed the requirements for that one (if you want to see blog posts for free flat screens... help out
All I can say is: I got mine. I have no idea about everyone else who participated, but mine came to my door. So for me, it worked.
Just my $0.02
I can't believe the owners of this site are in with the scammers! They call the guys legit! It's so hard to build credibility, then they throw it all out with one story.
Physical Property=Time * Effort.
Intellectual Property=Time * Effort.
I know you all would like those equations to be different, but so far despite all efforts you've failed.
Back in the day, before I went on to better, more mature things, I ran some porn sites. To get traffic, I sent about 100 spams every day by hand to usenet groups using AOL. The spams said they were giving a pirated login/password to a porn site link that was included.
Of course, the web-form that opened was bogus, people could have typed in anything and gotten to the porn. But, thinking it was a stolen password, people jumped on it. I was making 3000 or so a month at the peak, all from the same 100 or so daily usenet spams. For some reason, (maybe guilt?) people who used the "free" password were much much more likely to click on the legit banners in my site.
Eventuanlly, after the the banner affiliate programs got complaints from the usenet police (a singularly dedicated band of activists that have way too much time on their hands) about me, I stopped getting paid. Sluggish AOL even noticed their complaints, and my accounts kept getting turned off. By then I was making much more money at a real job, but the experience a very valuable look at the dark side of net and human psychology.
It would be really interesting to look at how many of these slashdotters posting about how they got a "free iPod" somehow all set-up their accounts in the last couple of hours or so ... Also, those folks with sigs linking to the iPod offer will also have realized the potential this story offers.
After reading through the thread a few things become apparent:
/. news post??
1) For some this free iPod stuff works.
2) For others, the cueues are too long and companies have to decide who is more deserving.
3) Some posters are discrediting these companies saying they have bad motives.
Could it be that if #1 works, given #2 is short enough, that accomplishing #1 and #2 can be done by using #3 on a
because you don't have to do a damn thing! Sorry, I'm just bitter after four trips to an Apple Store for nothing. I bought an iBook in August and after the keyboard quit, and all the Apple Store employees would do was ship it back to Apple. That was the first week of October, and it's still not back! They had a replacement keyboard in stock, and it would have only taken five minutes to replace it. Instead, I'm out a laptop for over two months and approaching on three. Thanks for nothing!
The first week of December, I bought a PowerBook in the Apple Store in Lennox Mall in Atlanta, GA, USA, because I need a laptop for a two week trip for work. The CDROM didn't work out of the box. I got the same crap from Apple. They wouldn't replace it with a new laptop, and I couldn't do without it for months, so I paid the $279 open box fee to swap it out with a new one. I'm going to fight them through my credit card company. They're a bunch of damned crooks. I thought Circuit City was horrible (and they are), but these guys are worse. They just don't care.
The worst part of the deal is that I almost had my boss talked into replacing our Sony Vaio trouble-makers, err, laptops with iBooks. After he's seen firsthand the horrible service at Apple Stores, he's decided we're going to buy more Sony's running XP. Damn it. I almost had something easier to maintain on all of our laptops than XP. I'm stuck for another three years with spending 80+ hours a week removing spyware and browser hijackers. I'm VERY angry about that.
FreeDryerLint.info
I created this site to put in my sig on various sites after getting annoyed by all the freeipod referal links)
I have blog like everyone else
"If enough people start using bugmenot, these bastards just might stop requiring us to give them our life history* to access a bit of information."
Or simply require that you become a paying customer before showing you the goods. You know, like a regular newspaper would.
*Life history. Who would have though exaggeration would be so effective? BTW You give as much when you subscribe to a newspaper/magazine. Are you outraged now?
Has anyone tried creating 6 e-mail accounts for you and your 5 'friends'?
Why is everyone so hardcore against getting these free iPods? Ok, so you pay your time instead of money. No one's fooling me, but what's wrong with it?
Fine, I made an email address specifically to receive spam from these companies. You know what? I don't even get spam from them. I get more spam from Barnes and Noble than I ever got from Gratis or their affiliates.
You sign up for an offer you don't want, and you cancel and it doesn't cost you anything! Boo freaking hoo, what are you whining about. Get your friends to do the same, and you get some free hardware. Don't bitch about the macroscopic scale how do they make money.... The point is, if you do your part, they do theirs. I've personally seen people with devices they've received. It's not a scam, and they're not fooling me.
Fine, it's not free, it's a legitimate business trade. You generate commissions for other people, and they generate hardware for you.
If you want to learn more, click her for and xbox
or click here. It's a great system, give it a whirl
Partial Credit: The Engineer's Best friend
"Well, the bridge didn't fall all the way down!"
A post from some random guy with two pseudo-anonymous friends who claim to have been burned by this scam counts for more to me than a thousand rebuttals from people with "free iPod" links in their sigs. To put it bluntly, they have no obvious reason to lie. You do.
0 1 - just my two bits
Most of these free offers that you sign up for in order to get your free ipod give a kick back to the company that got you to sign up (most are 10 bucks).
If you do the math they don't make any money unless someone signs up but doesn't complete the cycle. If everyone where to complete the scheme they won't make a dime. Good Luck!
yes, but the hard part is creating the 5 street addresses, birth certificates and credit cards.
Douglas P. Price
And how does any of the above uniquely identify you?
There's paranoid, and there's PARANOID.
"Just a reminder: If it sounds to good to be true, it is."
I'm very pleased to know that my sense of the goodness of something and its likelihood is 100% reliable. On your recommendation, I plan to hire myself out for feasibility studies ordinarily done by corporations and governments.
With my preternatural ability to tell whether something is possible purely based on my own limited life experience, I can make a lot of money! Feasibility studies usually cost millions of dollars because of the amount of research involved to determine the chances of success. I can charge just 10% of the usual fee and still be one of the richest people on the planet.
Wait... this ability sounds too good to be true...
Each of the players you mention in making, selling and delivering a widget "adds value", yes even the accoutant. What happens with pyramid selling is that the retail store has been changed into a pyramid and the extra layers add no value to the widget. The many "retailers" at the bottom are screwed by the few at the top and that is why it is illegal in most of the western world. You could argue that understanding and applying 8th grade maths for everybody would achive the same results as prohibition.
