Sure sounds hackable. Just a few bytes of information relayed through Twitter could make the instigator a lot of money from people who willingly sign their resources over to them.
I can tell you right now that the bird droppings can have far more value than gold.
Situation: The "system" has collapsed. Its hard to get anything - its simply not there. You have some land, and you can grow stuff there... but the soil is poor...
If I were on the Titanic when it was going down, you can bet your bottom dollar that the old styrofoam cooler box with the broken lid is more valuable to me than a satchel full of gold coin.
The only reason gold was considered of value is because it represented the work it took to mine it; it could not be simply signed into existence like today's dollar.
I took a big hit on this personally about six years ago, as everything I knew indicated petroleum and rights to it represented a far more stable store of wealth than, say, an American Dollar, which can be printed up in unlimited quantities. I considered the petroleum valuable because of the work it could do, not for what it looked like or what other people valued it as... remember milk pogs?
Yet I watched people sell off their petroleum stocks en masse in a "flight to safety", US Treasuries. Selling off their ownership of petrochemical industry for pieces of paper with a dead president on it. I bought as much oil stuff as I could, and by golly I am hanging onto it.
We may be basking in fracking now, but I know from personal experience how fast a fart flies. I am an old man, and old men have quite a repertoire of experiences with how fast gas passes.
It amazes me that diamonds have any worth at all to speak of. They can be made in a lab. They make fine abrasives, and have some interesting thermal and optical properties, but as a store of wealth? Again, compare to milk pogs. If we want some, just make some. It will require energy though, and that's why I thought energy investments would be the most critical thing in our world today. Yes, I read the comments on the Slashdot story, and still am of extremely mixed emotions on it. A helluva lot of cognitive dissonance going on in me. Enough to drive me crazy.
I got really fed up with paying high prices for soda pop.
The 2 and 3 liter plastic bottles soda pop comes in make handy carbonation vessels. I drilled a hole in the cap and inserted one of those bolt-in-place stainless steel tire stems sold at Pep Boys. I also got a 20 pound CO2 tank at a garage sale, and a decent 100 PSI adjustable regulator from a surplus house.
I fill my bottle to the brim with water. Refrigerate it. Warm water will not carbonate... cold water will. Then I connect my special cap and hook it to 70PSI CO2 ( Do not connect to tank directly, as tank pressures run from 500 psi on a cold day to over 1000 psi on a hot day; the CO2 inside the tank is a liquid ).
I shake for a few seconds and watch the gas stream into the water. About 10-15 seconds or so. After that things taper off. I shut off the gas and disconnect the hose. I take my container full of freshly carbonated water into the house to mix with any variety of flavor powders or fruit juice concentrates.
Makes great fizzy soda pop. It cost me $14 to get the 20 pounds of CO2. I have been using the same tank for about 3 years now. My calculations show I have roughly enough CO2 to carbonate a swimming pool full of water. Its gonna take me quite some time to drink that much.
The one caveat is you do not want any substantial volume of gas in your carbonation vessel, as the compressed gas will release substantial mechanical energy in the event of a rupture of the vessel. The water does not compress, so the idea is to minimize the amount of explosive decompression you get in the event the bottle ruptures - albeit I have not ever had that happen.
I have noticed a lot of companies are using verbal trickery in their business dealings to pull a fast one on their customer.
Remember in the old algebra classes we took, we were given math equations to reduce to the simplest form?
These days, the first thing I do when evaluating a business "deal" is see if I can reduce it to the form:
"Up to ( what the business will provide ) for only ( price* )" followed by "* other charges may apply"
This verbiage makes sure there is a legal obligation in place forcing the customer to pay whatever the business asks, but lets them off the hook for any commitment to the customer. That part is left as "up to".
This seems to be the most common verbiage used today by sleazeball businesses trying to pull a fast one. Even many well-known businesses will pull this one on their customers. Surprising to me, most people still haven't caught on and call them on it.
One has to be very careful these days of dealing with a business. While most are on the level, there are a few which leave a trails of distrust with their shady legal maneuverings. The man with a pen can cause you far more grief than the man with the knife or gun. Most of the men using knife or gun won't use it - but the man who gets you to sign something owns you.
I think it has everything to do with "plausible deniability"; that is Microsoft has a design legacy of products needing a heck of a lot of security related patches.
Any government worker who knowingly specified a product with known security issues might be held personally accountable for his actions
This whole rating is like the Wall Street ratings - I see it as a useless metric, as it is more a mechanism to let someone who specified its use off the hook for the ramifications of his decision. These ratings, like laws approved by lobbied Congressmen, are a purchasable commodity - a tool to be used to provide plausible deniability for shifting responsibility to a hard-to-pin-down entity.
You have to scroll down to the very bottom to see the Good Ole USA... The scariest thing to me of all is not that are we at the bottom... its just how much in the hole we are... and this "benefit" appears to have been granted us because the other countries still accept the US Dollar as a world reserve currency.
We need to start asking our congressmen, especially in public at these "town meetings" what they intend to do about all this litigation the DMCA is stirring up.
Prohibition was unpopular. It got repealed. DMCA is no different. It can be repealed as well.
I guess we need to let the record companies sue enough people to make themselves so unpopular that any politician failing to remove DMCA will not see another term in office.
Our town library has a big bookshelf in the foyer. Ten cents each. I think every library patron knows exactly what is going on. We all bring our unwanted books and put them in this bookshelf. I got a really nice original Borland C++ for DOS manual set and a few other gems through this route, albeit I was probably the only one in town who wanted it. I get a lot of books from it. I also leave them there when its time for me to clean house.
The library goes through the shelf occasionally and culls the junk out when it becomes too messy.
Thanks... Now that you mention it, I have seen a lot of stuff on Amazon marketed by Goodwill. They have the time and resources to warehouse stuff like this and wait it out until the guy who needs it finds it, and what money is made sure goes to a good cause. I would have modded you up if I had modpoints, but being I do not, I'll have to settle for a thankful reply to your post.
What is one man's junk is sometimes another man's treasure, but you are probably not interested in holding onto what may or may not be junk forever. These guys seem to be in the business of warehousing old stuff and may gladly pay the shipping before you dumpster it all.
You will be doing somebody a great service by slipping your discards to someone who has the resources to remarket these old treasures. Its not so much emsps, but the bloke who is dying for some documentation for some old dinosaur that wandered into his life.
Jones found that of the four safety mechanisms in the Faro bomb, designed to prevent unintended detonation, three failed to operate properly. When the bomb hit the ground, a firing signal was sent to the nuclear core of the device, and it was only that final, highly vulnerable switch that averted calamity.
