I think you already saw one of the images of the offers in question above. How much more clear do they have to make it than the text above the button that says, "You authorize us to transfer your credit card information" or the text on the button saying, "Yes, sign me up." Or the image on the side saying, "Free for 30 days $12 a month thereafter."
Comparing that to having the Slashdot submit button charge your CC number is ludicrous.
I have never seen a service offered by any of the three companies in question that auto-signed you up where you had to call them within 24 hours. If you click the continue button and enter your email address (or other verification information) on the page rather than clicking no thanks then you are agreeing to all the little details they put up there.
I have heard of such things through Facebook where you sign up to get points in a game such as Farmville or Mafia Wars and you do it by putting in your cell phone number and they sign you up for something that way.
Again though, read the fine print before entering any of your information on a page. If you are getting something out of going to the page (even "FREE" points), then inevitably you are entering into a transaction. The only reason people ask you to enter personal information such as email or anything else is either to verify that you have read something or to collect that information to use in email communications/marketing or a transaction.
Corporations should only exist for the betterment of society? Come on. You are living in some fantasy land if you think that is how things will ever work.
The other assumption you're making here is that there is nothing to be gained from these services that people sign up for, when in reality there is plenty to gain. A friend of mine signs up for these things regularly and takes advantage of the free month and then cancels before getting charged. If there was nothing that these things offered then they would have been shut down completely a long time ago. Scams come and go. You see those sorts of businesses pop up, make a few million off the backs of unsuspecting consumers and then disappear. Affinion,Webloyaly,Vertrue, these guys have been in business doing this same thing for ten years now.
I like how we've gone from online marketing to Enron and Worldcom and global financial collapse. Talk about completely off topic. Spare me the claptrap about policing markets. Government is only interested in policing those businesses that don't supply them with enough lobbyist cash.
Take a look. Marketing, it's what drives e-commerce. Everything is spelled out on the page. What's the trickery here? When you sign up for any recurring service they try to sell you on something before telling you about what you have to pay for it, but in the end they do tell you. Hell, there is a big burst there on the side that states 30 Days Free then $12 thereafter.
Legitimate merchants are the ones working with Affinion, Webloyalty and Vertrue. Look at the list of companies that are on their rolls. Buy.com, Fandango, Orbitz, Classmates, pretty much every flower sales company out there.
These programs have been so successful that some of those "legitimate" companies have implemented their own rewards programs and cut out the middleman.
I'm replying to the guy who said that he would prefer to re-enter his credit card information for every transaction he makes on the Internet.
The obvious benefit to marketers and retailers of you not having to re-enter your credit card information is that you think less about making the purchase. As you pointed out, people with less self control will tend to purchase using One-Click without thinking about the purchase as much.
The Affinion,Webloyalty,Vertrue offers all take advantage of this tendency to make it easy for you to purchase. The assumption here is that there is some sort of scam, when in reality all the information is there on the page, but they just make it easy to sign up by transferring most of the information from the partner. The "scam" is them taking advantage of this lack of self control. So, now we are in effect creating legislation to regulate personal responsibility.
You have to scroll down the page to get to where you enter your information, passing by every piece of information that informs you about what you are getting into. I've never been fooled for one minute by one of these offers, because it is all there in black and white.
I'm of the opinion that the less government intervention in e-commerce the better.
I also find it ironic that the guy leading the charge on this is one of the richest Senators out there and his money comes as a result of one of the biggest monopolies in history that used some of the shadiest business practices ever created.
We need to start allocating more towards our tech research so we can get to that Fusion Power upgrade before too many more turns elapse and the Indians declare war!
So, you're saying that Amazon One-Click scam should be abolished because it's obviously causing consumers to buy without thinking about the consequences?
The difference between signing a receipt and these offers is that you aren't being presented a page with just a box to enter your email address and a button to click.
It's a page that is obviously trying to sell you something, with the details spelled out.
How much protection does the average consumer need from marketing at this point? You're sliding down a slippery slope when you say that reading the fine print (which in the case of these offers isn't exactly that fine, there are various call outs all over these pages indicating that you are signing up for a service, that you get a month free and then pay money thereafter) is just too onerous for the average consumer and that the government must intervene to protect them. When offering something up like this is the company expected to just put up a big banner at the top saying, "HEY, WE ARE CHARGING YOU FOR SOMETHING IF YOU CLICK YES!" before even trying to sell the person on the product?
