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Amazon Veteran On the Record and Off the Leash 82

Posted by michael from the dogs-everywhere,-running-up-and-down-the-aisles dept.
krow writes: "Mike Daisey, an X Amazon employees has put up some really humorous stuff about the company on his website. A trailer to a film, information about a play that is being done in Seattle and more is there. This is pretty funny to anyone who has worked in the web industry for the last few years. Serves them right, hiring all of those college grads, and then laying them off."
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Amazon Veteran On the Record and Off the Leash More

Amazon Veteran On the Record and Off the Leash

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  • WTF? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What the hell kind of sense does that make? It is people like you that ruin the world. With that "Give me, give me, give me." attitude.

    They obviously fucked up. If they give it to you, fine. If they correct their mistake, suck it up. You knew they fucked up. Only a dumbass would think they were really going to sell it for that low of a price. As for buying it at the current price and disputing it, that is another level of assholishness alltogether. Damn you bastards.

  • Re:What to post. (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Ah.

    Geek bondage.

  • Re:Ha ha, real funny guys... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    TO everyone who takes that comment seriously: losen up (particularly if you're British). It was supposed to be bitingly sarcastic, thus the long winded story (which some might consider a troll, and I have learned not to trust moderators with subtleties) about how things are vs. how they should be. And yes, I am graduating in two months, have no respect for philosophy majors, but I do have respect (and pity) for those continuing in their education.

  • Amazon $9.99 glitch (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @10:23PM (#331418)
    Speaking of Amazon...

    two nights ago I saw Amazon selling 256 MB of PC133 Viking RAM at $9.99. Obviously this was a glitch, so I wasted no time and took advantage of it. I was ecstatic, but I didn't want to be too greedy -- so I only ordered two sticks (a friend bought three, another friend ordered two plus two 1GB modules (which, incidentally, were also selling for $9.99)). Placed the order. Got the confirmatory email. For kicks, I checked the web page again -- the price of the 256 MB modules had mysteriously risen to $329.99. Waited two days. Tonight I received an email from Amazon telling me that my order had been cancelled and that Amazon had not charged my credit card. But I would be getting a $15 gift certificate, good towards any purchase on Amazon (hurry, this incredible offer expires soon!) I understand that a *lot* of people tried to place orders during the glitch's transiprance. Perhaps that spoiled the broth. Anyhow, it was fun while it lasted.

    Now maybe if e-business would check *before* sending out confirmatory emails...

    useless rebates.

    RKatz

  • Ha ha, real funny guys... (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @10:33PM (#331419)
    No, this can't be true! Everyone knows that if you go to college, you graduate and then get a job automatically (well except those who go on for more school or are philosophy majors). Then you work at that company (while getting in Nerf fights every day, and causing mischief and mayhem between them) until another one sees what fine work you do, and hires you for more money with more stock options and perks (and better-looking co-workers). The cycle continues until you retire early at 40, then decide to invest your millions into "side projects" that you've been meaning to do all along. So a few startups later and the federal government is asking you for loans. You tell them you will loan them money if you can drive their top-secret 'mechs (because when I get that old, they better have mechs dammit!) and they say yes, so you invite a bunch of your old college buddies over (who are all rich like you except that guy in philosophy who still thinks computers are for geeks) and you compare the real thing to Mechwarrior 46, and then decide they need a little bit more work, but that the government is making good progress. So you loan them the money afterall and then pause to reflect on all the goodness you've done in your life.

    So what's this I hear about work sucking? I don't believe it. (And I've got another two months of covering my eyes and ears before I get bitchy, decide my employer sucks, and then wait until my NDA is up so that I can publicly trash my ex-employer in a desperate attempt at attention because I'm so distraught that everything didn't turn out like it was supposed to) I hope somebody will notice me and reach out to me, perhaps employ my sorry ass before I am forced to jump from the top of my two-story low-rent apartment complex in a weak attempt at suicide because I wasn't noticed by my bitching and moaning about the real world.

    Moderators, I leave it up to you.
  • Yeah, I "bought" 10 sticks of 256MB, and 2 of the 1GB SIMMS (normally $879, marked for $19.99).