You are correct about the free-ipod, it is not a "pyramid scheme". The only thing that seems even remotely like a pyramid is the way the ipod people collect emails. If you "complete the offer" (buy something) you are not stuck with unwanted goods that you have to sell to another sucker at an even more inflated price (like the infamous Amway of old). Rather you give them a list of (willing?) contacts for thier mailing list. I assume they are doing it to reach as many people as possible but it wont last since the email pyramid will soon become staurated and they will start a new one with a different name and prize. It is nothing more than an advertising gimmick and adverts pay for all sorts of "free" things from slashdot to ipods. If your friends give all your details out without your knowlage then your real problem is that your friends can't be trusted. It is kind of ironic that with the use of lots of "junk@dont.care.com" accounts the people most hurt are the "free" email providers who are, in part, payed for by adverts.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Do I have my free iPod yet? No. But, that's not their fault. I just haven't gotten my five referrals yet.
.sig)
When I joined, I signed up for that BMG Music service, which I've been happy with. (Incidentally, BMG also has a quasi-pyramid scheme- if I refer someone else, I get 6 CDs for the price of one.) However, even after two months passed, the membership was never recorded by freeipods.com. After a few e-mails (the final 'responses' of which were a bit confusing) I was told to copy the 'Welcome to BMG Music' e-mail to the form and send it to them. I did so, and three days later my account reflected that I had completed my part of the offer.
If they were into screwing over their customers, they probably would have led me along much longer, or just not credited my account. But after one or two e-mails, they did so obediently. This tells me they either want me to get five people, or that if I do get five people they will actually hold up their end and send me an iPod.
Now I just have to find five suc- I mean, very good friends to complete offers.
After that, I'm going for the free flat screen.
(Yes, I realize what's in my
"I don't think anyone who contributes their efforts will believe their work valueless."
Here's what I would like to know. Were does the OSS contributors get the free food, housing, let alone the free transportation, zero taxes, etc? We all should be so "free".
There's even one "thing" that is trading gmail accounts for signing up under his referral id. Sad.
Please, everyone, stop pushing pseudo-free crap. And telling people to sign up and cancel right away to avoid credit card charges is fraud.
I think one of the "simplest" ones to cancel was the offer to sign up with AOL, and as most of us probably already know - that's not usually the easiest thing in the world to cancel. (At the very least, you're gonna be waiting on hold for 20 or 30 minutes until you talk to some cust. service clown who keeps trying to give you more "free hours" rather than just cancel you.)
Tip from personal experience: cancel via fax. No muss no fuss, AOL account is gone after about 3 days
...and that's all there is to it.
"No, but selling out 5 of your friends to get it does."
Not if they're actually getting something for what they buy into the deal with.
The best offer on the Gratis site is probably MyInks, which sells remanufactured inkjet cartridges, refill kits, and other consumables.
Come ink refill time, it's reeeeal nice not to have to subsidize your printer company's printers sold at a loss by buying their overpriced ink.
+++ATH0
-1 for being clueless.
Please repent now. -1 for .sig pollution.
I am sure there are lots of slashdotters ready to sign up for that program...
BTW You give as much when you subscribe to a newspaper/magazine.
Er, no. Not when I cruise down to my supermarket in my disguise, taking a 100-mile detour to ensure that I'm not being followed, driving my car with fake license plates and a stripped VIN, buy a magazine/newspaper, and pay with cash that has been altered to remove the little tiny RFID tags.
BTW, the tin foil hat is getting hard to integrate with my disguise. Damned black ops making all the good disguises impossible to use... THOSE BASTARDS!
Are you outraged now?
Yes!!
bash: rtfm: command not found
Sign up for some offer that involves them giving a company their credit card.
Then you advise them to cancel said service purchase to avoid a charge so you can get something for free.
Isn't that defrauding the company that you're whoring yourself to?
To quote the Simpsons: "it's not a pyramid scheme, it's a trapezoid!"
GET A FRIGGIN' JOB!
Consumer Research Corporation = SubscriberBase = Scott Richter
He is responsible for most of the Viagra and Cialis spam in your mailbox.
Moral of the story: If you want something, buy it you cheap prick, don't beg like some highway offramp whore.
Sell out friends and family and get free stuff. How much more insidious can you get? A useful little test of the character of your friends, though. Ever wonder how those underground resistance guys in history end up exposed by friends and family? Ever wonder how they could sell out someone so close to 'em? Well here's your answer. People who sell me out at this trivial stage of the game can't be trusted.
Physical Property=Time * Effort * materials
Intellectual Property=Time * Effort
The fact is, if I write a piece of software for me, and keep it closed source, it takes X amount of time and effort. If I release the source code for it so other people can use it, it still only took me X amount of time and effort. There is no loss involved, I don't get less of my software, its not a tangible thing that has to be devided up.
Bullshit, I have cancelled AOL on two occassions with no problems other than a "one last pitch" or "free AOL for two months". I politely said no thank you and they politely said "okay, thanks for having been an AOL customer, have a good day". and no I don't think they got fired :P
Mod the parent up.
Purely for educational purposes only :-)
Click HERE
Moral of the story: Begging for a free iPod makes you no better than a truck stop whore.
There are other scams like this one. Take a visit to www.doom3underground.com and look toward the top of the page. There will be a link there that claims a free Doom3 game offer 'expires today'. So ya better hurry, huh?! Wait! The link has its link target suppressed, but a little digging brings it out as http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com and some more text. This is only a transitory front door to the real destination, and that is www.everyfreegift.com/help.jsp! On this page you get invited to the scam. A link at the bottom of that page contains the meat. To get your 'free game' , you have to 'complete sponsors offers' of an unknown number of sponsors. Some of those sponsors are credit card companies trying to get their cards into your pocket. Sponsors at the bottom of that page are: Columbia House (a record 'club' of some notoriety), United Online, Chase Manhatten Bank, and American Online and a company whose symbol I cannot make out but seems to be a KW or KN. Completing the offers means getting a Chase card and probably rattin on friends by listing them on the required 'credit app'; also joining AOHell and acquiring another monthly bill; joining a record club that it takes a court order to leave, and so on. There are probably many other 'sponsors'! All of these 'offers' that a 'game winner' would be required to 'complete' have the potential to cost a lot of money. The website 'everyfreegift.com' is right in saying that they do not take any money directly from customers and visitors, but you can bet that the 'sponsors' will certainly kick back a hefty sum from the spoils by the time they get through shearing the digital sheep that show up on their doorstep hat in hand and panting for a 'free game' that really will be the most expensive bit of plastic that they ever got. "Everyfreegift.com" appears to have a wide selection of baits in their 'product catalog', so if you want a 'gift' (curse) that keeps on 'taking', by all means go see em. Your friends will LOVE you! But you will be a good exponent of the shepherds philosophy and not tell 'em, won't you? Who knows, maybe one of them already told them all about YOU? This data that you give really is valuable, even individually. Else why would Kroger, in the real world, forego up to 40 percent of a retail price just to get you to allow them to track your grocery purchases. Do you know that your beer purchases are valuable to car insuranse and health insurance companies, your sugar purchases valuable to health insurance companies, all of it valuable to companies that make recommendations on job applications for corporate clients, etc.......off topic but relevant. Your data is money, do not give it away and do not violate the trust of your friends by giving theirs away!
