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According to my receipt, Washburn Mills Chickpea Rotini on Amazon was $12.48 on Friday June 30th.

A few weeks later, Chickpea Rotini was ~$18.99.

Today it costs $24.97.

Why the 100% increase in less than 30 days? Could it be that Sam's Club and WalMart stopped carrying it?

Maybe Amazon is taking a page out of WalMart's playbook. Undercut prices until the competition gives up, then raise them to any level that consumers will pay. If this is the overall pattern, then it is an abuse of a monopoly.

Maybe if you get them at Whole Foods. Vegetables can be very economical if one bothers to shop carefully.

Dry pinto beans: $0.99 per 2,000kcal. Bread flour: 28 cents per 2,000kcal. Cheapest bag of frozen mixed vegetables I can find: $11.63 per 2,000kcal.

Don't forget about the $2000 EVERY person in America (on average) pays to have a ludicrously oversized military, the $750 every person pays for interest on our national debt, the $1500 or so the government "borrows" from you from you every year to fund our government

Actually, I was only accounting for consumer spending out of their take-home income, and not taxes. So the government takes all that shit and consumers today spend vastly more of their take-home money on luxuries and much less on necessities.

By the by, that "borrowing" is voluntary: the Government sells treasury debt objects, and people buy them under the belief that they'll mature in 20 years to be worth more than inflation, thus acting as a source of investment income. The government doesn't raid your paycheck; you go to the government and offer them a loan.

Oh and those safety net programs the conservatives hate so much? They cost around $1000 per person every year per person - curiously barely more than the interest on the debt we pay every year to finance their aversion to taxes.

Actually no. The total cost of those programs is roughly $1.68 trillion in 2013. I know this because I did a lot of math, risk analysis, and transitional planning to design a much better system that takes over $1 trillion less from American taxpayers while moving more support more reliably to the needy. It's notable that current HUD puts 75% of qualified applicants on a waiting list and never pays them benefits; while Social Security retirement benefits pay less out for the poorest and more out for the wealthier, with as little as $728/month going to a full-time minimum-wage worker who worked 40 hours every week his whole life, and zero going to one who averaged 30 hours (didn't make enough money, so you get nothing).

We've built a system that takes $15,000 from a middle-class income and inadequately shelters the poor and transitionally-unemployed; we can transition it to a system that pays full benefits to all adults while grandfathering current beneficiaries (notably Social Security retirees) and still lower taxes, with no corresponding tax raise on anyone, anywhere. The next generation ends up breaking even, on average, in terms of welfare benefit; except everyone is covered, completely, reliably.

You seem to overestimate the available capital in the current system, underestimate the current cost of welfare, and not understand the full extent of what's actually achievable. America isn't wastefully throwing away its riches into government programs that keep everything running and provide little services like defense; it's hurling tons of money into a Welfare black hole that doesn't do its job. That's largely because of progress: implement the Universal Social Security I designed in 1950 and the United States economy collapses faster than the USSR; do it in 2013 and tax burden falls like crazy, poverty vanishes entirely, markets get stronger, and the income hierarchy remains unchanged (just the people at the bottom aren't starving and neglected, and the people in the middle are a fair deal richer). It's time to change.

I just looked. It's $0.30/bottle at Wallmart. That's much better, but still a bit pricy compared to the actual cost.

If you want a link, Sam's Club. Local supermarkets are in the $0.10-0.15 range, but I can't link to those.

So what's the excuse for $0.50 cent shirts going for $50 and $5.00 shoes going for $100?

Gouging. :)

You pick Visa and then you don't worry about your card not being accepted. Seriously, I can't remember the last time a merchant didn't take visa if they took cards at all.

Sams Club stores only take MasterCard and Discover
http://help.samsclub.com/app/a...

It is mandated if it's a food or drug. Do you have something that is not labeled in metric?

Yes. Everything.

http://www.samsclub.com/sams/shop/product/templates/samsShop_productTypeIndex.jsp?altQuery=&searchTerm=&rootDimension=1430221+4294952644&brand=&searchCategoryId=430221

Yes, its on the physical package, but its not in the advertising, on the flyers, the website, the coupons...

Putting it on the package is the first step, but its not enough to make it actually useful.

Thanks, I've found the product, now just need to find it locally! Like you (see my other response), I eliminated HFCS several years ago; in my case, I lost over 50 pounds. In the past year or two I've started adding a Coke back in now and again; I'm now back to one per day, which is why I wanted to find a sugar-based one. Thanks again.