    I figure $15 for about 5 minutes of work ain't too bad. You can't actually expect them to send me 1600$+ worth of ram for 40$ can you?

    Get real.

  • This has been in the Seattle Weekly a coupla times now. The website is for a play of the same name, which may or may not still be running in downtown Seattle. It was supposed to be a mediocre play, but a good commentary on dot-bomb life.
  • The glue between apache and oracle is written in C and C++. It is enormous, it is an architectural nightmare, and its name is obidos. Compiled (for the Alpha), it weighs in at over 150M, and compiling it typically takes more than 12 hours. It is monolithic, and a new instance is created with each apache child. It has its very own garbage collector, and its very own web-scripting language (think asp or php, only much, much worse). The code was forked for the auction site, so it has an evil twin named varzea that has to be maintained in parallel. It is, without question, the biggest waste of good programmers that I have ever seen.

    The company also uses a mountain of perl, some java, a trace of lisp, and the usual tangle of shell scripts, but none of that is "live" on the site. What you are looking at on their homepage is delivered through the world's most bloated apache module.

    (In fairness to apache, it should be noted that obidos was originally written to netscape's nsapi).
  • That regarless of what confirmations we have, Amazon reserve the right to cancel the order at any time before charging your card. You aren't going to win this one...
  • IANAL, but I've read that if the company sends out a confirmation, they are legally obliged to fulfil the order. Which makes sense.
  • The interesting part of the email was that Viking was apologising for the pricing mistake, not Amazon.com. Reread it again and see how it is an e-mail from Amazon.com with a quoted e-mail from Viking in the lower half of the body.

    Apparently Amazon.com has a system that allows non-Amazon parties to update pricing.

  • Yea, no kidding. I was gonna say "lighten up", but I figured it would be in bad taste....
  • Man, none of you guys actually watched the video! It's really very funny and enlightening.

    I saw the video. I hardly consider random musing by idiots funny and enlightening.

  • Obviously you werent paying attention when composing your post. Does that mean I get to reap the benefit of my paying attention and flame you?

    No. Because in a civil society, I gently point out your mistake and get on with my life.

    Oh wait. This is slashdot.

  • Re:Amazon $9.99 glitch (Score:3)

    by Dredd13 ( 14750 ) <dredd@megacity.org> on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @10:36PM (#331429) Homepage
    The answer to that is to make a big stink about it. Claim you never got the "oops" letter and demand to know when they're going to ship the memory you paid for. When they refuse, order it at the current price, then dispute it with your credit card company.

    That's what happened with UAL a month or so ago, and most of the credit card companies told their customers "pay the higher rate if you must, but call us immediately after you get the flight completed, and we'll chargeback the difference". UAL finally realized they were screwed, and "decided to honor the sales they made"... amazon will have to do the same thing.

  • I just got done watching the whole movie and as a failed dot-com refugee I must say it was damn, damn funny, and absolutely cathartic. That little section on Pets.com cut right to the meat of the matter. Now my friends and I have something besides Office Space to watch when we sit around and shoot the breeze about the bad old days of free bagels.

    You've inspired me to dig out my digital camcorder again and have some fun. Thanks Mike!

  • This guy is retarded (Score:3)

    by ig88 ( 19976 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @11:02PM (#331431)
    This guy's "humor" is incredibly uninsightful and unfunny. His "wacky" views on the amazon and dot com culture may have been insightful FOUR YEARS AGO, but they're tired, stupid, and redundant now.

    And as if that wasn't enough, his pining over his lost love for Jeff Bezos is equally pitiful and speaks to his intelligence (or lack thereof).

    Basically, his whole shtick can be summed up as: "I joined what I thought was this wonderful cult called Amazon.com, but then it turned out to be not so great!"

    The one thing this guy is good at, is self-promotion. His site makes that abundantly clear.
  • Everyone knows that if you go to college, you graduate and then get a job automatically

    Some opinions [universitysecrets.com] differ. If one was really cynical, you might suspect that governments force people into schools/universities to get them off the official unemployment rolls and improve their administration's statistics. Given that computerisation is going to wipe many low-mid range white collar jobs out, things are going to get worse for the unskilled and general paper-pushers.

