Support a new business, & get a cool flashlight to boot

4 Responses to Support a new business, & get a cool flashlight to boot

1. Rivrdog says:

   July 15, 2011 at 7:55 am

   As I read the ad, the $35 or $60 you pay does not pay for the light, it pays for the privilege of standing in line to get one, at the actual prices of $54.99 or $89.99. Note that the language in the ad DOES NOT SAY that the “pledges” are down payments or partial payments. I’m not the barrister, David is, so why don’t we run this by him?

   First time I’ve seen the word “pledge” used in any sort of transaction other than some sort of gift to a charity.

   I’d be suspicious of this outfit, just for re-inventing the language of sales, if nothing else.

   Also, what the HELL does “open source” have to do with a flashlight? Nothing that I can divine. Flashlights are hardware, and as such, once you get your hands on one, you can reverse-engineer it if you want. “Open source” has been used in the computer industry to describe NON-proprietary software coding, and I’ve not seen it used for anything else. ANOTHER use of non-traditional advertising language, heightens the suspicions above.

   This whole ad reminds me of the scammer firm that sells “Easy Water” systems. By very careful maneuvering of the language, their ads never quite tell you that they are trying to sell you a different type of water softener, but that’s their intent. They play with words because their “system” doesn’t actually work to remove dissolved calcium from your water as other types of actual water softeners do. So far, the Easy Water boys have managed to survive attacks in court, but they are numero uno for customer complaints in their field. This flashlight ad seems to have some similarities to Easy Water in that regard.
2. Mad Rocket Scientist says:

   July 15, 2011 at 9:31 am

   Actually, this is common on Kickstarter, where the idea is to get individuals to pledge money to supply your startup capital. Think of it as crowd-sourcing venture capital. Check out the Help section on the website for more info.

   Open source hardware (OSHW) consists of physical artifacts of technology designed and offered in the same manner as free and open source software (FOSS). Open source hardware is part of the open source culture movement and applies a like concept to a variety of components. The term usually means that information about the hardware is easily discerned. Hardware design (i.e. mechanical drawings, schematics, bill of materials, PCB layout data, HDL source code and integrated circuit layout data) in addition to the software that drives the hardware are all released with the FOSS approach.
   http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open-source_hardware
3. Rivrdog says:

   July 16, 2011 at 7:42 am

   Interesting, Mad Rocket. Does that mean that the followers of OSHW pledge NOT to seek patents?
4. Mad Rocket Scientist says:

   July 19, 2011 at 11:37 am

   Yep

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