People like to say that they didn't know what they were getting into when they clicked through on these things. Well, how did you not know when it is spelled out in great detail on the page?
I'm actually immune to email spam and chain letters. I didn't have enough exposure to Facebook to build up an immunity. I tried to fight it off and waited several weeks, but after about five people I knew sent me one of these I found myself writing one and sending it off to other people to spread the infection further.
Now I've seen a few other note memes like this and I don't feel compelled to follow. I think my immunity has kicked in.
Damn, the cleaning crew is aptly named as they cleaned us out of about 14k in equipment. Maintenance seems to be maintaining some of our equipment somewhere else too. The problem is, the whole lot of them are in on it, so if you talk to the supervisor, he does nothing because he is probably getting a nice cut.
The key is really not to leave equipment like that anywhere where anyone can just walk in and take it. Take your laptops and other portables home, at the very least lock them in a cabinet where one can't see them at first glance.
Most of the time the people that steal hardware are looking just to get the hardware and could care less about the data.
If you notice while they are able to run the processor using the 266mhz RAM speed, the final platform also provides for 266mhz bus speeds for the CPU (133x2 for EV6 bus = 266). They did not have a processor that would run at that bus speed, so this is not a test of the platform itself, it's more of a test of the difference between the Athlon running with PC133 and the Athlon running with DDR RAM.
This is really a very useless and misleading test. They should really have waited until they could utilize all the functionality of the new platform rather than showing us benchmarks using only half the added functionality.
Come on, Intel is full of crap. This is just a marketing ploy to get our attention away from the superior chip Athlon.
When have we seen news about this sort of thing before? Oo, we just sampled the first 486, oo, we have beta silicon on Pentium II it runs some apps, but others it won't!
Who cares!! When you can run a Quake3 timedemo on that sucker then call me up!
Everyone go make some noise at the motherboard manufacturers to get those Athlon boards out so we can see some real performance NOW!! The chips are ready, if AMD had the marketing clout that Intel does then the boards would be too and I would have a brand spanking new Athlon running on my machine at home now.
The thing that I can't believe is that people when they are at work can't get by without checking porn!
I mean, jerk off or something in the morning and then at night. Cruise the porn from your home machine! Get some self-control! If you are that bored at work that you need to surf porn, maybe you should ask for more work? Or maybe find another job?
I'm totally serious with this one! I can't believe that people can't control themselves enough to not surf porn from work. Or that they feel the need to use company e-mail to send porn to all their buds!
Let's get real here. If you want to send porn e-mail from work, use a web based e-mail system or telnet to your home machine or something! If you want to browse porn and jerk off at your desk, well prepare to be fired, stupid!
I can understand if you are one of those programmers that works 15 hours and doesn't get home except to sleep. Hell, porn should be distributed by the company for those sorry SOB's, but for you 8-10 hour schmoes (including me) what is your excuse?!
For the guy that is the sysadmin, I say, if you have the policy in place, no porn at work. Then don't feel bad that these people are stupid enough to disobey the rules. It is your job to make sure that the system runs smoothly and according to the companies guidelines. It isn't like you are blindsiding any of these morons. Everyone knows you aren't supposed to be hitting porn at work.
As for all you free speech people, I think when you find the guy in the cube next to you jerking off to big busty babes on the monitor, you might figure out where the line is at that should not be crossed.
Slashdot Mirror
Give me a break.
Which commercial on television blasts you with "THIS COSTS $XX!!!!" before even showing you the product?
I think you already saw one of the images of the offers in question above. How much more clear do they have to make it than the text above the button that says, "You authorize us to transfer your credit card information" or the text on the button saying, "Yes, sign me up." Or the image on the side saying, "Free for 30 days $12 a month thereafter."
Comparing that to having the Slashdot submit button charge your CC number is ludicrous.
I have never seen a service offered by any of the three companies in question that auto-signed you up where you had to call them within 24 hours. If you click the continue button and enter your email address (or other verification information) on the page rather than clicking no thanks then you are agreeing to all the little details they put up there.
