I tried to do some dealing with the gov't, but since I wasn't an approved contractor, I couldn't even attempt it. That's why you keep seeing the same big names providing everything to NASA, or any other gov't agency.
You and I can't afford to even attempt to get these sweet gov't contracts. We'd get refused because we can't say "We'll put 1,000 employees on it", even though if we had the contract, we could afford to hire 2,000 and still bring it in early and under budget.
The whole gov't contract thing is a scam. Plain and simple. It keeps funding those who have money to put into campaign contributions (and other unspoken transactions).
I'll be interested to see what they plan to do for long-term food, water, and atmosphere supplies. It's not like they'll be getting a monthly resupply from Earth. Their description is ambitious at best, and negligent at worst. It reads like they're taking the best case scenario as the nominal situation.
Oh, I'm sure the conspiracy nutters are having a field-day with that news story. Well, if they aren't already, they will be soon enough.
Sadly, it is a terrorist event, no matter who did it or why. It will help strengthen the US Gov't stance that everything has to be secured, because the terrorist are going to get us.
Things have been getting slow, since there hasn't been an attack on the US in over a decade.
It wouldn't be surprising if some part of the gov't was involved.
And no, I haven't seen it. Unfortunately I don't smoke pot, so if I ever do accidentally start watching it, I may not make it through the whole movie.:)
Nah, I'm just hard pressed to pick a country that would actually attempt an invasion of the US. China is the most capable. If I had to wager between China invading the CONUS, or aliens landing in Times Square... well... aliens are more likely.:)
But lets look at some numbers for military strength, if to see who could attempt such a thing.
The US has the largest airforce, with China being #2. That's followed by Russia, India, Iran and North Korea.
China outnumbers the US in active military., but the US is #2. That's followed by India, Russia, North Korea, and South Korea.
Budget is significantly different by country. The US overwhelms this category. The US spends $689B. China spends $129B. That is followed by Russia, France, UK, and Japan.
Some of that is likely skewed by expenses. The US has stuff like aircraft carriers built *in* the US. China has been buying theirs used, and now has 3 in the works being done in China. As we all know, labor and materials is a lot cheaper there than here.
Honestly, that brings us back to drunk rednecks, or a small group of domestic terrorists. They *could* cause a lot of isolated damage. They could break an awful lot of stuff in a relatively confined area. Even if they took control over an area, which is amazingly doubtful, they wouldn't hold it for long. It would be a very short revolution.
Something to remember about any group, either a group of domestic terrorists, or a country trying to invade. The United States is a lot stronger than it's military. There are approx 1.5M active military personnel. There are approx 22M military veterans. There are approx 300M firearms in civilian hands. That makes for an awful lot of armed civilians with training, and untrained armed civilians to go with them. It's not good odds for an aggressor, no matter how you look at it.
I'd still be willing to wager that it will eventually be tied to drunk rednecks.:)
Even if they put it underground, that only means illicit activity goes from being seen by people on the ground, to not being seen.
Where did you get the 200K miles number from? I'm just curious. I hadn't seen a number for it before. Well, more like I never bothered to look for the number.:)
I have to question who did this. That's going to make a big difference. If it's a nation planning an invasion, that's a lot different than a group of thousands of well armed and organized civilians (with or without military training). If it's a small group of say 5 to 10 people wanting to cause trouble, they can still inflict serious damage to an isolated area, if they have good planning and equipment. 100 shots at a transformer isn't much, but it's less obvious than say blowing a bridge.
From the military handbooks (paraphrased, of course), this is generally the course of action to do an invasion or take control over an area. It's no secret, it's the way has been conducted for centuries, with additions for modern civilization.
Disable critical infrastructure.
Power (electricity and fuels such as natural gas and oil to facilities and gas pipelines.
Communications (telephone, data/internet, television, radio)
Water (water pumping stations)
Transportation (bridges, railways)
Disable active response
SAM
Armed ground patrols
Ready and airborne forces
Disable secondary response, through neutralization or diversion
Ground military not actively on patrol
Police (local/state/federal, as applicable)
Fire response
Medical (ambulance, first responders, etc)
So this one was a dressed rehearsal on power *and* communications. I'm hoping it was drunk rednecks, and not an advance team from the PRC, or a less than friendly nation, testing response time and reactions.
But please, don't take Wellinghoff's advice of concealment over cover. That's easily mitigated with Google Maps satellite view or just a guy on a ladder with a laser pointer to show the target on the concealment. Come on, bricks aren't that expensive, and do a pretty good job stopping or deflecting common ammunition. They can do it right with steel reinforced concrete 12" thick with supplies from Home Depot. But making a bunker around the transformers won't protect the high voltage transmission towers.
From TFA, Wellinghoff's quote:
His proposed defense: A metal sheet that would block the transformer from view. "If you can't see through the fence, you can't figure out where to shoot anymore," Wellinghoff said. Price tag? A "couple hundred bucks."
It all depends on the airline, and as you said, your class. Employers have always booked me on the airline and flights of their choice, usually the cheapest for that particular trip.
