How to get cheap PS3s!

November 9, 2006 on 11:19 pm | In Business, Funnyish, Insider View, Musings by Josh Jones |

A clever editorial on web 2.0?

Nobody showed up at our talk. We’ll post a video when we get one from ISPCon. It’s too bad we don’t have one yet, because in my country, they would go crazy for my talk. Dallas, not so much…

Ha, just kidding BIG D!

Well, some people showed up, just no customers (except for the moderator.) But we understand. It would have cost like five-hundred YEARS of hosting to attend. And it’s not like you can’t just hang out with honchos anytime you want.

For example, my next public appearance will be next Saturday at the Nintendo store in New York City.. waiting in the balmy warmth all night to take a Wii.

Come hang out and I’ll let you cut!

What happens to those who cut in line.

Which reminds me… why is Sony not charging $2000 for a PS3?

They come out Nov 17th and people are ALREADY waiting in line.

“Hey fun boys, GET A JOB!”

Why on earth would somebody wait in line ten days for a $599 video game machine?

Maybe because they’re only making 400,000 of them?

So maybe these people do have a job. Maybe they just REALLY love Guitar Hero. Or Maybe these people are waiting in line for a week and a half because their job doesn’t pay $50,000 a year. You see, by waiting just ten measly days, they’ll be able to resell these PS3s on ebay in time for christmas at probably, literally, $2,000 a pop.

Not so bad..

In Boston they have a much smarter way of doing this.

Back in January 2005 I was waiting in line at Fenway Park with some friends at 6am. There were hundreds of people in line ahead of us, many of whom’d been there over two days. That morning the Red Sox were releasing a few ticket packages for the upcoming season (you had to buy three blah games to get one Yankee game) to the public for the first time (as World Champions) in 86 years.

Anyway, just twenty minutes before the gates opened, a group of about a dozen southies showed up, and shoved themselves right near the front of the line.

Nobody did a thing.

I mean, what would YOU do? Everybody in line were just little groups of two, four, maybe five guys. This was TWELVE strapping young morons, working for some kind of ticket-scalping mafia… and it didn’t really matter to anybody near the front of the line. After all, the only people being screwed were a couple hundred back who had just gotten bumped out of the running for any tickets.

So annoying!

I wish the Red Sox just held an auction for the tickets. Let the market take care of things, let the Red Sox make more money, and let those southie thugs all sleep in.

Sony should hold an auction too. Do a Dutch Auction like Google’s IPO. Screw these people waiting in line, screw ebay, and actually make some money on these things!

Or if an auction is too crazzzzzzzzy, release a pricing schedule like this:

November 17th, 2006: $1999
December 24th, 2006: $1299
January 8th, 2007: $899
April 30th, 2007: $599
November 17th, 2007: $399
January 12th, 2008: $249
April 13th, 2008: $199
November 32nd, 2008: $149

Release it to the general public NOW, and stick to it.. the things will sell out the entire time and you’ll get a big PR BLAST each time the price drops.

(Incidentally, I also think new TLDs should do the same thing.)

Oh yeah, after our talk, Ken Schafer of Tucows asked us about our affiliate program.

Then, we cut the legs off a squishy cow.

27 Comments

  1. 1

    Still all jazzed about getting dug, eh? =)

    Comment by Pete — November 10, 2006 #

  2. 2

    Josh, you wore a shirt?? I thought the pictures in the last post were of you guys 5 minutes before show time?

    I’m surprised you guys even go out in public. Aren’t you afraid of bumping into that angry-spam-phone-message guy?!

    Seriously though, you guys seem cool. Speaking of promo codes… If you ever want to sign up for your own hosting, let me know and I’ll make you each a $97 promo code with your name in it… you’ll have no idea that you’re being tracked. ;-)

    Comment by Mike — November 10, 2006 #

  3. 3

    I’m sorry. I would have enjoyed showing up but… um… my.. err… enchilada… was… um…. having a baby…. and so I… errrr…. had to see a man about a horse…. or something…

    Comment by Alex Riviere — November 10, 2006 #

  4. 4

    An auction? Bleh… all would go to the millionaires. With me it would be another way. FIFO net sale: first in, first out.

    Making people wait in lines for hours or days… that makes me angry… :p

    Comment by Nuno — November 10, 2006 #

  5. 5

    And hey, in a few months I have more than 100 direct referrals!!
    That’s crazy!

    I could never have done that without your excellent promo codes idea. 100000 thumbs up for the DreamHost team!

    Hurray!!!!!!!!!!!

