There's a Sucker Converted Every Minute 395
Ponca City, We love you writes "Once the US converts from analog to digital broadcasting next February, those who receive their signals over the air will need a converter box for older, non-digital models. Government-approved converter boxes sell for $60 or less and a government-issued $40 rebate coupon is available for the asking but that hasn't stopped companies like the Ohio-based Universal TechTronics from offering supposedly free converter boxes. The gimmick: the box is free, as long as you pay $88 for a five-year warranty, plus $9.30 shipping. Universal TechTronics seems to specialize in 'high-tech' products of questionable value, marketing the Cool Surge portable air cooler, 'a work of engineering genius from the China coast so advanced that no windows, vents, or freon are needed' that uses the same energy as a 60-watt light bulb. It works by blowing a stream of air over two ice packs that you have previously frozen in your freezer. What's the best tech scam you've heard of lately?"
Careful with the word "scam" (Score:5, Insightful)
The "free" digital TV box gimmick is not necessarily a scam. Comparing a box with a 5 year warranty to one with a 1 year warranty is not a fair comparison. It's gimmicky pricing to make people think they're getting a great deal. A scam, on the other hand, requires deception to secure an unfair or unlawful gain. In this case, the user is getting a 5 year warranty rather than the typical 1 year warranty, so it is understandable the overall cost should be higher, meaning it's not an unfair or unlawful gain.
(It could be argued that warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on. If a warranty is not workable, that's the part you can call a scam, not the gimmicky pricing.)
Re:Careful with the word "scam" (Score:3, Insightful)
The "free" digital TV box gimmick is not necessarily a scam. Comparing a box with a 5 year warranty to one with a 1 year warranty is not a fair comparison. It's gimmicky pricing to make people think they're getting a great deal. A scam, on the other hand, requires deception to secure an unfair or unlawful gain. In this case, the user is getting a 5 year warranty rather than the typical 1 year warranty, so it is understandable the overall cost should be higher, meaning it's not an unfair or unlawful gain.
(It could be argued that warranties aren't worth the paper they're written on. If a warranty is not workable, that's the part you can call a scam, not the gimmicky pricing.)
I agree it's not a scam, but a 5 year warranty on an item with no moving parts?
One is born every minute, especially since you could buy 2 for less than this one and have a spare if teh first ever fails after a year.
Re:Maybe the (Score:5, Insightful)
The real tech scam: you have to upgrade your PC every two years to run the latest and greatest versions of Windows and Office.
Other scams (Score:5, Insightful)
You don't need techobabble to put one over on people ...
Just look at the erpackaging of crap loans and blessing them with AAA ratings, and the proposal to bail out those who participated in the scam.
Time was, the three biggest lies were "The check is in the mail", "I'll still love you in the morning", and "I won't come in your mouth."
Now its "Mission Accomplished!", "Housing prices never go down," and "Jebus loves you- gimme money!"
Re:Tech scam? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Kinoki Foot Pads (Score:4, Insightful)
The issue there is that you can have a disclaimer which says that none of these claims have been evaluated, even if it's not actually legible due the the TV screen resolution.
The ad agency in general should never have been freed from the earlier regulations. Thanks to the Reagan administration, IIRC, advertising for medications is OK. You can also say whatever you want, as long as there's technically a disclaimer included, even if it's too long or small to be read.
Advertisers are liars, that's basically their job, and it always has been. The problem is that the watchers would rather watch TV and the cash flow into their bank accounts than actually regulate the industry.
The infinity razer springs to mind. It supposedly never requires a change of blades ever. Unfortunately, it doesn't break the laws of physics and as such the friction causes the blades to deteriorate. But the company is happy to sell you new blades. A cost which isn't disclosed in the ad, implying that it's free or of minimal cost.
Re:2 GHZ with 1 GB of Ram. No problem. (Score:1, Insightful)
Just imagine how much FASTER it would be with XP or Linux...
Audiophile Hardware (Score:5, Insightful)
These audiophile things offend me. I realize some people like to mess with their hardware to make it look pretty in their eyes (ricers, for example) but to claim such "behind-the-scenes" hardware mods do anything except drain the bank accounts of the ignorant is beyond the pale and simply a scam perpetrated by those who know better.
Re:Careful with the word "scam" (Score:4, Insightful)
Rubbish. Most electronic gadgets come with limited 30-day manufacturer warranties, with arduous repair/exchange requirements, and it's the retailer that offers an "extended warranty."
Here, we have the next datapoint in the series, giving product away for free! But only if you pick up the expensive "warranty."
