SparkFun Forums

[phalanx]

...when you came upon some true (and clean) constructive criticism of 'free day', you would have responded with something other than a cheap joke.

I see lots of people asserting that non-prior customers were running rampent scooping up the $100K give away when there is no data available to the general population at the moment that tells us if this is the case. The consipiracy theory drivel that's being spewed on the forums, based on these assertions, is completely inane. No person worth listening to would be caught making up garbage like this.

Being upset that you didn't get some cool free stuff is fine. I'm part of that 70:1 majority that wasn't able to take advantage of the offer. But for one to resort to claiming that SFE intentionally screwed them when they have no idea who actually got in on the offer makes them sound like a crazy moonbat.

-Bill

[sylvie369]

And to all, I am sorry I ever posted after juggle, as it seems the people (sylvie) who disagree with him, but fail to find fault in his reasoning and therefore add to the discussion, would rather rant about his 'poor' writing style and rant on me for complementing him. I fail to see how some of us are acting like 'adults' when the best response in this debate is to attack the debater himself rather than his argument.

That is a shameful misrepresentation, kid. You're the one who wrote "juggleclown, are you a speech writer? If not, you should be". You're the one who raised the issue of his poor writing. Don't try to pawn it off on me.

As far as his "reasoning", where should I begin? I thought it was quite obvious that the problem is that his post was a wild conspiracy theory rant, with implications of some not-quite-specified dishonesty on Sparkfun's part, a few poorly-informed and not well-specified threats of legal action, and ridiculous hyperbole like this: "I know these sort of arguments are as purposeful as the worst of humanities blights". I could have picked it apart point-by-point, but I doubt that would have made you any happier, and given the overall blaringly nonsensical content (as others have also pointed out), I didn't think it at all necessary. It was an angry incoherent rant: reasoning wasn't the point in the first place. Pretending otherwise is ridiculous.

If you didn't recognize it as an rant, here are a couple of hints to help you avoid that mistake in the future. First of all, if a post refers to people who disagree as "sheep", it's probably a rant. If it talks about how things are "these days", that's a pretty good sign. He did avoid some of the most glaring signs of a rant ("WAKE UP, AMERICA!" and "these so-called..."), but there were plenty of clear indicators that you should have picked up on.

Finally, labeling MY comments as a "rant" is outright laughable in this context. My first response had six words in it. My second response had four of them. My comments about his writing were not quite as brief, but by no stretch of the imagination were they a "rant". This is a public forum, and the people you respond to are real people. In your imagination it may be okay to lie about others' behavior, but in the real world it's simply wrong.

I suggest you wait until you can manage some honesty before you reply again. Flailing wildly in anger is not productive participation.

[silverspoon]

Thank you phalanx- Your point is exactly one of the things I have been saying all along. As a business owner for over 30 years, and personally involved in extreme hosting situations I can say *with no doubt* and with *direct experience instead of rhetoric* that these things happen all the time with no adverse or dishonest intent on the part of the business owners/management. (OK, OK: several posts have mentioned the very good point of the "give back" issue going to non-previous customers. Oops. Simple planning mistake- please don't assume everyone is dishonest. People do make mistakes, however... that much CAN be assumed).

Why do people assume dishonesty as fact? I am glad that SF is remaining quiet- letting the business get back to normal and just moving on. Perhaps finally the 'noise' of the crowds will quiet down and these topics will finally rest on their forum.

Are there dishonest businesses? Of course! Do I think SF is one of them- absolutely not. Was I a previous (and current) customer of SF? Yes. Did SF underplan the power of "free"? Obviously. Should they have made this a customer-only event? I would have... And I suspect they would have if they had thought of that or if management had been presented that as one of the technical solutions.

Let it go people. I, for one, would like to see them do this again- but next time successfully and I have already suggested things for them.

People who like their products and style will continue to buy from them and be happy. The others can find another source for these products. Fine. Let's kill this unproductive topic and spend our time on productive and fun things, like electronics. These continued complaints serve no useful purpose.

[sylvie369]

Why do people assume dishonesty as fact?

I think it's a high-level effect of a very low-level, innate bias that people have to attribute actions to intentions. We know that young children sometimes (often?) fail to distinguish between non-intentionally caused movements (such as a piece of paper blown by the wind) and intentionally caused ones ("It's trying to escape").