I don't happen to have any American Express cards. According to their site, you have to fly 25,000 Delta Medallion Qualification Miles (MQM) or 30 qualifying segments per calendar year, to reach the minimum status for one free bag in economy class.
So if I were flying JFK to LAX (2475 MQM), I'd have to make the trip 11 times to qualify. That's not so bad. If I was making the trip monthly, on the second leg in the 6th month, I'd get to check one bag for free. Wow, talk about generosity. Unfortunately, that doesn't work if my employer books me on another airline for some of those trips, either because it's cheaper, or because the Delta flight is full (or both).
Groupon logic is horribly flawed. They actively encourage vendors to sell under cost, with the hope that customers will return. There's always a chance they will, especially if you treat them well. There are numerous stories online about how the vendors are totally screwed.
In this blog post, Groupon takes 100% of the sale, promising that customers will always buy more than the ad (and they didn't), and wouldn't limit sales, so they were giving away everything for every Groupon customer for months.
In this story, the story is similar, where far too many customers were sent in, and the vendor was pressured to sell at materials cost, which almost killed them.
Now, in The Brick case (TFA for those not paying attention), the company made the mistake. They were able to limit their losses by resolving the discount problem.
There were several other comments here. One says "what if they bought 100 mattresses?". Well, there's no indication of that in the story. Others are first-hand accounts of the way the company operates, which has included blatant false advertising and other deceptions. That would indicates the real truth behind TFA was intentional. If I, an average consumer, see that I get an outrageous discount, I'll probably go add more items so I can get the better deal. Great. But their plan is to now bill me for the difference.
Some people have said the problem was caught before anything shipped. Great. So cancel the order, and work with the customer. I have seen that happen before. It's not unreasonable. "Sorry, due to a technical error, your order has been cancelled. Please place your order again."
The Brick went totally the other way with it. "Hey, we screwed up and applied the wrong discount, pay this new amount. We don't care about the receipt being the legally binding contract. You owe us." I have seen that before too, usually with con artists who get to exert some sort of leverage. I've mostly heard this with moving companies. "It will be $5,000 to ship your belongings from Point A to Point B." When the day comes for delivery, since they have all of your possessions in their storage yard they demand more for whatever fees they decide to apply.
You get it at car dealerships too. "$22,500 out the door" and hours of dealing with them over paperwork becomes "$22,500 plus tax, tag, dealer prep, showroom fees, and whatever else is now $33,999."
I've heard many stories about car dealerships taking your trade-in car, which they offer to "wash, detail, and inspect", and when it comes time to close the deal and you're presented with a new price *and* an insulting trade-in value, your car is no longer on the lot. It's been "sold", which usually means moved to another lot. So before you've signed the paperwork, you're stuck between walking home or accepting their offer. I've known people who had to go as far as to call law enforcement to report their car stolen, just to get their old car back.
Personally, I've never had to go that far with a car dealer. I trust them less than a thug who says he wants to steal my wallet. At least the thug is up front about what they're going to do. I demand to know what they will give me for my trade-in before I do anything else. Once I was offered $100 trade-in on a $10,000 car. Ok, so you're a crook. I'll go buy elsewhere.
Of course, all of those are dirty tactics, and the company will deny any knowledge of such activity ever happening, but they still do it. So TFA about The Brick isn't some sob story about a company being screwed by the customers. It's a sob story of a con gone bad.
I went looking for the US laws on it. The story has a statement about the Canadian laws at the end of the article which says they can't do it.
One of the stories I did run across, which I've already unfortunately closed. The story was about a guy who bought a car. He then wanted a different color so he went back and they traded him cars with a fresh contract. Shortly after, the dealer told him there was a $4,000 price difference. he said "that's not what my contract says." and ignored them. The dealership got law enforcement involved, who did arrest him, but let him go with no charges filed because... well... the guy was in the right.
You sell me a product. I pay for product. You can't later decide the product should have cost more....or as companies are more than happy to say, your receipt is a legally binding contract, and you are bound by the terms and conditions including the return policy and referenced documents. Dammit, just because I opened it up, and then checked to see what thermite would do to the components, they won't let me return it. Something about open packages or damage, or some such nonsense.
A bunch of them do. And I haven't been tracking them well enough to know which ones do what. The majority of my flying is for work, so I just get on the flight I'm told to. The bean counters get upset when I turn in huge expenses associated with the flight.:)
Nah, they charge everyone those fees. They may as well give away their tickets, considering the other fees included. I'm surprised they haven't added ticket counter fees, and terminal boarding fees. Those would be cash at the time of use, of course. Asking for directions to your next flight? $5. Asking if the flight is on time? $5. Asking to upgrade? $10 before they tell you if there are even upgrades available. $5 to ask if a flight is on time when waiting to pick someone up. $10 arrival waiting area fee. $5/bag luggage belt fee. Hell, I'd pay an extra $5 just to be sure my luggage got on the same plane as me.
Of course they have legal redress. Well, maybe not totally legal, but accepted in the current environment. You tell the customer to pay what you think they owe, even though they have the product. If they don't pay, you can file with the local courts, which cost money, or stick it on their credit report. It may be dirty, but not illegal. They'll get a world of bad press from it though.
