GeekNights Monday - Buying Other People Computers

MrPeriod

Tonight on GeekNights, we talk about how to buy or recommend computers for other people. As in, the people who will call you for help when they eventually fail. Rym had good luck with the Newegg iBUYPOWER configurator thingie. Gerrymandering can be analyzed, quantified, and solved with mathematics. The European Parliament tothlessly declared that Google should be broken up. Blackberry is so desperate they'll buy your iPhone.

The GeekNights Book Club book is now Watership Down. Also, rent can't be paid with anything other than paper in New York, and there's talk of laundry.

• Russian Darts
• Old CPUs Minus Heatsinks
• Schlieren Optics

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ninjarabbi

I've been thinking along the same lines as Scott when it comes to Blackberry. I could see a traditional blackberry phone running Android that's still compatible with the blackberry ecosystem being popular with a certain segment of the market.

Daikun

I'm not a fan of buying stuff off Newegg. It's great for browsing for what you want to find, but holy hell, they're way overpriced.

Once I've found the part I'm looking for, I'll just buy it from another site where I can get it cheaper.

Anthony Heman

I could have been out of the loop for a while, but a ways back I recall price shopping parts and finding newegg better on most components (with a couple random hold-outs like $10 better deal on a graphics card elsewhere).

Apreche

Anthony Heman said:

I could have been out of the loop for a while, but a ways back I recall price shopping parts and finding newegg better on most components (with a couple random hold-outs like $10 better deal on a graphics card elsewhere).

Yeah, Newegg has always been comparable to Amazon for me. I've bought a few things on Amazon that were $10-$20 less, but Newegg usually was great. Sometimes a random thing would be ridiculously cheap on some shady site, but I'm not trusting those shady sites.

sK0pe

I think Amazon has worked out better recently.
They were selling the top tier AMD card (R9 290x), XFX modified with a lifetime warranty for $300 less than retail and $150 less than Newegg during October.

Also Amazon wasn't increasing the prices of cards based on stock. Amazon seems to be selling most things cheaper because it is a market place of resellers competing for buyers.

My most recent experience was getting a card from Amazon for US $560, it was being sold in Australia for a translated price of US $770 (and out of stock) while Newegg had it listed for US $590 and were out of stock.

Rym

OK, wow. Bing is absolute garbage. I retract my statement on the show that it's mostly fine.

Searching for some ridiculous gomergate thing, I needed these two strings:
sstjohn sjw

Google found everything immediately.



Bing returned a bunch of herbal medicine bullshit.



Bing is amazing in how useless it is for anything other than a super generic or DNS-replacement search. In further poking, I determined that it basically can't search for specific things easily.

Daikun

Bing is useful for only two things, and they're not really for searching (at least not legitimately):

1) Checking the news ticker. They actually have some interesting stories, several of which I've posted in this forum.
2) Abusing the search bar to accumulate Bing Rewards points. Just type in random gobbledygook (they don't even have to be words) and hit Enter. I mainly use BR to get free Amazon gift cards.

Neito

Daikun said:

2) Abusing the search bar to accumulate Bing Rewards points. Just type in random gobbledygook (they don't even have to be words) and hit Enter. I mainly use BR to get free Amazon gift cards.

I'm sure there's a way to programatically do this.

Daikun

Neito said:

I'm sure there's a way to programatically do this.

There is.

Victor Frost

Am I going to be the only one to point out how unethical that is? The Bing Rewards system is there to encourage users to use Bing for legitimate search purposes. Abusing it just to get free gift cards is tantamount to stealing. If you prefer Google (like most people do) that's fine, but don't defraud Microsoft just because you can.

Rym

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system. See also: the free ad-supported computers of the 1990s, or the "paid to look at ads" browsers.

Rym

Also, it's kind of fucked that they are literally paying people to use their search engine.

sK0pe

I can't imagine having to use cheques, the situation you described about your paying for rent in a modern city seems crazy.

Scott's point on parents and technology was salient. However I still have to get my Mum and Dad desktops as my Mum does translations as a secondary business.

The Surface Pro is actually quite useful, a bunch of kids at University now use the Surface devices instead of laptops (outside of Computer Science).

Rym said:

Also, it's kind of fucked that they are literally paying people to use their search engine.

