Consumed Consumer . org

I was a happy camper this afternoon, on a lazy sunny Sunday, trying to decide between a bicycle ride and wasting time on the 'net.

I fought the ‘net, I fought the ‘net, I really did, but the ‘Net won. I checked out this particular website and felt that it was not loading as fast as I would have liked. I decided to remove the twitter feed from the sidebar, as it is not terribly useful. But rather than remove it completely, I decided that, as a first step, I will simply reduce the 6 tweets displayed to only one. The code – taken from the official twitter widget – was:

<ul id="twitter_update_list"></ul>
<a id="twitter-link" style="display:block;text-align:right;" href="http://twitter.com/InBonobo”>follow me on Twitter</a>
<script src="http://twitter.com/javascripts/blogger.js" type="text/javascript"></script>
<script src=http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/InBonobo.json?callback=twitterCallback2&amp;count=6 type="text/javascript"></script>

I changed 6 to 1, saved, and reloaded to page, only to get a login prompt in a pop-up for m.twitter.com – Yikes!?!???

I then checked my account, only to find the dreaded “account suspended” page:

(Image used with permission.)

I proceeded then to file a support ticket stating that I haven’t broken any rule and asking that my account is reinstated. Checking my account again, I was hit with “page does not exist”:

date    Sun, Jul 5, 2009 at 7:38 PM
subject    inbonobo account deleted?!?
mailed-by    gmail.com

    hide details 7:38 PM (59 minutes ago)    

Dear Madam or Sir,
Upon noticing today that my account was suspended without cause, I filed a ticket requesting that it is reinstated. I have not done anything against the rules or terms of service.
Shortly thereafter, when checking if the account had been reinstated, I noticed that now, instead of "this account was suspended" page, I was getting "this page does not exist'.
Has my account been deleted?!? Please explain.
Cheers,
http://inbonobo.com

All that’s left for me to do is post a request on GetSatisfaction, but it’s unlikely that anything will be done

It seems that my previous ticket has disappeared, being replaced by the email I had sent:

For posterity, this is what my account used to look like:

As you can see, I once had 584 followers while following 545. ‘twas good while it lasted

Here’s what tweetlater had to say:

Sunday, July 5th, 2009: A lot of people with legitimate Twitter
accounts are currently suffering from having their accounts suspended
(late Sunday afternoon).

It is not TweetLater’s doing or fault. So, please do not submit a
TweetLater support request about it.

We just heard back from Twitter via email, and they said : “Spamcloud
hit. We’re working on restoring accounts.”

We just need to be patient. The suspended accounts will be restored.

Patience is one of my strongest gifts, but I’ve been using it all u[ in a totally different kind of hell..

• Senator McCarthy, I’m not a commie!
• Mr. Bush and dark eminence Cheney, I’m not a Muslim and I bathe in oil, just like you!
• Mr. Obama, I’ll listen to all your speeches in their totality, just let me go home!

Sources / More info: my twitter account, twitter support, twitter status, twitter request, known issues, suspended@getsatisfaction

I have recently unearthed a computer I haven't touched in a while and together with it the problems that frustrated me initially. Not only that the problems did not go away, but now the computer seems to suffer abandonment issues. This is a multiboot machine and it seems that the CD-ROM / DVD burner is identified by all OSs but it is unusable in only one of them. I'm showing you how to fix this problem.

The computer is a Shuttle 85G4 with an AMD 3200+ processor  and a DVD Dual Layer NEC burner, ND-2510A. Back in 2004 when I purchased it was top of the line, but lack of timely support for AMD-64, nVidia betrayal of the nForce 3 platform and ATI's general lack of support and notoriously poorly written drivers for their video cards caused me to forfeit setting it up as an HTPC / game rig. The problems encountered with this system are better left for another article. Here we'll be looking only at the inability to use the drive in Windows XP 64.