They should have sucked up the GOOD press about it. "Wooo, we screwed up and gave stuff away for free! Enjoy! And here's our latest offer, 25% off new purchases! Coupon code: WESCREWEDUP"
Someone didn't pass the customer relations portion of their training.
That's part of business. If you screw up, you'd better honor them, and make sure you don't do it again.
I've seen places give away merchandise over accidents like that. ok, so you lost $10k in product, big deal. You also made some very happy customers, who will likely come back.
The opposite is true too.. If you try to come after the customers who bought in good faith, now they won't come back, and neither will their friends.. "friends" has expanded over the last decade or so, goign from "oh, what, a dozen people?" to thousands of Facebook friends who may in turn share your experience with millions. I don't know who "The Brick" is, but I won't even bother shop there now.
Don't worry about it, anyone can get mod points. There's no sense of humor test in there at all. Well, except on Slashdot's part where they're giving me 15 mod points at a time now.:)
Some people get really bent over their invisible friends, so even if they had a sense of humor, they lose it entirely. As long as they don't insult Gozer, I think we'll be ok.
I'm not so concerned about the gov't. I can be fairly sure they can (if they are so inclined) monitor my phone calls, emails, credit card use, and even know where and when I'm driving thanks to electronic tolls and license plate monitoring at major intersections.
I'm not so fond of someone standing at my door saying "Hi, we're from the church of buggary, and would like to introduce you to our lord and savior." while recording the whole exchange. Or the "friend" who you knew was a friend, and is sitting on the couch looking you straight in the face when you say "Oh I would trust that asshole any farther than I can shoot him from.", which then shows up on YouTube, and you're labeled as a wackjob with a gun looking for a target. People respond to the quote, not the backing, where he was caught stealing DVDs from my livingroom while I was taking a piss.
It's frequently decisions made by non-technical people, but I'm sure you're familiar with that.
When there's a healthy 5-figure pricetag on a server, and the salesman goes on about how excellent their support contract is, technical people cringe, and executives say "why do we need spares?"
So, it could be the most critical piece of equipment in your infrastructure, if you don't have the top brass signing off on buying a spare, you don't get one. Or what I've run into too many times is setups predating me, where exactly the scenario above played out, so there is exactly one server. Trying to sell the top brass on buying more falls on deaf ears, when they're trying to figure out who gets the new office furniture and which private jet to charter for the executive retreat.
It really doesn't matter how much noise IT makes, its the apparent needs that take priority over the theoretical oh-shit moment. Well, until the oh-shit moment happens, and I end up explaining how I've been insisting on improvements for X years. "Please reference my memos and meeting notes over the last two years warning of exactly this situation" doesn't go over as well as you'd think.
Hell, one place I worked at, we had to cannibalize old servers to assemble almost enough working servers to keep production going. The staff got a new office, all new workstations, new phones, and raises. I got $2,000 for infrastructure even though there was a detailed plan of what was required just to maintain operation safely. Needless to say, the $2k didn't even make a dent in it.
The rest of the discussion won't be quite as exotic hardware.
[truncated ECC vendor rant]
Ok, so desktops are worthless for anything that may rely on memory working. I'm glad no accountant ever does work on desktops. Or databases are ever run on desktops. Or developers never use desktops. In any of those circumstances, the memory randomly flipping bits would be horrible failures. Heck, with as much information that goes through your RAM, your machine must have crashed a dozen times while writing that response. I'm very proud of your dedication.
[truncated buy Sun/IBM/Dell rant]
No, I haven't. Here's a couple real things that have happened.
I've stood in a C-level meeting, and apologized that a critical name brand server failed. Their on-site tech showed up in 2 hours, and told us that the part would take 2 days to get. "BUT THE CONTRACT SAYS 4 HOUR RESPONSE!" Ya.. 4 hours for them to come back with something. Not 4 hours to resolve the problem completely. 4 hours frequently turns into days, or worse on holidays.
I've also stood in a C-level meeting, showed the cost effectiveness of *NOT* Sub/IBM/Dell. In some instances where the budget was small, the recommendation was Asus motherboards and Crucial memory and IDE/SATA drives in rackmount 1u's . In higher budget instances, Supermicro Crucial memory and IDE/SATA drives.
The "face the music" meeting is usually "We had a failure that no one noticed. We failed over exactly as planned. The repairs fall within budget. We'll be under budget on repairs again this year."
I also get the luxury of saying "I want to try [some other hardware]" We use it, we don't use it, it doesn't matter because I'm still way under what your favorite vendor would have cost.
Sometimes I was told to send the vendor my buildout list and said "match this, and remember I have the lower price", they couldn't even come close.
With the significant savings, I not only got the servers, but I was given extra servers and a functional budget for spare parts, which *still* came in under the name brand vendor prices. We fail over gracefully from the production machine to the hot spare, and still have more hot spares waiting.
So you can buy one. I can buy three, and (if the employer is good) shared the savings with staff at the end of the year in bonuses.
you've decided to save on some el-cheapo memory sticks.
