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On a sort of related note, I've noticed recently while observing the Big Dig that heavy machinery, which intuitively should be built as big as the task demands, in practice tends to generally scale up to a size that will fit either inside a standard 40 foot shipping container or, less frequently, the back of a flatbed 18 wheeler trailer.

There's a definite range where equipment will approach this size -- bulldozers & similar tracked digging equipment, high-capacity ventilation fans, and so on -- but for the most part it won't be bigger than will fit on a truck or railcar. If something does need to be bigger, it will either consist of major components that are up to the shipping container's size, &/or it will consist of collapsible sections. Either way, this allows the equipment to be shipped to the construction site, assembled for use, then taken apart & put back when no longer needed.

I suppose this is the modern version of the chariot / railroad constraint. America's Interstates have replaced its riverways & railways as the major means of moving material around the country, so it only makes sense that mass produced products would be built in such a way that they are easy to transport on the back of a truck or, under less common circumstances, on a train or freighter ship. Hence, things tend to be long & skinny, like big shoeboxes.

Rob Cockerham has made a little sticker for your shopper card, making you one of his Safeway clones. All over North America, people are sticking this UPC code over the one on their card. As a result, he appears to buy a lot of stuff.

This bring an interesting wrinkle to his experiment.

The McDonald's Hot Apple (American) Pie thing has been done already. In fact they actually placed their ad in McDonald's drive-thru menus.

Hot Apple Pie

I have complained to Monster, and they have replied that yes, this is a violation of thier TOS, and yes, they would remove the ads that I called to their attention. Just for grins, I checked this morning to see just how many such ads there were on Monster, and found over 5,000 of the Herbalife ads, and about 1,000 of the "work at home" membership ads. This appears to be primarily the output of 3 organizations, with Herbalife 'distributors' responsible for the largest portion. If this is the beginning of a trend, then every MLM and suckerbait outfit on earth is going to be putting their crap there by the end of next week, drowning the legitimate job ads in the noise. For example, my last search produced exactly one legitimate job opening in the last 2 days, and 10 listings for a "work at home" service. (How many legitimate businesses actually use the word 'legitimate' in their names, anyway?)

While tracking down the perpetrators of the most egregious ads, I came across this description of just what Herbalife is, and the damage being done to the Sacramento area by Herbalife 'distributors'. Very interesting read. These scumbags are making spammers look good... OTOH, it sure seems to me that Monster needs to clean up its act, too. They obviously can't remove these fraudulent ads as fast as the MLM victims post them, so they need to start preventing them from getting there in the first place.

I think it's about time we all got this guy's fingerprints and started making thousands of simultaneous purchases worldwide.

He acquired his 15 seconds of internet fame by duplicating and sharing his frequent shopper's card via his personal web site. I can only imagine the junk mail he receives on account of that profile.

According to the How Much Is Inside article on batteries, Duracell D-cell batteries costing $3.69 powered a flashlight for 116 hours, while some unknown brand costing 48 cents lasted 40 hours. This means Duracells cost 3.2 cents/hour and the other brand costed 1.2 cents/hour.

Who would have thought batteries could last that long, or that the brand would make such a difference?

According to the How Much Is Inside article on batteries, Duracell D-cell batteries costing $3.69 powered a flashlight for 116 hours, while some unknown brand costing 48 cents lasted 40 hours. This means Duracells cost 3.2 cents/hour and the other brand costed 1.2 cents/hour.

Who would have thought batteries could last that long, or that the brand would make such a difference?

Of note is that 92 percent of the new information was stored on magnetic media, which may create an interesting problem for historians and archaeologists of the future.

That's because about 57 percent of it was internet porn.

Offshoring the call centers won't help because the company whose product is being advertised is still liable if the telemarketer is offshore. The "distributors" you speak of are similar to the "affiliates" that those MLM vitamin firms Berrytrim and Herbalife use to shield themselves from accusations of spam and illegal billboards. That may work up to a point. As the story shows, Herbalife affiliates go to great lengths to hide exactly what they're selling until you pay something to buy into their business opportunity.

"Simple solution: swap your transit passes with your friends when you get together."

Another link which might interest you is cockeyed.com - where you download a barcode, print it, and stick it over the barcode on your Safeways loyalty card. Suddenly, you become part of the most massive, distributed customer Safeways ever had.

Get the discounts of a spied-upon drone, while not having any personal information stored. Bargain!

A better way to F' with the Man, is to go to a site like this , print out the barcode, and become a Super Shopper. I don't know if their little tracking/averaging softwares toss out ridiculous purchasing numbers, but at least if it doesn't screw up their numbers, it makes a hassle for them.