In general, as children or adults, we're biased towards seeing intentionality where there is none rather than failing to see it where it exists.

We also have that well-known tendency to attribute others' actions to what we think are their internal, persistent states while attributing our own to the environment. The most obvious cause of this is that we see our own intentions and know when our behaviors are not the result of those intentions but rather are our reactions to the situation, while we don't have such a window into others' intentions.

Human beings are compulsive explainers - we need to tell ourselves stories about why things happen. Some of those stories make it to the level of cultural assumptions, and the overly paranoid "governments, organizations, and corporations are always intentionally evil" assumption has a LOT of power. I'll bet there are over a million adult Americans who have honestly convinced themselves that biologists are intentionally conspiring against their religion when those biologists use evolutionary theories, and probably as many who believe that corporations are deliberately poisoning us with their choice of materials for our products.

In the face of that pressure, it takes quite a bit of effort to resist falling into the "they did it to me deliberately!" kind of thinking. It's really the default position, and it's not at all easy to overcome.

[silverspoon]

@sylvie369: Great, well written post!

[sylvie369]

@sylvie369: Great, well written post!

Thanks. I was thinking of making it into a speech.

[Asmo]

Somebody linked to this through the Facebook fan page, and since nobody's really picked it apart yet, I figured I would.

Well, kid, there's a word for that, and it's called "apathy". You will find there are ways to deal with problems, other than turning a blind eye and allowing any sort of treachery to become the norm.

I'm just going to ignore this part since it was addressed to somebody other than myself. The user it's aimed at might be a "kid" for all I know.

Deceitful advertising is most worthy of subpoena, without a doubt. One of the first things a child should learn is not to believe everything they're told. An entire generation learned that very quickly through the infamously disappointing "sea monkeys". Nevertheless, tuning it out, considering it "OK" that advertisers are free to lie and benefit so greatly from it, is one of the things truly wrong with people today.

Advertisers lying is definitely a problem today. It's gone to the point where some nations have decided to put up some fairly harsh restrictions on advertising. In Sweden you cannot use the word "Gratis" (Free) unless something truly is free in every sense of the word. No ifs, buts, or "when you sign up and pay $14.99/month for a year"s allowed. If a restaurant claims "Kids eat free" it means that children do indeed eat free, even if their parents don't purchase anything. Is this needed for America? Who knows?
However, a larger problem is definitely the general entitlement of Generation Me. I think this social experiment by SparkFun shows it more than anything else. Despite outlining several reasons for having Free Day, people lock on to only one of the reasons it was done (the giving back one), and then blatantly ignore everything else, just because it happens to fit their "woe is me" attitude the best.

I'm new here, and I didn't win at free day. In fact, the site never loaded during free day, not once. I came across Sparkfun by chance, looking for the cheapest deals on a particular product, and the first thing I saw was the advertisement for free day. Saying that, regardless of whether I won or not, this sale was supposedly aimed at "giving back", which is quite different from "giving away". "Giving back" would mean "free day" only for those who have given to Sparkfun in the first place, preferably prior to the initial announcement of the sale. Not random people who just showed up, like me, or people who got told about this sale, especially those only interested in turning something, anything free, into profit.

Once again, "giving back" was only ONE of the reasons given.
Another reason was "sponsoring groups" so they could go through with whatever projects they had in mind but couldn't afford.
Now I'm no Einstein, and I have no data on how many people who have never purchased a single item from SparkFun still ask them for Free Stuff for high school and university projects, but I would imagine there are a LOT of kids out there who do. Giving ONLY to previous customers would thus completely shut these people out, rather than enabling some really cool new projects to be made. I don't know about you, but in today's world where everybody seems to do Art, Journalism, and "Sports Science" for college, I welcome every single person with the slightest interest in engineering of any form to further that interest.

Third, SparkFun also wanted to create a lot of site traffic. Just opening this up to former customers would have severely impaired this kind of testing. As a software engineer, I may have an unfair advantage into realizing exactly what true load testing entails, but it still seems like it would be common sense that only using a limited part of an existing customer base just wouldn't do it.