Now did I say I placed orders from no-name Chinese brands? No. You also haven't checked server memory. Better machines use Crucial. I've seen all kinds of crap shipped with servers directly from the manufacturer. The price for Crucial memory ordered from Crucial.com is less than through the vendor. Hell, unless there's a great sale at BestBuy/TigerDirect/etc, their prices are better.
But hey, you're clearly a fanboy. You're that ass that will scream "I can't work on X, I need Y!" X and Y can be almost anything. I've seen asses like you who won't touch IBM because they love Dell. Interchange IBM, Dell, Sun, SGI, etc, in either X or Y, because no matter how fanboy you are for yours, there's someone else out there with exactly the opposite opinion.
You obviously have never torn down a server. I've built thousands. Everything from empty 1u cases filled with gaming parts, to 1u to 8u HP, Dell, IBM, Sun and SGI servers.
I've done price and performance comparisons between both. You could say that you can't get as many CPUs or as much memory, but you can. The last place I was at paid over $300K for a Sun machine with 128 cores and 1TB RAM. I priced the same machine, with 128 cores and 1TB RAM for something like $20K, but with faster components made for gaming use. Even in their application, they didn't *need* 128 cores, nor 1TB RAM. 768G of RAM was allocated for a ram drive and other storage that wasn't available to the rest of the system.
I don't build 1u cases with gaming parts any more, but only because of cooling concerns.
Just about every "professional" built server has a video card of some sort. Most are cheap chipsets, as they know they'll run Unix in text mode or Windows in a low resolution video mode.
The different "class" of motherboard is simply a different form factor so you can't swap for another one. i.e., vendor lock-in.
RAM is different. It's claimed they use ECC for the safety of your data. In practice it's so you can't go to the local computer store to buy more. Corps tend to buy from the manufacturer because "that's where we got the server, and it was expensive."
Box? Well, rackmount for racks, desktop for not-racks. I've seen plenty of people ungracefully stack rackmount boxes on the floor of a corner office, and complain when they need to pull out the bottom one. That's not so different than racks. I've seen people rack mount where they put in a shelf, and then put 10 servers on top of it without ever putting in the rail kits. Same nightmare, different environment.
With only a very few exceptions, they're the same chipsets, using the same technologies. Except "servers" are usually a year or 10 behind the gaming systems. You get the cool new features on gaming machines, which eventually get adopted to servers.
Hell, even the hard drives are gaming, or are making their way there. SCSI was the only way to go, even though SATA overtook the performance long ago. Then they started putting 2.5" SAS drives in, which are laptop SATA drives with a bigger pricetag. Some use 3.5" SATA drives that perform well. Plenty still include SCSI drives with slower performance and more heat. Why? Because IT managers only remember that they learned "SCSI is for servers. IDE is for desktops. SATA is just the new IDE"
Whats the difference between a WD Green, Blue, Red, or Black drive? Green are set to spin down to save power. That is adjustable. Red is sold for SAN/NAS use. Black is sold for servers. Red and Black may have better warranties. They *all* use the same platters, head, actuators, motor, and even control board with different settings.
You can scream "BUT THE CACHE!" Ok. But remember, the drive you buy today has more cache than the drive you bought 5 years ago. It's a *lot* cheaper to buy a drive with a bigger cache now, and you can keep upgrading. Upgrading your RAID? Swap out one drive at a time until they all have the bigger cache and faster read times. Go with a "professional" server, you'll have to buy the new platform because the new drives aren't in the supported list for the server you bought last year.
Well, gaming machines do make great servers. What is a gaming machine? Fast CPU, lots of memory, fast storage. The only difference is the video card. For home built servers in PC cases, I just don't bother with the pesky high end video cards. They run so much cooler and quieter. I'd hate to have a rack of servers at the house. I rather not have a jet engine running in the next room.:)
Well, it does save a lot of money. No more beta testers, let the paying customers do it for you.:) Plenty of them will do free advertising for you, even if you charge them a premium to be "early adopters". Hell, Google Glass is $1,500 for a $200 toy.
Don't worry about it, QA will catch it before it goes to production. That's the new world of development. Write your code as horribly as you want, someone will fix it later.
I agree. Luckily, I don't know anyone who has them, or at least they aren't wearing them in public.
I don't like being photographed or recorded. If I see a camera, I avoid being in front of it. People argue "But every phone is a video camera!" Ya, but unless someone is pointing it at me, it's not a big deal. If you're going to stand in front of me, pointing a camera at me, regardless if it's recording or not, we're going to have some words..
I'm much nicer than just punching random strangers in the face. It also keeps me out of jail.
People are going to find that the Google Glass is unwelcome in many places. Pretty much the same places where you aren't welcome to hold a video camera in someone's face. Like, just about everywhere.
Slashdot Mirror
Not really. It's the lowest approved bidder. :)
I tried to do some dealing with the gov't, but since I wasn't an approved contractor, I couldn't even attempt it. That's why you keep seeing the same big names providing everything to NASA, or any other gov't agency.