I guess the problem I have with this is the same problem I have doing all multi-level sales -- basically, you're approaching someone and begging. Oh, it might be a friend who's helping you out 'cause you're a buddy, or it might be a family member, and you might be able to convince yourself that you're providing someone with an opportunity, but basically you're just like the guy gumming a trash-retrieved pickle whilst begging for change. I think that's pretty pathetic.
"hottest gadgets around"? Seriously, kill yourself and lighten the load of marketing bullshit on the world.
I got mine. Check my blog (planetmew.com/blog.html), I documented it all. Even exchanged it and paid the $100 to get a 40GB one.
Some people don't understand the work it'll take to get a free $300 product and just expect it to fall in their lap.
Yeah, except you've got your leech link in your "homepage" (under your name). And that we can't turn off. Besides, that's like saying "stop using email if you don't want spam".
I don't know... JWZ is fond of it and openstep and I wonder how that's really any different.
OSX? Probably the most expensive OS to own, but then, he's solvent enough to run a nightclub so...
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
There is no free lunch. Ever.
If you're thinking of duplication costs; they're low, but certainly not zero. However, until somebody puts forth effort into producing an original work, there's nothing to duplicate.
That takes us back to production: somebody had to pay for the engineering time and resources. Skilled engineering labor is expensive and most decent software projects require teams of people writing the software, docs, distro scripts and doing the QA. Even if this work is done "after hours" the worker could be working at a job that paid or be doing some other activity.
There are ways to get free IPODs. There was a big promotion in Canada by Pepsi that resulted in 2016 IPODs being given away; one every hour of every day from Oct 3rd to Dec 25th (no purchase required). I ended up winning two IPODs - but many teenage Canadians ended up winning between 2-6 IPODs each. I believe there were similiar contests/giveaways by Pepsi in other countries.
It's the companies that BUY the information they collect.
Also, there's the little problem that referral-based schemes tend to collapse under their own weight (remember all those referral-based web ad systems back in the late 90s... what ever happened to those?)
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
$170 check from a free green xbox offer (now closed)
Xbox, from another free xbox offer. (Anyfreegift)
ipod, from freeipods.com
$700 check, from freelaptops4you.
I'll give you $50 to fuck your sister.
that the working population would scale with the retiring population. Actually, you would expect there to always be proportionally more younger people as a population grows. However, the baby boom upset this relationship and now we're in deep shit.
THIS THING CAN TURN ON A DIME, MACROSSZERO STYLE ALSO FUCK BETA, ~NYORON
Add that to the list of oxymorons...
jumbo shrimp
hypocritical Democrats
biased media
liberal media
asshole professors
I'm listening to my photoipod right now! Yah I had to jump through some hoops, but as long as your not a complete loser and don't have any friends it's really pretty easy. http://www.freephotoiPods.com/?r=13346252
I signed up for AOL one day just to see what their interface was like. I mean, after all, they are known for being the "dumbed down" internet.
Had no problems canceling a few days later. They offered a free month, then three free months. Nope, no thank you. "I'm moving out of the country where there is no AOL dialup number."
They never billed my card a single time.
+5 insightful!
Just rob the Apple store.
Mod flaimbait as you must, but human greed and
whoring for money/free Ipods/whatever is done,
chiched(sp?), and tired to death. I wish humanity
would just grow up.
Since there is a mathematical formula for how long it takes for the pyramid to collapse, this cycle would then begin anew for each new item offered correct? So if people keep getting in at the top of each new item offered, they'll still be good right?
Also, can anybody vouch for the legitimacy of those other things, particularly the plasma and laptop offers?
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
has anyone tried making 5 friends?
is it hard? do you have to go outside?
"(At the very least, you're gonna be waiting on hold for 20 or 30 minutes until you talk to some cust. service clown who keeps trying to give you more "free hours" rather than just cancel you.)" I used to be that clown... :o(
Software is not "Free" as in beer - when people do publish software Freely , they are doing charity. FOSS software can be sold (RMS sold emacs for 150 USD per copy !!!). But what FOSS tries to seperate is the Cost of Development from Profit per Sale.
I have been (wioll haven been) paid to do some features on the OSS I work on - because somebody really needed it. That's because I created some wealth with my effort (in a wholly capitalistic point of view). And Everyone else gets the stuff for free and in short - Everybody wins.Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum videtur
I still haven't recieved credit for a deal from freephotoipods.com that I did a month and a half ago. I signed up for the Urban Nutrition offer and I STILL haven't recieved credit. I filled a complaint on 11/30, and I haven't gotten a response almost a month later. I haven't canceled the offer so I have no clue what's going on...
You want to hear something negative? Well... OK, if you insist... I had to complete three offers before I got my iPod because the first two were using yoggin.com's email service, which is gone gone gone. That meant no reference emails to prove I'd completed the offer. (I hadn't gotten credit automatically because I was using a Mac/Safari, I guess.)
:) (seriously. I registered it, but never did a thing with it.)
But sorry, I did get my ipod thanks to a few domains that I have and a fair amount of traffic. Took me about two months, I think.
Anyone want to buy freeipods.info?
I had a sucky sig.
A site like these? Rob's Giant BonusCard Swap Meet or The Ultimate Shopper (Safeway)
"Also, it's not about registration. It's about my right to be able to access the Internet in privacy."
How does "right to privacy" equate with "right to content without honoring an agreement"?*
*And as NanoGator pointed out NYT's is more forgiving than most when it comes to meeting that agreement. I could also trim that "without honoring an agreement", and the question would still be valid.
When comes the time that Mother Nature will give us droughts and floods and poison monkeys all together, you will care!
- reference from "Simpsons: The Old Man & the Lisa"
I have a
V
e
r
t
i
c
a
l
.sig
Then again, I can see why people didn't like it in retrospect.
Wh47 d1d j00 541, 31337 15n't t3h r0xor5 ne m0r3???
what's the insightful thing in that?
that's like saying that a pyramid scheme isn't a scam because they paid the first 10% who got in.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
Allow me to paraphrase:
Somebody (RedHat, IBM, Linux) is making money. Let me tell you a secret... your operating system is valuable. Individually, it means very little, but when you sell out Microsoft to get in on this Linux scheme, numbers start adding up and consulting firms and companies are paying big for linux consulting work... thus the 20000000 Linux-converts/week adding up to $Billions US/year and IBM is decidedly making a tidy rofit on top of this expenditure.