The very fact that hardware manufacturers no longer stand behind their product means they now *anticipate* a high failure rate, which indicates they no longer design with reliability in mind. Gadgets have become disposable crap. Quality is no longer assured, it's avoided. Welcome the new revenue stream, "Quality Insurance," if you will.
*That*, my industrialist-named friend, is the "scam" nowadays. Manufacturers have shifted reliability and warranty concerns from their pocketbook to the consumers.
The day of the bathtub curve is over and done.
Re:Best Tech Scam (Score:3, Insightful)
No fair cutting the previous two sentences out of your quote; you either missed the point that they are directly connected to the sentence you quote or you're being deceptive.
That the whole "big comfortable ensconced business takes advantage of its overwhelmingly dominant position to screw the consumer" storyline completely fails when it's actually "three big uncomfortable rapidly-dying businesses refusing out of (apparently) sheer-bloody minded hatred for humanity to spend $2 to get 9 more mpg out of their cars, thereby making them more attractive for purchasing and possibly saving their asses, but still holding this magical technology back". (Not my numbers, so don't attack me on the $2 and 9mpg values.)
It's time for the milage-conspiracy-theorists to update their theories; it is neither in the best interests of the big companies nor the US government to continue to withhold the awesome milage technologies that we've been promised are being suppressed for so many decades anymore. Oooooooooor.... these technologies never existed in the first place. I know which way I would put my money, personally.
So, what's their motivation to spend money "they don't have to"? How about... they have to or they will die? (And since they can't...)
Re:Best Tech Scam (Score:3, Insightful)
My logic as to why they're a scam has nothing to do with their absence on manufactured cars and everything to do with an absence of any proof that they do work.
Go walk into a dealership, take a look at a $27,000 truck marked down to $18,000 and tell me Americans don't care about fuel efficiency now. In the era of $1.50 gasoline, you're right, Americans didn't give a damn. That ship sailed about 3 years ago.
Further, American manufacturers have almost no competitive advantage again Japanese and Korean autos, particularly in the sedan market. American cars depreciate like mad, often have to fight an oversupply issue because union contracts force production, and are still widely regarded as less reliable (even when most industry data says that they're about the same). If Ford, GM, or Chrysler could drop a basic sedan with 9 mpg better than a Camry, Accord, or Sonata, you don't think they would?
If Americans don't care about mileage now, why is the resale value of SUVs and Minivans taking a nosedive while the resale value of compact and subcompacts rise? Why is GM dumping brazillions of dollars into the Volt, a car that some estimate will sell for far more than most Chevys in its size range? Why did Ford bother making a hybrid Escape, or for that matter, why is it one of the best selling hybrids outside of the Prius? Why is the Prius worth mentioning at all - outside of the mileage, it's widely reviled in the automotive press as being a gadget-laden car that can't make up for the fact that it's zero fun to drive for an auto enthusiast. Why does the TDI Volkswagen Jetta still carry resale prices near what it sold for new?
Maybe Americans DO care about mileage, although it is sad that it took $3 and up gas for them to start caring.
Re:Careful with the word "scam" (Score:2, Insightful)
Don't hold your breath. I think there was a Constitutional amendment a few years back that gave all corporations the right to fuck consumers.
I mean, now Congress is trying to pass a law that gives our phone company immunity for breaking the law designed to protect us. "Consumer protection" my ass. It's been a few decades now since the companies in the Dow Industrial index and NASDAQ became the government of the US, and they put a big ol' bulls-eye on the back of every American.
Re:Carbon credits (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm not sure if you're serious or not, so I'll explain. When you buy a carbon credit, it doesn't remove CO2. Duh. What it does is increase the demand (and therefore the price) of carbon credits. Then, polluting factories that *have* to buy these things to continue operating are forced to pay more for them. At some point the price of having to buy carbon credits outweighs the price of just buying cleaner machinery/power plants/etc. The point of the whole carbon credit system is to use "free market forces" to achieve a goal (cleaner factories) by causing an artificial shortage (of carbon credits).
biggest tech scam-digital bits (Score:3, Insightful)
Treating easily replicated digital bits exactly the same as tangible commodities, by (relatively) newly written laws and by industry practice, creating a purely artificial scarcity business model.
Digital copying is a huge game changing tech advancement, and society has fallen flat on dealing with it. It is one of the few "star trek" level tech advances in the past few generations, yet we can see that business society has freaked out, it made a lot of the older practices virtually unneeded, and wants both to be able to use this tech freely for themselves, and also to be able to restrict it to others, entirely in their favor following the old and now obsolete so called "laws" of supply and demand as they might pertain to such products today. There is the potential for unlimited and "so close to free it doesn't matter" supply now, so they are trying to restrict it through DRM and laws and lawsuits such as they can still extract the same (or more) level of profits "per unit" as when back in the day they had to actually publish a dead trees book or stamp out a vinyl album, etc.