    There's a reason why they call it work no matter how much the bosses try to dress it up.

    LL

  • Is this the famous slashdot "write the whole post twice" glitch? And did I ever get a confirmation email? NAH!

    Dave
  • >Don't you guys ever read the fine print? Amazon has
    >a clear policy which states that they are not
    >responsible for errors in pricing.

    Reminds me of the sticker I saw on the back of a gravel truck yesterday, "Not responsible of broken windshields". The problem, of course, is that they are responsible for ANYTHING that falls off their truck. But they think just saying they aren't responsible gets them off the hook.

    That said, Amazon is not responsible for errors, any more than a local store is responsible for every misprint in an ad. If this were an intentional tactic, then that would be another story.

  • Re:Amazon $9.99 glitch (Score:3)

    by Monte ( 48723 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @06:41AM (#331435)
    I have since been compensated with an incredibly lame $15 gift certificate, which just about guarantees me buying something for more than $15 because, hey what can you get with $15?

    Here's [amazon.com] a book for only $12.00, that should leave enough for shipping.

    I'm not looking for a free lunch,

    You sure fooled me.

    I just want Amazon and Viking to be held accountable and not sweep us under the gift certificate rug.

    You want them to be held accountable to the tune of what, a hundred bucks, because of a typo? Do you really think that's reasonable?

    You found a mistake, and they're giving free stuff for your trouble. I think you got a pretty good deal. Maybe not as good as you wanted, but still...

  • rather funny [ddj.com] Indeed! I laughed all the way through. Definitely deserved a posting to the front page.

    I didn't even bother to check out the videos on the site attached to this story because every page looked the same. I guess its the video thats supposed to be funny, the site is nothing but marketing hype.
    ---
  • We could always use them to power the computers in the beowulf cluster. Hey, it worked in The Matrix...

  • Re:ok... (Score:3)

    by Elbereth ( 58257 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @02:54AM (#331438) Journal
    Nope, not really... just some stupid guy with a bone in his mouth talking about how he and some other people worked for 12 hours a day and thought they weren't being taken advantage of.

    Huh?

    I wish I could find people like that. I'd build up an army of them, then take over the world.

  • Re:Amazon $9.99 glitch (Score:4)

    by Elbereth ( 58257 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @02:52AM (#331439) Journal
    You tried to cheat someone out of something, and they figured it out? And then had the gall to offer you a gift certificate to keep your business? The assholes! BOYCOTT TIME!

  • Re:Amazon $9.99 glitch (Score:3)

    by radja ( 58949 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @01:14AM (#331440) Homepage
    here in europe too, although there is a provision that if the advertised price is ridiculous
    (brandnew pentium 3, 1GHz, 256MB mem. for only $9.99) the company is not held by it. if it would be a normal, but very very very low price, they're fucked.

    //rdj
  • Offtopic??? ARe you nuts? man, the guy is sitting
    there with a bone in his mouth..! Obviously you moderators suck at getting puns or something
  • mike -
    just watched your whole webcast. i hate realplayer, but it was worth the effort to see your show.

    i know that horrible, sinking feeling that comes from being in the midst of a whole company that can't possibly be producing anything, doing nothing, pissing money, surrounded by that horrible duo:
    -impending doom
    -clueless people who don't know you're doomed

    your show is great. i think your talents are real, and they don't involve computers.

    best of luck to you. hope you beat #5 at rogue someday.

  • This claim would be inadmissable in a court of law. - Thank goodness the court of public opinion has a lot lower standards.

    Moderate this one up someone! I'd do it myself but I squandered all my last points moderating Jon Katz down on his dribbling New Jerusalem Open Source heresy.

    Fight the power! Fight the powers that be!
  • How sad is that?

    I'm assuming I'm not only illiterate dork here with a disdain for articles, right?