I guess those who live by the sword, will die by the sword.
I should consider myself quite lucky that my screw-ups are quite limited in scope.
There are a lot of references in the Bible as to each of us being members of "the Body of Christ". I often ponder if God is the collective of intelligence, human, animal, everything. There are many references to "stewardship" of God's creation, with wanton destruction of it being a sin against God.
I wonder if this "free will" is also a manifestation that we all are unwittingly part of the "Borg Collective". We experiment, hold fast what worked, remind ourselves not to do that again when things go sour.
I will call this unknown "God" because this seems to be the catch-all for observed but unexplained phenomena. I see all these things which are so wondrous to me, and have no explanation whatsoever of how they came to be, nor has anyone been able to convince me their reasoning of how it came to be is correct.
Turns out everything which is written as a "sin" against God is also a sin against my fellow man or my environment. I feel I have a conscience, cause something inside sure bugs me when I do something I know I ought not do. It is my belief that this thing I know as "conscience" is also known as "the Holy Spirit" by others who have been instructed thus.
The Bible has some commandments ( 10 of 'em which later got reduced to two in the New Testament: Love God and Love your Neighbor ). There are also a lot of ordinances, and a lot of history. I see the Bible as an ancient compendium of history, genealogy, leadership training, and ethics for dealing with others. A decent thing to consider as we live in these flesh bodies.
However, I find many of those who preach the Bible to be about as ethical or caring as a politician or used-car salesman. There is too much of a strong financial motivation, rather than spiritual motivation, that drives way too many hucksters into the spiritual professions, whether it be plate passing preachers or palm-readers practicing their art for a fee. That crap is all about gullibility and who can talk a dollar out of someone else instead of providing some useful effort.
My observation, and amazement at the complexity of all I see, and the high order ( entropy ) thereof convinces me there is a God. Such complexity and beauty. I can not explain it. Religions are the greatest faction in my life presenting evidence that God is a figment of some management leadership technique designed to extort wealth from gullible people.
just because I know exactly how a chair was built, it doesn't mean that I stop believing that a carpenter built it.
The same paradigm was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this topic.
From since my childhood, I was raised religious ( Baptist, Pentecostal ), and I was of the observation that the whole purpose of the Church was to teach obedience to authority. We were supposed to be sheep and "turn the other cheek". As far as I was concerned, Christianity was something like a mental computer virus which was crafted to enrich the coffers of the church and religious leaders at the expense of anyone who they could convince to take their teaching seriously. The centerpiece of the whole thing seemed to be the great ceremony of the passing of the plate, as well as getting out there and converting others to the faith. It seemed to me that being a Christian meant: 1) I would not steal anyone else's stuff, 2) I would not fight back if someone else took my stuff, and 3) I would pay a 10% tithe on everything I make to the people who taught me to do this.
What got me was this faith thing.
From personal experience, "faith" seemed to have little correlation to reality. As far as I was concerned, "faith" was what I had if I went-a-gambling; and I was told gambling was sinful. I have had faith in a lot of things. Things that should have worked, and didn't because of some unforeseen element - which became apparent to me after the fact the thing did not work as intended. Due diligence seemed to have far more effect on a positive outcome than hope.
From what I can tell of religions, it appears the ones I have been influenced by seemed that God was some sort of another word for Statistics. Maybe I would get what I prayed for, maybe I would not. I still lack conclusive evidence that God is some sort of businessman who has accounts payable and a big bag of blessings and curses which he levies on those who pay up in Church and those that drank beer on Sunday. Maybe God is Statistics. More like "What goes around comes around."
From the Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the word was God." ( John 1:1 ). The Word in my understanding is the basic physical laws that runs this universe. The same stuff scientists study. It was science who convinced me that there is some sort of intelligence out there which resulted in the formation of me and everything I observe. The religious people call this God, Spirit, and all sorts of other names, but it seems to be a universal human observation that we are likely not the top in the chain of command in the Universe.
I would venture to say that every religion I have encountered is very destructive to my faith in God, as they seem to try in every conceivable way to lead me into some sort of belief system where creation is some sort of business, with all sorts of freeloaders needing to be paid off in order to keep the God they refer to happy. I try to think of myself as an ethical person - and there are things I have to know for sure, not faith, before I feel comfortable trying to influence anyone else with it. I do not give investment advice for the same reason. I am often wrong. I felt very uncomfortable counseling people in grief that some tooth fairy was going to swoop down and take care of their problems. Nor could I believe that God was a force I can bargain with. The Bible has God referring to himself as: "I am that I am" ( Exodus 3:14 ).
As far as I am concerned, science verifies God. For years I have had the tagline:."Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21].
That one line of scripture, taken right out of the Bible, summarizes my whole take on it. Incidentally, it was a preacher on "The Simpsons" that turned me onto it.
The poignant thing to me is that it was the young baristas who went out of the way to make sure my Starbucks experience was a good one.
It was the people who had executive/management responsibility that struck me as not giving a damn about the customer's experience. They gave me every indication they considered the Starbucks experience more in terms of salary, career advancement, retirement plans, and travel with people like me that was spending a hard-earned $5 for a cup of coffee as just a means to an end. Expendable. Dime-a-dozen. Just the end product of a marketing blitz. Seemed like a kid with a rental car - see how much you can nickel and dime a customer before he leaves. Pissed off. Customer satisfaction is marketing's job. When earning executive salaries, customers don't count. Only thing they seemed to care about was 50 cents extra for sweetener.
I sensed a feeling that suited-and-tied marketing professionals were thought of as being worth quite a bit, but customers are just floor-trash, just something to be exploited as much as they would stand - with the executives running statistics on just how much exploitation people will take before they leave. Like a lab experiment of EE students finding out how much current a wire will take before it melts.
If I had my way, I would have immediately switched the baristas to the executive role, and vice versa - benefits and all. The baristas knew how to build a business. The executives were just tearing it down. They never seemed to teach the psychology of building a customer relationship in any of their high-falutin' business schools.
Since the IRS is becoming increasingly reliant on the internet, I see the time coming IRS themselves will be targeted with arrays of bogus returns, making it very difficult to prove who filed what. A computer can issue a million bogus returns before I even begin to read the instructions on what the Government wants me to do this year.
All the information on millions of people are now accessible on the net, making a cyberwar effort to spoof millions of returns containing enough correct data to make them credible exist. Our Congress has already made the storage and sharing of this information legal and the capability exists to transfer terabytes of info in a few seconds.
If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is - leave it be.