Just the facts, ma'am

The drive is correctly identified but no drive letter is assigned and in Device Manager appears with a question mark and error code 39:

Windows cannot load the device driver for this hardware. The driver may be corrupted or missing. (Code 39)

Question mark in Device Manager	Error Code 39

The Details of the drive, as reported in the Properties, are 2.18____\4&27AF&F99&0&1.0.0

The Treacherous Path

In my research, I was surprised to find that this problem is very frequent. While this can be caused by a hardware issue, such as a failed drive or a cable / contact problem, this cannot possibly be the case since the drive more or less works in the other operating systems installed on the computer. By this I mean that I have burned coasters in the past, but they could have been caused by a multitude of reasons and in each case the problem was not that the drive was completely unusable. Nonetheless, an intermittent problem cannot be completely eliminated.

The problem is not that described by Calabrel (XP-won't-recognize), since the drive is partially recognized but unavailable and is connected via PATA to the motherboard, not SATA. Uninstalling and reinstalling the drive as suggested here (after-sp3) did not do the trick and the drive is not USB  (USB-cdfreaks). New or hacked firmware (cdfreaks-firmware) or new drivers are most likely to cause more problems than they would solve (NEC-drivers, bio-2510A, 3.26-fw, 2510A-NEC).

Removing the lower and upper filters from registry

This sounds like curing cancer through voodoo, but where I found it, there seem to reports that it works (regedit1, regedit2). Here's the write-up by Ekse (with minor corrections):

There are even several youtube videos:

It couldn’t be any easier, right?

CYA Preparation

Prior to trying this registry modification, I will attempt the following:

1. Read more about these filters

A quick search turned out additional links, this time more authoritative. The Microsoft Knowledge Base 304060 article (ms-kb), although almost idiot-proof, does not answer any of my question. Yahoo! Answers (y-answers) comes closer, but still no cookie:

sometimes they screw up or go bad because you updated your windows, or installed alternate dirvers, or something in your system changed which over-wrote the drivers or changed the default drivers (which are provided by microsoft...

The PCreview forum (pcreview) as further discussion on this topic. Truth be told, any such research should start with Microsoft Knowledge Base but unfortunately, it is notoriously difficult to obtain good search results there, as the articles are indexed based on obscure or arcane language.

2. Test the drive one more time

That is, burn something in one of the other OSs to make sure it's not a hardware failure. The DVD is not only visible, but it reads DVDs and CDs with no problem. Just to be on the safe side, I tried burning my Liberkey as a backup.

CDburnerXP failed right away with error:

LiberKey Unable to cast COM object of type 'NMSDVDXLib.DataImageXClass' to interface type 'NMSDVDXLib.IDataImageX'. This operation failed because the QueryInterface call on the COM component for the interface with IID '{639520A1-3657-493E-8326-C88A8E90B4A9}' failed due to the following error: No such interface supported (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80004002 (E_NOINTERFACE)). C:\LiberKey

Amok started caching the files but failed when it reached a file name with Russian characters. So did Infrarecorder. Nero managed to get over it gracefully and upon verifying the disk, found even Sector read errors toward the end – but those could have been my fingerprints.

3. Backup that registry branch

Here it is, below – copy and paste in a .reg file if you need to restore or if the change doesn’t do anything.

4. ..and.. success!!! Drive works now flawlessly, at least so far!!!

More info / Sources

XP-won't-recognize, after-sp3, USB-cdfreaks, cdfreaks-firmware, NEC-drivers, bio-2510A, 3.26-fw, 2510A-NEC, regedit1, regedit2, y-answers, ms-kb, pcreview, xp-64-not-worth-it, yt

As most consumers can no longer ignore economic news, we are taking a long, hard and detailed look at the data spewed by the financial press.

OECD cheers, central banks retreat

In its latest report, the organization states that its 30 members prospects are the best in the past two years and that the "worst scenario was averted". The economies will grow 0.7% next year, with Canada 0.7% and US 0.9%, a marked improvement from the previous estimate, but will still shrink 4.1% this year. As the situation improves, central banks start to apply their "exit strategies".

“It looks as if the worst scenario has been avoided and that OECD economies are now nearing the bottom,” Jorgen Elmeskov, acting head of the economics department, wrote in a report released Wednesday. “Even if the subsequent recovery may be slow such an outcome is a major achievement of economic policy.”