Paying for the privilege of shopping at a store?
Who would fall for such a thing?

http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?dest=5&item=385975&pid=_Froogle&ci_src=14110944&ci_sku=32176

http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?dest=5&item=386638

The Broyhill Giannelli Leather Executive Chair. I'm not a small guy, and I've always had a lot of issues with chairs. Even the 'big man' chairs they sell at Office Depot would break with me (I'm rough on them apart from being heavy, I lean back, a lot, and HARD, I've snapped several chairs backs.)

This one is $250. Pricey? Hell yeah. After breaking several $100 chairs, though, I figure it's worth it. It's very comfortable and feels incredibly sturdy. It looks great too, my gf encouraged me heavily because it looks a heck of a lot better than any other chair I've ever had, so it doesn't upset her fung shui.

If you really feel you work in an environment that is not secure, and you insist on remaining with these people, here are a few suggestions:

To lock up a running laptop, you could use what is called a DVR box - it holds a PC in a secure box with adequate ventilation. http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?dest=5&upc=61751755200&pid=_Froogle>

I'd suggestsimply investing in a large number of Kensington locks, many, many devices have Kensington lock "ports". http://us.kensington.com/html/1434.html>

Have you ever looked at your cell phone after using it on a hot, sunny day?

Yeah, telephone sanitation ain't all *that* bad. 'Course, they make wipes for that now, so we can still safely cut out the middlemen -- as long as we're not too busy dreaming stuff up and doing stuff to remember to wipe our phones...

Here's one source:

http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?catg= 535&item=340464&prDeTab=2#A

$28 (USD) for a 3-pack is not such a bad price. The only thing I haven't found is the color temperature of these bulbs. I already have some CFLs that are 2700K and some that are 3000K. I find the 2700K to look a bit dim while the 3000K look brighter. (I am talking about perception, not actual light output)

What I really want are 3000K dimmable reflector (R30, R40, PAR38, BR30, etc.) CFLs for a reasonable price. In the mean time, I often use a CFL in a floor lamp instead of the recessed lights in the living room.

The TV shows are great - did you miss your favorite show once? $2 bucks and you got it.

(Every Sci-Fi Fan should download the Stargate '200' Episode now -
it's packed full of puns and spoofs of other SciFi shows - very funny stuff, best show ever!)

iTunes lacks a 'DVD to iPod' button - it needs one.
iTunes also needs a 'Burn to DVD' button - why download a 2 hour movie, if you can't play it on your TV?

I imagine over time the Song sales will plummet into the ground.
After the first 15,000 songs - do you really need to buy another one?

The occasional TV or Movie is ok, but HOW can you buy them with Apples Tiny 60GB/80GB Hard Drives - Pathetic.
Apple shouldn't even sell one machine with less than 100 GB Hard Drive.

The Music Videos are good, better now in 640x480 - an actually viewable experience.
The early 320x240 videos are a worthless joke.

Once you've bought all the music you'll ever need, (including the 12 CDs for the price of 1!),
that leaves your favorite movies, and they are by far cheaper over at Blockbuster, Netflix, or Hollywood Video.

The TV shows are a growth area - cheap enough to enjoy - disposable entertainment - no interruptions.

But once you have watched/listened to all you wanted to buy, you can still subscribe to dozens of free podcasts,

Podcasts let you learn the latest science, enjoy the latest entertainment, learn a new language, or catch up on interesting topics (like TikiBar!)

After you've grown bored with music, seen the latest music videos, grown tired of movies, and had your fill of podcasts,
well - iTunes will depend on the 'Long Tail' model of selling a little here and there of everything,
The monopolistic practice of DRMing content to Only run on Apple products - is not a successful plan for a business model.

Archos by far has a better media player - with web browsing, web mail, WiFi, touch screen, video, photos, music, TV DVR.
The Archos products make the current iPod look like the outdated 1990s product that it is.

Archos 604 WiFi
What the iPod wish it could be.

Found my Archos 604 WiFi at Sam's Club

Businesses typically have volume licensing agreements that work out far cheaper.

Most of my customers are small business with fewer than 10 employees, so many of them are not eligible for big volume discounts (my nonprofit customers get MS products cheaply though). I was cabling a collision repair customer's shop yesterday and he had four MS Office SBE packages on his desk that he had purchased the previous day from Sam's Club. Why he didn't purchase OEM Versions from us is beyond me, since I ended up installing the software and will probably also end up supporting it. One of the reasons that he bought the Office suites is that it was in the "System Requirements" for his industry-specific software.