    Comment by Nuno — November 10, 2006 #

  6. 6

    So much ajax…

    I’d come and meet you guys if you were in England, for example Linux World Expo :P (which several of your competitors were at, and giving out free stuff!)

    Comment by Shish — November 10, 2006 #

  7. 7

    When seeing the AJAX picture, I was excited at the idea that maybe the PANEL.dreamhost.com was redesigned and now used AJAX.

    I guess one can only wish.

    Comment by Frank — November 12, 2006 #

  8. 8

    Dreamhost…official home of the American Nazi Party. Dont you guys feel a bit ashamed of hosting this group: americannaziparty.com

    Comment by visitor — November 12, 2006 #

  9. 9

    I dont think that they really mind! At the end of the day its another customer thats paying money!

    I wasnt on planning on spending $1000 to come and fly to USA, I think you guys should come over to England like Shish said! Then I’d come and have a look!

    Comment by Craig — November 13, 2006 #

  10. 10

    Re: #8

    Are you going to point out the part of their site that actually breaks their TOS, or do you just hate America and freedom of speech altogether?

    Anyway, good job of advertising the Nazi site on a high traffic blog–you are now one of them.

    Is there anything else from your bookmarks you want to promote here? NAMBLA? Beastiality?

    Comment by Mike — November 13, 2006 #

  11. 11

    Craig:

    > I dont think that they really mind! At the end of the
    > day its another customer thats paying money!

    That’s a pretty common misnomer. For every site like this that we host, we probably lose money due to the negative PR (we get a few “we’ll never host with DreamHost due to your hosting of site XYZ!!!” type messages from time to time). In the end, though, we’re just not going to assert editorial control over customers’ web sites. That’s a slippery slope we’re going to leave to our competitors.

    Mike:

    > Are you going to point out the part of their site that
    > actually breaks their TOS, or do you just hate America and
    > freedom of speech altogether?

    Yeah - I don’t think it’s exactly a big secret that we have a very liberal free speech policy when it comes to customer sites. We host sites from all over the socio-political spectrum, many of which we don’t personally agree with.

    As for hate sites in particular - we feel that the best way to deal with such attitudes is to let them expose themselves. Hiding alternative viewpoints isn’t a very good way to combat them, and such obscurity could make them more popular among the impressionable.

    - Jeff @ DreamHost

    Comment by Jeff C. — November 13, 2006 #

  12. 12

    That, and DH is a US based company - subject to US legal process. So the people that watch these groups can get easy access to their records/site with one subpoena if they break a law.

    From a prosecution point of view, when these groups break laws its better to have their sites on the servers of a legit domestic hosting Co. Then on some guy’s PC in Russia or something. DH I’m sure is only too happy to fork over the goods when the Justice Dept comes knocking. All we have to do in the public is keep the Justice Dept honest ;)

    But to censor based on political viewpoint gets pretty dicey from a legal/ethical standpoint. Part of the price of a free society is being exposed to views that most of us find disgusting. I say that as one of them commie-socialist-pinko- leftist-secular progressive-god hating-San Francisco value holding-homo-big guvment loving-tax and spend-effete-latte drinking-’merica haters… Who also hosts with y’all.

    Comment by Sarah — November 13, 2006 #

  13. 13

    Jeff,

    That’s one of my favorite things about DH, even though I personally don’t do anything that pushes those limits–and would probably disagree with most of the sites that do.

    I don’t think that some people (like #8) get that respecting freedom of speech is not the same thing as harboring criminals or failing to cooperate with law enforcement when there’s an actual problem.

    Plus… If I had a problem with every host that hosted a site that I didn’t like, I’d either have stock up on missiles to take out every data center on the planet, or at least disconnect from the internet… whichever is cheaper & easier. ;-)

    Comment by Mike — November 13, 2006 #

  14. 14

    > I don’t think that some people (like #8) get that respecting
    > freedom of speech is not the same thing as harboring criminals
    > or failing to cooperate with law enforcement when there’s an
    > actual problem.

    Yeah, freedom of speech is a very different thing from harboring criminals (though I can understand the confusion when Europeans write in about some of these sites, as such material actually is illegal in many European countries).

    If you want the right to post critical speech, you can do it from our servers. It’s best not to think that means you can break the law, though, as we _do_ cooperate fully with law enforcement.

    - Jeff C. @ DreamHost

    Comment by Jeff C. — November 13, 2006 #

  15. 15

    Sorry I missed seeing you guys speak! I ended up in New York that week, but I would have loved to have seen it. Great job on the blog guys ;)

    Comment by amy — November 14, 2006 #

  16. 16

    What’s with the ben wa balls stuck to his face? I guess I shouldn’t tease too hard; seems like a nice guy…

    Comment by JeffBell — November 16, 2006 #

  17. 17

    same wars, different console - they’ll probably show up in the paper and on ebay for that much but once supplies even out enough, they’ll drop. no big deal.