I will warn you right now that if you are buying "consumer" type stuff ( jewelry, clothes, trinkets ), you better buy in very small quantities, as nothing beats holding one personally and examining it.
and, from you...
Certainly don't trust any filtered feedback you find on the Aliexpress site
Point taken. As I said, I have had an account on AliExpress for about a year now. I left some bad feedback about that merchant that sold me the misrepresented battery pack. The feedback went up, then disappeared. I stated on the feedback the same things I stated on my Slashdot post. The seller left me some bad feedback too - short, and to the point... "very hate buyer". That disappeared too. Well, just to be honest, I felt I needed to back up your statement with my personal experience.
I can see why reseller ratings has some bad reviews, I have experienced likewise for trying to buy stuff I should have bought from Harbor Freight Tools or the dollar stores.
One item in particular I remember is a small LED illuminated ring magnifying glass.. Looks great in the offer. I'll tell ya something - the thing is useless as a magnifier - way too much distortion in the lens. Might as well use the bottom of a coke bottle. Look again at the image in the offer. That must have been one of the better ones. Can you imagine trying to read through that lens?
Most of the stuff I get is not prepared for immediate resale. Often the item is shipped with none of the usual trade dress such as gaudy boxes and printed inserts. In a way, those are kinda useless, as AliExpress sells to a lot of countries, not just USA. Items packaged for Russia are not appropriate for sale in USA. If we want to resale, then we make up our own trade dress and go for it. They just make the item to put in the box.
I will not dispute claims made on Reseller Ratings. From the buyer's point of view, they are probably true. A lot of people are looking for a quick markup with fat margins. There is a lot of people out there with those same intentions, and they are big enough to make money on volume. This "buy here for ten cents, sell for a dollar!" is mostly stuff hocked by late night DIY business televangelists looking for money in his mailbox too.
I see a lot of exaggerated claims. That's why a solid understanding of science/math comes in damn handy. 2000 lumens at 80 lumens/watt ( quite optimistic ) is 25 watts. That's a helluva pull for a battery.
Also its one heck of a lot of heat. Fan-cooled flashlight?
Most likely the manufacturer of the emitter claimed that rating on an infinitely heat-sunk LED.
I have bought several dozen UltraFire WF502 flashlights ( XML-T6 emitter ). I do not think any of them came close to claimed lumen output. They are bright enough, and use the 18650 cell, which is *very* important to me. They are well made and maintainable - that is I can completely disassemble them for cleaning and maintenance instead of having to throw a soiled one away. I figure I get about 500 lumens ( although some claim 1000 lumens ). But realistically, given the capacity of a single 18650 cell, I am very pleased with what I get. About 6.5 watts. Enough energy in a 18650 cell for about an hour of light. I do not want to use multiple 18650 cells because that would result in charge balancing issues, and I want my stuff as simple as possible.
I have bought mine more for "stock in trade" because they won't go bad in storage, and when a disaster strikes, they will become as good as currency for trading for things I need. For me, used 18650 are plentiful - and I very rarely find unusable ones.
I have personally used AliExpress and have an account on their "escrow" system. I have used it for about a year now.
You have to be cautious about what you buy there. Don't buy anything bulky or heavy; the logistics charges will eat you alive.
However, there are a lot of merchants finding things in China like circuit board assemblies and various small parts and offer them in smaller quantities.
I have been bitten a couple of times, but by and large, most of the smaller guys on AliExpress I have bought electronic parts from ( IC's, LED's, resistors, capacitors, modules, and occasionally small tools ) have been on the level with me. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is - leave it be. I have bought some stuff that was probably a knockoff, but it was good enough for what I needed.
There is a lot of stuff available in China that I have not seen over in the USA yet. I am particularly interested in circuit modules and high-power LED's ( 100 Watt range ) that I do not see over here. Yes.. 100 Watt LED's... about 36 volts at 3 amps. However I will warn you right now if you do not know how to heat sink these, you will not get light for long.
I have about 100 transactions with AliExpress. I have had four disputes with merchants. Of these, the merchant and I resolved it without involving AliExpress's dispute resolution three times, and once I had to escalate the dispute to have the AliExpress dispute resolution team mediate.
This particular one was over a laptop battery pack that was marketed as using high capacity cells. When I tried to use it in my machine, it first identified it as having a substantially lower capacity than that advertised, then a few hours later, something fried in the battery management board, to the extent that the power block charging my machine heated up and there was a hot smell coming from somewhere, and the battery pack was quite warm. The laptop locked up and would not boot. I disconnected the whole shebang and queried the merchant, who wanted me to ship the battery back to China. There was no way I was going to place a lithium battery pack I had no idea of how much overcharge it took onto an airplane. So I ended up disassembling the pack to discover it was indeed made with lower capacity cells, however they were good quality cells - and the battery pack was quite well made - I guess the battery management board fry was a fluke, as I saw no obvious reason for it frying ( you know, stuff like bad solder joints or sloppy assembly ). AliExpress ruled in my favor .
( Thank goodness the laptop itself survived - scared the crap out of me there for a while - the laptop would not boot with that battery in even if the AC adapter was present. Apparently the BIOS sensed a problem with the BMS and would inhibit the startup.)
Two disputes were packaging errors. Upon contacting the merchant, he checked his end and verified and shipped me the correct part.
One merchant apparently sold me something he did not have, and ended up refunding my money. That was a weird one. I tried and tried and tried to open communication with the merchant over it. Eventually the AliExpress transaction monitors timed out over it and automatically cancelled the transaction. I saw the credit show up on my next Visa statement. ( they also sent me emails to the same effect )
But anyway, that's my experience with AliExpress. I order through them for small samples. I am using them to build a product I hope to go into business one day selling. I am hoping one day I will be able to ask my guy in China if he can get me several thousand of an item.
I will warn you right now that if you are buying "consumer" type stuff ( jewelry, clothes, trinkets ), you better buy in very small quantities, as nothing beats holding one personally and examining it. When China and US are on opposite sides of the planet, the shipping costs often far exceed the cost of the thing you are buying. Go get it from some big retailer that buys them in bulk and uses far more economical ( albeit far slower ) shipping ( as in a ocean vessel ).
As a member of the older set, I will relate an experience I had at Starbucks Coffee a few days ago. I'll state what happened, my take on it, and run it up the flagpole.
It was a hot Sunday afternoon a week ago. Its usually very crowded at that Starbucks during those hours, and sometimes one cannot find seating. This time, what little seating and tables there were are all bundled together, with little table-tents marked "reserved" on them, but no-one is there. There is nowhere to sit, so I pass on the coffee and walk onto the mall and get some coffee at the Tea Leaf. I putter around the mall for a while then walk back, noticing a bunch of young preppy Starbucks executive types yapping while the baristas all were at rapt attention. They took away the customer seating for this. On one of the busiest days of the summer.
