Real-life reenactments of The Far Side comics.
So what do you make of the Swoopo auction site? Ingenious business plan, or scam? Both? See more discussion here and here.
Covers of Leonard Cohen’s haunting classic “Hallelujah” now hold the number one and two slots on the British charts. But weirdly, it’s on the British Christmas charts. There’s nothing remotely Christmas about that song.
Former Alabama governor, now convicted felon Don Siegelman talks about his prosecution, his time in prison, and Karl Rove’s role in it all.
Not sure about the source, but if true, these are some pretty sweet shenanigans.
I appreciate the intent of this piece, but my impression over the last eight years is that the career guys at the Pentagon have actually been fighting DoD mission creep, as well as a lot of the other crap the Bush administration has tried to pull. Most of the bad ideas have come from the civilian political appointees.
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TheAgitator.com
I would normally E-mail this to Radley, but I can’t do that right now.
I was on Live Leak, and saw this video of a dog that had broke through ice. As usual the cops are completely useless, and stand around doing nothing. The dogs owner gets mad attempts to retrieve the dog himself. He ends up getting arrested. As they are cuffing him the fire rescue team shows up.
If you read the caption he was charged with failure to obey a lawful order and obstruction of police and fire operations.
Maybe, but I’m not sure it was a lawful order, obviously the police were not conducting any operations, and the fire rescue arrived after his arrest.
This is quite similar to the recent man drowning while the cops arrested his son for attempting to save his father.
http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=be6_1229884422
Sorry for this link post Radley, I just can’t run mail right now.
That has to be one of the most misinformed, and borderline idiotic articles I’ve seen in a long time on similar subjects.
1) The intelligence community has always been a part of the defense establishment. The only agency that hasn’t been part of the DoD since the reorganizations that occurred under the National Security Act of 1947 is the Central Intelligence Agency, and that was to keep the SecDef from having all of the keys to the kingdom. NRO, NSA, NGA and DIA have always been part of the DoD, been heavily controlled or influenced by military personnel, and that goes back well into the early 19th century with our military’s informal espionage in times of war.
2) The very reason that the military has had a hands off policy toward the opium trade in Afghanistan is to win the “hearts and mind” campaign there. You don’t raze a country’s number one cash crop and wonder why the farming communities hate your guts.
3) As much as I disapprove of the militarization of American police, Iraqi and Afghani police have to be better armed and equipped than ours because of their more dangerous circumstances. It would be unrealistic to limit them average cop in those countries to a six shooter, and the issue of them turning into armed rogues is more of a threat with their armed forces than the police.
4) What is the difference between a retired general or admiral heading up a national security post, and a “civilian?” Both are civilians. However, the former has command experience, and the latter is probably some think tank wonk who has never gotten any practical experience with national security issues.
The ‘Hallelujah’ thing is because a british music talent show always declares a winner at the right time for their first record to come out with the christmas chart in mind (for profile and sales). The latest winner did a cover of Hallelujah and reraised interest in the song in general.
So, it’s not a coincidence that it’s the Christmas number 1 and 2, but it’s not because of anything to do with Christmas.
In fact, Jeff Buckley (who’s version trumps all others) said that Hallelujah is about sex between two people who cannot love each other more.
“Most of the bad ideas have come from the civilian political appointees.”
I disagree. Like any other organization, there are numerous competing factions in the permanent beauracracy. Some want to have policy A, other factions want policy B, C, or D. All a change in political appointees does is open up one faction to press for their ideas to be put into practice. For example, you think torture was dreamed up just by Darth Cheney and his staff? There were plenty of military personnel and civil servants who wanted to “take the gloves off”, and just needed the cover the “right” set of leaders could provide. That is an extreme example, but in general that is true for any agency and any set of policies you care to name, from the monumental to the mundane.
When Obama comes in and replaces the political appointees they will of course set certain policies, and promote people who agree with their ideology, but the factions that believed in the old policies aren’t just going to disappear or retire en masse, they will bide their time for the next administration. The factions who suddenly find themselves in favor will be ready with Powerpoint slides just filled with “new” ideas. Oh, the civilian appointees will get the credit (or blame) but make no mistake, only rarely were they the originators of the ideas and polices in question.