I have heard of such things through Facebook where you sign up to get points in a game such as Farmville or Mafia Wars and you do it by putting in your cell phone number and they sign you up for something that way.
Again though, read the fine print before entering any of your information on a page. If you are getting something out of going to the page (even "FREE" points), then inevitably you are entering into a transaction. The only reason people ask you to enter personal information such as email or anything else is either to verify that you have read something or to collect that information to use in email communications/marketing or a transaction.
Corporations should only exist for the betterment of society? Come on. You are living in some fantasy land if you think that is how things will ever work.
The other assumption you're making here is that there is nothing to be gained from these services that people sign up for, when in reality there is plenty to gain. A friend of mine signs up for these things regularly and takes advantage of the free month and then cancels before getting charged. If there was nothing that these things offered then they would have been shut down completely a long time ago. Scams come and go. You see those sorts of businesses pop up, make a few million off the backs of unsuspecting consumers and then disappear. Affinion,Webloyaly,Vertrue, these guys have been in business doing this same thing for ten years now.
I like how we've gone from online marketing to Enron and Worldcom and global financial collapse. Talk about completely off topic. Spare me the claptrap about policing markets. Government is only interested in policing those businesses that don't supply them with enough lobbyist cash.
http://www.xconomy.com/wordpress/wp-content/images/2009/08/webloyalty_offer_changes.jpg
Take a look. Marketing, it's what drives e-commerce. Everything is spelled out on the page. What's the trickery here? When you sign up for any recurring service they try to sell you on something before telling you about what you have to pay for it, but in the end they do tell you. Hell, there is a big burst there on the side that states 30 Days Free then $12 thereafter.
Legitimate merchants are the ones working with Affinion, Webloyalty and Vertrue. Look at the list of companies that are on their rolls. Buy.com, Fandango, Orbitz, Classmates, pretty much every flower sales company out there.
These programs have been so successful that some of those "legitimate" companies have implemented their own rewards programs and cut out the middleman.
I'm replying to the guy who said that he would prefer to re-enter his credit card information for every transaction he makes on the Internet.
The obvious benefit to marketers and retailers of you not having to re-enter your credit card information is that you think less about making the purchase. As you pointed out, people with less self control will tend to purchase using One-Click without thinking about the purchase as much.
The Affinion,Webloyalty,Vertrue offers all take advantage of this tendency to make it easy for you to purchase. The assumption here is that there is some sort of scam, when in reality all the information is there on the page, but they just make it easy to sign up by transferring most of the information from the partner. The "scam" is them taking advantage of this lack of self control. So, now we are in effect creating legislation to regulate personal responsibility.
There's a difference between being honest and being stupid about how you market a product.
Outside the viewable area?
http://www.xconomy.com/wordpress/wp-content/images/2009/08/webloyalty_offer_changes.jpg
You have to scroll down the page to get to where you enter your information, passing by every piece of information that informs you about what you are getting into. I've never been fooled for one minute by one of these offers, because it is all there in black and white.
I'm of the opinion that the less government intervention in e-commerce the better.
I also find it ironic that the guy leading the charge on this is one of the richest Senators out there and his money comes as a result of one of the biggest monopolies in history that used some of the shadiest business practices ever created.
We need to start allocating more towards our tech research so we can get to that Fusion Power upgrade before too many more turns elapse and the Indians declare war!
So, you're saying that Amazon One-Click scam should be abolished because it's obviously causing consumers to buy without thinking about the consequences?
Zombies don't require electricity, so that zombie apocalypse is the answer to all our problems!
The difference between signing a receipt and these offers is that you aren't being presented a page with just a box to enter your email address and a button to click.
It's a page that is obviously trying to sell you something, with the details spelled out.
Is this really that unclear?
http://www.xconomy.com/wordpress/wp-content/images/2009/08/webloyalty_offer_changes.jpg
How much protection does the average consumer need from marketing at this point? You're sliding down a slippery slope when you say that reading the fine print (which in the case of these offers isn't exactly that fine, there are various call outs all over these pages indicating that you are signing up for a service, that you get a month free and then pay money thereafter) is just too onerous for the average consumer and that the government must intervene to protect them. When offering something up like this is the company expected to just put up a big banner at the top saying, "HEY, WE ARE CHARGING YOU FOR SOMETHING IF YOU CLICK YES!" before even trying to sell the person on the product?