I have been going to that Starbucks for quite some time. I have always ordered the same thing - a coffee frappucino with chips and sugar-free vanilla sweetener. $4.75. Now the barista tells me she has to charge me an additional 50 cents for sweetener. I feel I am already way overpaying for coffee, but I did like the social environment of Starbucks, and my baristas always seemed to care a lot that they made my coffee just right - but I felt worse than useless to those executive types - as far as I could see, I was nothing more than some nameless, faceless, wallet-carrier that was there to be fleeced as far as possible. I figured they saw Starbucks Coffee Corporation as nothing more than opportunities for career advancement, retirement plans, shared profit plans, health-care, whatever, with the customer ( me ) being expected to simply absorb whatever they dish out. Just to pay the salary of ONE of those handshaking suit-guys, 200,000 of us are going to have to be charged an extra fifty cents for a squirt of sweetener. On top of that, even more baristas will have to demand an extra 50 cents for sweetener to pay for hotel bills, per-diem, airfare, and whatever for the suit-guy in addition to telling the useless customer that there isn't any seating for them.
If I ran Starbucks, I would call the guy who hired those preppy suit-guys to justify his own salary and retention. First, I would demote him to barista, and have him ask each customer for an extra fifty cents for sweetener. And keep him at it until he has justified his former salary out of the pockets of his customers. If he loses his customers, have him do whatever it takes to recruit more customers. At his OWN expense.
Its been my experience that those who built the company up realize the importance of a loyal customer base. The new execs hired into the company with business-school educations seem to completely lack common-sense when dealing with old people who have been loyal to the company as a result of hard work by the baristas who saw customer satisfaction as the key to a successful business.
To a young growing company, they need the customer. To some older established companies, the executives seem to see the customer as just a pain in the ass.
I think the baristas are doing great. However I feel I am nothing more than a mark as far as the Executive class is concerned...
We get these business execs who are able to calculate the price of everything, but do not seem to know the worth of anything.
I think the core problem is Zucker marketed buckyballs as toys for kids. Home Depot (where I just picked up a couple of packs of neodymium magnets ) would also be in a hot spot had they marketed these as a toy instead of as a tool.
I don't think Zucker was thinking clearly when he considered this as a business model... likely his hopes of entrepreneural success overwhelmed his common sense of kids eating these things. My feeling is he saw they weren't poisonous and had no sharp edges....one would most likely pass through with no more ado than a small nut or bolt - he probably never considered what would happen if two of these were ingested, several hours apart, so that the magnets try to attract each other once in the intestine ( with each magnet being in a different fold of the intestine ). Of course, the magnets would migrate to each other as the crow flies, and catch both intestinal walls between them, and with the pinching, shut off the blood supply to that tiny section of intestinal wall. Something like that would be extremely difficult for a doctor to diagnose because it would not leave any chemical signatures of infections or biological distress in the blood until the damage had been done and the intestine began to rot. Once the structural integrity of the intestines are compromised, the chyme leaks out into the abdominal cavity, making one heckuva mess which will be fatal if not corrected.
This is the same cell that my HP/Compaq CQ56-WalMart uses. My packs use 12 of 'em. I have noted I get a couple of years out ot them before they begin dropping off, then I end up cannibalizing the battery pack for its cells which I then use in projects and flashlights.
When I buy power tools, which lithium cells they use is of much interest to me. So far, I have bought ONLY tools that incorporate the 18650 cell, as I know that in a pinch, I may have to fabricate a battery pack for them, or cannibalize spent packs for usable cells for other things.
I have been very irritated that manufacturers make the battery packs in such a manner the cells are not individually serviceable. One cell goes out of balance and the whole pack is rendered inoperable.
However, the 18650 cells I have experience with are not Panasonics. Apparently many companies manufacture these. They are found in a lot of consumer stuff like power tools.
10 years? What do they consider end of life? I have to admit I have been using these cells for quite some time now and have yet to toss one because it was completely unusable, however I have noted they do indeed lose capacity as they are cycled, and I have developed charge balancers to help me keep these in service.
Yeh, I was in there and saw a couple of books on Arduino I took a liking to.
The salesperson wanted so bad to get me onto their loyalty card. Offered a big discount if I would sign up today.
So, given that they are offering discounts, I asked if they had a Senior Citizen discount, I am old enough for that. No. Cash discount? No. Then I asked about the Amazon discount - they did not know what I was talking about. At that point I was a bit exasperated about the membership hoops I was going to have to jump through to get the discount and indicated I was quite aware that I was already paying about double what I could get the books online for just for the sake of getting them NOW.
I wondered how much B&N is paying the marketing exec who dreamed up asking their sales reps to nail prospective customers for a discount if they would comply with rules, then watch them walk out the door with no purchase.
They made it rather clear to me that if I would comply with rules over discount cards, they would have me as a customer, otherwise shoo over to Amazon.
As far as I am concerned, they sent me the same signal as I give the waitress when she comes over with the coffee pot to refill my cup, and I place my hand over the cup: "I do not want any more, thank you." I folded my wallet back up and left.
No discount. No sale. I ordered the books a few hours later from Amazon.
AC, I believe you show much insight, pointing out that the content does not just pop out of thin air. Its a creation, and its creators should be remunerated from those who benefited from their work.
Of all the replies I have read here, as well as my own personal observations, I believe the "product placement" paradigm is by far the best. Its unobtrusive, subliminal, and if it stokes a desire for the product being promoted, well, should I say the effort was fruitful?
Disney has been doing cross-media promotions for years, selling art in various forms. It works.
From what I see, this paradigm of ads in the program goes over like bones in the fish, pebbles in the peas, or someone pouring ketchup in your beer. It doesn't work. It just pisses people off. Its high time that advertisers quit acting like a two year old child constantly thinking of ways to get your attention by making a scene.
I see some are against product placement in commercially produced entertainment, but as far as I am concerned, I am for it. The whole idea is to stoke a desire for a product, and if this can be done properly, everyone will benefit. I wonder how many people wanted that AT&T bank card after that TV show where the hologram of that pretty spy-girl who resided in an AT&T bank card aired? I would much rather have Coke products featured in the content than have them separately delivered al-a-carte via ads.
Slashdot Mirror
Sure sounds hackable. Just a few bytes of information relayed through Twitter could make the instigator a lot of money from people who willingly sign their resources over to them.
Anyone hip on the sensor technology? Microwave? Ultrasonic? Capacitive?