Of the small number of home users who do buy it separately, most are smart enough to buy an upgrade rather than a new product, having established a chain of previously licensed software back to the dawn of time.

Lol...probably true. However, upgrades are not that much cheaper, for example: http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/search.do?searcht ype=simple&catg=5678&simplesearchfor=Microsoft+Off ice&simpleitemtype=&x=0&y=0

What would be smarter--though not necessarily legal--is to buy a Teacher & Students Edition off the intarweb for next to nothing http://www.amazon.com/Microsoft-Office-Student-Tea cher-Macintosh/dp/B0001WN16M.

$5 - $15 a light? TFA has Walmart selling them at $3.19 - $2.50. Not low enough for you? How about less than $1.50 a light. (you'll need to play their website games to get to the price, but it's there, darn it!). Home Depot also has 6 packs for ~$9, but they don't put it on their website.

- Tash

I have a Costco card and a Sam's Club card already. I don't like Sam's club as much, since they have higher prices, lower quality, and more rednecks starting fist-fights in the parking lot.

This article is really about informal buying co-ops. Co-ops were and are a good idea, and are widely hated by "real" and "legitimate" businesses because they cut into profits. That means it's about time they make a big comeback, aided by the Internet as a way to "spread the word".

The first standalone hd players will be from $500 to over $1000. You can get hdtv's starting at under $799. Granted these aren't big screens but still. A respectible 32inch hdtv lcd can be bought around $1000.

Here's one:
http://www.samsclub.com/shopping/navigate.do?dest= 5&item=333226&pCatg=1338

$1500-$1700 for a new game system (if the ps3 is over 700, sony has forfeited the race), hd player, and tv. Or $1500-$2000 for just the tv and a hd player.

Is this going directly to OpenSSH efforts, or to OpenBSD in general?

This is going directly to Theo's "free as in beer" fund.

WTF +4 Insightful? The post didn't even make any sense.
 
You said it's silly to say that Apple isn't one, without even specifying what "one" is. Are you saying it's silly of them not to be considered as a tier 1 company? Assuming that's what you were talking about, you didn't even specifiy exatly WHY you feel they're paying a Microsoft. As it was previously mentioned, they don't ship with Microsoft Office, and last I checked, they didn't own Intel either - so what's the x86 argument that you're refering to?
 
The operating system is not a tax. If Dell ships all of their machines with Maxtor hard drives, you are not paying a "Maxtor tax", you're paying for the part inside.
 
Dude, lighten up. It's just a common saying, not to be taken literal. Although when the OS can account for about %10 of the price of the computer, it doesn't seem that far off. The difference here is, if you don't like Maxtor, you can easily go with Seagate or Western Digital, and the end user won't know the difference. Try putting something other than Windows on the shelves at Office Depot. Every computer is running that pretty screen saver with the fish, and this one is running "The Matrix Code". You can pretty much guess which pc is going to sell the least.
 
Windows is a critical part of a computer. If you don't want that part, go build your own computer.
 
A MAJOR contridaction. You say Windows is a critical part of a computer - almost as if you're justifying the price. If it's that critical to a PC (as you stated), you'll need it even if you built your own PC, now wouldn't you. And Even if you didn't, it's almost pointless (from an economical standpoint) to build a pc from scratch. They've gotten so much cheaper, it's almost impossible to build your own, and have it match up with recent hardware, without using refurb or used parts (and yes I'm quite famaliar with OEM). Don't just read prices off NewEgg, try and build your own, and you'll see what I'm saying. It's hard to reason why I should do it again, when Sam's Club has an Athlon 64 3700+ with a gig of ram and a 17 inch LCD for under $1150 (not to even mention this one. They make computers so cheap, you might as well just buy one, and consider Windows free with the hardware. That makes a lot of sense, but guess what? They STILL get their money.

tbis one?
http://www.samsclub.com/eclub/main_shopping.jsp?BV _UseBVCookie=yes&n=0&mt=a&coe=0&oidPath=0:-23541:- 42505:-42513:-43023:-43045:-43047:883191
188.82- SHIPPED?

But this is not surprising concidering the cost of a home finger print scanner of only 39$.

How about identification via fingerprint with this reader? Anyone used it and are there any good hacks with it?