To continue to defend that they were "giving back" is sickening, and maybe my stance would be a little more biased if I had won, but my point is true enough. Some of you are so faithful, and turn the other cheek that your precious Sparkfun had a giveaway, presumably to bring in new blood (let's see how that goes with the eBay crowd), while increasing their reputation with their loyal customers, who they've now earned even more points with, though they were "given back to" no more, and probably even less due to the ratio of Sparkfun regulars to random contest-seekers who showed up for free stuff.

Why wouldn't they defend "giving back?" Do you have any data that would indicate that they haven't been? I've been reading a lot of comments on the site and their Facebook page now, and it would indicate that a LOT of their former customers and the people belonging to the SFE community at large have received the discount. There are tons of people describing what they are going to do with their new toys - including people who say they couldn't afford buying stuff, but now they can still go ahead with their projects. How is that not giving back?

Once again, your definition of "giving back" is extremely limited. Is a person that's been answering questions in the forums or on IRC without ordering anything before any less part of the community than somebody who spent $20 on LEDs in 2006 but haven't participated in a single discussion?

Are the profitseekers unfortunate? Yes, obviously - but guess what - if they sell those items at a discount on eBay, it STILL benefits the end user, doesn't it?

An apology from Sparkfun, a blacklisting of the site, pretty much any behavior is far more understandable than this disgusting 'shugging it off and saying "it's ok"' mentality so many people seem to display these days. Sparkfun could've given away $1,000,000 in cold-hard cash to 50 people on the condition that those people have never spend a dime here before. It'd be controversial, but it's their right. As long as they don't blatantly lie about it and say they're giving that money for 50 regular customers when the adverse is true.

Repeating the same argument over and over again doesn't make it any more valid. I'm getting tired of this stuff. Once again you're looking at one out of several reasons they listed. Once again, your definition of "giving back" is very limited. There were no lies. Never did they say that only former customers were going to be able to use this free money.

They said they were giving back. I, as well as many others, have pointed out that while they did give back some percentage (and to those who keep saying "you never gave to Sparkfun, you bought from them", who exactly would they be "giving back" to, pray tell? I'm so very tired of word games like this, and the wording in the case of free day is very obvious and needn't be misconstrued.), I'm sure a significant part of that percentage "gave back" to people who never "gave", had never spent a cent on this site before, and probably won't be returning unless such an opportunity for indiscriminate profit shows up again.

I'm repeating myself a lot at this point. It's really funny how you point out that the wording is very obvious, when what is obvious is that you stopped reading after reason #1.
Also, once again, not spending money doesn't mean you didn't "give" so that SparkFun could "give back."

I too doubt their integrity, madsci1016. For this reason, and the fact that after a huge surge of orders, I would likely find myself waiting longer than expected at the usual price, I decided to take my business elsewhere. However, upon seeing all the "I won nothing but Sparkfun is great for giving back to us" sheep, I couldn't help but put my word in, as well as I know these sort of arguments are as purposeful as the worst of humanities blights. Unlike Gsm Man, I've yet, even in these years, taken the downhill route of apathy as the wisest path, and neither, I believe, should so many others, for we accomplish nothing good this way.

There's nothing like calling people with different opinions "sheep." The best part is that unlike many of the people here who have been SparkFun loyals for years, you claim to know SparkFun's intentions after being brand new to the community. You claim people show "apathy" when I'd rather say that it's just some members being tired of the entitlement of a small but vocal fragment of the people who didn't get a $100 discount. I should probably mention that I didn't get any free stuff either.

I think a vast majority of the non-upset participants in Free Day realized (after reading the entire Free Day announcement that they were essentially getting a free lottery ticket that could give them $100 worth of free stuff. Did they get marketing for their money? Yeah, and that was clear from the very first sentence. Here's the deal, though. You had a chance at a free $100 rather than POSSIBLY getting the opportunity to see two or three half page ads in a hobbyist magazine (I believe those generally run at $20k-$40k for a single issue).

I know which one I'd prefer, although with the amount of people crying their eyes out because they felt cheated when they didn't take the time to think first, I doubt SparkFun will ever have another Free Day. Thanks for that, pal!

[silverspoon]

@Asmo: Well said, thank you.