“It suggests that there is no longer the need for training wheels on the credit markets,” Charmaine Buskas, a senior economics strategist at TD Securities, said in a note to clients. Still, all help isn't disappearing. The main Bank of Canada lending program aimed at major banks will be kept open until at least until the end of January. “In this context, it is appropriate to focus on the Bank's primary tool for injecting term liquidity into the financial system,” Mr. Harrison said. There is about $29-billion of loans to banks outstanding under the main program. While that's down from $41-billion at the end of 2008, it's a significant figure that shows banks are still relying on the funding.

The World Bank predicted a worldwide contraction of 2.9%, the first since WW2.

The OECD's forecast for Canada next year compares with the Bank of Canada's estimate for growth of 2.5 per cent. The two estimates aren't comparable because the OECD and the Bank of Canada use different methodology in their forecasting. (?!?)

Consumer reaction: China, the new US?

Predictably, the american consumers, who has long carried world's consumption on their shoulders, tightened their purse. (The rest of this section contains direct quotes from the Globe and Mail.)

The savings rate, which was hovering near zero in early 2008, surged to 6.9 per cent, the highest level since December, 1993. (...) Nigel Gault, chief U.S. economist at IHS Global Insight, forecast that consumers would remain cautious going forward but that even dampened increases in spending should be enough to jump-start economic growth. “We do expect spending to creep slowly higher in the second half of the year as the labour market deterioration becomes less severe,” he said in a research note. The U.S. government reported Wednesday that the overall economy, as measured by the gross domestic product, shrank at an annual rate of 5.5 per cent in the January-March quarter, slightly less severe than the 5.7 per cent decline estimated a month ago. However, the 5.5 per cent drop in the first quarter followed a 6.3 per cent decline in the last three months of last year, the worst six-month performance for the GDP in more than a half-century.

In the long term, this relative miserliness isn't such a bad thing. Spending will once again be a function of incomes, rather than assets, and the U.S. economy will be less vulnerable to the kind of credit-fuelled crisis that we're all trying to climb out of. In the immediate term, however, there is little doubt this saving will slow the pace of a global economic recovery. The paradox of thrift, first espoused by John Maynard Keynes, posits that if people save too much in bad times, they could actually become poorer: The lack of consumption begets a falloff in demand, which in turn stalls the economy and results in lost jobs.

"This marks a significant change in the global economy," said Ken Lieberthal, who was the senior director for Asia on the national security council under President Bill Clinton, and is now a professor of business administration at the University of Michigan. "It means the U.S. will no longer provide the level of consumption the rest of the world has become accustomed to, and built their economic models around. I see the potential for very substantial friction going forward."

"It is almost mathematically impossible for China and India - either alone or together - to fill the void that is now being left by the post-bubble American consumer," said Stephen Roach, chairman of Morgan Stanley Asia. He notes that although the United States accounts for about 4.5 per cent of the world's population, it consumes $10-trillion annually. In contrast, China and India are home to 40 per cent of the global population, but account for just $2-trillion in spending.

The world may be looking at China's continuing growth and hoping it can save the global economy as it expands, but Beijing's goals are more immediate. Battered by seven months of falling export sales as demand from North America and Europe vanished - including a 26.4-per-cent plummet in May - the government, concerned about social stability, is trying only to keep its own economy from further collapsing. Saving the West is the last of its concerns. "In the medium term, it's more likely [the Chinese consumer] will replace the Japanese consumer as the engine of Asian growth," said Matthew Crabbe, director of Access Asia, a research consultancy. "As for the global economy, it obviously helps [that Chinese consumers are still buying], but it's not a panacea." Others wonder if the Chinese stimulus program, which effectively creates artificial domestic demand to keep more factories from closing, isn't doing more harm than good. "It's very hard to make the transition from an export-led economy model to a consumption-led economy model. No one before has done it in less than a decade, and much of what China is currently doing may actually slow the needed adjustments," said Michael Pettis, a professor of finance at Beijing University. "The U.S. has stopped being the consumer of last resort, so unless somebody else steps up, there is going to be problem with too much production globally and not enough consumption," he said. "What I'm very worried about is that we're going to see a situation where the Americans aren't buying [the surplus], and the Chinese aren't buying it, either. I'm worried we're going into a very rough decade."