The uniform from the waist down will have a robotic-powered system that is connected directly to the soldier.

Psssst! Wanna see my gun? ;-)

This just really does beg to be joked about. And as for the nano-technology; I see lots of problems. For instance - how does the nanobots know the difference between the person and the clothing? Will they accidentally convert the person's skin from one thing to another? Think about it - one of the reasons crimes get solved is because all things leave traces of themselves on other things - like bodies. So the clothing you are wearing is actually leaving small amounts of itself on you as you wear them. If the nanobots are keyed to convert all of X into Y won't they then, just maybe, convert skin into....what? Or even if they just collect around the point of impact to solidify the cloth-like substance into an Ironman outfit - won't the speed of the bullet mean that by the time the nanobots converted the cloth that the bullet would have already partially penetrated the person's body? I mean, after all, they may be fast, but a bullet is travelling at an extremely high rate of speed. Thus, for every 1/10 or 1/100th of a second they attempt to converge on and stop the bullet - the bullet will have traveled some distance. And that distance is not a millimeter but maybe as much as a centimeter or decimeter. So suddenly the nanobots are attempting to stop the bullet after it has penetrated the skin. Wouldn't that mean that they might just enter the blood stream? If they are keyed to react to heat they might suddenly decide that the blood stream needs to be stopped.

So in reality, the nanobots would have to recognize that something was moving towards the target at a high rate of speed which, when the calculations are done, would show that the item would hit the target. Then the nanobots would all have to be told to go to the potential impact area so they could build up against the impact (or convert the cloth in that area to whatever material is going to be used to resist the impact). This doesn't account for exposed areas such as the head, hands, or other areas exposed by the nanobots rushing to one particular area (and possibly leave something hanging out for everyone else to see).

Last, but not least is the fact that multiple shots being fired from multiple locations at the same target could also confuse the nanobots leaving the person to look like a zebra or maybe a cheetah as the nanobots try to protect the person within the suit.

My money would be on a more classical outfit with a PDA for a brain, greater memory so it can handle the increased needs, some kind of multitasking OS so it can handle all of the requirements, and a networking/cellphone interface so it can handle that as well. Probably less than ten pounds altogether. If they used current laser technologies on transmitting data they'd just need one fiber to do all of the i/o and visuals. PDAs are already used to do sensing in classrooms, to do fingerprinting, and will very soon probably be able to run another display.

As for power - I see fuel cells as the way of the future with PDAs. Today's bulky fuel cells are going to be replaced by slimmer, lighter fuel cells. Thus, the PDA suit could be powered for an entire day if necessary via a fuel cell which conforms to the soldier's body.

Other methods to generate electricity for the suit could include light weight, piston based, energy generators. These generators are situated on the outside of the arms and legs. They are not heavy, bulky metallic rods but are instead smaller light weight polycarbon rods. The rods are hollow and have wires running back up to the helmet/neck region. (Or down to the lower back.) As the rods are pulled

Several local geeks swear by these things for storing their junk.

The Wacom tablets could be close to what you need... check them out at www.wacom.com. The Graphire is a cheap USB option, which can be had at your local Sam's Club store or at many fine online establishments. As you move up the scale, they have tablets such as the Intuos that can handle the "Intuos Inking Pen" (so you can sign a receipt at the same time you capture, if you so choose) and at the top of the line, the PL series, which is a LCD screen with a tablet on top.

If you need to slide in a receipt like they do at Circuit City, a bit of plastic cut to shape and glued to the tablet shoudl work beautifully. The Graphire comes with a plastic shield anyway - just cut three/fourths of a box out of it and slide the receipt right in.

Hope this helps!

Ben

I don't think software has become so expensive, but that less comes with it anymore. It used to be that when you bought software, you would get a semi-useful manual that you could learn from, and you would get some support in case you had trouble.

That's the only reason that I've ever bought software, even if it was shareware or legally free software. Case in point: I had the download version of WordPerfect 8 for Linux for quite a few months before I finally bought a boxed version from Sam's Club. I certainly could have not paid for it, but I wouldn't have a backup copy of it on cd(no CDR yet), the 700+ page manual is actually useful, and the price wasn't outrageous.

Why don't they just realize that it is the corporation's greed that is turning people into pirates? If they actually produced a quality product at a good price, only the hardcore 'I don't pay for software no matter the price' types would still be pirating it. Unfortunately, many people just see the internet as an amplifier for this greed, and that just sickens me.