  • Bezos Sumo Wrestle Challenge... (Score:4)

    by smirkleton ( 69652 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @10:49AM (#331445)
    If Bezos steps up to the plate for a rassling match with you, Sumo-suited or no, tape it. I would pay money to see a Bezos bodyslam. (I don't have anything against the man personally, but it isn't every day you get a chance to see a billionaire get squashed by a disgruntled ex-employee of his own company.)

    On a side note:

    Depressing and unfortunate to see so many /. people making comments about weight/appearance. I guess that's the downside of /. having a readership that so closely resembles the denizens of the J. Crew Catalog [jcrew.com].

    I'm assuming I'm not only supermodel here, right?
  • it's not a binding contract until they bill your credit card. come on. this happens all the time with e-tailers. get used to it. they don't owe you memory. it was a glitch. the guy tried to take advantage of it along with a few thousand other people.

    every e-tailer has a policy about mis-typed prices. EVERY SINGLE ONE. I think it was awfully nice of them to give the guy a $15 gift certificate because honestly, they didn't have to give him anything and could have just cancelled the order. He lost nothing, gained a gift certificate.
  • you know /. gods, there really needs to be a way to preview your signature. Or you could at least do us the favor and limit the field input to 120 chars so we know when we're over the limit!

    http://www.hyperpoem.net
  • I can't imagine the size and power of all the web professionals who've been layed off in the last few months and now can't find a job.

    It'll be really interesing to see all the startups and ideas that bubble up from the froth in the next 6-12 months. I know I'm cooking up mine. Getting layed off was the best thing that's ever happened to me.

    http://www.hyperpoem.net
  • Despite our best efforts, a small number of the more than 4.7 million items in our catalog are mispriced. Rest assured, however, that we verify prices as part of our shipping procedures.

    * If an item's correct price is lower than our stated price, we charge the lower amount and ship you the item.
    * If an item's correct price is higher than our stated price, we will, at our discretion, either contact you for instructions before shipping or cancel your order and notify you of such cancellation.

  • The web site isn't the point (Score:3)

    by Argy ( 95352 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @01:46AM (#331450)
    Some people have commented that the site is lame, just a couple pics and comments. I'd agree, it's nothing special, and I'm surprised at the Slashdot description of it. But the site is about a play, how to get to it, when it runs, viewer comments. The play it's referring to is well done. Maybe not earth-shattering, but it's an interesting first-hand perspective on some of the dot com hysteria, with some amusing diatribes (if they amuse you) as well as personal insights and self reflection. For people who dismiss the site because "it's got a fat guy with a bone," I don't think you'll get much from the play, but if you're dismissive only because of the lack of content on the site, that's not really reflective of what its author has to say.

    You can view the entire play in Real or Quicktime formats at different speeds from http://206.253.218.29/21dogyears/index.htm [206.253.218.29]. The web page seems intermittently slashdotted at the moment, though I just watched the 100kbps feed for forty minutes or so, and performance was fine.
    • The old man and the C++
    • Greps of wrath

  • Coming Soon (Score:4)

    by zpengo ( 99887 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @10:10PM (#331452) Homepage
    From Pen-Gwynn Productions:
    • Portrait of the Artist as a 1337 h@x0r
    • My Life With the One-Click Cult
    • They Call Me Mister Romero
    • Distro Fever
    • Carrie 2: No Carrier
    • Twelve Angry Geeks
    • Cobol Jungle

  • Re:Amazon $9.99 glitch (Score:3)

    by cperciva ( 102828 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @12:58AM (#331453) Homepage
    Don't you guys ever read the fine print? Amazon has a clear policy [amazon.com] which states that they are not responsible for errors in pricing.

    In addition, while courts have upheld statutes which state that you cannot knowingly advertise incorrect prices, they have also stated that an advertisement is a solicitment and not an offer.

    In other words, you might get something out of Amazon through media blackmail, but that's all it is -- they have no obligation to give you anything.
  • Sorry, I don't have the inclination to waste time and bandwidth on stuff that looks like it might be crap. The guy with the bone in his mouth didn't inspire any confidence. Sites like fucked company [fuckedcompany.com] or Netslaves [netslaves.com] and Bubble Economy [bubbleeconomy.com] do a fine job of pointing out the idiocy of the "new economy" thanks very much. As far as my story not getting posted - I'd like to see the submission queue opened up so people could vote on which submissions they'd like to see added.