Advisors and Millionaires

Canadian investors are significantly less satisfied with their advisors compared to last year. Only 24% would recommend them vs 32% in 2008 and 10% will switch compared to 6% then. 36% of investors have started using a discount broker and keeping a full-service broker at the same time vs 25% last year.

“This has created a new frugality, a situation in which an investor might call their adviser to get recommendations on portfolio mix and stock selection, but then turn around and place their order online for $9 or $7 per trade rather than spending $250 by trading through an adviser,” said Lubo Li, J.D. Power's senior director.

Obviously, investors lost a lot of money in the market turmoil. According to the World Wealth Report, "the number of people with assets of between $1-million (U.S.) and $30-million fell 14.9 per cent to 8.6 million" and their combined wealth fell "19.5 per cent to $32.8-trillion". The number of those with "more than $30-million in assets dropped 24.6 per cent, and the group's wealth fell 23.9 per cent".

Ileana van der Linde, a principal with Capgemini said: “We've never seen such a decline in all the years we've been doing the report,” she said in an interview with The Associated Press. “This market was really unprecedented.” Those in Latin America fared much better because they favour low-risk investments - Brazil's millionaires lost only 8.4%.

Canada's Own: the Irvings & Reisman

While most businesses were and still are faced with serious problems, it is difficult to learn how they respond and adapt to the new environment. One of Canada's most secretive business empires, Irving Oil, changed its name to Fort Reliance and also opened an office in Toronto. Reisman, who purchased Chapters back in 2001 despite its management opposition, has started to diversify into the digital realm with Shortcovers, its answer to Kindle. Unlike Kindle, the service is available on a multitude of platforms in both Canada and USA.

More info / Sources: gm-investors, gm-oecd, gm-central, gm-million, gm-sock, gm-paradox-us, gm-paradox-china, gm-irvings, gm-shortcovers

One of my favourite winter things to do is cooking good food. After all, you’re stuck inside for longer than usual, you get those carb cravings, and what better way to fight that then with good, wholesome, homemade food?

We looked at 4 recipes so that you can choose. The photos belong to 1001:

There is no particular reason why we looked especially for Red Lentils other than the fact that this is what we had in our kitchen.

Originally, the lentil soup was something brown and fatty, with bacon thrown in to provide ammunition for the cold. These days, few of us really need fat any more. Personally, I don’t like it, so I was very happy to find these fresh, light recipes. I tried only the first and it was awesome. But before the winter’s over I’ll be sure to try them all!

Do you have anything better? Have you tried any of them? Let us know!

Sources: rs, wp, 1k1, mk

One of the features designed to help beginners that ends up annoying the hell out of anyone else is the Windows Update "Restart your computer now?" nag. We look at a few ways to stop it.

For the absolute beginner, Windows Update provides a very important function: the need to keep your OS updated as a way to prevent disaster. While other OSs (such as Ubuntu) take a friendlier to the user approach, Windows will nag you every 10 minutes to restart the machine, and absent any user input, will restart it automatically. This is fine if you left the computer on without shutting down, suspending or hibernating; however, if you are in the middle of a lengthy task, such as rendering, compiling or downloading, a reboot would turn your microcosm upside down. You need to prevent it, but how?

There are two ways to go about it:

1. Temporary solutions

• The fastest and quickest is to type in a Command Prompt sc stop wuauserv or net stop "windows update". This will stop the nags for the time being, but everything will start again on reboot.
• The same effect as above can be achieved graphically: Start->Control Panel->Administrative Tools->Services->Automatic Updates->Right-click->Stop.
• Suspend the process using pssuspend: pssuspend wuauclt

2. More permanent solutions

• On Windows, you can modify a group policy setting to change how frequently it re-prompts you. In Group Policy Editor (start -> run type gpedit.msc), look under Computer Configuration/Administrative Templates/Windows Components/Windows Update. The settings of interest are Re-Prompt for restart with scheduled installations and No auto-restart for scheduled Automatic Updates installations. Be sure to read the explanations provided by Microsoft in the Extended tabs, as the way GPedit works is often counterintuitive.
• The same effect as using gpedit can be achieved by directly modifying the registry. Obviously, this is not something you should be attempting if you can use the above method or if you are not a power user. In the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Policies\Microsoft\Windows\WindowsUpdate\AU key create a new 32-bit DWORD value named NoAutoRebootWithLoggedOnUsers and give it a value of 1 to prevent automatic reboot while users are logged on
• Download WUNoAutoReboot.reg and 2X click it.
• Use AutoBoot Remover.