“Not sure about the source, but if true, these are some pretty sweet shenanigans.”
Way too much work. Taking a picture of the license plate and printing a nice glossy picture of it and taping it over your own plate will do the job just fine.
I’ve never heard of Swoopo.
It took me about 30 seconds to figure out that it’s a total scam.
Come on! 75 cents to bid… then the price of the item goes up by 15 cents.
This is just PREYING on human stupidity. At what price does a product become viable? For example… if a 42 inch plasma TV starts at 15 cents, what dumbasses are bidding on that? Don’t they know they forfeit 75 cents just to raise the price 15 cents so another dumbass can spend 75 cents to get it another 15 cents?
The only way I can think this works is if a percentage of people trying it, through a process of self delusion, read that their bids only cost them money if they win the item.
Looked at Swoop some more…
OMG, this is the biggest scam ever.
There is no way this is even being run by the rules they say they use. They have to be using autobidders (Not the ‘bidbutler’ they let you use… but actual shill accounts) just to keep the bidding going until the price reaches a reserve level.
Here’s an example, and, no doubt… their bread and butter….
A Sony VAIO laptop with a 18.4 inch screen loaded with Vista… gotta be worth over a grand…
Current ‘bid’? 18.25
But! This is a ‘penny auction’, where every bid only raises the price one cent.
So, for every 75 cents bidders pay, the item goes up by one cent.
In addition, there cannot be an internet delay of more than 15 seconds, ever. Or the last bid gets the item.
Swoopo is not a scam, in my opinion, but a well thought out bussiness model. The math works out that if they sell an item for 1/6 of what they paid for it, they break even. Yes, people have to pay .75 cent per bid, and can end up paying alot to loose an auction, but the site makes that pretty obvious. If you get lucky and win, you can get some great deals, and the company make a bunch of money.
It works great for me. I am stationed in Europe, and can get stuff awfully cheap in the morning, since it is the middle of the night back state-side, and no one is bidding.
Not a scam, huh?
Let’s see… Oh! There’s that same ‘auction’ again. It’s up to 23.54 now. (It was 18.25 in post 8, about 14 minutes ago.)
So, in 14 minutes, Swoopo earned 396.75 and the people bidding had 0% chance of ‘winning’ the item.
Oh… sorry, that was 50 minutes. Radley, do you live on a boat in the Atlantic? Like… with your own special time zone?
Not a scam, huh?
Let’s go back to that auction… Oh! It’s still running.
Since I started looking at it, at 18.25… it’s up to 28.51
That’s 1026 bids. At 75 cents per. Swoopo has profited 765.50 on the bids since 1:41 Agitator time.
There is no way this isn’t a scam. I’m sure they toss a product out for cheap once in a while to cover the tracks… but they’re making a killing off people that don’t understand exactly what’s going on.
A recent 18.4 inch Vaio went for $190.60 which if it started at a penny meant there were 19060 bids. At .75 cents per that meant that Swoopo sold that $1500 laptop for $14480. So I’m sure they can afford to sell many thingswith those kinds of mark-ups.
However, from the buyer’s side lets say he put in 100 bids, that cost him $75 plus the 190.60 he just paid $265.60 for a $1500 computer. I’m thinking he felt like he got a great deal. Even at 200 or 300 bids he still gets a massive discount.
As long as the item goes for a substantial discount but with many bids both sides win.
Bob,
It’s no stupider than playing the lottery. In fact, with Swoopo, if you manage to pay $2k for that Vaio, you still get a computer.
Warren,
If it wasn’t a penny auction, then that $190.60 final price brought in $1143 for Swoopo.
All you do is take the final price and multiply by 6 to get what Swoopo brings in on an ordinary auction. For penny auctions, you multiply by 76.
Warren, that’s how PONZI schemes basically work, too.
Thousands of people are duped into putting in .75 cent bits that cannot possibly win, then a few lucky people that got in on the bidding at the tail end (And you cannot know exactly when the ‘tail end’ will be.. ) get a chance at a cheap item.
‘Both sides win”? How do you figure this? One guy gets a laptop for 190 bucks. Swoopo scores a 13,000 dollar profit. and 19059 other bidders got the shaft. Looks like one winner (Swoopo), one patsy (The ‘winner’), and a giant sack of losers.