People like to say that they didn't know what they were getting into when they clicked through on these things. Well, how did you not know when it is spelled out in great detail on the page?
And they want to see it. I suspect the drop off this coming weekend will not be nearly as big as for Wolverine.
Fails saving throw against stupidity. Lawyer casts Bankruptcy spell.
I'm actually immune to email spam and chain letters. I didn't have enough exposure to Facebook to build up an immunity. I tried to fight it off and waited several weeks, but after about five people I knew sent me one of these I found myself writing one and sending it off to other people to spread the infection further.
Now I've seen a few other note memes like this and I don't feel compelled to follow. I think my immunity has kicked in.
Can we move to the point where we recognize that this guy is so irrelevant that he doesn't even deserve to have a story greenlit here?
I'm gonna be CEO with my 4 digit number!
I have no idea where you are getting that from.
-Harvey
Damn, the cleaning crew is aptly named as they cleaned us out of about 14k in equipment. Maintenance seems to be maintaining some of our equipment somewhere else too. The problem is, the whole lot of them are in on it, so if you talk to the supervisor, he does nothing because he is probably getting a nice cut.
The key is really not to leave equipment like that anywhere where anyone can just walk in and take it. Take your laptops and other portables home, at the very least lock them in a cabinet where one can't see them at first glance.
Most of the time the people that steal hardware are looking just to get the hardware and could care less about the data.
If you notice while they are able to run the processor using the 266mhz RAM speed, the final platform also provides for 266mhz bus speeds for the CPU (133x2 for EV6 bus = 266). They did not have a processor that would run at that bus speed, so this is not a test of the platform itself, it's more of a test of the difference between the Athlon running with PC133 and the Athlon running with DDR RAM.
This is really a very useless and misleading test. They should really have waited until they could utilize all the functionality of the new platform rather than showing us benchmarks using only half the added functionality.
Come on, Intel is full of crap. This is just a marketing ploy to get our attention away from the superior chip Athlon.
When have we seen news about this sort of thing before? Oo, we just sampled the first 486, oo, we have beta silicon on Pentium II it runs some apps, but others it won't!
Who cares!! When you can run a Quake3 timedemo on that sucker then call me up!
Everyone go make some noise at the motherboard manufacturers to get those Athlon boards out so we can see some real performance NOW!! The chips are ready, if AMD had the marketing clout that Intel does then the boards would be too and I would have a brand spanking new Athlon running on my machine at home now.
The thing that I can't believe is that people when they are at work can't get by without checking porn!
I mean, jerk off or something in the morning and then at night. Cruise the porn from your home machine! Get some self-control! If you are that bored at work that you need to surf porn, maybe you should ask for more work? Or maybe find another job?
I'm totally serious with this one! I can't believe that people can't control themselves enough to not surf porn from work. Or that they feel the need to use company e-mail to send porn to all their buds!
Let's get real here. If you want to send porn e-mail from work, use a web based e-mail system or telnet to your home machine or something! If you want to browse porn and jerk off at your desk, well prepare to be fired, stupid!
I can understand if you are one of those programmers that works 15 hours and doesn't get home except to sleep. Hell, porn should be distributed by the company for those sorry SOB's, but for you 8-10 hour schmoes (including me) what is your excuse?!
For the guy that is the sysadmin, I say, if you have the policy in place, no porn at work. Then don't feel bad that these people are stupid enough to disobey the rules. It is your job to make sure that the system runs smoothly and according to the companies guidelines. It isn't like you are blindsiding any of these morons. Everyone knows you aren't supposed to be hitting porn at work.
As for all you free speech people, I think when you find the guy in the cube next to you jerking off to big busty babes on the monitor, you might figure out where the line is at that should not be crossed.
I can't get that link to post right.
Look for Healing Back Pain by John Sarno on Amazon.
Or just get rid of the space before the last series of numbers in that link above.
This $6300 chair is a bunch of crap. You can find a comfortable chair and workstation for much less than this.
If you have problems with your back hurting read this book. It cured me of back pain as well as several other family members and friends.
Healing Back Pain