Reminds me of cafe in Japan where you order for person who comes after you and you eat what was ordered by person before you http://www.cabel.name/2009/09/kashiwa-mystery-cafe.html
Jonathan's Card
181–190 of 232 posts
Re: Jonathan's Card
#182Whenever I go through a toll bridge, I frequently pay the toll of the person behind me. I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all. For the Starbucks card, I would love to live in a society where this could work. Unfortunately it's one of those things where one anonymous bad egg will ruin (i.e., drain the account) for everyone else. Some way to restrict it to a community with less anonymity would help (…
> I frequently pay the toll of the person behind me In what country/state/city? Is that legal? In most (all?) US cities, it is illegal to fill other peoples' parking meters because that robs the city of fines. But maybe it's not a concern for tolls? > I've sometimes wondered if it propagates backward at all. At most, it would only reach exactly the car behind you. If that driver decides to pay the toll anyway (or the…
Some company in the Gold Coast (originally it was the city council, but they stopped, so someone else took up the slack) hires gold-bikini clad girls (called "Meter Maids") to put money into parking meters that are just about to expire. And leave an ad on your windshield. But then, it's a tourist city.
Re: Jonathan's Card
#183I hope Starbucks' system can handle the amount of activity this thing is eventually going to get! You're picking up a lot of steam.
Re: Jonathan's Card
#184Earlier quoted context omitted.
I heard that! Looks like Jonathan's social experiment is clashing w/ eBay's "people are good" philosophy... either that or there are a LOT of thirsty people all at the same time. Regardless, I'm glad we tried it; anyone have any theories of how it's being hacked?
I guess a way of doing it is to brute force the 8 digit CSC on the website and then transfer funds away from the card.
I hope Starbucks has some mechanism to prevent brute-forcing like this.
Re: Jonathan's Card
#185Earlier quoted context omitted.
It looks like things have died down. The steady state seems to be one where the balance is low and the transactions are small: http://dpaste.com/589113/ . That would imply that the card is currently being used as intended.
Looks like it only gets abused when there is a high balance that people can see on the twitter feed. A solution is to focus on coffee not money. "at least one coffee is available" or "buy someone a coffee, no coffee available" or "someone gave the gift of a coffee". Oh, FYI free coffee refills after purchase in shore.
Indeed, the monetary value makes things impersonal - great idea!
Re: Jonathan's Card
#186I don't really like how this is playing out, seems every time the card gets a decent amount of funds it gets takes in 1 lump sum. As people have said I think the buy a gift card thing ruins it, socially I don't think people would run up $100 purchase in one go unless they aren't buying coffee/ food.
If people donating to it's money is all going to a couple of people working the system for their own gain it doesn't really motivate people to give to it.
Re: Jonathan's Card
#187At this point it's clear that the card can be abused as there are people who for some reason think it's cool to suck the balance completely dry.
However, a company like Starbucks could set something up that is very similar to Jonathan's experiment but with a reduced abuse potential: just introduce a card with a limit per transaction. For example, if you could only charge 6 USD per purchase to the card, it would make life difficult for the cheaters.
Re: Jonathan's Card
#188This reminds me of something that happened when I was just a bit younger... My girlfriend and I were graduating from pharmacy school and she was applying for residency positions (yes, they have those for pharmacists). Well, she found out she got the one she really wanted and so that night we went out to a nice dinner to celebrate. We did it up like you would expect a happy couple to - nice bottle of wine, share an ap…
Great story. Will do the same going forward.
Re: Jonathan's Card
#189There's a cafe under the castle in Prague where for a decade or more, patrons can buy an extra coffee for someone else. A physical cup goes up on a line above the counter. Others, usually students, will come in, see the cups, and ask for the free coffee. A Czech architecture student told me she never paid for a coffee -- just took one from those donated. When I would visit the cafe, I would make sure to add another cup or two to the line.
Jonathan's Card didn't seems to work, and it makes me think (unsurprisingly) that what works at local levels as this cafe in Prague, can't work in the Extremistan that is the entire global community.
We're so used to all the benefits of this new, suddenly-made-close world: play poker with a guy in Singapore one moment, buy an antique off an old woman in Portugal the next, without moving anything but the mouse; that we forget the beauty and function that the local still provides.
Re: Jonathan's Card
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Please select a state or a province" I selected "Armed Forces Europe" ;)
Instead of virtually enlisting in the US Army I decided to just donate 10x what I tried to load on the card to a charity for Somalia. Thanks Jonathan for igniting my desire to give!
How is that Jonathans fault?