  • Move on, nothing to see (Score:5)

    by MrBlack ( 104657 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @10:37PM (#331455)
    Perhaps I have a low tolerance for stupidity but seeing a few pictures of a fat(ish) guy with a dog buiscuit in his mouth doesn't constitute fun stuff to me. Obviously I'm not 1337 enought to have stuff that I've submitted like this rather funny [ddj.com] parody of /. that ddj is running posted. (not even in "ask slashdot" which will put up pretty much any crap). Granted, I didn't look at any of the videos etc for this one but it seemd a bit lame to me.

  • Somehow... (Score:4)

    by gvonk ( 107719 ) <(moc.knovtterrag) (ta) (todhsals)> on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @10:04PM (#331456) Homepage
    This guy looks like someone I would never hire in a thousand years in any capacity for an e-com. Hmmmm...why could that be? Maybe it's because there's a GIANT PICTURE OF HIM WITH A BONE IN HIS MOUTH on his page.
    • Enemy at the Flow Gate Array
    • The Determinant
    • Men In Pocket Protectors
    • One Flew Over The Coder's Nest
    • Titanic: The Story Of Amazon.com (too big to fail!)
    • Bridges and Routers of Madison County
    • The Dirty 0x0C

    --
    News for geeks in Austin: www.geekaustin.org [geekaustin.org]
  • Serves them right, hiring all of those college grads, and then laying them off.

    But I thought Slashdot was against people making money on the Web. Google's suddenly a bad company for "selling out." Baseball's not allowed to sell subscriptions to their game coverage. You get the picture...

  • What do you expect? The "first impression" rule is as old as salesmanship. If he's got quality content, but hides it behind a particularly lame and off-putting homepage, then whose fault is it when visitors are immediately put off and promptly leave?

  • I'd like to see the submission queue opened up so people could vote on which submissions they'd like to see added.

    Perhaps you should rephrase that to:

    I'd like to see the submission queue opened up so it can become a toy for trolls and spammers.
    Repeat after me: "Slashdot is not K5". Nor will it ever be. It is too huge, and too different. If you want to vote on stories go to kuro5hin [kuro5hin.org] and stop bitching.
  • Perhaps you have a low tolerance for concentration. The entire *point* of the linkage was the videos.

    Oh BTW, poor you. Everyone should get every submission posted so people like you can bitch about how stupid it is.
  • I just bought two 256MB 133mhz DIMMs for $99 each, and they had just gone up from $89. ECC RAM from the same two stores I checked was only about 30% higher, so what's so special about this stuff?
  • And if anyone reading these threads is in the Puget Sound area, you can catch Mike's live performance on the weekend's for only ten bucks. I can't imagine he's really making much off that. I've only seen the online video; thought it was hilarious. I hear there's always an empty seat set aside for Jeff B, but he hasn't shown up yet ;) Sure he flames Amazon a bit, but overall it sets a pretty funny image about how all these dot-coms thought things were gonna happen.
  • Yeah, I caught the show last weekend. Never worked for Amazon or any other .com, but still thought Mike's insights into the culture were insightful and very funny. Plus Mike himself is just a damned hilarious guy (he also does sketch comedy with the Seattle group "Up In Your Grill"). In fact, the night I went most of the house was taken up by a group of .comers (although I didn't catch from what company), who were hooting there way through the entire show -- 'course the many beers they consumed beforehand might have had something to do with it...
  • Thanks for the clarifications, Mike. BTW, saw your show last weekend with a whole house full of .comers, but still enjoyed it anyway -- good work! And I'll bet you never thought you'd find a website with more rude, bitter and cynical people on it than TPS! (;-)

  • While its easy to dismiss the whole site based on the front page, you'd really be missing something: the films. "Rear Entry: An Unauthorized Expedition into Amazon.com" was produced and realised by John Tynes (the famed game designer and author of the recent Salon article [salon.com] on Wizards of the Coast linked Monday on /.) is well worth seeing and received quite considerable media attention. The soon-to-be released "Barely Legal: Amazon.com Employees On the Record & Off the Leash" seems off to a good start too. You can grab the trailers for both here [johntynes.com]. (.mov only, sorry).