    Comment by Matt — November 16, 2006 #

  18. 18

    Damn, I woulda showed if I had of know you were gonna be here in Dallas.

    Comment by Joel — November 17, 2006 #

  19. 19

    You know, that’s an actual gang sign one of your cartoony thugs, “Da Croc” is throwing. You might want to blur that out unless you want to get your asses kicked by a rival gang banger.

    Comment by beej — November 17, 2006 #

  20. 20

    So Josh, we’re all dying to know, did you get your Wii?

    Comment by Karl — November 20, 2006 #

  21. 21

    Did I? It’s a long story..

    A pretty sweet one too. I showed up at around 10pm with my wife, and right after we got in line (which was all the way around the block Toys R Us is on in Times Square), some wii people came by and gave us each a bracelet which “guaranteed” us a wii (they had like 5,000).

    So we left, since a friend of mine was in town for a party at some bar that was starting at 10pm. My wife went home to bed, and my friend and I returned at 2:30am thoroughly trashed to see the status of the line.

    At that point the line was only about 1/4 of the way around the block. But my friend was like “WHOAAAAAAAAA! I ain’t waiting in THAT!” So we got some Nuts4Nuts then went over to Yoshinoya and ate some yummy beef bowl. I think due to my blood alcohol content, the nuts just tasted like chewing and the beef like hot.

    We then returned around 3am, and the line was down to like a dozen people! So I hopped over the barrier and got right at the end of the line! Immediately a nintendo guy said “sorry, the line is closed.. no more people tonight!” To which I replied “I HAVE A BRACELET! I am guaranteed a WII!!!!” And he said “Well, actually, my boss didn’t notice you hop over, so just keep quiet and I’ll let you stay. Unfortunately, my friend wasn’t so sly, and he was just trying to walk up to the end of the line, and the boss guy wasn’t letting him in! The line was getting shorter and shorter, we were almost in, and my pal was stuck on the outside.. he even had my wife’s Wii bracelet!

    But, right as I was getting in the store, he got his sly back, and slipped in next to me! We were in.. the VERY LAST TWO PEOPLE allowed in on opening night! Once inside, we were a little pumped/inebriated and I decided to buy four, extra controllers, 2 zeldas, monkey ball, plus an xbox 360, and bomberman land touch for the ds! (They had lots of wiis left.)

    Unfortunately, when it came time to check out (the very LAST check out I might add), they wouldn’t let me buy the xbox OR the DS game.. it was “WII NIGHT” only. I was seriously bummed because I’d literally been waiting TEN YEARS for a good online Bomberman game.. in fact, I’d rather have had that one Bomberman Land Touch DS than ALL THE WIIS IN THE WORLD!

    On our way back home in the taxi my buddy revealed to me he’d stolen Madden 07, Excite Truck and some super-hero game! So sly!

    When we got back home, we woke my wife and our dog and regaled them the tale of our exploits. My dog was in some kind of weird sleep stupor though, he immediately peed on our bedroom carpet (which he NEVER does!), then bit my friend’s foot. My wife probably wanted to do the same.

    We then played with our wees for an hour and a half before finally going to sleep around 5:30.

    Comment by Josh Jones — November 22, 2006 #

  22. 22

    NOBODY gives a dam about your stupid talks!

    Comment by anonuser — November 28, 2006 #

  23. 23

    Apparently, you do, since you went out of your way to comment here about it.

    Comment by Mike — November 29, 2006 #

  24. 24

    In which other company blog will you see a post about stolen games and dogs peeing in the carpet? :p LOOOOL!

    I don’t even remember last time I played a game. When I rarely have some time for some fun, I try to run away from computers, videogames, and all this %#”%”#&&#$ :p

    Comment by Nuno — December 1, 2006 #

  25. 25

    So, what’s up with the November’s newsletter Josh?

    Comment by waa waaa weee weee — December 5, 2006 #

  26. 26

    [...] Anyway, I’m sure you’re all more interested in getting that present than in another tired annual discussion of how “nobody’s allowed to say Christmas anymore”. I know not everybody got FOUR Wiis in their stocking like I did, so I better cut to the chase! [...]

    Pingback by DreamHost Blog » A Christmas Present for You! — December 28, 2006 #

  27. 27

    SOUNDS LIKE A SCAMMMMMM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

    Comment by Anonymous — January 2, 2007 #

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