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Henrico County iBook Sale Creates iRiot
pikester writes "What do you get when you combine 1000 used iBooks being sold for $50 and 1000 people desperately wanting to buy them? You get an iStampede of course! Add into the mix one guy who watches too much wrestling and one gal who re-lived her first Backstreet Boys concert by wetting herself and you'll being looking for video of the whole thing. CNN has some extra details as well." From the article: "Officials opened the gates at 7 a.m., but some already had been waiting for hours in line. When the gates opened, it became a terrifying mob scene. People threw themselves forward, screaming and pushing each other. A little girl's stroller was crushed in the stampede. Witnesses said an elderly man was thrown to the pavement, and someone in a car tried to drive his way through the crowd."
I had submitted this article this morning, with a little more information in case people were interested here is what I had posted:
Henrico Co. Schools of VA decided to change laptop suppliers at the end of their contract with Apple, opting instead for a contract deal with Dell and Microsoft. The result was a couple thousand laptops of no use. In a first attempt, Henrico Co. was going to sell laptops in a free for all at $50 dollars each, but subsequent meetings and enraged tax payers made them change to limiting the sale (at least this first sale) to Henrico citizens and tax payers. The sale occurred at the Richmond International Raceway where 1000 laptops would be given on a first come first serve basis with proof of residency/tax payments. The facilitators of the event decided to close the main gates of the area until 7 AM and begin the sale at 9 AM. This did little to deter people arriving as early as 1 AM and circling the area until the main gates opened. At 6:54 AM the main gates were opened and a massive stampede of over 12 thousand attendants for the event fought to be the first in line. Injuries (albeit minor according to the Times Dispatch) and chaos ensued. One unconfirmed report I was given by an attendee was of a lady who.s ankle was broken and her baby carriage trampled by the sheer number of people shoving to get through the gates. Police support was supposedly small with off duty officers working, the event planners obviously underestimating the popularity of this event. The details of the event including the specs for the iBook (12 inch, G3 500 MHz) can be seen at this posting on the Henrico Co Schools website. In the fall there is to be another sale of which no restriction will be made on buyers, but after today.s incident, one could only imagine that it will differ highly from the chaos of today. Photos of the scene can be viewed at the article in the Richmond Times Dispatch website .
local richmond newspaper link
another local link with slideshow pictures
Don't anthropomorphize computers: they hate that.
As geeks living in the area my friends and I were interested in getting some cheap computers to set up as servers and various low intensity jobs. The local papers and Henrico County made such a huge deal over this that I am really not that surprised by the turnout. They were selling off used and discarded low end macs, and making it sound like the deal of a lifetime.
I personally think the county would have been better off finding a way to distribute them to low income families and possibly offering classes in their use, but what do I know.
"It is sad to see a family torn apart by something as simple as a pack of wild dogs."
According to the 14th Amendment, "all persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the state wherein they reside."
What?
Being a Henrico county resident, I tried to go to the iBook sale this morning. I have younger siblings who could use a computer and this was a pretty good deal for that.
I got to the Richmond International Raceway where the sale was held at 6:55. It was pretty obvious to me that there was no way I was getting a laptop based on the number of cars trying to get in and the number of people lining up outside. So I left. The police were doing their best to try to keep the siutation under control, but you could tell that it was rapidly getting out of hand just because there were too many people. Driving back home, I think there was at least a good mile or two of cars still trying to get into the sale. I can't imagine how long those people ended up sitting there.
I'm not sure why more people didn't just decide to leave when the saw the number of people there. I'm also not sure why the county didn't make the price higher. Having it at $100 - $200 would have made a lot of money back for the county and would have discouraged a lot of people. This has to be a net loss in profit for them based on the number of police officers that were there. It could have been handled much better.
Rumor has it that there may be more laptops laying around (they did give one to every high school student in the county and only sold 1000). Hopefully, they are smarter next time. I guess at least I know where my tax money is being spent...
I happen to live in the Henrico area, and honestly - a fifty dollar computer is a deal you can't beat. I went there with my mother and my sister, however, after people started running, I just wanted out. I only stayed for my sister.
It was chaos. The first people who started running, I don't know what they were thinking, but after that, you HAD to run. There is just something about 12,000 people running at you from behind that kind of makes you run away.
Ended up getting stuck in a huge crowd for several hours, left when the police in riot gear started telling us they only had 300 left.
I don't know if imageshack likes Slashdot or not, but it's worth a try.
I took some pictures of the crowd, I'll post them if anyone is interested. Mine aren't as good as the ones from the times dispatch, but they gave a decent view of how many people were packed in.
Of course, the true problem is that the iBooks were sold at a price well below their true value.
My theory is the following: To get the money to purchase new laptops from Dell and Microsoft, somebody had to represent that the existing, perfectly-good iBooks were obsolete and near-worthless. If they had been offered at auction, they would have sold at a much higher price, exposing the fraud. So instead, they were offered to the public at fire-sale prices. The riot was the predictable outcome.
In fact, it is hard to imagine what student use would have required anything more powerful than a 500 MHz iBook. The only one that leaps to mind is video editing, and somehow I doubt that a large number of students needed to do that on their laptops.
They were not 7 year old laptops, they were 4 years old. This makes them either 500 or 600MHz machines - more than adequate for most uses. I have friends who still use 500MHz iBooks for day-to-day work - they're fine for pretty much anything other than scientific computing, high-end gaming, video editing or large compiles. They will run Tiger, but if they are CD-models you will need to pay extra for the CD version. They support a maximum of 640MB of RAM, and it's well worth the upgrade - my girlfriend has one and was complaining it was slow with 128MB, with 512Mb it's very responsive and does everything she needs it to.
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My Good Lord, I almost relived "War of the Worlds" where people start killing each other for a spot on a Van.
I got there around 5:45 and the crowd was already over a 1000, snaking along the road for half a mile. It got worse as it got near to 7:00 when the gates were supposed to open. There were hardly 4 law enforcement officers near the gate and even they were hardly prepared for the onslaught at 7:00. More over, even after having over a month to prepare, there was hardly any planning. They could have let people in to the Raceway which had a huge parking lot and used barricades to create a maze like queue. I am positive people would have respected that, but they made people wait in unmanaged queues outside the gate. They could have opened just one gate, and let people trickle in. Instead they opened two gates, one wide enough for cars waiting outside to enter (which they did plus hundreds waiting to pounce) plus they flung open the gates where people were waiting and you bear witness to what ensued by looking at the slideshows on Times dispatch. People ran like as if a pack of hellhounds were at their heels and in less than 30 seconds a "queue" (if you can call it that) formed outside the entrance to the facility which was more like 10 queues side by side.
People were fainting all around us, fire department did what they could. Swat team in riot gear assembled towards the back of the facility, willing to step in to do what they can if things get more worse. There were still less than 10 law enforcement officers in regular attire trying to manage the crowd. People were unruly, cussing and dropping like flies around us as the heat picked up.
Towards 9:30, authorities realized they need a plan and put together some barricades and started channeling people inside the facility. It was another 3 hours before I got in and got my hands on one. I am sure Steve jobs will be licking his lips in anticipation of 1000 odd users foraging through his stores..
Anyway, this was an event that went to hell in a handbasket in 10 seconds straight. Due to bad planning or lack of it, something that could have been organized to the point where the whole thing should have lasted a couple of hours, it turned out in to a free for all, where people, regardless of their social status put a lid on their conscience and returned to more basic instincts.
Rapid Nirvana