Heh heh. What are the odds that this was from one of those digi-camera cell phones?

Nah, those are reasonable 1024x768 pics. If you want to see what current phone cameras are capable at the moment then take a look here.

Or, you can go with this guy's formula. Heh.

Try doing this.

You're absolutely right...there is no good reason for ink to cost what it does. I've heard from several friends of mine that have worked for Lexmark and HP out here in Colorado that their printing divisions are ink companies first and printer companies second.

Here is a somewhat amusing comparison on the per gallon cost of various liquids. It's not very statistically accurate as it doesn't take into account bulk discounts and stuff, but it is roughly accurate and quite amusing. Ink is 7th on the list, below things like mercury, scorpion venom, and LSD, but above things like GHB, human blood, and penicillin.

source of the above information.

Cockeyed.com did a comparison of the cost of various liquids by the gallon in the US. Check it out, some of them are pretty amazing: Cockeyed presents: The Price of a Gallon

abd oh yeah... the cartrige purchaced was $32, and the 146 pages of porn were printed and for $41. It seems to me after all is said and done, the cartrige costs about -$0.21 a mililitter.

Well according to this, ink costs about the same as Chanel No. 5 Eau Du Parfum, but when was the last time you tried to print porn with parfume or champagne?

There are several sites that I look at regularly for different programming things.

When I did windows development Code Project was a lifesaver, nowadays that's been replaced by the venerable Perl Monk

For online books I'd browse through The Assayer, and for zany reference nothing beats How Much Is Inside .. Stuff!

This is what's called a straight-line matrix scheme, my friend. It's a scam.

For more info on pyramid or "matrix" schemes, check this out.

There are tons of sites like that out there, offering laptops, x-boxes, plasma TV's, etc. I know it's tempting, but don't send them your money, whatever you do.

like this guy

The video is for QuikStar (sp?), which is this deal where you start your own web business selling things like soap and toilet paper. Or something. At this point I of course realized I was being pseudo-scammed.

Since this guy was a friend and it was my house, it's not like I could leave. So I sat there and asked him why I would buy soap and toilet paper online instead of Wal-Mart and he had some sorta valid reasonings (like bulk) but I really don't want to plan out my soap buying that far in advance. When I asked him how it is that so many online businesses could succeed against each other (see Herbalife) he kept diverting the question.

I basically let the conversation die without giving him a yes or no answer as to whether this would be something I'd want to do. A friend of mine got into it with him (the contact he was in town to meet, I think) and shortly thereafter was doing everything in his power to get out of it.

Ironically, Quikstar is associated with Amway.

It looks like an inkjet printer, but I could be wrong.

You mean, like this?

Seriously, your friend should just quit and get a different job. The end results will be the same either way; he'll no longer be working at Starbucks and so he won't have to listen to their crappy music anymore.

Yeah, but sometimes the hack is the fun part. Check out what this guy has done at Java City. Eventually management did catch on, but they had a sense of humor and admired his wit.

Spam is bad. It doesn't work. I can't figure out why people keep dping it. Is the word not getting out there? IT DOESN"T WORK.

Alas, I think the problem is that there are a lot of idiots out there. Note that people are still joining things like Herbalife, even though it appears to be a scam. Ditto for all the other MLMs. For some people, it seems to take a really long time to get TANSTAAFL.

This study is a pretty amusing look into exactly how much each page of inkjet-ed printing costs you.

Here's a page about a guy who has done several of these, although he doesn't them more from a prankster point-of-view. They aren't vandalism as you might think, but just fun stuff that he makes to see how long his art goes by unnoticed.

Most of them are funny, like the one where he finds a sign at a cafe explaining "How to put the lid on your coffee," (duh!) and changes it to a version which contains many sexual overtones that even fools the employees.

20W won't get your a dual athlon. I measured my Celeron 700 machine at 70W and a 1.1GHz Athlon box at 110W. Maybe 130-150W for a dual Athlon. You will need a little bank of 8 turbines to power the beast.

And about flashlight life... cockeyed has a series on "how much is inside". Checkout the battery one for a shocker about how much is really in a pair of D cell batteries. Then try to figure out why your flashlight is always almost dead. Who comes in and uses up your flashlight?

20W won't get your a dual athlon. I measured my Celeron 700 machine at 70W and a 1.1GHz Athlon box at 110W. Maybe 130-150W for a dual Athlon. You will need a little bank of 8 turbines to power the beast.

And about flashlight life... cockeyed has a series on "how much is inside". Checkout the battery one for a shocker about how much is really in a pair of D cell batteries. Then try to figure out why your flashlight is always almost dead. Who comes in and uses up your flashlight?