</sarcasm>
More to the point - my demographic info means little to me. And once I discovered (early in colege) you get better junk mail if you say you're a CXO with 1/2 mil salary and an interest in hunting endangered species, my voluntereed demographic info really should have just as little value to marketing firms.
An ipod for a few colorfully-exaggerated-fantasies is a pretty good trade.
"I never agreed to anything."
You decided to access their content.
"And, since the means exists for me to access their content without registration, why shouldn't I? "
Within the parameters set by the NYT.
"By the way, it is also possible to access their content without logging in at all, with fake user/pass or not. This link generator works nicely."
It's also possible to get a fake drivers license without giving the government any "privacy inhibiting" information.
Free software.
The Raven
if your time is worth nothing.
With open source software it's very rare that the product a) does exactly what you want and b) works perfectly out of the box. As a result, using OSS requires two primary considerations; what's missing and what's broken. You then have to consider the time it's going to take to fix the bugs and add in the custom features you need.
And time is money. I only consider my web-site profitable now because the costs are met by the revenue. This is mostly due to some clever rearranging of resources. However, the amount the site brings in doesn't come close to meeting what I make per hour at my job. If I claimed some kind of salary I'd be waaaay in the red. Instead of bobbing gently in the black.
Free time is a mostly fictional concept. There is always a cost associated with how you spend your time. Time you spend behind a computer costs you time you could be spending with friends and family. The only time I consider free are the hours from midnight to 10am. Only the time you cut from sleep I consider free time.
It's extra time to be alive and experience something that normally you'd be oblivious to.
Work Safe Porn
way back in the days before i had a dsl line, I used to use those free aol cds that used to drop through the door (AOL/UKOL/Compuserve) to get free internet time. and to start with cancelling was never aproblem with any of them. but around the time that UKOL & Compuserve vanished i had some pretty major hassles with trying to cancel an aol free trial. i actually ended up paying for 2 months dial up access that was never used as i was out of the country at the time.. having supposedly cancelled it before leaving. and as for the ipod thingys.. i live in the uk so i never even had the temptation. *pix
Well, since we're talking about free ipods... see my sig. :)
I was raised on the command line, bitch
"Nemo me impune lacesset"
"Property is what you can lose. If you create a sculpture, you can lose it; if you paint a painting, you can lose it. "Intellectual Property," on the other hand, is the "right" to tell other people they may not produce certain things."
IP can be forgotten. IP (expressions of an idea) is what is being controlled by the government, and those who don't wish to share.
"The market sets a value on that which is scarce - i.e. what a person cannot have if someone else has it. "Intellectual property" has a value only because governments are letting people and companies buy and sell the right to restrict what people say and do."
IP can be as scare as anything tangible (I've developed warp travel. Were's your copy?)
"This is unconscionable. I don't care how much people earn by doing it, it's still wrong."
Opinion noted.
"Restricting people's rights to life and liberty held up the American South's cotton economy until the mid-1800s."
Life and Liberty don't guarentee "right to the fruits of expression" nor the "expression" itself of others.
"Restricting people's right to free speech and movement held up the Soviet Russian economy."
Ideas still existed in Soviet Russia.
"I don't care how much "time and effort" somebody puts in to get the right to muzzle me. I still won't be muzzled."
You are free to create your own "expression of an idea".
"Anyone who thinks gagging the public is "fair compensation" for a creative act doesn't deserve to have free speech."
You can still have your "free speech" within the limits of "not yelling fire in a crowded theatre" or plagerizing others "free speech".
However you don't have the right to specific expressions of an idea gained through time and effort by others.
Sign up for one free deal (like a free trial of efax) and get a few friends to do the same. You can cancel the efax account before the free 30 day trial and not get charged.
http://www.freephotoiPods.com/?r=12707567
That said, I would do something like freeipods.com in a second if they had anything like that in Canada, but it seems like Canadian advertisers haven't jumped on that bandwagon. Has anyone seen a Canadian advertising company do something like this?
It has little to do with the reality of the iPod, or the cost of the iPod. But has everything to do with the offensiveness of the distribution mechanism.
Which is why I systematically 'Foe' everyone I see hawking ponzi-pods.
Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.
Do you want free stuff? just create your own website/electronic magazine and write reviews. Hardware/software companies sometimes send their products and also pay advertising if you write a review or article, just try to be "objective".
This way I have received books, software and some of the most modern computer hardware, for free.
The man was pure genius.
She's built like a steak house, but she handles like a bistro....
Very much the same deal as the photo ipod6 72
http://www.pvps4free.com/default.aspx?r=131
Fuck that.
So I'll admit to signing up for as many free offers as I could circa 1997, sticking to anything that would actually send me free tangible stuff (I think the most I ever got was a "Internet-safe color wheel poster")
But forget this. I could almost understand giving out a street address, provided it accepts P.O. Boxes or that I was planning on moving without filling out a change of address card at the post office anyhow.
If it were really lucrative, and I'd had several independent confirmations that it was on the up and up, I could almost give out a credit card number, believing that I could cancel it later if it turned out to be a hive of scum and villainry.
If the clouds opened up and the almighty $DEITY said "Do it. It'll be fine.", I'd give up my SSN, knowing that even it could be exchanged in instances of fraud.
But there's no way in hell I'd provide anyone a copy of my birth certificate in the name of a free, soon-to-be-obsolesent not-quite-standards-complaint digital music player.
-transiit
if those clouds opened up all that'd happen is $DEITY->smite_the_unbeliever_with_cunning(@argumen ts);
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
The word you want is simply "obsolete." Suffixing superfluous syllables doesn't make you look smarter.
I actually did go thru that process. I used 5 email accounts which to most would appear to have no relationship to one another. I used false contact information on all of the phony accounts. Naturally, the system doesn't "verify" them until AFTER all 5 emails have attempted their offers. Only after that do they discredit you, once they've already gotten me to sign up for 6 different offers.
The only way they could have been identified as phony is either by the name/info I used when signing up for each offer (which poses a big privacy issue), by the credit card info (which is even a bigger issue), or by IP address, since I did not have the insight to sign up for each offer behind a different IP address. I suspect it was actually the latest, but I don't put anything by that company.
Anyway, moral of the story is, don't try it unless you use different IP addresses for each phony e-mail.
Let's do the math. I'm not going to double check the figures, but I believe you refer 5 people, and once they all sign up, you get a free iPod. Rinse and repeat.