    -Earthling

  • AFAIK, when you clicked "submit" a binding contract was made with Amazon. Reckon they owe you some memory.
  • I went to see the show with some Amazon friends (I'm not one). It was pretty funny, even some of the "higher up" Amazonians thought. But the guy himself? Well-remembered! "Yeah, he joined Customer Service when I did. Always hung around and never did anything. We were all being promoted beyond him when he left...never did a bit of work..." This opinion was shared by both his colleagues and his higher-ups.

  • Re:Amazon $9.99 glitch (Score:3)

    by clare-ents ( 153285 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @01:25AM (#331469) Homepage
    "

    In addition, while courts have upheld statutes which state that you cannot knowingly advertise incorrect prices, they have also stated that an advertisement is a solicitment and not an offer.
    "

    But a confirmation seals the agreement.

    The confirmation email says

    Amazon.com agree to sell to you one memory stick for $9.99 + shipping. We have accepted the order and will be delivering as soon as possible.

    You can also go for misleading advertising - this is only likely to work if it is displayed as a special offer though - I once did this in a supermarket with beer - it had a misprinted special offer notice above it, £1.99 for 24 cans - not £11.99, and I quibbled at the till over the price. I think they would have chucked me out were it not for every other customer in the shop refusing to pay for anything until they honoured it [really].

  • What is Amazon running? Perl? I cannot figure this one out. Any insight would be apretiated.
  • I don't know if this applies to those of you south of the border, but up here in Canada any company that advertises a price must stand by any orders placed during the time that price was available. This means they cannot charge you a different amount, and cannot cancel your order on the grounds that there was a pricing glitch... I should have placed an order!

    -Medgur

  • His web site may be a bit - unpolished, but the webcast was great.

  • Grow a set and demand that they honor your purchase. A company will never "give" you what your owed (regardless of who's mistake it is), you have to take it. Is this the first purchase you've made from a for-profit company?

  • ok... (Score:5)

    by dR.fuZZo ( 187666 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @10:07PM (#331474)
    Someone can feel free to clue me in if there really was anything interesting on that site. Three pictures of some weirdo with a dog biscuit in his mouth are about enough for me. Someone might walk by and get the wrong idea...
  • I keep hearing about the dot-com culure, but want I really want to see is a one-man act about the dotorg culture.

    And please, no fat people.
  • Here in australia theres a law that says if an item is incorrectly marked they must give you one of that item for free and the rest for the marked price. I think thats it anyway, maybe u just get the first one at the marked price and the rest at normal, either way it'd still be a bargain.
    That only applies to barcode scanner systems where the price the scanner produces doesn't match the price on the shelf. It doesn't apply to incorrect prices on the shelf.

  • Re:What to post. (Score:4)

    by O.F. Fascist ( 198664 ) on Wednesday March 28, 2001 @10:04PM (#331477)
    yeah if we only had a whole bunch of unemployed .com people lying around. Hey wait we do, maybe we can make a beowulf cluster of them.
  • I heard this guy on NPR, and thought it was a gag - it wasn't. This seems to fall somewhere between terminal whining and public masturbation.

    OK - you didn't mesh with Amazon.

    OK - Amazon is version 0.9 of how to do anything remotely like this.

    OK Jeff Bezos puts his pants on one leg at a time...

    But you intend to make an industry of your response to your experience? Then start a biz and show us how to do it without all the alleged tragedies - unconstructive criticism is at best obvious noise. If it was funny, I could see - but this is strained at best. His NPR spot sounded like he was waiting for the laugh track to kick in - sort of "Just Jack" with a cloying, pseudo-hip web presence.

  • I'm assuming I'm not only supermodel here, right?

    You can assuming you're not only English major, right, too?

  • Man, none of you guys actually watched the video [mikedaisey.com]! It's really very funny and enlightening. I thought it had great insights into what a corporation can do to a person.