50 years from now, long after this company is gone… people will be being indicted for running ‘Swoopo schemes’.
thomasblair:
“It’s no stupider than playing the lottery. In fact, with Swoopo, if you manage to pay $2k for that Vaio, you still get a computer.”
While I agree that playing the lottery is stupid, and that you should be putting your efforts into earning money instead…
There are HUGE differences here. The lottery is a sweepstakes, there are X tickets that cost Y money. Each ticket is equal. There are systems in place to prevent abuse (Like printing 10 times more tickets than you base the odds on)
It’s not a sweepstakes, it’s not even gambling… where at least there is a consistent probability of winning an honest game (Only 6 sides to a die)
This is a next generation ponzi scheme. It’s brilliant… it puts it’s con right in front of you, with a full explanation of how you’ll be worked. Then plays on greed and human weakness to make it work.
Ooo! Let’s go back to that Laptop ‘auction’!
It’s up to 34.09
Wow! You can score a laptop for 34.09! Who doesn’t want a 1500 dollar laptop for 34.09? And the 75 cents it costs to bid, that is.
OMG! Only 8 seconds left! Better bid!
See the psychology working here? What do you think the ACTUAL CHANCES of winning this laptop are right now?
Also, how easy would this ‘auction’ be to rig? Then release the rigging at … say… 100 bucks? At 34.09 Swoopo has already pulled in 1000 bucks more than it’s worth, without even selling it.
Hell, Look! I’ll rig it with one line of code:
if ((timer <= 2) && (bids == 0)) AddFakeBidder();
Woo. They could sell 1500 dollar laptops all day for 100 bucks per, and still have a 500% profit margin.
It’s brilliant! Criminal Mastermind level brilliant. Also totally unethical.
Bob,
People know what they are getting into, since you have to buy your bids first then use them they alread know how much extra they might have to pay if they win.
If both sides freely agree then it is a fair transaction.
Yes, all but one person ends up losing on the deal but that is their choice.
You are saying they might be rigging the auctions? I’ll need proof of that.
I can’t prove they’re rigging the auctions, just pointing out that it would be easy and very profitable to do so. But since EVERY business is completely ethical and would never try to cheat, that could never happen, right?
And it’s NOT a fair transaction. One side has been duped into thinking they have a chance of ‘winning’. They are not told the actual chances of winning, they are simply shown a game that looks like other games with different rules.
This would be like the state of Virgina having a lottery, but not disclosing how many tickets were printed.
Swoopo is not a scam. The creators aren’t forcing anyone to bid and then providing something other than described. It’s a game of chance heavily weighted in the house’s favor.
Freakonomics blogged about this one.
“However, from the buyer’s side lets say he put in 100 bids, that cost him $75 plus the 190.60 he just paid $265.60 for a $1500 computer. I’m thinking he felt like he got a great deal. Even at 200 or 300 bids he still gets a massive discount. ”
This is true but the same can be said for the buyer of a winning lottery ticket. He can get millions for just a 1 dollar investment. It does seem basically like gambling to me. Calling it an auction instead of a lottery seems misleading.
This shit is an utter scam, and they’re fixing the numbers, too.
Tragically… I have no proof.
But for the last few hours I was looking at the site pretty hard…
Of the dozen auctions I was analyzing, one sold.
http://www.swoopo.com/auction/nikon-d90-12-3-mp-dslr-camera-with-18-10/131374.html
For the entire time I was looking, Fluffypolish was the main bidbutler account. Others would try… but they would die. Fluffypolish would always be on top. This went on for HOURS.
According to the winning post… Fluffypolish only used 224 bids. NO WAY IN HELL! I dropped 50 bidbutlers on that auction myself… And I was only a drop in the bucket.
And… During that ENTIRE time? Rube after rube dropped bids on an auction they could not POSSIBLY win. It was fixed.
At BEST, 224 bids would last an hour (Perfect usage, once every 15 seconds) But I watched Fluffypolish own the auction for 3 hours.
The final price? 145.32. On a penny auction. Swoopo made 10,899 dollars on that deal.