Okay, so one person hooks up five people, they all sign up (making the company $50 * 6 = $300) and a $249 iPod is sent out to the first guy. Profit so far is $51.
Each of those five hooks up five people for a total of 25 new people, so 25 * 50 = 1250. Five iPods = 1245, not much profit this time.. so this shows that at $50 there's no real profit for the company at each generation, until...
25 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 * 5 = 2.5 billion.
At this point you've exhausted everyone on the Internet, as you can't sign up more than once. So where's the money?
As in ANY pyramid scheme, the money is in the last generation of the scheme! Free iPods will reach a point where they have several million on their books, and those several million can't find anyone to sign up! So.. several million * 50 = $A LOT OF PROFIT. And those guys won't get an iPod. Cha-ching.
I had all offers completed in early November and was suprised to actually recieve my iPod. It came via FedEx directly from Apple within two weeks of clicking order. Popped it onto craigslist, sold it. Bought a digital camera. Cost to me or my referees $0. End of story.
"Friends" that pushes ads in their sigs is fair game to be ratted out to spammers. >-)
In Germany, we have the PayBack system, where you get something like 1% of each purchase on a separate account or something. It's pretty big over here, and I guess it must be comparable to the courtesy cards you mentioned.
The clue is that these cards are tranferable. So FoeBud got a card, made "Privacy-Cards" with the same barcode, and offered them to people interested in consumer privacy. Several thousand euro were collected, but PayBack wouldn't pay out.
So the whole thing went before a court. The court apparently decided that FoeBud could tell their barcode number to others, but were not allowed to print it out.
A friend of mine made the mistake of signing up to AOL with his debit card. I watched him at work make dozens of phone calls to try and get AOL to stop billing him. Eventually he got frustrated enough he went to his bank and threatened to close his account if they didn't stop it.
I think he did eventually get AOL to cancel - but the moral is, if you must sign up to AOL, use a credit card rather than a debit card. (Generally, it's also less hassle to cancel a credit card rather than close your bank account and change billing/direct debit instructions for all your bills to a new account)
Oolite: Elite-like game. For Mac, Linux and Windows
If an offer sounds too good to be true, it usually is.
From everything I have read, it seems legit as far as people getting their ipods.
You're missing something. The fact that some people got iPods is meaningless if you're trying to prove this thing is "legit". Everyone who gets into the early stages of a pyramid scheme makes out great. Yeah, the initial people get their iPods, but in the end a lot of people are still going to get screwed out of their "free iPod" because it's a Ponzi/pyramid scheme. "There's no two ways about it", as the saying goes.
Here's how it works. The advertising research company gets paid X amount by the advertisers for each referral, such that 6*X is greater than the price of an iPod. They then order a brand new iPod for the first guy, keep the small profit margin and the other 5 people are left to come up with another 5 referrals... each. After about 6 generations of this all possible leads are used up as the number of people signed up increases exponentially.
The sequence below is just the number of new referrals required in each generation for every person in the previous generation to qualify for a free iPod, not including a running total:
1, 5, 25, 125, 625, 3125, 15625, 78125, 390625, 1953125, 9765625, 48828125
The last few generations of signers are never able to complete their 5 referrals because every person on the Internet who could possibly fall for this has already been contacted and roped in. At that point the advertising company gets to keep ALL the money for everyone who has signed up, because no one can possibly meet the requirements to qualify for a free iPod.
They make a profit for the initial generations of people who sign up, but after the "market" gets saturated it's ALL profit. No more free iPods. It may be perfectly "legit" but it is still a pyramid scheme. Plain. And. Simple. It's only free for the people who jump on the wagon the moment it starts rolling. There is no sustainability, it will eventually (quickly) fizzle out.
I figure there's no way any generation past about the sixth (3,125) could ever have a more than 25% success rate at getting their free iPods, taking into account the supply of new iPods, the number of people who actually go through the whole process, the number of people in qualifying countries who have Internet access and somehow encounter a link into this scheme, etc, etc. There are a thousand different variables that will keep the majority of those who sign up from getting anything, while the advertising research company still gets its $50-60 per head for as long as people still think they have a snowball's chance in Hell to get a free iPod. Judging by the stupidity of the average homo sapiens, they could probably keep getting referrals out to about generation ten, maybe even eleven (wouldn't want to underestimate human stupidity). They start out with a small profit margin on each signer and work their way up to making out like bandits and laughing all the way to the bank.
There are a lot of legal scams, and this is one of them. Don't tell people it's legit just because it's legal. I think at this point it's only still legal because it's obscured by the misdirection of where the money is coming from and going to. You put money into the scheme, but your money goes directly to other companies (the advertisers, from whom you order small items to qualify for the referral system), and the advertisers pay out money but it doesn't go to you, it goes to the middleman (the advertising research company), who promises you a free iPod. It ends up being a lie because the final generations cannot possibly complete the requirements, but they are still enticed into giving up personal information and buying useless junk.
If it requires that much sleight of hand and misdirection, it's always a scam. And of course all this is ignoring the part about every person turning in 5 people so that advertisers can collect their demographic information. That part is pretty rank, and not worth the price of an iPod in my opinion. You're paying for that iPod, just not with money.
TANSTAAFL, my friend. TANSTAAFL. Or should that be TANSTAAFI now?
In this case, the money is probably in the FIRST level or two of the scheme. I already don't have 5 people who would get 5 friends to sign up; and I'd be the first level if I signed up, so they'd get maybe $60-$180 out of me and my friends, and give out *NO* I-pods.
It's also not a true pyramid scheme in the sense that you don't have to pay any money to get in. There's a fine line between a pyramid scheme and just paying people to do sales. My company has a bunch of people we pay JUST to sell stuff. And in fact, some of the people they sell stuff too then turn around and sell it to someone else. We call those people END USERS.
In this case, the people who sign up for offers but don't get iPods are just the end users. The people who manage to get other people to sign up and get iPods are just a cheap sales force.
paintball
Dear Free IPOD Offer
My name is Mungani Bantuwaani, wife of the late GeneraL Abangi Bantuwaani who was recently executed by criminals in a coup of the Democratic Replublic of Katanga. I am a good Christian and so are my eleven children and eight adopted children and so was able to escape to the relative safety of Switzerland in a cago ship. Unfortunately, my late husband's substantial bank account is still frozen by the Authorities in Katanga and will not release funds to me. It brings me shame to beg you!
For the sake of the 17 children, will you please send me your bank account details so that I can pass them to a collegue and friend in the Katanga Nationla Reserve who will instantly transfer the sum of YSD 15,000,000 to you, so long as you promise to then transfer the same amount (less a 10% handling fee) to my account in Switzerland? Alternatively if you send me 20 Ipods I will be able to give each of my children a present they deserve in leiu of their father.