The Neanderthal survived.
Looking at their predicament and environment, I do not think the same could be said for me.
I can tell you right now that the bird droppings can have far more value than gold.
Situation: The "system" has collapsed. Its hard to get anything - its simply not there. You have some land, and you can grow stuff there... but the soil is poor...
If I were on the Titanic when it was going down, you can bet your bottom dollar that the old styrofoam cooler box with the broken lid is more valuable to me than a satchel full of gold coin.
The only reason gold was considered of value is because it represented the work it took to mine it; it could not be simply signed into existence like today's dollar.
I took a big hit on this personally about six years ago, as everything I knew indicated petroleum and rights to it represented a far more stable store of wealth than, say, an American Dollar, which can be printed up in unlimited quantities. I considered the petroleum valuable because of the work it could do, not for what it looked like or what other people valued it as... remember milk pogs?
Yet I watched people sell off their petroleum stocks en masse in a "flight to safety", US Treasuries. Selling off their ownership of petrochemical industry for pieces of paper with a dead president on it. I bought as much oil stuff as I could, and by golly I am hanging onto it.
We may be basking in fracking now, but I know from personal experience how fast a fart flies. I am an old man, and old men have quite a repertoire of experiences with how fast gas passes.
It amazes me that diamonds have any worth at all to speak of. They can be made in a lab. They make fine abrasives, and have some interesting thermal and optical properties, but as a store of wealth? Again, compare to milk pogs. If we want some, just make some. It will require energy though, and that's why I thought energy investments would be the most critical thing in our world today. Yes, I read the comments on the Slashdot story, and still am of extremely mixed emotions on it. A helluva lot of cognitive dissonance going on in me. Enough to drive me crazy.
I got really fed up with paying high prices for soda pop.
The 2 and 3 liter plastic bottles soda pop comes in make handy carbonation vessels. I drilled a hole in the cap and inserted one of those bolt-in-place stainless steel tire stems sold at Pep Boys. I also got a 20 pound CO2 tank at a garage sale, and a decent 100 PSI adjustable regulator from a surplus house.
I fill my bottle to the brim with water. Refrigerate it. Warm water will not carbonate... cold water will. Then I connect my special cap and hook it to 70PSI CO2 ( Do not connect to tank directly, as tank pressures run from 500 psi on a cold day to over 1000 psi on a hot day; the CO2 inside the tank is a liquid ).
I shake for a few seconds and watch the gas stream into the water. About 10-15 seconds or so. After that things taper off. I shut off the gas and disconnect the hose. I take my container full of freshly carbonated water into the house to mix with any variety of flavor powders or fruit juice concentrates.
Makes great fizzy soda pop. It cost me $14 to get the 20 pounds of CO2. I have been using the same tank for about 3 years now. My calculations show I have roughly enough CO2 to carbonate a swimming pool full of water. Its gonna take me quite some time to drink that much.
The one caveat is you do not want any substantial volume of gas in your carbonation vessel, as the compressed gas will release substantial mechanical energy in the event of a rupture of the vessel. The water does not compress, so the idea is to minimize the amount of explosive decompression you get in the event the bottle ruptures - albeit I have not ever had that happen.
I have noticed a lot of companies are using verbal trickery in their business dealings to pull a fast one on their customer.
Remember in the old algebra classes we took, we were given math equations to reduce to the simplest form?
These days, the first thing I do when evaluating a business "deal" is see if I can reduce it to the form:
"Up to ( what the business will provide ) for only ( price* )" followed by "* other charges may apply"
This verbiage makes sure there is a legal obligation in place forcing the customer to pay whatever the business asks, but lets them off the hook for any commitment to the customer. That part is left as "up to".
This seems to be the most common verbiage used today by sleazeball businesses trying to pull a fast one. Even many well-known businesses will pull this one on their customers. Surprising to me, most people still haven't caught on and call them on it.
One has to be very careful these days of dealing with a business. While most are on the level, there are a few which leave a trails of distrust with their shady legal maneuverings. The man with a pen can cause you far more grief than the man with the knife or gun. Most of the men using knife or gun won't use it - but the man who gets you to sign something owns you.
I think it has everything to do with "plausible deniability"; that is Microsoft has a design legacy of products needing a heck of a lot of security related patches.
Any government worker who knowingly specified a product with known security issues might be held personally accountable for his actions
This whole rating is like the Wall Street ratings - I see it as a useless metric, as it is more a mechanism to let someone who specified its use off the hook for the ramifications of his decision. These ratings, like laws approved by lobbied Congressmen, are a purchasable commodity - a tool to be used to provide plausible deniability for shifting responsibility to a hard-to-pin-down entity.
This is no joke. Have a look at this. Kinda scary....
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cumulative_Current_Account_Balance.png
You have to scroll down to the very bottom to see the Good Ole USA... The scariest thing to me of all is not that are we at the bottom... its just how much in the hole we are... and this "benefit" appears to have been granted us because the other countries still accept the US Dollar as a world reserve currency.
We need to start asking our congressmen, especially in public at these "town meetings" what they intend to do about all this litigation the DMCA is stirring up.
Prohibition was unpopular. It got repealed. DMCA is no different. It can be repealed as well.
I guess we need to let the record companies sue enough people to make themselves so unpopular that any politician failing to remove DMCA will not see another term in office.
Definitely.
From what I could tell, RIM had become just a pawn in the Wall Street pump'n'dump racket. That's how the uber-rich "earn" their money.
Our town library has a big bookshelf in the foyer. Ten cents each. I think every library patron knows exactly what is going on. We all bring our unwanted books and put them in this bookshelf. I got a really nice original Borland C++ for DOS manual set and a few other gems through this route, albeit I was probably the only one in town who wanted it. I get a lot of books from it. I also leave them there when its time for me to clean house.
The library goes through the shelf occasionally and culls the junk out when it becomes too messy.
Thanks... Now that you mention it, I have seen a lot of stuff on Amazon marketed by Goodwill. They have the time and resources to warehouse stuff like this and wait it out until the guy who needs it finds it, and what money is made sure goes to a good cause. I would have modded you up if I had modpoints, but being I do not, I'll have to settle for a thankful reply to your post.
Maybe these people would be interested...
http://www.emsps.com/oldtools/
What is one man's junk is sometimes another man's treasure, but you are probably not interested in holding onto what may or may not be junk forever. These guys seem to be in the business of warehousing old stuff and may gladly pay the shipping before you dumpster it all.
You will be doing somebody a great service by slipping your discards to someone who has the resources to remarket these old treasures. Its not so much emsps, but the bloke who is dying for some documentation for some old dinosaur that wandered into his life.