You and I can't afford to even attempt to get these sweet gov't contracts. We'd get refused because we can't say "We'll put 1,000 employees on it", even though if we had the contract, we could afford to hire 2,000 and still bring it in early and under budget.
The whole gov't contract thing is a scam. Plain and simple. It keeps funding those who have money to put into campaign contributions (and other unspoken transactions).
I'll be interested to see what they plan to do for long-term food, water, and atmosphere supplies. It's not like they'll be getting a monthly resupply from Earth. Their description is ambitious at best, and negligent at worst. It reads like they're taking the best case scenario as the nominal situation.
Oh, I'm sure the conspiracy nutters are having a field-day with that news story. Well, if they aren't already, they will be soon enough.
Sadly, it is a terrorist event, no matter who did it or why. It will help strengthen the US Gov't stance that everything has to be secured, because the terrorist are going to get us.
Things have been getting slow, since there hasn't been an attack on the US in over a decade.
It wouldn't be surprising if some part of the gov't was involved.
And no, I haven't seen it. Unfortunately I don't smoke pot, so if I ever do accidentally start watching it, I may not make it through the whole movie. :)
Nah, I'm just hard pressed to pick a country that would actually attempt an invasion of the US. China is the most capable. If I had to wager between China invading the CONUS, or aliens landing in Times Square ... well ... aliens are more likely. :)
But lets look at some numbers for military strength, if to see who could attempt such a thing.
The US has the largest airforce, with China being #2. That's followed by Russia, India, Iran and North Korea.
China outnumbers the US in active military., but the US is #2. That's followed by India, Russia, North Korea, and South Korea.
Budget is significantly different by country. The US overwhelms this category. The US spends $689B. China spends $129B. That is followed by Russia, France, UK, and Japan.
Some of that is likely skewed by expenses. The US has stuff like aircraft carriers built *in* the US. China has been buying theirs used, and now has 3 in the works being done in China. As we all know, labor and materials is a lot cheaper there than here.
Honestly, that brings us back to drunk rednecks, or a small group of domestic terrorists. They *could* cause a lot of isolated damage. They could break an awful lot of stuff in a relatively confined area. Even if they took control over an area, which is amazingly doubtful, they wouldn't hold it for long. It would be a very short revolution.
Something to remember about any group, either a group of domestic terrorists, or a country trying to invade. The United States is a lot stronger than it's military. There are approx 1.5M active military personnel. There are approx 22M military veterans. There are approx 300M firearms in civilian hands. That makes for an awful lot of armed civilians with training, and untrained armed civilians to go with them. It's not good odds for an aggressor, no matter how you look at it.
I'd still be willing to wager that it will eventually be tied to drunk rednecks. :)
Even if they put it underground, that only means illicit activity goes from being seen by people on the ground, to not being seen.
Where did you get the 200K miles number from? I'm just curious. I hadn't seen a number for it before. Well, more like I never bothered to look for the number. :)
I have to question who did this. That's going to make a big difference. If it's a nation planning an invasion, that's a lot different than a group of thousands of well armed and organized civilians (with or without military training). If it's a small group of say 5 to 10 people wanting to cause trouble, they can still inflict serious damage to an isolated area, if they have good planning and equipment. 100 shots at a transformer isn't much, but it's less obvious than say blowing a bridge.
From the military handbooks (paraphrased, of course), this is generally the course of action to do an invasion or take control over an area. It's no secret, it's the way has been conducted for centuries, with additions for modern civilization.
Disable critical infrastructure.
Power (electricity and fuels such as natural gas and oil to facilities and gas pipelines.
Communications (telephone, data/internet, television, radio)
Water (water pumping stations)
Transportation (bridges, railways)
Disable active response
SAM
Armed ground patrols
Ready and airborne forces
Disable secondary response, through neutralization or diversion
Ground military not actively on patrol
Police (local/state/federal, as applicable)
Fire response
Medical (ambulance, first responders, etc)
Disable other long-term necessary services.
Seaports
Airports
Trucking routes
Food supplies
So this one was a dressed rehearsal on power *and* communications. I'm hoping it was drunk rednecks, and not an advance team from the PRC, or a less than friendly nation, testing response time and reactions.
But please, don't take Wellinghoff's advice of concealment over cover. That's easily mitigated with Google Maps satellite view or just a guy on a ladder with a laser pointer to show the target on the concealment. Come on, bricks aren't that expensive, and do a pretty good job stopping or deflecting common ammunition. They can do it right with steel reinforced concrete 12" thick with supplies from Home Depot. But making a bunker around the transformers won't protect the high voltage transmission towers.
From TFA, Wellinghoff's quote:
It all depends on the airline, and as you said, your class. Employers have always booked me on the airline and flights of their choice, usually the cheapest for that particular trip.
I don't happen to have any American Express cards. According to their site, you have to fly 25,000 Delta Medallion Qualification Miles (MQM) or 30 qualifying segments per calendar year, to reach the minimum status for one free bag in economy class.
So if I were flying JFK to LAX (2475 MQM), I'd have to make the trip 11 times to qualify. That's not so bad. If I was making the trip monthly, on the second leg in the 6th month, I'd get to check one bag for free. Wow, talk about generosity. Unfortunately, that doesn't work if my employer books me on another airline for some of those trips, either because it's cheaper, or because the Delta flight is full (or both).