Possibly one of the contributing factors to their search engines being trash.

Daikun

Victor Frost said:

Am I going to be the only one to point out how unethical that is? The Bing Rewards system is there to encourage users to use Bing for legitimate search purposes. Abusing it just to get free gift cards is tantamount to stealing. If you prefer Google (like most people do) that's fine, but don't defraud Microsoft just because you can.

Think of it this way: You keep using Bing, you give the site more hits. I'm pretty sure Microsoft would encourage this sort of thing, especially when they're trying to stack up against the mighty Google. Hell, they created the Rewards system to encourage people to use the site, and that bot could provide multiple searches with the Bing engine--the very thing Microsoft wants. The bot doesn't really "steal," it just speeds up the search process. Also, the bot site opens up Bing's main page, so you can also use the site manually from there.

Oh, and Bing Rewards prizes are free in the first place. MS isn't expecting you to use money on them; you're accumulating points, not dollars. Is it really "stealing" if it's free?

Victor Frost

Rym said:

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system.

That's kinda fucked up, dude. It may be a stupid system, but literally stealing from it is just wrong. How can you condone that?

Rym

Victor Frost said:

Rym said:

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system.

That's kinda fucked up, dude. It may be a stupid system, but literally stealing from it is just wrong. How can you condone that?

What are the terms of service? What exactly is the "product" there?

They're paying virtual points for strings entered as searches. Would it be any less wrong if I manually searched for gibberish for 15 minutes every day until I maxed out their daily cap?

They asked for search strings of any quality, and are paying a trivial reward for said search strings. No problem here if I go "SDGFuk asdgfhkilasdgfr" a bunch or a bot does it for me.

Matt

Victor Frost said:

Rym said:

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system.

That's kinda fucked up, dude. It may be a stupid system, but literally stealing from it is just wrong. How can you condone that?

This thread has only made me want to look further into how to get free Amazon money by abusing Bing.

Rym

I abuse my Bing a few times a week and I never get an Amazon money...

Punt Rocket

Rym said:

I abuse my Bing a few times a week and I never get an Amazon money...

You aren't uploading video of it to the correct sites then. ;p

Neito

Victor Frost said:

Rym said:

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system.

That's kinda fucked up, dude. It may be a stupid system, but literally stealing from it is just wrong. How can you condone that?

How is it any different, morally, than running Adblock?

Victor Frost

Rym said:

Victor Frost said:

Rym said:

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system.

That's kinda fucked up, dude. It may be a stupid system, but literally stealing from it is just wrong. How can you condone that?

What are the terms of service? What exactly is the "product" there?

The first paragraph of the Bing Rewards Terms of Use. Emphasis mine.

1. Program
Through the Program, Microsoft will enable you to earn redeemable credits for your searches, as well as through offers from other Microsoft services or third-parties or partners (which may include the Microsoft Store, Skype, OneDrive, and others). A Search is the act of an individual user manually entering text for the good faith purpose of obtaining Bing search results for such user’s own research purposes and does not include any query entered by a bot, macro, or other automated or fraudulent means of any kind (“Search”). Microsoft in its sole discretion determines what constitutes a Search that qualifies for credits. Your earned credits, whether through Search or other offers, can be redeemed for items, discounts, or donations to nonprofit organizations (“Rewards”) in the redemption center.

The crux of this is that you are, in no way, using this system in good faith. You're not actually using Bing to search for stuff you actually care about knowing or accessing, you're using it to milk the system. And if you use a bot, that's even worse because now you're also too lazy to bother defrauding them yourself.

Neito said:

Victor Frost said:

Rym said:

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system.

That's kinda fucked up, dude. It may be a stupid system, but literally stealing from it is just wrong. How can you condone that?

How is it any different, morally, than running Adblock?

I view adblocking systems as akin to skipping past commercials on a DVR-ed tv show. You've paid for the infrastructure to get the content you want (cable tv and, in this case, internet) and you aren't legally bound to look at the ads. You're not taking money from the owner of the site, you're just not allowing yourself to become a money source. Is there an implicit agreement that "you use my site, you look at the ads"? Yes, but not an explicit one and you also aren't actively trying to fuck them over. And, in the case of YouTube ads, most channels that create their own content have alternative means to show your support (patreon, for example). And for channels that are just uploading someone else's copyrighted material and monetizing it, I think it's more moral to block their ads than to let them earn ill-gotten gains.