I guess those who live by the sword, will die by the sword.
I should consider myself quite lucky that my screw-ups are quite limited in scope.
Thanks, Duncan...
There are a lot of references in the Bible as to each of us being members of "the Body of Christ". I often ponder if God is the collective of intelligence, human, animal, everything. There are many references to "stewardship" of God's creation, with wanton destruction of it being a sin against God.
I wonder if this "free will" is also a manifestation that we all are unwittingly part of the "Borg Collective". We experiment, hold fast what worked, remind ourselves not to do that again when things go sour.
I will call this unknown "God" because this seems to be the catch-all for observed but unexplained phenomena. I see all these things which are so wondrous to me, and have no explanation whatsoever of how they came to be, nor has anyone been able to convince me their reasoning of how it came to be is correct.
Turns out everything which is written as a "sin" against God is also a sin against my fellow man or my environment. I feel I have a conscience, cause something inside sure bugs me when I do something I know I ought not do. It is my belief that this thing I know as "conscience" is also known as "the Holy Spirit" by others who have been instructed thus.
The Bible has some commandments ( 10 of 'em which later got reduced to two in the New Testament: Love God and Love your Neighbor ). There are also a lot of ordinances, and a lot of history. I see the Bible as an ancient compendium of history, genealogy, leadership training, and ethics for dealing with others. A decent thing to consider as we live in these flesh bodies.
However, I find many of those who preach the Bible to be about as ethical or caring as a politician or used-car salesman. There is too much of a strong financial motivation, rather than spiritual motivation, that drives way too many hucksters into the spiritual professions, whether it be plate passing preachers or palm-readers practicing their art for a fee. That crap is all about gullibility and who can talk a dollar out of someone else instead of providing some useful effort.
My observation, and amazement at the complexity of all I see, and the high order ( entropy ) thereof convinces me there is a God. Such complexity and beauty. I can not explain it. Religions are the greatest faction in my life presenting evidence that God is a figment of some management leadership technique designed to extort wealth from gullible people.
The same paradigm was the first thing that popped into my mind when I saw this topic.
From since my childhood, I was raised religious ( Baptist, Pentecostal ), and I was of the observation that the whole purpose of the Church was to teach obedience to authority. We were supposed to be sheep and "turn the other cheek". As far as I was concerned, Christianity was something like a mental computer virus which was crafted to enrich the coffers of the church and religious leaders at the expense of anyone who they could convince to take their teaching seriously. The centerpiece of the whole thing seemed to be the great ceremony of the passing of the plate, as well as getting out there and converting others to the faith. It seemed to me that being a Christian meant: 1) I would not steal anyone else's stuff, 2) I would not fight back if someone else took my stuff, and 3) I would pay a 10% tithe on everything I make to the people who taught me to do this.
What got me was this faith thing.
From personal experience, "faith" seemed to have little correlation to reality. As far as I was concerned, "faith" was what I had if I went-a-gambling; and I was told gambling was sinful. I have had faith in a lot of things. Things that should have worked, and didn't because of some unforeseen element - which became apparent to me after the fact the thing did not work as intended. Due diligence seemed to have far more effect on a positive outcome than hope.
From what I can tell of religions, it appears the ones I have been influenced by seemed that God was some sort of another word for Statistics. Maybe I would get what I prayed for, maybe I would not. I still lack conclusive evidence that God is some sort of businessman who has accounts payable and a big bag of blessings and curses which he levies on those who pay up in Church and those that drank beer on Sunday. Maybe God is Statistics. More like "What goes around comes around."
From the Bible: "In the beginning was the Word, the Word was with God, the word was God." ( John 1:1 ). The Word in my understanding is the basic physical laws that runs this universe. The same stuff scientists study. It was science who convinced me that there is some sort of intelligence out there which resulted in the formation of me and everything I observe. The religious people call this God, Spirit, and all sorts of other names, but it seems to be a universal human observation that we are likely not the top in the chain of command in the Universe.
I would venture to say that every religion I have encountered is very destructive to my faith in God, as they seem to try in every conceivable way to lead me into some sort of belief system where creation is some sort of business, with all sorts of freeloaders needing to be paid off in order to keep the God they refer to happy. I try to think of myself as an ethical person - and there are things I have to know for sure, not faith, before I feel comfortable trying to influence anyone else with it. I do not give investment advice for the same reason. I am often wrong. I felt very uncomfortable counseling people in grief that some tooth fairy was going to swoop down and take care of their problems. Nor could I believe that God was a force I can bargain with. The Bible has God referring to himself as: "I am that I am" ( Exodus 3:14 ).
As far as I am concerned, science verifies God. For years I have had the tagline:."Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21].
That one line of scripture, taken right out of the Bible, summarizes my whole take on it. Incidentally, it was a preacher on "The Simpsons" that turned me onto it.
The poignant thing to me is that it was the young baristas who went out of the way to make sure my Starbucks experience was a good one.
It was the people who had executive/management responsibility that struck me as not giving a damn about the customer's experience. They gave me every indication they considered the Starbucks experience more in terms of salary, career advancement, retirement plans, and travel with people like me that was spending a hard-earned $5 for a cup of coffee as just a means to an end. Expendable. Dime-a-dozen. Just the end product of a marketing blitz. Seemed like a kid with a rental car - see how much you can nickel and dime a customer before he leaves. Pissed off. Customer satisfaction is marketing's job. When earning executive salaries, customers don't count. Only thing they seemed to care about was 50 cents extra for sweetener.
I sensed a feeling that suited-and-tied marketing professionals were thought of as being worth quite a bit, but customers are just floor-trash, just something to be exploited as much as they would stand - with the executives running statistics on just how much exploitation people will take before they leave. Like a lab experiment of EE students finding out how much current a wire will take before it melts.
If I had my way, I would have immediately switched the baristas to the executive role, and vice versa - benefits and all. The baristas knew how to build a business. The executives were just tearing it down. They never seemed to teach the psychology of building a customer relationship in any of their high-falutin' business schools.
Since the IRS is becoming increasingly reliant on the internet, I see the time coming IRS themselves will be targeted with arrays of bogus returns, making it very difficult to prove who filed what. A computer can issue a million bogus returns before I even begin to read the instructions on what the Government wants me to do this year.
All the information on millions of people are now accessible on the net, making a cyberwar effort to spoof millions of returns containing enough correct data to make them credible exist. Our Congress has already made the storage and sharing of this information legal and the capability exists to transfer terabytes of info in a few seconds.