Groupon logic is horribly flawed. They actively encourage vendors to sell under cost, with the hope that customers will return. There's always a chance they will, especially if you treat them well. There are numerous stories online about how the vendors are totally screwed.
http://posiescafe.com/wp/groupon-in-retrospect/
In this blog post, Groupon takes 100% of the sale, promising that customers will always buy more than the ad (and they didn't), and wouldn't limit sales, so they were giving away everything for every Groupon customer for months.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/22/groupon-cupcake-deal-need-a-cake-bakery-rachel-brown_n_1108676.html
In this story, the story is similar, where far too many customers were sent in, and the vendor was pressured to sell at materials cost, which almost killed them.
Now, in The Brick case (TFA for those not paying attention), the company made the mistake. They were able to limit their losses by resolving the discount problem.
There were several other comments here. One says "what if they bought 100 mattresses?". Well, there's no indication of that in the story. Others are first-hand accounts of the way the company operates, which has included blatant false advertising and other deceptions. That would indicates the real truth behind TFA was intentional. If I, an average consumer, see that I get an outrageous discount, I'll probably go add more items so I can get the better deal. Great. But their plan is to now bill me for the difference.
Some people have said the problem was caught before anything shipped. Great. So cancel the order, and work with the customer. I have seen that happen before. It's not unreasonable. "Sorry, due to a technical error, your order has been cancelled. Please place your order again."
The Brick went totally the other way with it. "Hey, we screwed up and applied the wrong discount, pay this new amount. We don't care about the receipt being the legally binding contract. You owe us." I have seen that before too, usually with con artists who get to exert some sort of leverage. I've mostly heard this with moving companies. "It will be $5,000 to ship your belongings from Point A to Point B." When the day comes for delivery, since they have all of your possessions in their storage yard they demand more for whatever fees they decide to apply.
You get it at car dealerships too. "$22,500 out the door" and hours of dealing with them over paperwork becomes "$22,500 plus tax, tag, dealer prep, showroom fees, and whatever else is now $33,999."
I've heard many stories about car dealerships taking your trade-in car, which they offer to "wash, detail, and inspect", and when it comes time to close the deal and you're presented with a new price *and* an insulting trade-in value, your car is no longer on the lot. It's been "sold", which usually means moved to another lot. So before you've signed the paperwork, you're stuck between walking home or accepting their offer. I've known people who had to go as far as to call law enforcement to report their car stolen, just to get their old car back.
Personally, I've never had to go that far with a car dealer. I trust them less than a thug who says he wants to steal my wallet. At least the thug is up front about what they're going to do. I demand to know what they will give me for my trade-in before I do anything else. Once I was offered $100 trade-in on a $10,000 car. Ok, so you're a crook. I'll go buy elsewhere.
Of course, all of those are dirty tactics, and the company will deny any knowledge of such activity ever happening, but they still do it. So TFA about The Brick isn't some sob story about a company being screwed by the customers. It's a sob story of a con gone bad.
I went looking for the US laws on it. The story has a statement about the Canadian laws at the end of the article which says they can't do it.
One of the stories I did run across, which I've already unfortunately closed. The story was about a guy who bought a car. He then wanted a different color so he went back and they traded him cars with a fresh contract. Shortly after, the dealer told him there was a $4,000 price difference. he said "that's not what my contract says." and ignored them. The dealership got law enforcement involved, who did arrest him, but let him go with no charges filed because ... well ... the guy was in the right.
You sell me a product. I pay for product. You can't later decide the product should have cost more. ...or as companies are more than happy to say, your receipt is a legally binding contract, and you are bound by the terms and conditions including the return policy and referenced documents. Dammit, just because I opened it up, and then checked to see what thermite would do to the components, they won't let me return it. Something about open packages or damage, or some such nonsense.
A bunch of them do. And I haven't been tracking them well enough to know which ones do what. The majority of my flying is for work, so I just get on the flight I'm told to. The bean counters get upset when I turn in huge expenses associated with the flight. :)
Nah, they charge everyone those fees. They may as well give away their tickets, considering the other fees included. I'm surprised they haven't added ticket counter fees, and terminal boarding fees. Those would be cash at the time of use, of course. Asking for directions to your next flight? $5. Asking if the flight is on time? $5. Asking to upgrade? $10 before they tell you if there are even upgrades available. $5 to ask if a flight is on time when waiting to pick someone up. $10 arrival waiting area fee. $5/bag luggage belt fee. Hell, I'd pay an extra $5 just to be sure my luggage got on the same plane as me.
Of course they have legal redress. Well, maybe not totally legal, but accepted in the current environment. You tell the customer to pay what you think they owe, even though they have the product. If they don't pay, you can file with the local courts, which cost money, or stick it on their credit report. It may be dirty, but not illegal. They'll get a world of bad press from it though.