Do you know any other methods? Speak up!

Sources: StOFwu, lhwu, thtgwu

This is Winter Wonderland season and while some can’t wait for it to end, others would like to keep it going for the rest of the year. For them and all those who just can’t get enough of its magical power, here is a list of Christmasy things you might enjoy.

We have not forgotten our Jewish friends, who celebrated Hanukkah. This is why we included a clip in the list below at the very end

1. The carols, the joy, the videos

2. Jon Stewart's (tds)

Navigate the lists above (over 60 video clips) by pressing the right and left arrows on the clips. And if that’s not enough, there’s a movie played in many families on Christmas morning (funnyordie).

3. Crazy photos

…some ads (christmasads), some random funnies

If you want more photos, try Time’s collection of photo essays (timephoto) or Telegraph’s (tlgpoy, tlgtop).

4. Merry Christmas & Happy New Year

…in 100 Different Languages:

Isn't it interesting how different is "Romani" from "Romanian"?

5. News & trivia

Presented on Seinfeld in ‘97, Festivus is still gaining followers (see the last videos in the list above). Scoring at a Christmas Party is a deeply held desire of many people, which is why HolyTaco has not one, but two HowTo’s explaining how to accomplish this noble goal (holytaco). If you are the analytical type, you can meditate on 5 Qs on the origins of Christmas (5qs). Mac.addicts get their fix from the Mac Giving Tree, which has application icons that start glowing with promotion codes (mgt) – if there are none around you, try the list of 6 green gadgets (6gg). Astronomers claim that Jesus was born in June (junechrist). GE Unveils the World’s First OLED Christmas Tree (geoled). Santa is likely pulled by all-female reindeer, finds Discovery, dealing yet another blow to patriarchy (discrndr). And if they dare to be transgendered or unidentified, NORAD is purposely tracking them (wrdnrd). A leftist artist created Christmas decorations commemorating President’s Bush impeachment and they were accepted by the White House staff, who probably did not inspect them (rlso).

No Christmas would be complete without its share of weird news. Bruce Jeffrey Pardo, 45, slaughtered at least 9 people at a Christmas party of his ex-wife before killing himself (cnnsg), and a boy is arrested at his mother’s request for opening gifts too early (tsgb). RIAA continues its campaign to bring misery to downloaders (incp2pl). Finally, the Vietnam government has a gift for its bloggers, helping them become better (/.vietb).

6. General Lists

• Top Technology Breakthroughs of 2008 (wrdttb, /.ttb)
• Review of 2008: 100 great articles (100gr8artcls)
• 5 Best Data Visualization Projects of the Year (5bdvp)

7. Fun lists and reviews

• Top 25 Christmas Movies (t25ct)
• 10 Best Bits Of Christmas From Non-Christmas Movies (10bboc)
• Mashable’s 12 Graphs of Christmas (msh12g)

8. Food & drinks

Beer is a drink for the summer, but don’t despair, there’s no need to torture yourself with an eggnog: there are beers made especially for the winter (winterbeers)! Yet there are some heartier drinks as well, actually, 12 of them (12doc). Some don’t like overrated Christmas food (ocf).

9. Artist’s winter dream

Webmasters or designers who want to add some winter cheer to their creations have too many resources to choose from. Let us contribute to the clutter:

• Snow Text Effect for Photoshop (snowtext)
• Snow Effect on Wordpress and Blogspot (wpsnow, bsnow)
• 10 Christmas Fonts and Old Romanian (10cf, zam)
• 24 Free Christmas Photoshop Tutorials (24fcpt)
• How to Photograph Christmas Lights (h2pcl)
• 16 Digital Photography Tips for Christmas (16ptc)
• Make your own Flying Spaghetti Monster Lights (fsm)
• How to Make Your Christmas Lights Flash to Music (wkhl)
• Make a LED Christmas Tree! (and other DIY – DIY122)
• 25 Winter, Snow And Christmas Related High Resolution Wallpapers (25wsw)
• 16 Stunning High Resolution Christmas Wallpapers (16shrw)
• Cracked Funny Doctored Christmas Photos (crkdwce, crkdlfs, crkdcmb)
• Miscellaneous collections (19sa, hk40b, kbs)