What will we be seeing when we can do such replication as easy with tangible objects, if we can't even embrace and adapt to digital copies? This effort is not only ill conceived it should be *embarassing* to humanity in general, why it is even contemplated. We all should be enjoying the big freedom to freely share and share alike and have a huge expensive burden of transferring knowledge and culture from each of us and to all of us removed from our backs so we can concentrate on the next tech hurdles that could ultimately lead to humans being able to universally exist without a huge amount of drudgery and dangerous labor. Isn't that some sort of goal anyway?
It won't happen all at once, but every time we lick a major tech problem, like we have with copies of this or that chunk of knowledge or culture, why should we -or even allow- go out of our way to create an additional problem just to perpetuate the old problem, which has been solved now? This is illogical and makes no long view historical sense. Unless we want the space aliens to start calling this the planet of the buggywhip traders (part of the embarrassing part)
disclaimer: all I can do is not be hypocritical about it. I have a ton of digital stuff on the net over the past decade, if anyone thinks it might be useful (stop laffing!), take a copy share a copy, go for it. I work ag in meatspace, I encourage everyone who is so inclined to get seeds and "grow their own copies", use open pollinated so you can share copy making potential, go for it, feed yourself and the planet as cheaply and nutritiously as possible, leading to all free someday when the tech gets better. I seek no DRM restrictions or patents or any of that other nonsense on your ability or desire to produce your own food, even if that means I might theoretically make less, I'll be much happier once everyone is fed for cheap or free, and will go on to do something else. And that's the best I think I can do right now with voluntary sharing.
Re:Carbon credits (Score:3, Insightful)
Been to northern California recently?
Re:Carbon credits (Score:1, Insightful)
Once the tree dies, its carbon goes right back into the air.
Is spontaneous combustion a big problem for trees in you area?
Living on the central coast of California, lately the answer to that is sadly yes.
Re:I like Vista (Score:3, Insightful)
Broken window fallacy, look it up
Re:Maybe the (Score:3, Insightful)
Then, he put in a driver CD to enable bluetooth functionality. It was absurd! Why crack the box open at all? My guess was to rationalize an obscene price by making a simple driver install an illusion of a "ZOMG hardware surgery performed by a engineer".
He would have to check if there was any hardware to install drivers for now wouldn't he?
Since you probably didn't bother to check if the price was reasonable either, nor if that which he needed to remove obstructed the slot he needed to stick the bluetooth card in, i'm giving him the benefit of the doubt.
Re:Maybe the (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Best Tech Scam (Score:5, Insightful)
The OP is trying to make himself seem like the good guy in the story. Here is what happened :
Guy goes to eBay. Guy finds lots of speakers that he thinks are worth lots of moolah. Guy thinks to himself, hey, maybe I can bid low and rip somebody off (legally, $1 auctions have been known to net you high-priced goods whenever christmas and easter fall on the same day). Guy proceeds to bid on stuff with impunity without researching what he's bidding on.
Guy waits a day.
Guy actually wins an auction for an item. He didn't bother to read the description and model number the first time. He did not bother to research the item before he placed a bid. Guy thinks he's being scammed because, hey, he actually got an item for the price he bid. Guy is panicking. Guy wants out of this deal. Guy comes up with "They are SCAMMING ! This is not the item I bid on ! This is sub-standard quality gear ! I know, let's be a douchebag and offer to relist the item, I don't want to be held accountable to the bid I entered !"
Seller, meanwhile, gets annoyed. Since he does not want negative feedback (which is bad, bad stuff on eBay), he tries to work out a deal that is to everybody's satisfaction. Buyer offered to pay relisting, so seller takes the deal. Buyer does not believe the fee. Buyer is getting annoying and costing a lot of money in time spent. Seller offers buyer to pay whatever he deems fair as relisting fee. Buyer declines, frothing at the mouth. Seller initiates dead-beat buyer proceedings, as ANY reputable seller would, seeing as how they are the ones being scammed out of their listing fee.
Seller ultimately decides to cut their losses and not deal with buyer anymore, not deal with eBay in this matter, not risk negative feedback, and just moves on, writing this off as the cost of doing business.
Meanwhile, douchebag buyer thinks he's won and really shown them. He hasn't been scammed. The speakers were listed on the eBay listing. He could have researched. Since he feels he is in the righteous right, he posts unanonymized eMails and tries to pass these guys off as scumbags ... I have yet to see any evidence of that. If he had been delivered a box full of bricks, we might have a story. He hasn't.