    -- juju

  • Since when are mean-spirited, thoughtless insults "(+1 Funny)"?


    -- juju

  • Re:/.s have no sense of humour (Score:4)

    by juju2112 ( 215107 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @12:55AM (#331482)

    I agree. It seems most everyone just spent one second of their life to view the front page of the site, made a split-second judgement of everything this guy was about, and then posted some dumb comment here. But then, the /. story doesn't really make it clear that you can actually watch the entire one-and-a-half hour show.


    -- juju
  • Who ever put this site together knew what they were doing. They made the 100kbs intro so cool you don't mind watching it over and over again as you try to get the %#@$@ quicktime movie to download. Too bad the 300kbs lacks this feature.
  • telemarketeering companies ?
    customer service companies ?

    I know that most people amazon laid off nearby recently were working in call centers, while those people might have understood a little about computers they are not the type of people that would start .coms or it companies, they are just the type of people that work in callcenters and do customer services...

    I think that the people that have some techical training already found another job, the market is still quite good for people with technical training.

  • I would be extremely wary of posting a page like this. Especially the introduction. Considering whats happening to the guy that posted something resembling CNN's CNNFN, he could have a whole pack of lawyers after his pack of dog biscuits lickety split.

    Anyone know about the legal ramifications of using some of Amazon's actual logos and pages on a page directing a lot of negative direction at Amazon? It seems to me they would be likely to throw everything in the book at this guy for doing this site..
  • Being the industrious consumer that I am, I purchased 3 sticks. I was sent a confirmation email with the low low price of $9.99x3 plus shipping. Now, two days later they have canceled the deal stating they had been "incorrectly priced" the excuse being that "this error was caused by incorrect information provided to us by Viking Components Inc."

    I have since been compensated with an incredibly lame $15 gift certificate, which just about guarantees me buying something for more than $15 because, hey what can you get with $15? What kind of recourse do I have? Would this kind of thing be tolerated at a retail store? I recall getting a 50 stack of cdr's once from best buy for 4.99 because they were "incorrectly priced" but only because they cannot get out of selling a product for something other than the advertised price. It worries me that we have one set of rules for internet based commerce and another for the real world.

    I reaped the benifits of paying attention, something which had amazon and viking been more mindful of would have avoided bad pr like this. Marinate on that for a bit and predict how well amazon will do in the future if this level of concern about it's customers and standards of quality assurance are continued. I'm not looking for a free lunch, I just Amazon and Viking to be held accountable and not sweep us under the gift certificate rug.Two days ago Amazon.com had an excellent deal on 256MB of ram, $9.99 in fact, so being the industrious consumer that I am, I purchased 3 sticks. I was sent a confirmation email with the low low price of $9.99x3 plus shipping. Now, two days later they have canceled the deal stating they had been "incorrectly priced" the excuse being that "this error was caused by incorrect information provided to us by Viking Components Inc."

    I have since been compensated with an incredibly lame $15 gift certificate, which just about guarantees me buying something for more than $15 because, hey what can you get with $15? What kind of recourse do I have? Would this kind of thing be tolerated at a retail store? I recall getting a 50 stack of cdr's once from best buy for 4.99 because they were "incorrectly priced" but only because they cannot get out of selling a product for something other than the advertised price. It worries me that we have one set of rules for internet based commerce and another for the real world.

    I reaped the benifits of paying attention, something which had amazon and viking been more mindful of would have avoided bad pr like this. Marinate on that for a bit and predict how well amazon will do in the future if this level of concern about it's customers and standards of quality assurance are continued. I'm not looking for a free lunch, I just want Amazon and Viking to be held accountable and not sweep us under the gift certificate rug.
  • ...and it was great. Laugh-out-loud funny at parts, heady at others, Mike is a genuine performer with something intelligent to say during these crazy times. Mike has picked up quite a bit of positive media coverage from this latest work, and though the web site might be "primitive" according to some standards, it's the show and what Mike is saying about himself and his relation to Amazon.com that really matters.
  • yeah if we only had a whole bunch of unemployed .com people lying around. Hey wait we do, maybe we can make a beowulf cluster of them.