[edembowski]

ed, If you are going to try to argue, please quote or at least read my entire post, or jungle's, as he captured the same thought better then I did. Most of your points have already been addressed, and should not have to be repeated.

I've read it, thanks. Since you're saying that topics covered cannot be discussed, then you probably shouldn't be posting, but again, that's up to you.

(ie. "They state clearly'? ...... They stated clearly they wanted to give back...... "this sale was supposedly aimed at "giving back", which is quite different from "giving away". "Giving back" would mean "free day" only for those who have given to Sparkfun in the first place")

So, what I get from this comment is that if they run a promotion like this, they have to follow your rules (and only your rules). You're making an assertion here that they cannot give back to the community as a whole, that instead it needs to be a specific subset. How is this selected? By volume of purchases? By length of time a s a customer? By setting up some other system? I'm very sorry you didn't get in (neither did I) but they have every right to run a sale as they see fit. Even if you're not happy with how they did it, they did do it exactly as they said they would.

And to all, I am sorry I ever posted after juggle, as it seems the people (sylvie) who disagree with him, but fail to find fault in his reasoning and therefore add to the discussion, would rather rant about his 'poor' writing style and rant on me for complementing him. I fail to see how some of us are acting like 'adults' when the best response in this debate is to attack the debater himself rather than his argument.

I don't have a problem with anyone's gramar or style here. As far as attacking, I'm certainly not doing that. I honestly do not understand your position (or the position of the other people who are complaining).

- Ed

[Arachnivore]

I agree that Sparkfun should appease the angry mob. Host free day round 2. Give away $100k worth of Gerber peas and carrots for all the whiny babies out there. Seriously. It's 100 bucks, guys. Get over it.

First of all. $100K is quite a lot of money for a company with less than 80 employees to just give away. It's also not a sure thing that free day will be effective at paying itself back. It's a gamble. The internet has a tendency to generate a lot of very large but ultimately hollow numbers (i.e. 70,000 simultaneous connections) that don't necessarily translate into real customers or any real world effects. So, assuming that because free day generated or seemed to generate a lot of publicity, spark fun is now somehow swimming in money which they now, for some reason, owe to their "loyal base" is rather ridiculous. Some of you guys go on to contradict this hypothesis that SF will be swimming in dough, by stating that free day was a snafu and netted negative publicity. Go figure.

Sparkfun could have easily spent the $100K on a television ad campaign (a much more proven/reliable technique for getting your name out there) and none of you would have complained, but since they decided to generate publicity in a more creative way, they all of a sudden owe you guys something. The way I see it, spark fun has been an awesome company, you guys have been loyal customers. You give spark fun hard-earned cash, they give you quality products and top notch customer service. That's a fair trade. I don't see how they owe anyone anything more.

By the way, there was no clause that said loyal customers were not allowed to participate in free day. I know of several people who are loyal spark fun fans, have been for years, and got a piece of the free day pie. In fact; if you are a loyal Sparkfun fan you would have been following their blog updates, known the history behind their site slow-down and their server upgrades etc. and should have a better understanding than most that their servers were going to slow down. There's a guy at my work place who heard about spark fun and tried to participate in free day but he gave up after 10 minutes because he figured it was like one of Amazon.com's limmited-quantity Black Friday sales where supplies only last a fraction of a second. He obviously didn't know much about spark fun (i.e. they are not at all like Amazon.com) which gave more informed and loyal customers the advantage.

I don't know why you guys are so abhorrent to the idea of sparkfun expanding its customer base in the first place. If free day was only limited to previous customers, then It would have no chance of helping new comers get into hobby electronics. Most people I know that aren't into hobbyist electronics take one look at spark fun and don't see what's so great about an Arduino or a 6-DOF sensor board. They say, "My computer has a 2.6 GHz dual-core 64-bit processor on it with a 500 GB HDD and 2 GB of RAM. WTF can I do with a 16 MHz 8-bit proc with 32KB ROM and 2KB RAM?" Those aren't the people interested putting together a shopping cart and hitting the refresh button on the check-out page for two hours.

