61–70 of 106 posts
Anyway - how much of the donation actually ended up feeding starving children I guess is neither here-nor-there; at the end of the day giving to charity is usually about how it makes you feel.
Or maybe they suddenly realized themselves that criminals could have been moving money through them for years. I'd say it's almost certain that a Starbucks lawyer pointed this out and the executives didn't like the idea. Watch for changes to Starbucks' money card program.
I am surprised at the hate against Sam Odio. Sam had the option of taking the gift card and selling the card and keeping the iPad. He exposed the vulnerability. If he hadnt you would have paid in for the card, but someone would have abused the system, and not disclosed it. Here is a though experiment. There is a widely used piece of software which has a vulnerability. There are bad guys who are going to abuse it. A g…
He's like the kid who destroys other kids' sandcastles to show that they were not so awesome after all. What's not to hate?
Scenario: I want to thank someone. Instead of giving them a gift card with an arbitrary dollar value that they will inevitably need to round out with their own money, I can give them a gift card and say "your next drink is on me."
And I get billed/deducted in the background. This would make Jonathans card work as intended.
Incidentally I have previously pitched this idea to employees at Starbucks corporate, to the Starbucks "idea" forums, etc over the last two years. My core scenario is I want to have a stack of these cards and give out free drinks to random people. :) $5 gift cards make things too cumbersome.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sam literally did the opposite of contribute to the experiment. There is nothing he could have done which would be more disruptive. The "experiment" was to see if a system based purely on goodwill, like take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, can survive. And in fact, it largely can , as the growing popularity of Jonathan's Card showed. That there are people who will abuse the system does not excuse the people who abuse the sys…
> Are you likewise surprised by the fact that people don't like the guy who comes up to the bowl labeled "Free Candy" and takes all of the candy // Well it's like a guy coming up to a bowl of free candy in a place where everyone already has their pockets stuffed with candy, then going to some other place where people haven't got any candy and giving the candy to them. Oh and the kicker, the guy who took all the free…
The merits of that action aside, we don't actually know that's what he's going to do with the money from eBay. We do know that he's going out of his way to convert it to cash, and we also know that he's gone out of his way to make himself seem less trustworthy. Given that cash is fungible and he wants to promote the idea of giving to charity, you'd think he would have given what he expected to make off the card to charity and pointed that out up front, if giving the money to charity were really his intention.
Here's a free idea for Starbucks: issue gift cards that only allow purchase of a specific product, like a tall chai/coffee. Scenario: I want to thank someone. Instead of giving them a gift card with an arbitrary dollar value that they will inevitably need to round out with their own money, I can give them a gift card and say "your next drink is on me." And I get billed/deducted in the background. This would make Jona…
Having it be $2 was a lot more useful than having it be for a large coffee - I don't drink coffee, and I ended up using the $2 to subsidize a bagel.
While Sam's post was admittedly a bit snarky, and his actions did seem a bit 'scummy.' But Sam simply contributed to the experiment. Surely others were going to take advantage of the system. While his actions may run counter to the 'spirit of the experiment,' it's fair game and part of the experiment. Stark didn't enforce any sort of rules for a reason. People who participated in the experiment can continue to pay it…
Sam literally did the opposite of contribute to the experiment. There is nothing he could have done which would be more disruptive. The "experiment" was to see if a system based purely on goodwill, like take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, can survive. And in fact, it largely can , as the growing popularity of Jonathan's Card showed. That there are people who will abuse the system does not excuse the people who abuse the sys…
> Sam literally did the opposite of contribute to the experiment. There is nothing he could have done which would be more disruptive.
>
> The "experiment" was to see if a system based purely on goodwill, like take-a-penny, leave-a-penny, can survive.
I think this actually parallels how many entitlement programs work: they are set up for truly altruistic reasons, but bad actors enter the program and make it difficult for the program to remain sustainable. A subset of people will always manipulate a system where they can get something for nothing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
No, it means "from the family Odio". Snopes explains this sort of thing better than I can: http://www.snopes.com/business/misxlate/nova.asp
The word "odio" in Italian means "hate" or "hatred".