The object would be to keep taxpayers from feeding Vaal by stuffing its mouth with detritus.. ( reference to Star Trek: TOS ).
and, from you...
Point taken. As I said, I have had an account on AliExpress for about a year now. I left some bad feedback about that merchant that sold me the misrepresented battery pack. The feedback went up, then disappeared. I stated on the feedback the same things I stated on my Slashdot post. The seller left me some bad feedback too - short, and to the point... "very hate buyer". That disappeared too. Well, just to be honest, I felt I needed to back up your statement with my personal experience.
I can see why reseller ratings has some bad reviews, I have experienced likewise for trying to buy stuff I should have bought from Harbor Freight Tools or the dollar stores.
One item in particular I remember is a small LED illuminated ring magnifying glass.. Looks great in the offer. I'll tell ya something - the thing is useless as a magnifier - way too much distortion in the lens. Might as well use the bottom of a coke bottle. Look again at the image in the offer. That must have been one of the better ones. Can you imagine trying to read through that lens?
Most of the stuff I get is not prepared for immediate resale. Often the item is shipped with none of the usual trade dress such as gaudy boxes and printed inserts. In a way, those are kinda useless, as AliExpress sells to a lot of countries, not just USA. Items packaged for Russia are not appropriate for sale in USA. If we want to resale, then we make up our own trade dress and go for it. They just make the item to put in the box.
I will not dispute claims made on Reseller Ratings. From the buyer's point of view, they are probably true. A lot of people are looking for a quick markup with fat margins. There is a lot of people out there with those same intentions, and they are big enough to make money on volume. This "buy here for ten cents, sell for a dollar!" is mostly stuff hocked by late night DIY business televangelists looking for money in his mailbox too.
I see a lot of exaggerated claims. That's why a solid understanding of science/math comes in damn handy. 2000 lumens at 80 lumens/watt ( quite optimistic ) is 25 watts. That's a helluva pull for a battery.
Also its one heck of a lot of heat. Fan-cooled flashlight?
Most likely the manufacturer of the emitter claimed that rating on an infinitely heat-sunk LED.
I have bought several dozen UltraFire WF502 flashlights ( XML-T6 emitter ). I do not think any of them came close to claimed lumen output. They are bright enough, and use the 18650 cell, which is *very* important to me. They are well made and maintainable - that is I can completely disassemble them for cleaning and maintenance instead of having to throw a soiled one away. I figure I get about 500 lumens ( although some claim 1000 lumens ). But realistically, given the capacity of a single 18650 cell, I am very pleased with what I get. About 6.5 watts. Enough energy in a 18650 cell for about an hour of light. I do not want to use multiple 18650 cells because that would result in charge balancing issues, and I want my stuff as simple as possible.
I have bought mine more for "stock in trade" because they won't go bad in storage, and when a disaster strikes, they will become as good as currency for trading for things I need. For me, used 18650 are plentiful - and I very rarely find unusable ones.
Although you
I have personally used AliExpress and have an account on their "escrow" system. I have used it for about a year now.
You have to be cautious about what you buy there. Don't buy anything bulky or heavy; the logistics charges will eat you alive.
However, there are a lot of merchants finding things in China like circuit board assemblies and various small parts and offer them in smaller quantities.
I have been bitten a couple of times, but by and large, most of the smaller guys on AliExpress I have bought electronic parts from ( IC's, LED's, resistors, capacitors, modules, and occasionally small tools ) have been on the level with me. If something sounds too good to be true, it probably is - leave it be. I have bought some stuff that was probably a knockoff, but it was good enough for what I needed.
There is a lot of stuff available in China that I have not seen over in the USA yet. I am particularly interested in circuit modules and high-power LED's ( 100 Watt range ) that I do not see over here. Yes.. 100 Watt LED's... about 36 volts at 3 amps. However I will warn you right now if you do not know how to heat sink these, you will not get light for long.
I have about 100 transactions with AliExpress. I have had four disputes with merchants. Of these, the merchant and I resolved it without involving AliExpress's dispute resolution three times, and once I had to escalate the dispute to have the AliExpress dispute resolution team mediate.
This particular one was over a laptop battery pack that was marketed as using high capacity cells. When I tried to use it in my machine, it first identified it as having a substantially lower capacity than that advertised, then a few hours later, something fried in the battery management board, to the extent that the power block charging my machine heated up and there was a hot smell coming from somewhere, and the battery pack was quite warm. The laptop locked up and would not boot. I disconnected the whole shebang and queried the merchant, who wanted me to ship the battery back to China. There was no way I was going to place a lithium battery pack I had no idea of how much overcharge it took onto an airplane. So I ended up disassembling the pack to discover it was indeed made with lower capacity cells, however they were good quality cells - and the battery pack was quite well made - I guess the battery management board fry was a fluke, as I saw no obvious reason for it frying ( you know, stuff like bad solder joints or sloppy assembly ). AliExpress ruled in my favor .
( Thank goodness the laptop itself survived - scared the crap out of me there for a while - the laptop would not boot with that battery in even if the AC adapter was present. Apparently the BIOS sensed a problem with the BMS and would inhibit the startup.)
Two disputes were packaging errors. Upon contacting the merchant, he checked his end and verified and shipped me the correct part.
One merchant apparently sold me something he did not have, and ended up refunding my money. That was a weird one. I tried and tried and tried to open communication with the merchant over it. Eventually the AliExpress transaction monitors timed out over it and automatically cancelled the transaction. I saw the credit show up on my next Visa statement. ( they also sent me emails to the same effect )
But anyway, that's my experience with AliExpress. I order through them for small samples. I am using them to build a product I hope to go into business one day selling. I am hoping one day I will be able to ask my guy in China if he can get me several thousand of an item.
I will warn you right now that if you are buying "consumer" type stuff ( jewelry, clothes, trinkets ), you better buy in very small quantities, as nothing beats holding one personally and examining it. When China and US are on opposite sides of the planet, the shipping costs often far exceed the cost of the thing you are buying. Go get it from some big retailer that buys them in bulk and uses far more economical ( albeit far slower ) shipping ( as in a ocean vessel ).
As a member of the older set, I will relate an experience I had at Starbucks Coffee a few days ago. I'll state what happened, my take on it, and run it up the flagpole.
It was a hot Sunday afternoon a week ago. Its usually very crowded at that Starbucks during those hours, and sometimes one cannot find seating. This time, what little seating and tables there were are all bundled together, with little table-tents marked "reserved" on them, but no-one is there. There is nowhere to sit, so I pass on the coffee and walk onto the mall and get some coffee at the Tea Leaf. I putter around the mall for a while then walk back, noticing a bunch of young preppy Starbucks executive types yapping while the baristas all were at rapt attention. They took away the customer seating for this. On one of the busiest days of the summer.