If you guys insist that SF only serve it's pre-existing customers than you insist on hobby electronics remaining a niche market. You insist on being marginalized. Here's an example: The newest batch of consumer-level FPGAs (Xilinx's Spartan 6, Altera's Cyclone IV, and Lattice's ECP3) only come in BGA packages*, that means that they don't see hobbyists as an important market to serve, they won't come out with a chip that a DIY enthusiast can solder by herself. If the DIY community doesn't grow, companies will stop offering components that we can tinker with.

Lastly, while $100K is quite a large sum for such a small company to give away, $100 is not a lot of money to get so bent out of shape about or throw around accusations of deceit and treachery over. Especially when it's not coming out of your pocket. You could say, "but I'm a poor college student :'(" HA! You're paying $X,000 a year to go to college and $100 will break the bank? Sell your history Text book. You were going to use Wikipedia anyway. Besides, you'll learn a lot more from an Arduino kit than you will from any text book. BAM! there's your rationalization! Happy now? Of course not.

Seriously. You guys need to grow up and learn to enjoy life. Free day was a fun and exciting way to generate publicity. Stop trying to do rhetorical back flips to frame it as a morally reprehensible sham. You're just being sore losers, and it's clear as day.

-Abe

*EDIT: I went back to double check this assertion and found that there are a few non-BGA packaged Spartan 6 and Cyclone IV devices but far fewer than in previous generations. My point remains the same, though. If the hobby electronics community stays small, it will consistently be overlooked as a market. No company will keep its finger on the pulse of what hobbyists want. No company will serve our needs.

[juggleclown]

Writing the argument always feels like the bad game. You play, and then you realize you're losing and the rules, you don't quite understand. I throw in the towel now, my point is pointless and not worth the bytes it's written with. :/

I hate to think the things I say are meaningless babble, and my opinion to ridiculous to even void, but I am not the arrogant kind, so my head I hang in shame. Sorry for wasting of your time now.

I can't really think and focus right now, I just want to apologize to the good people, I have much sorrow for trying to press point of view when other people seem to make more sense. I don't understand, but I see that I don't make sense. I try to make the clarity but maybe I butcher the words too minced. I'm not so much a writer, just grumpy old man trying to have other people see things my way, but now I see quickly that my way, it's probably the wrong one, and I don't mean to corrupt people. I'm not wise, I wish to be, but it's wisdom enough not to turn the wise into fools by winning meaningless argument. Again, some apologies.

[Asmo]

Writing the argument always feels like the bad game. You play, and then you realize you're losing and the rules, you don't quite understand. I throw in the towel now, my point is pointless and not worth the bytes it's written with. :/

I hate to think the things I say are meaningless babble, and my opinion to ridiculous to even void, but I am not the arrogant kind, so my head I hang in shame. Sorry for wasting of your time now.

I can't really think and focus right now, I just want to apologize to the good people, I have much sorrow for trying to press point of view when other people seem to make more sense. I don't understand, but I see that I don't make sense. I try to make the clarity but maybe I butcher the words too minced. I'm not so much a writer, just grumpy old man trying to have other people see things my way, but now I see quickly that my way, it's probably the wrong one, and I don't mean to corrupt people. I'm not wise, I wish to be, but it's wisdom enough not to turn the wise into fools by winning meaningless argument. Again, some apologies.

You're a bigger man than me. It would take a lot more than that before ever admitting I was wrong about something.

I just get upset about this because I think it's really cool that SparkFun chose this format for advertising instead of the old boring way with magazine, newspaper, and tv ads. After all, I hate when the commercials come on in the middle of my favorite shows. I'd rather waste my time trying to win a bunch of cool stuff - servers crying and smoking or not.

I'm sure it could have been done in a better fashion, but I completely feel they should be able to call it a success.

[sylvie369]

Juggle, it took an adult to write that. Changing one's mind, and admitting that one was wrong is, in my opinion, the height of our mental abilities, and it's a height that isn't reached too often.

(I can almost imagine a warning siren going off somewhere, and the masters of the internet rushing over to watch this rare event)

I did notice, and I hope you did too, that when you slowed down and wrote thoughtfully, you did a pretty good job of it. It was only when you were (apparently) getting up a full head of steam, as it were, about the emotional issue that you sort of lost it. I think it's pretty obvious to the reader that the long post you made wasn't your best work, and that you're capable of doing better.

I apologize to you as well. I could have responded in a less inflammatory way.