They should have sucked up the GOOD press about it. "Wooo, we screwed up and gave stuff away for free! Enjoy! And here's our latest offer, 25% off new purchases! Coupon code: WESCREWEDUP"
Someone didn't pass the customer relations portion of their training.
That's part of business. If you screw up, you'd better honor them, and make sure you don't do it again.
I've seen places give away merchandise over accidents like that. ok, so you lost $10k in product, big deal. You also made some very happy customers, who will likely come back.
The opposite is true too.. If you try to come after the customers who bought in good faith, now they won't come back, and neither will their friends.. "friends" has expanded over the last decade or so, goign from "oh, what, a dozen people?" to thousands of Facebook friends who may in turn share your experience with millions. I don't know who "The Brick" is, but I won't even bother shop there now.
Don't worry about it, anyone can get mod points. There's no sense of humor test in there at all. Well, except on Slashdot's part where they're giving me 15 mod points at a time now. :)
Some people get really bent over their invisible friends, so even if they had a sense of humor, they lose it entirely. As long as they don't insult Gozer, I think we'll be ok.
I'm not so concerned about the gov't. I can be fairly sure they can (if they are so inclined) monitor my phone calls, emails, credit card use, and even know where and when I'm driving thanks to electronic tolls and license plate monitoring at major intersections.
I'm not so fond of someone standing at my door saying "Hi, we're from the church of buggary, and would like to introduce you to our lord and savior." while recording the whole exchange. Or the "friend" who you knew was a friend, and is sitting on the couch looking you straight in the face when you say "Oh I would trust that asshole any farther than I can shoot him from.", which then shows up on YouTube, and you're labeled as a wackjob with a gun looking for a target. People respond to the quote, not the backing, where he was caught stealing DVDs from my livingroom while I was taking a piss.
It's frequently decisions made by non-technical people, but I'm sure you're familiar with that.
When there's a healthy 5-figure pricetag on a server, and the salesman goes on about how excellent their support contract is, technical people cringe, and executives say "why do we need spares?"
So, it could be the most critical piece of equipment in your infrastructure, if you don't have the top brass signing off on buying a spare, you don't get one. Or what I've run into too many times is setups predating me, where exactly the scenario above played out, so there is exactly one server. Trying to sell the top brass on buying more falls on deaf ears, when they're trying to figure out who gets the new office furniture and which private jet to charter for the executive retreat.
It really doesn't matter how much noise IT makes, its the apparent needs that take priority over the theoretical oh-shit moment. Well, until the oh-shit moment happens, and I end up explaining how I've been insisting on improvements for X years. "Please reference my memos and meeting notes over the last two years warning of exactly this situation" doesn't go over as well as you'd think.
Hell, one place I worked at, we had to cannibalize old servers to assemble almost enough working servers to keep production going. The staff got a new office, all new workstations, new phones, and raises. I got $2,000 for infrastructure even though there was a detailed plan of what was required just to maintain operation safely. Needless to say, the $2k didn't even make a dent in it.
Where did you see me say I used Windows for servers? You're one of those trolls that makes the rest of us *nix people look bad.
My quote was...
I will make a correction. 64 cores, 1TB. And since Sun included HT as cores on the box in question, so am I.
SuperMicro X9QR7-TF+ (4x ES-4600, 1TB RAM)
SuperMicro H8QG7+-LN4F (4x Operon 6300, 1TB RAM)
There are others. They're not hard to find.
The rest of the discussion won't be quite as exotic hardware.
Ok, so desktops are worthless for anything that may rely on memory working. I'm glad no accountant ever does work on desktops. Or databases are ever run on desktops. Or developers never use desktops. In any of those circumstances, the memory randomly flipping bits would be horrible failures. Heck, with as much information that goes through your RAM, your machine must have crashed a dozen times while writing that response. I'm very proud of your dedication.
No, I haven't. Here's a couple real things that have happened.
I've stood in a C-level meeting, and apologized that a critical name brand server failed. Their on-site tech showed up in 2 hours, and told us that the part would take 2 days to get. "BUT THE CONTRACT SAYS 4 HOUR RESPONSE!" Ya.. 4 hours for them to come back with something. Not 4 hours to resolve the problem completely. 4 hours frequently turns into days, or worse on holidays.
I've also stood in a C-level meeting, showed the cost effectiveness of *NOT* Sub/IBM/Dell. In some instances where the budget was small, the recommendation was Asus motherboards and Crucial memory and IDE/SATA drives in rackmount 1u's . In higher budget instances, Supermicro Crucial memory and IDE/SATA drives.
The "face the music" meeting is usually "We had a failure that no one noticed. We failed over exactly as planned. The repairs fall within budget. We'll be under budget on repairs again this year."
I also get the luxury of saying "I want to try [some other hardware]" We use it, we don't use it, it doesn't matter because I'm still way under what your favorite vendor would have cost.
Sometimes I was told to send the vendor my buildout list and said "match this, and remember I have the lower price", they couldn't even come close.
With the significant savings, I not only got the servers, but I was given extra servers and a functional budget for spare parts, which *still* came in under the name brand vendor prices. We fail over gracefully from the production machine to the hot spare, and still have more hot spares waiting.