I have been going to that Starbucks for quite some time. I have always ordered the same thing - a coffee frappucino with chips and sugar-free vanilla sweetener. $4.75. Now the barista tells me she has to charge me an additional 50 cents for sweetener. I feel I am already way overpaying for coffee, but I did like the social environment of Starbucks, and my baristas always seemed to care a lot that they made my coffee just right - but I felt worse than useless to those executive types - as far as I could see, I was nothing more than some nameless, faceless, wallet-carrier that was there to be fleeced as far as possible. I figured they saw Starbucks Coffee Corporation as nothing more than opportunities for career advancement, retirement plans, shared profit plans, health-care, whatever, with the customer ( me ) being expected to simply absorb whatever they dish out. Just to pay the salary of ONE of those handshaking suit-guys, 200,000 of us are going to have to be charged an extra fifty cents for a squirt of sweetener. On top of that, even more baristas will have to demand an extra 50 cents for sweetener to pay for hotel bills, per-diem, airfare, and whatever for the suit-guy in addition to telling the useless customer that there isn't any seating for them.
If I ran Starbucks, I would call the guy who hired those preppy suit-guys to justify his own salary and retention. First, I would demote him to barista, and have him ask each customer for an extra fifty cents for sweetener. And keep him at it until he has justified his former salary out of the pockets of his customers. If he loses his customers, have him do whatever it takes to recruit more customers. At his OWN expense.
Its been my experience that those who built the company up realize the importance of a loyal customer base. The new execs hired into the company with business-school educations seem to completely lack common-sense when dealing with old people who have been loyal to the company as a result of hard work by the baristas who saw customer satisfaction as the key to a successful business.
To a young growing company, they need the customer. To some older established companies, the executives seem to see the customer as just a pain in the ass.
I think the baristas are doing great. However I feel I am nothing more than a mark as far as the Executive class is concerned...
We get these business execs who are able to calculate the price of everything, but do not seem to know the worth of anything.
I think the core problem is Zucker marketed buckyballs as toys for kids. Home Depot (where I just picked up a couple of packs of neodymium magnets ) would also be in a hot spot had they marketed these as a toy instead of as a tool.
I don't think Zucker was thinking clearly when he considered this as a business model... likely his hopes of entrepreneural success overwhelmed his common sense of kids eating these things. My feeling is he saw they weren't poisonous and had no sharp edges....one would most likely pass through with no more ado than a small nut or bolt - he probably never considered what would happen if two of these were ingested, several hours apart, so that the magnets try to attract each other once in the intestine ( with each magnet being in a different fold of the intestine ). Of course, the magnets would migrate to each other as the crow flies, and catch both intestinal walls between them, and with the pinching, shut off the blood supply to that tiny section of intestinal wall. Something like that would be extremely difficult for a doctor to diagnose because it would not leave any chemical signatures of infections or biological distress in the blood until the damage had been done and the intestine began to rot. Once the structural integrity of the intestines are compromised, the chyme leaks out into the abdominal cavity, making one heckuva mess which will be fatal if not corrected.
Speaking of lithium car batteries... according to the following, it looks like the Tesla will be running on about 8,000 18650 cells...
http://www.teslamotors.com/it_IT/forum/forums/model-s-going-use-new-version-panasonic-18650-series-battery
This is the same cell that my HP/Compaq CQ56-WalMart uses. My packs use 12 of 'em. I have noted I get a couple of years out ot them before they begin dropping off, then I end up cannibalizing the battery pack for its cells which I then use in projects and flashlights.
When I buy power tools, which lithium cells they use is of much interest to me. So far, I have bought ONLY tools that incorporate the 18650 cell, as I know that in a pinch, I may have to fabricate a battery pack for them, or cannibalize spent packs for usable cells for other things.
I have been very irritated that manufacturers make the battery packs in such a manner the cells are not individually serviceable. One cell goes out of balance and the whole pack is rendered inoperable.
However, the 18650 cells I have experience with are not Panasonics. Apparently many companies manufacture these. They are found in a lot of consumer stuff like power tools.
10 years? What do they consider end of life? I have to admit I have been using these cells for quite some time now and have yet to toss one because it was completely unusable, however I have noted they do indeed lose capacity as they are cycled, and I have developed charge balancers to help me keep these in service.
Yeh, I was in there and saw a couple of books on Arduino I took a liking to.
The salesperson wanted so bad to get me onto their loyalty card. Offered a big discount if I would sign up today.
So, given that they are offering discounts, I asked if they had a Senior Citizen discount, I am old enough for that. No. Cash discount? No. Then I asked about the Amazon discount - they did not know what I was talking about. At that point I was a bit exasperated about the membership hoops I was going to have to jump through to get the discount and indicated I was quite aware that I was already paying about double what I could get the books online for just for the sake of getting them NOW.
I wondered how much B&N is paying the marketing exec who dreamed up asking their sales reps to nail prospective customers for a discount if they would comply with rules, then watch them walk out the door with no purchase.
They made it rather clear to me that if I would comply with rules over discount cards, they would have me as a customer, otherwise shoo over to Amazon.
As far as I am concerned, they sent me the same signal as I give the waitress when she comes over with the coffee pot to refill my cup, and I place my hand over the cup: "I do not want any more, thank you." I folded my wallet back up and left.
No discount. No sale. I ordered the books a few hours later from Amazon.
AC, I believe you show much insight, pointing out that the content does not just pop out of thin air. Its a creation, and its creators should be remunerated from those who benefited from their work.
Of all the replies I have read here, as well as my own personal observations, I believe the "product placement" paradigm is by far the best. Its unobtrusive, subliminal, and if it stokes a desire for the product being promoted, well, should I say the effort was fruitful?
Disney has been doing cross-media promotions for years, selling art in various forms. It works.
From what I see, this paradigm of ads in the program goes over like bones in the fish, pebbles in the peas, or someone pouring ketchup in your beer. It doesn't work. It just pisses people off. Its high time that advertisers quit acting like a two year old child constantly thinking of ways to get your attention by making a scene.
I see some are against product placement in commercially produced entertainment, but as far as I am concerned, I am for it. The whole idea is to stoke a desire for a product, and if this can be done properly, everyone will benefit. I wonder how many people wanted that AT&T bank card after that TV show where the hologram of that pretty spy-girl who resided in an AT&T bank card aired? I would much rather have Coke products featured in the content than have them separately delivered al-a-carte via ads.