Yours and God Bles from the Children
Mrs Mungani Bantuwaani (Deceased)
According to this calculator, my entire life is worth $278.60. Wow, that's depressing.
I think my sig speaks for itself.
Please stop stalking me, bro.
There are places in South Africa, Mexico or Brazil where you can get someone professionally killed for less than that...
No sig for the moment.
So what's the difference in this scenario?
1. I paint a picture on a canvas with oil and it takes me a week or so to do it. I sell same picture for $600.
2. I paint a picture on a computer (using Painter) using virtual oil brushes and it takes me a week or so to do it. I print the picture with an Epson 7600. Now, how much is the digital image? How much is the print itself?
If you're typing there telling me the digital image is free, while the act of printing the digital painting is worth $600, uh you don't understand what went into making the painting, do you?
AOL doesn't seem to cancel accounts. My mother signed up for one of those free month deals thinking to use it with a laptop while on travel vacationing but she ended up never using even one minute of it because she couldn't get it working with the laptop. 6 months later and 6 calls later and they still bill her credit card every month for it. AOL are scammers, plain and simple.
The only thing that seems even remotely like a pyramid is the way the ipod people collect emails.
You make this sound like that is not a big deal. The part of recruiting and supplying the names of others is 100% required for you to complete the deal. It is not optional. If you do NOT supply names and those people do NOT sign up, you get absolutely nothing. So, what you consider a small part of the scheme, is a major factor on how the whole thing works. Eventually as proven with some basic math, there will be a point where a vast majority of people will not find 5 other people and shortly there after, it will mathmatically impossible to find 5 people. At that point, the bottom will have fallen out and the whole thing will come crashing down. You reference "changing the deal" as you realize it really is a pyramid. What about the people half way through still looking for people? They get nothing. At what point does the company decide to pull the plug?
Bad boys rape our young girls but Violet gives willingly.
Set up my account in the last couple of hours?
Oh BOLD AC, you know not of what you speak. Look at our UID's and you'll relize my tale came LONG before any such free iPod deals were a twinkle in their daddy's eye.
Yours Truly,
zoloto
err.. look at my uid and it came long before the free iPod deals.
bleh. it's still early.
I'd give them a Visa Buxx card number with $0 balance ;-)
That said, I wouldn't participate in this pyramid scheme .
OK. I got my freeipods and I'm happy with the service. If you know what you're getting into then its your choice. ....and personally I'm happy with it.
...and they're only gonna keep getting more.
First off you don't have to give up your friends and family. All you have to do is send your own email to friends and family and include your Freeipods referral link. That gives them the choice whether or not they want to do it or not. If they don't sign up then Freeipods doesn't get any of their personal info. If you send out referalls through their site(instead of sending the referral link), then freeipods can get your friends and family's personal email....but if you don't do it that way then they won't.
I did mine back in the day when all I had to do was open up and Ebay account and place a bid...that was my completed offer. They don't offer than one anymore....I guess cause it was too easy and everyone was doing it.
So anyway I got mine after like 3 or 4 months. My gmail address gets major spam, but it all goes into my spam folder, so no worries.
My feeling is that you give that personal info out all the time and companies already have a ton of information about you anyway.
Anyway here's a pic w/ my freeipod...just for legitimacy.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/jeffmchugh/1206088/
it doesn't hurt anyone to buy it through Gratis, provided they were buying it in the first place.
And Gratis' TOS says they do not resell or give away your personal data, though I believe they anonymize it and resell the anonymous purchasing info.
From the site itself:
We use other third parties to provide a short survey on our site which, with your consent, will collect the personally identifiable information entered on the preceding address form page in order to supply you with information about various special offers and services. These third parties are prohibited from using your personally identifiable information for any other purpose. You are provided with the option of opting out of these surveys, and must consent to each offer on an individual basis for your personally identifiable information to be transmitted.
I didn't fill out any surveys when I did my offer, and neither did any of my friends.
We may work with other third party businesses using the personal information that you supply to us on the main signup page to bring selected retail opportunities to our members via direct mail, email and telemarketing. These businesses may include providers of direct marketing services and applications, including lookup and reference, data enhancement, suppression and validation and email marketing. You may choose to opt out of receiving these promotional emails at the initial point of email collection by deselecting this option. Keep in mind that if you take advantage of an offer from a Gratis Internet business partner and thus, become their customer, they may independently wish to send offers to you. In the event that you are not interested in receiving future offers from these affiliates, you must contact them directly to fulfill your list removal request.
This is fairly standard. It's the same as when you deselect the check box when installing any application that wants to send you stupid marketing emails.
Where's the problem here? Be scrupulous about identifying opportunities for companies to mine your data, and you're fine. None of my friends are dumb enough to not pay attention to this stuff.
+++ATH0
Yes, of course they're making money off of this. It doesn't take a slashnot story to figure that one out. We're not exactly talking about breaking news here. And even so, do you really have a problem with that? I don't. And yes, they ask for personal information, but do you actually give it to them? I gave them an email address I can shut down at a moments notice. I gave them a creditcard that can't be used again. I don't mind giving out a physical address simply becasue these guys aren't interested in sending out real mail-- That costs money. It's not the MO of a spammer anyway.
Honestly, this story is a little lopsided in nature. Call me biased (see sig for details), but you don't have to play by their rules. I mean, God forbid you use that concept in say, a free email account? Not that they don't attempt to make cash off you either. Or how about slashdot adverts and the story self promotions you see occationally?*
Seriously, you play this game every day on the internet. Nothing changed just because it's a free ipod or because Slashdot all of a sudden became aware of it.
* No, I honestly don't care. Unlike some people I've accepted it as something that goes with the territory.
You need a FREE iPod Nano
I used to work for the company that owns freeflixtix.com, evivaclub.com, & tenspot.com - the premise was simple. Sign up, refer 5 friends, and get free movie tickets.
All of the information was happily sold off to "3rd party marketing partners" and the list (over 7 million people when I left) was also used for the company's spamming arm, Moxio (or Bonus Bonez, whatever they're calling it now) - you and your referrals all got the spam. Lots of it. If you cancelled your freeflixtix.com account, your referrals (and usually you) still got tons of spam. Your address (email, phone number, AND mailing address) was sold off already.
Yes, people eventually did get some free tickets after jumping through "partner" hoops..some requiring you to keep the "trial" for 2 weeks or more, or to give up MORE personal info & credit card numbers.
It's worse than the "freecreditreport.com" scam that requires you to sign up for Equifax's "Credit Monitoring Service" and more spam.