So you can buy one. I can buy three, and (if the employer is good) shared the savings with staff at the end of the year in bonuses.
Now did I say I placed orders from no-name Chinese brands? No. You also haven't checked server memory. Better machines use Crucial. I've seen all kinds of crap shipped with servers directly from the manufacturer. The price for Crucial memory ordered from Crucial.com is less than through the vendor. Hell, unless there's a great sale at BestBuy/TigerDirect/etc, their prices are better.
But hey, you're clearly a fanboy. You're that ass that will scream "I can't work on X, I need Y!" X and Y can be almost anything. I've seen asses like you who won't touch IBM because they love Dell. Interchange IBM, Dell, Sun, SGI, etc, in either X or Y, because no matter how fanboy you are for yours, there's someone else out there with exactly the opposite opinion.
So, what is your beloved that I just insulted so?
You obviously have never torn down a server. I've built thousands. Everything from empty 1u cases filled with gaming parts, to 1u to 8u HP, Dell, IBM, Sun and SGI servers.
I've done price and performance comparisons between both. You could say that you can't get as many CPUs or as much memory, but you can. The last place I was at paid over $300K for a Sun machine with 128 cores and 1TB RAM. I priced the same machine, with 128 cores and 1TB RAM for something like $20K, but with faster components made for gaming use. Even in their application, they didn't *need* 128 cores, nor 1TB RAM. 768G of RAM was allocated for a ram drive and other storage that wasn't available to the rest of the system.
I don't build 1u cases with gaming parts any more, but only because of cooling concerns.
Just about every "professional" built server has a video card of some sort. Most are cheap chipsets, as they know they'll run Unix in text mode or Windows in a low resolution video mode.
The different "class" of motherboard is simply a different form factor so you can't swap for another one. i.e., vendor lock-in.
RAM is different. It's claimed they use ECC for the safety of your data. In practice it's so you can't go to the local computer store to buy more. Corps tend to buy from the manufacturer because "that's where we got the server, and it was expensive."
Box? Well, rackmount for racks, desktop for not-racks. I've seen plenty of people ungracefully stack rackmount boxes on the floor of a corner office, and complain when they need to pull out the bottom one. That's not so different than racks. I've seen people rack mount where they put in a shelf, and then put 10 servers on top of it without ever putting in the rail kits. Same nightmare, different environment.
With only a very few exceptions, they're the same chipsets, using the same technologies. Except "servers" are usually a year or 10 behind the gaming systems. You get the cool new features on gaming machines, which eventually get adopted to servers.
Hell, even the hard drives are gaming, or are making their way there. SCSI was the only way to go, even though SATA overtook the performance long ago. Then they started putting 2.5" SAS drives in, which are laptop SATA drives with a bigger pricetag. Some use 3.5" SATA drives that perform well. Plenty still include SCSI drives with slower performance and more heat. Why? Because IT managers only remember that they learned "SCSI is for servers. IDE is for desktops. SATA is just the new IDE"
Whats the difference between a WD Green, Blue, Red, or Black drive? Green are set to spin down to save power. That is adjustable. Red is sold for SAN/NAS use. Black is sold for servers. Red and Black may have better warranties. They *all* use the same platters, head, actuators, motor, and even control board with different settings.
You can scream "BUT THE CACHE!" Ok. But remember, the drive you buy today has more cache than the drive you bought 5 years ago. It's a *lot* cheaper to buy a drive with a bigger cache now, and you can keep upgrading. Upgrading your RAID? Swap out one drive at a time until they all have the bigger cache and faster read times. Go with a "professional" server, you'll have to buy the new platform because the new drives aren't in the supported list for the server you bought last year.
Well, gaming machines do make great servers. What is a gaming machine? Fast CPU, lots of memory, fast storage. The only difference is the video card. For home built servers in PC cases, I just don't bother with the pesky high end video cards. They run so much cooler and quieter. I'd hate to have a rack of servers at the house. I rather not have a jet engine running in the next room. :)
Well, it does save a lot of money. No more beta testers, let the paying customers do it for you. :) Plenty of them will do free advertising for you, even if you charge them a premium to be "early adopters". Hell, Google Glass is $1,500 for a $200 toy.
If it makes you feel better, I lurked for a long time, otherwise I'd probably have a 4 digit UID. :)
[slides an eDrink to silas] Happy holidays.
700k series UID. Damned kids, get off my eLawn.
Don't worry about it, QA will catch it before it goes to production. That's the new world of development. Write your code as horribly as you want, someone will fix it later.
I agree. Luckily, I don't know anyone who has them, or at least they aren't wearing them in public.
I don't like being photographed or recorded. If I see a camera, I avoid being in front of it. People argue "But every phone is a video camera!" Ya, but unless someone is pointing it at me, it's not a big deal. If you're going to stand in front of me, pointing a camera at me, regardless if it's recording or not, we're going to have some words..
I'm much nicer than just punching random strangers in the face. It also keeps me out of jail.
People are going to find that the Google Glass is unwelcome in many places. Pretty much the same places where you aren't welcome to hold a video camera in someone's face. Like, just about everywhere.