10. Games

We recently learned that men enjoy computer games more than women becaus of a basic urge to conquer (tlgmcg) and that Wii is so popular, that a knee injuries epidemic is expected (tlgwkn). Here are some more peaceful (and not only) games as well as a review of the year in gaming (gmyig):

• Christmas Games (kbsG, kbsw, mnclp, prg)
• linux gaming ISO (lgn)
  • Xsnow
  • Snowballz
  • Extreme Tux Racer (fork of the now-dead Tux Racer and PlanetPenguinRacer)
  • Super Tux
  • Tux Typing
  • Frozen Bubble
  • Icebreaker
  • ET + NorthPole map
  • Compiz snow plugin
• Top 5 Freeware (cp, apc)
• Best Free FPSs (fps)
• Arcade & addicting Games (arcn, adcg)
• MAME (mme)
• Freeware Games (fwgn)
• Indie Games Best Of (igb)
• 101 Free Games (2008fg, defg)
• Freeware Genius List of Lists (fwglol)
• Spectrum Games (wos)

Sources

funnyordie, timephoto, christmasads, tds, festivus, winterbeers, holytaco, snowtext, wpsnow, bsnow, 10cf, zam, 19sa, t25st, 5qs, mgt, 24fcpt, 12doc, h2pcl, junechrist, geoled, fsm, ocf, wkhl, DiY122, 10bboc, 16ptc, 6gg, 25wsw, 16shrw, hk40b, kbs, kbsG, kbsw, mnclp, prg, cp, apc, fps, arcn, mme, adcg, fwgn, igb, 2008fg, defg, fwglol, lgn, wos, cnnsg, tsgb, crkdwce, crkdlfs, crkdcmb, incp2pl, tlgpoy, tlgtop, discrndr, wrdnrd, rlso, msh12g, tlgwkn, tlgmcg, wrdttb, /.ttb, 100gr8artcls, 5bdvp, /.vietb, gmyig

If you pay attention to the Web 2.0 phenomenon, you might have noticed the creative use of misspelling and icons in logos. You might know them even better if you voted in the Open Web Awards. Brace yourself for a quiz that aims to test that very knowledge!

The logo quiz is offered by quizible.com. There are 33 logos to identify and some of them are really tricky.

If you get stuck, here are the answers: 

Good Luck!

Mashable has just announced the winners to the 2nd edition of Open Web Awards. Today we learned the names of the People’s Choice Awards, while a week ago we were told the names the Blogger’s Choice Awards winners.

These technologies are exciting not so much because they just won, but also (and maybe especially) because they represent the creme of this past year’s web 2.0 crop and in some instances, they are technologies you or I should have heard of, but did not.

Source: Mashable

In the midst of a so-called recession, when people are expected to be afraid and postpone shopping, crazy shoppers trample a Walmart employee to death. We take another look at adbusters and their Buy Nothing Day campaign.

The following playlist shows clips related to the Black Friday shopping death as well as adbusters Buy Nothing Day.

Black Friday is traditionally the day when retailers turn profitable for the year (or are Back in Black). This year is different:

“I think it ties into a sort of fear and panic of not having enough,” said Joe Priester, a professor at the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and a former president of the Society for Consumer Psychology. A herd mentality, he said, can lead individuals to feel anonymous — so much so that they are quite capable of trampling someone. “Fear combined with the group mentality?” he said. “It doesn’t surprise me at all.”

Walter Loeb, president of Loeb Associates, a retail consultancy, said there was shopping mania at Wal-Mart every year. But this year, he said, it seems “people are becoming irrational in their actions.”

At a Wal-Mart store in Columbus, Ohio, Nikki Nicely, 19, jumped onto a man’s back and pounded his shoulders when he tried to take a 40-inch Samsung flat-screen television to which she had laid claim. “That’s my TV!” Ms. Nicely shouted. “That’s my TV!”

