Desipio Message Board

Quote from: therick711 on April 23, 2010, 09:31:06 PM
I'm heading to Chicago for the first time during the Pittsburgh series (around May 13).  I'm looking for advice about tickets, namely, where I should try and sit and where and how to go about getting tickets.  I know it is probably a dumb question, but I would really appreciate anyone helping me with my ignorance.  Also any general ideas on what to do would be appreciated.  Thanks in advance.

For starters, I think these are the canonical Desipio threads on this and related topics (and there may be others)...

http://www.desipio.com/messageboard/index.php?topic=1375.0
http://www.desipio.com/messageboard/index.php?topic=1394.0

Also helpful if you have questions about Riga, Latvia.

The lead-up to Al admitting that he gets a cut is a triumph of Yellon aggression...

Quote from: kanderber$1.50?

That's it?

Why aren't ALL profits going to the foundation? Sorry Al, I'm not interested in donating to your bank account. I'll pass.

Quote from: cubsonWGN4everDid Al shoot your dog or something?

Quote from: kanderberNo, he didn't...

I like Al and love his site. Got nothing against the guy at all.

Maybe I'm missing something here, but donating just $1.50 seems awfully weak.

Quote from: Al YellonYeah, you're missing something here.

I am working on getting some more donations made available for this promotion.

Quote from: kanderberWhat am I missing?

It's a $22 T-shirt, of which you're donating $1.50 to Dempster's foundation. If you want to sell products to make money, go for it. I'm all for entrepreneurialism. But trying to pass it off as a "BCB Fundraiser" for Ryan Dempster's charity is incredibly weak.

Quote from: Al YellonYou have no idea of the costs.

Nor do I. This store isn't set up by me. It's a fundraiser. Bashing it with no information is... how do you say it? Incredibly weak.

So he asked. And what he was missing was that Al was planning to take a 40% cut of the profit before donating the rest.

But Al's totally willing to consider donating that, too, now that you know about it. Provided everyone tells him he should.

Quote from: HoSs.Thanks Al!

I appreciate your honesty. I think that if your $1 is going towards paying the cost of either advertising the shirt or the maintenance of the site, I'm all for it. But if it's pure profit, I think you should change the wording to the effect of "New BCB Shirts are out. Part of the proceeds will be donated to Dempster's fund."

It's a wording issue. When McDonalds donates a dollar from every sale to a charity (as an example) we are aware that they're still making a profit. If you call it a "fundraiser" there should be no profits...just money used to fund the project and the donation.

It's semantics but just throwing it out there. A great thing either way.

The cost of advertising the shirt or maintaining the site?

Al's legion of lick-spittles only dare criticize him with the softest of touches.

Quote from: Powdered Toast Man on April 23, 2010, 01:27:15 PM
...picture sharing on bookface and Shutterfly...

Kind of off-topic, but some unsolicited two cents...

I'm pretty sure Shutterfly (just like Snapfish, Kodak Gallery and various other photo sharing sites) doesn't allow full-resolution downloads of images you upload. Their business model is to lock you and the people you share your photos with into ordering prints through them. If anyone just wants to print them out themselves at home or do anything with them not offered through Shutterfly, it's either tough titties or time to bug you guys to email them the original pic separately.

My sister-in-law used to send pics of my nephew through Kodak Gallery and I found this lock-in pretty annoying. Now they just send new pics around as email attachments. Probably more of a hassle, and less elegant, but it gets the job done.

If it were me, I'd use Flickr. It allows you to share albums of photos, which can be viewed as slideshows, and you can enable full-res downloads if you so choose. I believe they even offer print fulfillment through corporate partner(s), but I've never used that so I'm not sure how it works.

(The trade-off with Flickr is that free accounts are limited to 100MB worth of uploads per month and they only display your 200 most recent uploads. For anything beyond that, you'll have to pony up $24.95 per year for a "Pro" account.)