Gaming the Bing Rewards system is the exact opposite. There is explicit agreement and you are, instead, eschewing that and taking their money. It would be like a demographics researcher saying "Please answer this survey accurately a completely and we'll compensate you for your time" then you go ahead and fill the bubbles randomly and take the money anyway.


Look, people can justify things like pirating movies because "they're going to end up on Netflix anyways". You can justify using cracked versions of expensive software beacause you'll "buy a real version of it once I can afford it". I've done that and I have followed through.

But this is literally, 100% stealing.

Rym

So they don't ban bots, they just say they can decide what is a "legitimate" search or not at their own discretion. Onus is on them.

Rym

Also, with the daily caps, one could trivially make a bunch of generic searches every morning, max out, and get maximum rewards: no bots required.

Microsoft obviously is encouraging people gaming the system as long as they don't push it too far. This is obviously a ploy to generate high metrics of users for advertising and competing-with-Google purposes. If someone games it, it helps Microsoft have higher numbers while absolving them of any responsibility for "fraudulent" numbers.

They're bribing people to enter searches to boost their stats.

Rym

Neito said:

Victor Frost said:

Rym said:

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system.

That's kinda fucked up, dude. It may be a stupid system, but literally stealing from it is just wrong. How can you condone that?

How is it any different, morally, than running Adblock?

Victor Frost

This is what happens when I edit a post without refreshing the page beforehand...

Rym said:

So they don't ban bots, they just say they can decide what is a "legitimate" search or not at their own discretion. Onus is on them.

Read again. They explicitly ban bots.

Rym said:

Neito said:

Victor Frost said:

Rym said:

I have zero problem with people defrauding such a stupid system.

That's kinda fucked up, dude. It may be a stupid system, but literally stealing from it is just wrong. How can you condone that?

How is it any different, morally, than running Adblock?

I view adblocking systems as akin to skipping past commercials on a DVR-ed tv show. You've paid for the infrastructure to get the content you want (cable tv and, in this case, internet) and you aren't legally bound to look at the ads. You're not taking money from the owner of the site, you're just not allowing yourself to become a money source. Is there an implicit agreement that "you use my site, you look at the ads"? Yes, but not an explicit one and you also aren't actively trying to fuck them over. And, in the case of YouTube ads, most channels that create their own content have alternative means to show your support (patreon, for example). And for channels that are just uploading someone else's copyrighted material and monetizing it, I think it's more moral to block their ads than to let them earn ill-gotten gains.

Gaming the Bing Rewards system is the exact opposite. There is explicit agreement and you are, instead, eschewing that and taking their money. It would be like a demographics researcher saying "Please answer this survey accurately a completely and we'll compensate you for your time" then you go ahead and fill the bubbles randomly and take the money anyway.

Look, people can justify things like pirating movies because "they're going to end up on Netflix anyways". You can justify using cracked versions of expensive software beacause you'll "buy a real version of it once I can afford it". I've done that and I have followed through.

But this is literally, 100% stealing. There is no moral justification for this whatsoever.

Rym said:

Also, with the daily caps, one could trivially make a bunch of generic searches every morning, max out, and get maximum rewards: no bots required..

And that's still wrong.

Microsoft obviously is encouraging people gaming the system as long as they don't push it too far. This is obviously a ploy to generate high metrics of users for advertising and competing-with-Google purposes. If someone games it, it helps Microsoft have higher numbers while absolving them of any responsibility for "fraudulent" numbers.

They're bribing people to enter searches to boost their stats.

It doesn't matter. You are morally responsible for your actions, not theirs. You can't stop them from making a system like this but you are under no obligation to participate in it. Their system maybe stupid, but it's ultimately harming no one. If you are abusing the bing rewards system in this way, you are stealing.

Andrew

Apreche

If I could download a car, I'd download a jet instead.

Victor Frost

Apreche said:

If I could download a car, I'd download a jet instead.

How about one of these instead? 'Tis the season.

MATATAT

For some reason when Scott said duopoly I immediately registered it in my brain as dew-opoly.

Apreche

MATATAT said:

For some reason when Scott said duopoly I immediately registered it in my brain as dew-opoly.

The most dangerous opoly.