    What good will that do? Then we'll just have a bunch of people tied together with network cables. Then again we can use then for a wide area storage solution. hmmm... could work

    Arathres

  • If dog biscuits don't tickle your funny bone, try this from the guys at Modern Humorist [modernhumorist.com]. Now that's funny.

    -----

  • Celebrity gossip rag material (Score:4)

    by eXtro ( 258933 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @03:45AM (#331490) Homepage
    These kind of things have always seemed pretty lame to me. Somebody gets canned or they get fed up, part ways with the company then go and lambaste them in public... for profit. I don't see that this is any more humorous, informing or worthwhile than the typical unauthorized celebrity biography. If he expected to make millions off his time at Amazon and didn't and is upset over this, well, to fucking bad. Grow up, get a job at a 7-11 and start over. Unless you were a grade-A moron you knew there was a lot of risk in these overly valued and underly financially sound companies.

    It doesn't sound like this is completely what he does from his press releases, but it still reminds me of the Seinfeld episode where this female stand-up comedian based her entire show around "Jerry is the Devil".

    I do support his right to do it, I just think he's a slimy troll for doing it.

  • We're talking about a company that plays hardball with contracts. If you were on the receiving end, do YOU think they'd give you mercy?
  • It'll be really interesing to see all the startups and ideas that bubble up from the froth in the next 6-12 months.

    I don't know. These are the folks who brought us pet-food on the web and electronic birthday reminders. Maybe they should just look for nice jobs in middle management like their predecessors did.

  • Dude, you hit it on the head.

    Give the dog biscuit back to the dog! He's one fat and ugly guy!! Maybe the best thing that happened to him is loosing his job - hopefully he wont have enough money to buy groceries and can loose some friggen weight!

    -Fatty and Skinny went to bed, Fatty rolled over and Skinny was dead!
  • Yes, I'd say that was an accurate assessment of my job tenure, though the show makes no attempt to disguise that. I would say that it is rather difficult to do "no work" at Amazon, but if you get into Business Development you've got a better shot than most at achieving it.
  • Clarification: I left the corporate world, under my own power, a year ago. I have no steady job, which is my own choice, but it should be noted that I QUIT Amazon, in February of 2000, when the stock was still high. Also, I really loved working at Amazon--I believed in our mission to be Earth's most customer-centric company, and I still miss the frenetic pace and dedicated people. I just don't believe that what Jeff has built is on a supportable foundation--this doesn't mean I'm embittered or angry. I'm a little surprised that Slashdotters aren't more supportive: I live on $800 a month and voluntarily put all my content on the web for free. There was a time when that may have been admired in the /. community. Course, if you think I suck, it won't matter much, eh? ;)

  • Look--it's the author. (Score:4)

    by mikedaisey ( 413058 ) on Thursday March 29, 2001 @08:27AM (#331496) Homepage
    Hello--I'm the author, creator and performer of the website in question. Thanks to everyone that has watched the movie and enjoyed it, and thanks for all the valuable commentary on my weight--since I was unaware I was fat, it'll be very helpful to my future endeavors. I'm in a rush, but to answer a few questions: No, I don't need or want anyone to feel 'sorry' for me or other dot com people. I'm interested in the phenomenon from a social perspective, not as a pity party. If this is unclear and you have the time/bandwidth, the one-man show makes this abundantly obvious. The bone was a sanitary chew toy bought at a drugstore, though it did taste faintly of chicken boullion. Amazon has no official comment on any of this, but people who work under Jeff and senior management have told me they talk about the show all the time. There are standing orders to forward all press and emails people receieve or see to Jeff, so he's probably reading this thread now. I have challenged him to a sumo wrestling battle in those sumo suits...he's quite adept with them, and despite my obvious weight advantage I believe it could be quite a battle. I'll post to the site if they decide to accept, and what follows from that. Anyway, that's all I can think of now. Feel free to email me at mdaisey@mac.com if you like, or post here to make commentary. I'm happy to answer questions.

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