Quote from: BH on April 23, 2010, 03:26:39 PM
I'm afraid to visit this site much, due to my fear of being addicted to it and buying way too much stuff, but a friend got a decent deal on a macbook pros on there.. it's a combination of ebay and a gambling site.

anyone try this site before? it looks crazy to me.. like a giant f'ng raffle... not sure how you could get a good deal in looking at the odds here.. but it looks fun.

I've seen it described as more or less a dollar auction in action, through which incremental rational choices lead to an ultimately irrational outcome.

Here's a good summary...

http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2008/12/profitable-until-deemed-illegal.html

QuoteI just watched an 8GB Apple iPod Touch sell on swoopo for $187.65. The final price means a total of 1,251 bids were placed for this item, costing bidders a grand total of $938.25.

So that $229 item ultimately sold for $1,125.90.

But that one final bidder got a great deal, right? Maybe. Even when you win, you can lose. Remember that each bid costs you 75 cents, while only increasing the price of the item 15 cents. If you bid too many times on an item -- or if you use the site's "helpful" automated BidButler service, which bids on your behalf -- you'll end up paying the purchase price in bids alone. For this item, if you bid more than 305 times, you've paid the purchase price -- and only raised the cost of the item by $45.75 total.

OK, so bidding a lot is a bad idea, so maybe we only bid one time, or a few times, and near the end of the auction? Great plan, except the auction is extended 15 seconds each and every time someone bids in those final seconds. There are absolute end dates for the auctions, but they're usually so far in the future that the auction will end through attrition long before they reach their end date. I've often wondered if eBay would implement this feature, as it would effectively end last second sniping, a huge problem for auction sites. Well, beyond the obvious problem with auctions, which is that the most optimistic person sets the price for everyone else.

There's something else at work here, though, and it's almost an exploit of human nature itself. Once you've bid on something a few times, you now have a vested financial interest in that product, a product someone else could end up winning, rendering your investment moot. This often leads to irrational decisionmaking -- something called the endowment effect, which has even been observed in chimpanzees. So instead of doing the rational thing and walking away from a bad investment, you pour more money in, sending good money after bad.

...

In short, swoopo is about as close to pure, distilled evil in a business plan as I've ever seen. They get paid for everything up front, and as they drop ship everything there's no inventory or overhead to worry about. It is almost brilliantly evil, in a sort of evil genius way. You can't stop people from endowment effect fueled bidding when they have the individual chance, however small it may be, to win a $2,000 television for $80 -- while collectively sending the house $10,000 or more.

It really is a brilliant scheme based on exploiting basic economic concepts.

Quote from: R-V on April 23, 2010, 12:56:40 PM

Quote from: Slaky on April 23, 2010, 12:46:22 PM

Quote from: R-V on April 23, 2010, 12:43:14 PM
Apparently there's a backstory to this "streets ahead" thing.

QuoteA Twitter used named "amyfairycakes" tweeted Mr. Harmon: "both Modern Family and Glee are streets ahead of your meta bullshit." Harmon used his next ten or so tweets to mock the phrase "Streets ahead," and mentioned it pretty regularly later.

Harmon also made an xtranormal video about it:

http://www.xtranormal.com/profile/2271283/

Funniest show on TV.

That's pretty awesome. I'm all for one meaningless person being mocked in a nationally broadcasted, prime-time television show.

Here's the full story

http://earnthis.net/2010/04/community-is-streets-ahead/

I now greatly look forward to viewing this episode and having a knowing chuckle at some meaningless person's expense.

Quote from: SKO on April 22, 2010, 10:28:29 PM

Quote from: fiveouts on April 22, 2010, 10:22:12 PM

Quote from: Slaky on April 22, 2010, 10:16:50 PM

Quote from: fiveouts on April 22, 2010, 10:14:28 PM

Quote from: Day Man on April 22, 2010, 09:56:20 PM

Quote from: Andy on April 22, 2010, 09:54:41 PM
Josh McDaniels was hired to direct an offense with Jay Cutler, Brandon Marshall and Tony Sheffler and in 10 months he's turned it into Kyle Orton, Brady Quinn and Tim Tebow.