Is there any way that Slashdot can simply dump any post that has that ponzi scheme as a sig?
Someone on here had 510-THE-SCAM registered for Safeway and encouraged others to use it.
:)
I use it all the time and still get my Safeway discounts.
Now if only I could score the receipt that said I bought enough deli sandwiches to get my free one, I'd be a happy camper.
Jesus how stupid can you be? You're a sad little lobster, too weak to pull up the side of the trap, so you're desperately grabbing at all the other lobsters. The guy has a link on his name that people interested can follow if they find his posts interesting. If you don't like it, don't fucking follow it.
I cannot fucking stand pathetic lowest-in-the-totem pole sniping assholes. I don't link to anything of my own because I don't want cunts like you spamming me becuase you're angry, but I fucking would like to boot every asscunt like you in the face when you start sniping others because of your petty jealousy.
What if it's a all just a conspiracy to build up a huge database of personal data and then when it's big enough, unleash the biggest floodwave of spam the world has ever seen? On a more serious topic though (Well, not entirely), Gratis means free in swedish.
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Here's my personal webpage that shows proof pages for many of these offers...
l
http://users.zoominternet.net/~rconrad/free.htm
Here's a link to the Internet's Definitive Guide for all this free stuff.
http://www.FreebieAuthority.com
Closed source has to be an exact fit or you have to cater to it.
This is why, where possible, open source is prefered or custom tools are created from scratch.
The main point being that nothing, not even open source is free. Unless your time is worth nothing.
Work Safe Porn
... where we all have polite, reasoned discussions about the wonders of Windows and the suckiness of Linux. You mean there's another version?
Sean
You fail it! ("it" is coming even remotely close to properly identifying my party affiliation).
You are such a miserable, miserable failure. Go back to your blue state subsidized lifestyle you wife-beating welfare monkey. I didn't request the services of a gap-toothed inbred mountain man, so keep your mouth shut until you're called upon or I'll cut off your free supply of government cheese and food stamps you red state retard.
You succeed it! ("it" is being trolled by an obviously baited sig line like the red state failure that you are).
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
A friend of mine made the mistake of signing up to AOL with his debit card.
Why do so many people fall into this trap?!? A debit card is a direct line into a checking account, which for most people is all the money they have.
I wouldn't be suprised for there to be some huge consumer-action backlash in a few years against debit cards and direct-withdrawal billing schemes. The people sucked into this mess tend to be poor, which is a shame.
Everyone, the cost of a stamp is little to pay for keeping people's hands out of your only cash reserve!
Even using a credit card is risky, as I have seen CCs billed that required calling the company to have them credit back the charges. Imagine the unnecessary pain if the company decided to be jerks about it? You have to call your bank and even might have to hire a lawyer. It isn't worth it. Just send them a damn check and make them cry to you for more money if they want it so badly.
-- "Makes Little Debbie look like a pile of puke!" - Moe Szyslak
No, its not that bad. But it is a hassle. I signed up for a different trial with each of the ipod, desktop, and flatscreen and cancelled them the same day no problem. I did have to call 2 of the companies to cancel, and one tried to give me a different offer, but they cancelled easily enough.
The hardest part is getting others to sign up, I don't think I had anyone actually complete an offer under me. The "Time is Money" thing is definately applicable. Ultimately, it would probably be easier just to go buy an ipod/desktop/flatscreen.
Gratis Inc can burn in hell!! They are slobbering data hungry bastards who resort to tactics usually in the domain of spammers and child pornographers to get their greasy hands on peoples demographic data. At least "demographic data" is how they euphamise private, and personal data mining, with blatant disregard for the privacy and dignity of their victims. And offering illegal pyramid schemes to idiots who put money above their friends disgusts me even more. If I found out that someone I knew was selling off my details to such scum as Gratis, I tell everyone I knew that that person was an untrustworthy snake, and I would personally never have any business with them ever again. Idiot slashdotters with such sigs should be modded down, ASAP!
Personal data is on a need to know basis, and these filty data rapers do not need to know. They know my name, address, salary, habit, likes, dislikes and then squeal to lawmakers when honest people try to stop all this unethical behaviour. But if I was to try to find out their companies address, revenue, business contacts etc... I would be a criminal trespassers and would promptly be burned at the stake for my libertarian heresy against the corpratocracy.
I will not believe, and noone will persuade me, that this is all OK. So much personal data in the hands of private companies cannot lead to anything good. At best we can hope for a deluge of offers and junk mail, at worst we can hope for blackmail, surveillance and authoritatrianism. Extreme I grant you, but made ever more possible by the dispicable actions of the likes of Gratis Inc.
May the Maths Be with you!
I like that idea. random barcode use would drive the grocery stores mad. Can you imagine what would happen? I'm visiting Mom for the holidays, and Mom has no less than a dozen of these little things on her keyring. 5 grocery stores, 2 pet stores, 3 pharmacies, and others that I don't even recognize. I'd really get a kick out of 1/2 million people all using the same barcode for a day, then switching to random codes the next day, then switching back, and just f&cking with the whole system.
What that AC says is correct, my parents tried to cancel their AOL account and AOL just ignored it for a few months.
The do this counting on you to forget about it, and for the more determined make it a pain in the butt, and a waste of your time and money to do so.
Oh and if you think that signing up with a credit card that is about to cancel is going to save you, think again. Even if your credit card number chances, places can obtain your next credit card info and continue charging like normal.
If you've ever tried to cancel an AOL subscription, you've probably noticed that their employees are likely fired if they cancel a single subscription.
How the hell do I get moderated -1:Troll, yet you come out with that particular gem and are modded "insightful."
I used to work for AOL and had several personal accounts quite some time ago. You simply don't know what you're talking about.
"It is seldom that liberty of any kind is lost all at once." -David Hume
You don't need the birth certificates for them. YOu need the birth certificates to have credit cards in other names. They run a check to make sure that people don't use multiple cards for one person and cheat them.
Douglas P. Price
Amateur.
Never have had to provide a B.C. for a credit card. Weird. That is not something I would ever do. This isn't a passport, fer krissakes.
Tip from personal experience: cancel via fax. No muss no fuss, AOL account is gone after about 3 days
Personal experience: I faxed them all the info they asked for, and they kept my account active, charged me for the next month. I had to call, and speak with someone in the land of Sacred Cows who tried EVERYTHING to not cancel me. Took a half hour on the phone to finally get canceled, and I never did get the monthy fee back they charged me.
smartcongaline is terrible. Go to http://www.gratisoffersguide.com/ forums or one of the other popular sites.
