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."

Comments

Shows us how far we haven't come...

[jo_ham]

Whenever someone does something like this (selling something for much less than its value) scenes like these always happen.

Ikea did this with a new store in the UK, selling a £500 sofa for £50 and mob scenes resulted, with people fighting in the aisles, people trampled and people stealing sofas off feeble old people who were unable to hang onto their purchase.

When it comes to a bargain, I'm amazed people don't pack heat before setting off for the store.

perhaps you need to read

[isotope23]

this

Article IV

Section 1. Full faith and credit shall be given in each state to the public acts, records, and judicial proceedings of every other state. And the Congress may by general laws prescribe the manner in which such acts, records, and proceedings shall be proved, and the effect thereof.

Section 2. The citizens of each state shall be entitled to all privileges and immunities of citizens in the several states.

or this :

Amendment XIV

Section 1. 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.

although one could argue the 14th was not properly ratified. Many "unreconstructed" southerners still hold the view that you are a citizen of your state first, and these united states second.

Re:more information

[jc42]

Excuse me, but how does a decision to change suppliers of future purchases make currently owned equipment "of no use?"

You haven't worked out many multi-computer deals, have you?

The special-price deal they got with Dell probably included the condition that they get rid of all their non-Dell computers.

Salesmen routinely make deals like this. Usually they're "privately-arranged" deals that are not explicit in the written contract. But the contract is carefully phrased so that they can legally demand more money if they discover any of the old computers on the premises. Some admins resist this sort of deal; many don't.

(Dell and Microsoft aren't the only companies that play games like this. A year or so back, I got into a bit of a "discussion" with Apple's support people. They insisted that I disable the linux machines on my network before they'd help with a problem. The problem wasn't even related to the other computers; it was a difficulty getting a Mac to talk to a printer via an Airport Extreme. They wouldn't accept isolating the Mac+airport+printer from the network; they insisted that the linux boxes not be on the local network, and refused to talk to me until I disabled them all. This did backfire on them a bit, though. I recommended to management that we not use Apple equipment as infrastructure in in our network, and described this support problem as my reason. They accepted my recommendation.)

Re:Reminds me of a WWWF moment.

[adrianmonk]

Who was the DUMBASS from this school's administration that decided to sell 1000 laptops for less than 1/15th of what they could have fetched on eBay?

That's a very good question. I think the CNN article was a bit misleading in that it didn't describe the true market value of the actual laptops. Someone from the area has stated that they were 500MHz G3 laptops. A little research on eBay of completed items that are comparable indicates they would sell for something like $300 to $325 on average, depending on configuration.

So, that's still $250 per laptop down the drain. Given 1000 laptops, that's $250,000 taxpayer dollars wasted if they could've gotten the real value for each one.

Now, having said that, it takes time and effort to list things on eBay, and flooding eBay with 1000 similar laptops is likely to drive prices down. But still, there are companies out there who buy used computers in bulk and resell them. They probably could have gotten maybe $200 per computer from such a company, with no effort at all. So they are still wasting $150,000 even if they had gone the easy route.

The worst part of all this is that $150,000 could pay, depending on salaries and the cost of benefits, for a teacher for 2 or maybe 3 years. Letting citizens get a nice break on a laptop is neat perk, but is it really worth taking $150,000 out of your school district's budget? And even if it didn't come out of the school's budget, is it really fair to the taxpayers who had to pay the money in but really don't need a laptop (or already have one, etc.)? It amounts to redistributing wealth, but in a totally arbitrary manner. If the school district is already so well-funded they really don't need the money, then what they should've done is sold the computers for a fair value and then sent rebate checks out to the taxpayers. Or, put it in a rainy day fund at the very least. Or establish a foundation, or a small scholarship.

Re:Reminds me of a song title

[Lumpy]

Ahh reminders of exactly how big of assholes the people we share this planet with are :-)

My first exposureto the reality that is my fellow human beings was when I was 18 at the DAyton Hamfest.

A moron in an airplane threw a ream of papers out of the plane on a RAINY day each paper had a 1 dollar bill stapled to it. the ream of papers did not seperate, it fell as one brick 200 feet until it hit me in the head.

What did my fellow humans and americans do? See if I was ok as I was lying there bleeding? Nope they trampled me trying to get to the one dollar bills.

From that day on I learned that deep down, our fellow humans really are dirtballs and do not give a rats ass about anything but themselves.

If anyone is suprised at all by thisthen they are either fools that have been insulated from reality or had an IQ below 60. (selling the ibooks for $50.00 tells me the latter was true)