That is a special kind of genius.

According to the ESPN geniuses, that's what Josh McDaniels is all about.  Character guys.  Good people.  Tebow is his kind of pick.

I'll give a little credit to Steve Young, who said (about the Broncos first pick):


"Let me get this straight.  You used a first round pick, and committed first round money, to a guy you hope will someday be almost as good as the guy YOU JUST TRADED?" 

He might not be as good as Cutler but he's got heart and WANT TO.

So how many of the doofuses in Chicago media will point out that the Bears received Jay Cutler and freed up money to get Julius Peppers, and gave up what has become Robert Ayers and Tim Tebow?

Yeah but in Kyle Orton and Tim Tebow the Broncos have two quarterbacks who JUST WIN GAMES. That means the Broncos will be undefeated.

And Brady Quinn?

Quote from: CT III on April 22, 2010, 10:11:13 PM
The Hawks have found the key to beating the Preds - don't allow them to score any goals.

Also: score several goals on them.

The Preds were lost in the third tonight.

Quote from: Slaky on April 22, 2010, 08:34:02 PM

Quote from: Dr. Nguyen Van Falk on April 22, 2010, 08:28:28 PM
Not quite the display of killer instinct we were hoping for so far, huh?

Not quite - but not quite the cauldron of suck I was dreading, either.

Good, solid second period.

Not quite the display of killer instinct we were hoping for so far, huh?

Quote from: Internet Apex on April 22, 2010, 07:18:47 PM

Quote from: Dr. Nguyen Van Falk on April 22, 2010, 07:17:01 PM

Quote from: Slaky on April 22, 2010, 07:12:47 PM
Brian Campbell will play tonight.

Any word on Burish and Bickell?

And what word from Slezak?

Quote from: SlezakCall me ;)

Quote from: Slaky on April 22, 2010, 07:12:47 PM
Brian Campbell will play tonight.

Any word on Burish and Bickell?

Fucking BBTN...

http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5124139

Quote from: Internet Apex on April 22, 2010, 05:13:37 PM

Quote from: Bort on April 22, 2010, 05:12:05 PM

Quote from: Internet Apex on April 22, 2010, 05:10:52 PM
In Halladay World do they still go with a four-man rotation? Because that would be pretty hard on those four Halladay's. Maybe Jamie Moyer can take every fifth start in Halladay World to save the four Halladay's arms for the postseason.

That would leave only 35 Theriots on the roster.

With four Halladays and Jamie Moyer, 35 Theriots is fairly ample.

134 wins, 35 big white hearts, can't lose.

Quote from: MAD on April 22, 2010, 01:56:46 PM

Quote from: Slaky on April 22, 2010, 12:37:46 PM
Campbell is a game-time decision but frankly, he'd have to get pushed in front of a bus not to play tonight.

Man I hope this move isn't "put-your-ace-starter-into-a-setup-role" desperation.  

I will be wincing every time Phantom #51 goes to the boards.

I'd seen it said that they were planning on a Game 5 return. I don't know how legit that is but, if true, that would mean they've only moved the timetable up two days.

But, yeah... I'll be holding my breath, too.

Quote from: BH on April 22, 2010, 01:08:50 PM

Quote from: Dr. Nguyen Van Falk on April 22, 2010, 01:05:53 PM

Quote from: Slaky on April 22, 2010, 12:39:07 PM

Quote from: R-V on April 22, 2010, 12:35:47 PM
http://www.balloon-juice.com/2010/04/22/steve-jobs-comes-out-of-the-calvinist-closet/

QuoteHowever, we do believe we have a moral responsibility to keep porn off the iPhone. Folks who want porn can buy and [sic] Android phone.

    "You know, there's a porn store for Android," Jobs said. "You can download nothing but porn. You can download porn, your kids can download porn. That's a place we don't want to go, so we're not going to go there."

Why didn't I get an Android!?

So... Just how badly do you want to be able to pay for that porn?

http://appadvice.com/appnn/2010/04/breaking-android-iphone/

Did you ever get an iphone?

No.