This is a scam.
“It’s brilliant! Criminal Mastermind level brilliant. Also totally unethical.”
Unethical? Yes. But brilliant? I am shocked anyone would fall for this unusually obvious sucker bait after all the economic reaming we’ve just endured…
“Unethical? Yes. But brilliant? I am shocked anyone would fall for this unusually obvious sucker bait after all the economic reaming we’ve just endured…”
Then sir, you underestimate the general stupidity of the population. just think of how stupid the average person is… and remember that half of them are stupider than that.
Here’s a smoking gun right here:
‘Auction’ on the US Swoopo for a Sony Laptop:
http://www.swoopo.com/auction/sony-vaio-vgn-aw110j-h-18-4-laptop-vista/133674.html
Simultaneous ‘Auction’ on the UK site for an Acer laptop.
http://www.swoopo.co.uk/auction/acer-aspire-8930g-18-core2duo-laptop/133674.html
They’re exactly the same auction. Using exactly the same bids from exactly the same people.
So, just for fun… I put in a bid on the Sony one, my bid appeared right away as “Your Bid!”
It also appeared on the Acer one as my user name. But the Acer laptop does not appear in my list of auctions I’m bidding on.
This is evil brilliance at it’s best! They’re scamming millions of dollars with utter impunity.
From this site I find an explanation of the ’2 auctions’ phenomenon from The one and only Chris Bauman! He runs the US division of Swoopo from his plush office in Cupertino, CA.
Post from Chris Bauman, on Sept. 30, 2008.
*** Disclaimer – I work for Swoopo***
How is localizing a website’s language a case of fraud?
And, to speak to your latest fraud theory about different laptops under the same auction ID – You are correct that there is only one winner. However, it is based upon availability of the product in the country in which someone is bidding. In the case of Auction ID: 104131 we placed comparable wide screen laptops under the same auction. If you were to go to amazon.co.uk and try to find “Sony VAIO VGN-FW140E” the results would come back negative. But, perform the same search on amazon.com and voila! It is available in the US
So, he confirms it… it’s not an accident. It’s the same auction but with a different prize depending on what country the winning bid originates from. You do not win both prizes.
See the genius here? It’s not technically ‘fraud’ because there is only one auction, they’re just combining all the bids in a … sort of ‘shill by proxy’ scheme.
Oh wait. That is fraud. It’s called “Combination In Restraint of Trade” covered under the Sherman anti-trust act. Of course, I’m no lawyer, so I could be in error there.
Doh! Forgot to add the link to the site I got Mr. Bauman’s explanation from:
http://www.gadgetell.com/tech/comment/pay-to-bid-meet-swoopocom/
I noticed that one item ($730 some sort of phone/ computer!) was way over (almost $800) its retail value when two bid butlers were bidding against each other. That told me enough, right there! And the charge for bidding was, obviously, going to be very lucrative for the company, and at the same time, ending up to be very costly for the bidders, who, as with many businesses, get to be the biggest losers!
Regarding the British Christmas charts, they’re not actually tracking Christmas songs…they’re tracking singles released in the Christmas season. Some of them have to do with Christmas, some of them don’t. It’s just one of the Brits’ quirky little things…figuring out who can release the top song at Christmas.
Here’s a list of all of the top British Christmas singles since 1952. You’ll notice that several of them have nothing to do with the season (like “Bohemian Rhapsody”…which made it twice)
http://www.philbrodieband.com/muso_xmas-no1-hits.htm
Michael,
Yeah! They do that with high end phones a lot, basically, they use the ‘fixed price’ auction style … meaning that the end price for the item is fixed at some ludicrously low value, like 40 dollars for a 600 dollar phone.
It doesn’t matter what the bids go up to, the price is ‘fixed’. Obviously, that’s not an auction at all, it’s a gambling game where the prize is the phone.
To pad the bets, they place the same auction in all localizations… Germany, UK, Spain, USA, then combine all the bets into one total, but project a different actual value in each locality (3 different currencies, Mark ,Euro, Dollar.)
So… when the ‘auction’ ends for whatever reason they sell the phone to the winner for 40 dollars or 20 Euros, or whatever the hell the Marks one is… like “33,50″.