Once again, your post says one thing and your sig says the opposite. If you already have your 5 suckers...errr..."friends" signed up, and don't need me (or any other slashdot readers) why are you still spamming a referrer link for freeipods.com in your sig?
0 1 - just my two bits
To heck with the gratis and other sites. I've got six Gmail invites I will happily trade for a working 20gb or larger Ipod. Please reply to this to take me up on it.
It actually does work. My cousin got his. It just takes forever and you have to complain to get credit for an offer. I'm sure there are also scams out there as well. It's actually pretty hard to get 5 people. I could only get 2 and I'm still waiting for credit on those. The easiest offer are the credit cards because you don't actually have to buy anything. It's a pain in the butt but I still want a free iPod. http://www.freeiPods.com/?r=12135918
I was attempting to differentiate this scheme from pyramid selling. Pyramid selling is illegal and for good reasons, this scheme is not illeagal(INAL) but it is certainly not reputable. The ipods are free as in beer, they are actually a commission for signing up X customers to Y company. There is no requirement for you to buy anything to "complete the deal", that would make it pyramid selling(INAL). The deal is for you to provide enough leads for the company to sign-up X people and get Y product as a reward. Is it a bit sleezy? do they re-sell names? do they fold before delivering on the reward? of course they do. This is just the latest gimmick in a long history of gimmicks to hook people into working hard at making a pain of themselves to get a "free" trinket. If you want privacy, don't tell eveyone your life story and make sure it is clear to your mates that what you tell them is confidential (eg: "I will give you my cell number but I don't want everyone to know it, ok?"). As I said before, you can't legislate to stop mates from betraying your confidence so think carefully before you give them your root password.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
... and look up 'oxymoron'. You got one right, "Jumbo shrimp".
As for the others: Many people of both parties are hypocrites. All media is biased. Much media is liberally biased. Many professors are assholes.
I've got more mod points and GMail invi
And telling people to sign up and cancel right away to avoid credit card charges is fraud
;)
When a company gives out a free trial offer, such as AOL, how is it fraud to terminate your account before the end of the trial offer to prevent charges? If you aren't satisfied with a companies services, of course you're going to terminate the account. You are not breaking your legal contract with this company, as they TOLD you it was a free trial offer.
Conversly, companies who advertise through places such as FreeIpod.com know that a majority of people aren't going to remain active members at the end of their trial offer. But they still give FreeIpods.com $50-90 per person that freeipods.com sends their way because enough people stay and it's way cheaper than the billions they spend on TV advertising.
Here's a neat wired article
Here are some interesting quotes from that article:
"Canoso also declined to specify the advertisers' bounties, but said they can range between $25 and $90, depending on the program and the kind of customer it attracts"
and
"Canoso said while $90 seems like a lot, it is peanuts compared to the millions spent on TV and magazine ads, which don't guarantee new customers."
And of course, just in case I change my signature in the near future, if you would like a GMail invite, please help me get a FreeIpod. If I don't get an iPod, I'll let you know and will most definately help spread the word across the internet as a whole.
Until then please mark no-freebie-for-u as a friend. I know I have
http://www.FreeDesktopPC.com
http://www.freeiPods.com
http://www.FreeFlatScreens.com
Make sure to READ THIS FULLY(before you click on link) IF YOU WANT A FREE I POD!!!! Dont bid on this!! PICTURE of PROOF of recieving a Free iPod is on the LEFT of the page, i swear to god this worked for us, two of my friends already got them and i should be getting one in a few days but its crazy how you can get i Pods for so cheap. you should try it soon but dont tell too many people right away. wait at least till you get yours first. just go to this site http://www.****iPods.com/?r=13755442 (type in "Free" before i-Pods) and sign up what I Pod you want. then u will have like 10 survey, u could say no to all of them. then u have to complete an offer but dont freak out, here is the SECRET. the block buster offer you can sign up for it and cancell it within two weeks and it wont cost a penny. and there are many other FREE TRIAL offers, however they take about 7 Dollars for shipment. and then u have to tell 5 of your friends to sign up. you can even pay for your friends Shipping and Handling when they sign up for the offer. that means 5*7=$35 dollars for an i Pod!!!!! you could turn around and sell it on ebay for $250 if you want. if you are skepticle about this ill tell you WHY THIS WORKS. this FREE i Pod web site basically gets money from companies to collect people(by giving away i Pods) like us to take the quick survey. and if you say YES to any of them u get an E-mail advertisment from them and they get customers that way. so click NO if you dont want junk mail. THEN they also get money from the companies to advertise and have people sign up for one of the offers in the end. the companies that are making the offers get there moneys worth by people who actually continue to subscribe one of the offers. if you are interested in continuing one of the offers, thats great. but if you are only interested in getting the i Pod thats fine too, because someone else would be interested in continuing the offer and that DOES NOT have to be you. thats why they give away free I pods to people because they know that attracts people to sign up. companies make money by advertising, the website makes money from attracting people, and we get are i-Pods.......everyone is happy! :) it might cost you some money before you complete it but it wont cost you more than 40 dollars i guarantee. one of my friend payed 12dollars total to get his mini ipod and my other friend got his for free i swear to my dead grandma. just try it out. its easier than u would think.
If you have any questions let me know.
Sign up for one of these offers, these ones will charge you the least.(I RECOMEND BlockBuster because its absolutely Free)
I read ALL the FINE prints in the offers and these are what they charge.
Block Buster Free trial is Absolutely FREE(you get to rent like 5 movies for free) if canceled within two weeks! make sure to cancell it as soon as posible. no S&H
Free Video Professor(u get free computer learning soft ware) no cancellation required S&H is $6.95
Hydroderm free 14day trial is Free if you cancel within 2 weeks. S&H is $9.95
Feel Serenity 30day Free trial is Free. S&H is $5.95. make sure to cancel within 30days.
TrimLife Trio, you get a bunch of diet samples for Free if canceled within 14days. S&H is $5.95 make sure to cancel.
My Daily Dose Free 7day trial, cancel within 14days and will be free S&H is $5.95
People PC, they dont tell you how its a Free trial.......
Applying for Credit Cards, you have to approve and make a purchase...
GO get your i Pods!!!
From my BLOG about helping to expose a spammer for "free" iPods in my home state
Some people on this board are trying to legitimize the fact they received a "free" ipod, so they are all legit. They are NOT, not a single one of them. Their sole purpose is to harvest email. If you promote these services to ANYONE (even if you know how to skate the system by using dummy emails) you are doing us ALL an inservice by keeping them active!
Yell & scream & rant & rave... it's no use... you need a shaaaave ~ Bugs Bunny