A police officer and security guard intervened, but not before Ms. Nicely took an elbow in the face. In the end, she was the one with the $798 television, marked down from $1,000. “That’s right,” she cried as her adversary walked away. “This here is my TV!”

Charisma Booker, also on the hunt for a television, said she had been shopping at Wal-Mart every Black Friday for nearly a decade. “There are fewer people here this year, but they’re more aggressive,” she said. “I’ve never seen anybody fight like this. This is crazy.”

At a Wal-Mart in Niles, Ill., a mother fought back tears when she discovered someone had taken her shopping cart filled with toys.

In a statement about the death in a Wal-Mart in Valley Stream, N.Y., Hank Mullany, of the company’s northeast division, said the store had expected a large crowd on Friday morning and had added security staff, among other measures. “Despite all of our precautions,” he said, “this unfortunate event occurred.”

It seems however that only Wal-Mart had this kind of trouble due to poor organization, while the shooting deaths at Toys R Us were not Black Friday related. Best Buy, for instance, gave tickets for items on customers’ shopping lists, reducing the need to elbow out. Furthermore, some pundits claim that sales were lower not just because of the economy, but mostly because these days the best deals can be found online.

One of the best-known features of Wal-Mart corporate culture is their aversion to unions. The company has a stated policy of closing down stores that unionize.

“They have problems with crowds every year, and inevitab[ly], people get hurt,” said David Nassar of Wal-Mart Watch, a union-financed group. “They should expect to plan properly for this kind of a problem and have adequate security in place, and they don’t.”

Although retailers prefer the “black ink” explanation for the name of the shopping celebration, in reality the name was given by the Philadelphia police in anticipation of the chaos caused by bargain hunters:

The term Black Friday began to get wider exposure around 1975, as shown by two newspaper articles from November 29, 1975, both datelined Philadelphia. The first reference is in an article entitled "Army vs. Navy: A Dimming Splendor," in The New York Times:

Philadelphia police and bus drivers call it "Black Friday" - that day each year between Thanksgiving Day and the Army-Navy game. It is the busiest shopping and traffic day of the year in the Bicentennial City as the Christmas list is checked off and the Eastern college football season nears conclusion.

The derivation is also clear in an Associated Press article entitled "Folks on Buying Spree Despite Down Economy," which ran in the Titusville Herald on the same day:

Store aisles were jammed. Escalators were nonstop people. It was the first day of the Christmas shopping season and despite the economy, folks here went on a buying spree. ... "That's why the bus drivers and cab drivers call today 'Black Friday,'" a sales manager at Gimbels said as she watched a traffic cop trying to control a crowd of jaywalkers. "They think in terms of headaches it gives them."

A similarly misguided name exists for the starting of the online shopping season, CyberMonday, which refers to the Monday immediately following Black Friday. Just like Cyber Monday is not the busiest day for online retailers, Black Friday is not the busiest for brick & mortar ones (it was only in 2003 and 2005).

Is there a way out of this madness? Why sure there is, glad you asked!

Since the early 90s and starting with Vancouver artist Ted Dave, Adbusters, an anticonsumerist group, is running a Buy Nothing Day. This is set on November 28 for North America and 29th for the rest of the world. A group of culturejammers, Adbusters are trying to get you to think about your overspending ways, and do so primarily through a magazine and a website. Not to be outdone, the even more socialist Montreal gave birth to the Steal Something Day campaign:

The geniuses at Adbusters have managed to create the perfect feel-good, liberal, middle-class activist non-happening. A day when the more money you make, the more influence you have (like every other day). A day which, by definition, is insulting to the millions of people worldwide who are too poor or marginalized to be considered "consumers.

In the meantime, other than consumers trampling on each other, 150 whales died in Tasmania stranded on a beach.

We would’ve covered this earlier, but we were too busy shopping

Sources

Buy Nothing Day: Adbusters, wp, bndwiki, StealSD, td, tchb, grd

Black Friday: wp, CNNm, CTV, nyt, CNNunion, CNNdeaths, CNNwhales, CNNbf, wp:CM