So, if the ‘bidding’ goes up to 800 dollars, that just means that 5333 bids were placed. The number of bids has nothing to do with the price of the item.
Further, since there is absolutely no transparancy as to where the bids came from… they could come from the US, the UK, Germany, or a clandestine bid factory in China… bid padding would be really easy and essentially undetectable.
So… I gotta respect the kahones on these people.
Where else can you earn over 5000 bucks by auctioning off 1000 dollars in cash? What is that… like an eleventybillion percent return on your investment? it’s not like they actually had to put up 1000 dollars… They’ll just pay out of the freakin’ incoming bids.
Just the fact that they’re saying “We’re auctioning off cash! And we’re gunna make a killing doing it!” is enough.
I bow and scrape to the evil geniuses at Swoopo.
http://www.swoopo.com/auction/-1-000-cash-/134919.html
Oh, and in case you look at that, and the wagering (I can’t even say bidding) is over 1000 dollars? This is a “100% off” auction, meaning the whoever places the winning wager gets the cash for no additional charge. (I.E. ’100% off’) The only money involved is the bi… wagers.
I’ve actually been convinced by both Bob and some other stuff I read that Swapoo is a scam.
That whole “one item, four countries” thing is what did it. Also the bids may be aggregated from two different types of items, say a lap-top and a flat screen TV.
So, yes avoid this site.
That is not the same as saying the auction method itself should be illegal.
So. I’ve concluded my analysis of the site. I made an account, spent some money in the interest of science… (Ok… I was simply entertaining myself… but it was fun!)
Their system is highly unethical and is scamming unsuspecting people. It’s almost certainly illegal because it aggregates bids, producing what I call “Bid duplication by unauthorized proxy” which is a shill scheme under anti trust law. (Again, I’m not a lawyer.)
The scam is brilliant. It’s Evil Genius grade. But it’s not undetectable. A focused, peer collaborated effort could extract the data from the ‘auction’ stream data to construct evidence of the scammage.
I believe the scam itself is in 3 components. Basically, the technical model of the ‘auctions’ (They’re not auctions, they’re games. And I’ll call them such from now on.) is essentially defective. The internet is generally fast, and generally has high bandwidth, but you never get 100.00% connection. Timeouts occur, rolling outages occur, routers break and are replaced by backup routers. These delays take seconds to correct, but cause momentary delays in data transmission.
Scam component 1:
You cannot expect a system that demands no delays like this. If a new bid doesn’t show up in the reset time (10 to 20 seconds) the game is closed and a winner chosen. Right there, the server has to be programmed to ‘stretch’ the clock to get new bids in to compensate for the timing drops in the internet.
Scam component 2:
Statistically speaking, any system relying on random occurrences will experience dips and hills. A series of coin flips will sometimes result in many ‘heads’ or ‘tails’ in a row. It’s just the nature of the beast. The random element here is the average number of bids entering the system in time to continue the auction. If you watch a game, you notice that there is an average number of incoming wagers in the time frame of the game… It’s often 5 or less. I assert that it’s impossible that many of the games have enough average wagers to GUARANTEE that at least one will always hit. I assert that without a system that inserts ‘fake’ wagers when needed to continue the game the games will cancel prematurely.
Scam Component 3:
The BidButler. The BidButler’s mechanics appear to be designed to do two things. First, allow a system to automatically insert bids to compensate for components 1 and 2. Second, to create a mechanism that allows one account (Or a series of colluding accounts) to utterly dominate a game.
BidButlers are not equal. In any game at any one time, there can be only one ‘Alpha BidButler’. That BidButler will always trigger after the competing BidButlers, guaranteeing that it is the active account in the position to win. Further, if a second BidButler is introduced, they will ‘fight’, with the BidButler having the deepest pockets (Most bids to use) winning. The game time will be rolled forward for each BidButler interaction, thus removing that game from the “About to finish!” list.
Bob
Thanks for the information. But, as noted by others, they were making about $3800 through the 75 cents/bid. Great way to make money! I know they have expenses, but I would bet they are making a good living! I wonder if they will be questioned on their “business” practices!?
I wonder how Visa and Mastercard view Swoopo, and what MCC code they have assigned them.