The sale of fresh produce by Wal-Mart is a recent development, at least in my state; it has only occurred when the traditional stores were replaced by so-called "SuperCenters". For this neighborhood that happened three years ago, when the company shuttered its store that anchored a shopping center (and turned it into a ghost town) and moved a mile down the road to a newly minted SuperCenter. When I worked at a store briefly in the late Nineties I'm not sure Wal-Mart even yet had a Web site to promote its employment benefits, and those benefits did not include an employee discount at the time.
You missed how I parenthetically qualified "poor people"?
Regarding Kroger's versus local mini-chain: Raley's originated locally was once upon a time in such a position versus Ralph's and Von's and such in my neck of the woods, but was it ever competitive in the way you describe? Now it's not even close to being competitive with the likes of WinCo and Wal-Mart SuperCenters. One garish difference that has stuck in my mind was a difference of about $1.50 on a bottle of Newman's Own salad dressing between Raley's and WinCo. The markup was fucking ridiculous. (WinCo is supposedly employee owned IIRC, though not at all "local" to me.)
Shopping local - which doesn't mean shopping at Wal-Mart - isn't something (smart) poor people can really afford to do any more. The mass producers and "service providers" have been funneling so much of the material wealth in their direction - mere pennies each at a time but multiplied by hundreds of them and tens of millions of blood donors^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers - that when a person is poor there really isn't enough left after the aforementioned get their cuts to share with local mom-and-pop businesses, whose overhead is high and economy of scale very low and who need higher profit margins to justify what they're doing.
This is why poor people shop - and all too often also work* - at Wal-Mart. They don't have the option to shop local like Barack and Michelle.
* It's also worth noting that Wal-Mart KNOWS their employees are also customers: not only does Wal-Mart pay low wages and deliberately toy with hours to keep a third or more of its workforce part-time and ineligible for benefits, it also doesn't offer an employee discount. The end result is that Wal-Mart actually gets back as profit a portion of the low wages it pays its employees.
Zombies can cure cancer: they'll just as happily devour your brainz whether you have it or not. "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Your distinctiveness will be added to our own."
Xaxa already set you straight, so as you now know there have been two types of "optical" mice: (1) the original variety that still used a ball with internal optical sensors to read its motion from "spokes" in little wheels attached to the spindles that made contact with the ball, and then (2) MUCH later a true optical mouse with no moving internal parts (except button switches) that sensed motion directly from the surface on which the mouse moved.
Considering that the connector isn't the eventual female DB9 standard for PCs, it has no markings at all other than "Microsoft" in the housing, uses a potentiometer rather than an optical sensor, and has those roller bearings strongly reminiscent of a Xerox Alto mouse, I'm pretty sure that it at least doesn't post-date the first PC generation by much if at all....
This mouse is much older than a Macintosh. It's so old that the only marking on it is the name "Microsoft" molded in relief into the housing... no part number, no other external markings, period. The little internal PCB has markings in Japanese. It's so old it doesn't even use an optical sensor: instead it has some sort of endless potentiometer with its spindle in contact with the ball. The connector probably predates the RS-232 PC connector standard.
So did the "Made in Japan" sticker give it away?:-D
Yep, it works, but since my PCs are all missing RS-232 DB9 ports now I'd have to track down a USB adapter to tinker with it again. It's been a few years....
So maybe I can claim some space myself with these photos? I should probably de-BPA that housing (with the Oxiclean trick) and then enshrine it in a plexi case with a vacuum, huh?
The author of the piece has a Slashdot account that he can use to submit and promote his own work, and at least one Slashdot staffer is willing to let him do it. Is that good or bad? McCracken apparently isn't an exceptionally shoddy writer, since he's been making a living at it for decades.
I haven't eaten anything branded Hostess in 19 years, and the last time 19 years ago was an isolated atypical incident. The world can do without one corporation that concentrates wealth and makes its customers directly unhealthier while doing it.
So... an expensive little dedicated device that does little more than Proxomitron and privoxy have been doing for free for a decade? Do you really want yet another little plastic box taking up space, and with yet another wall wart demanding space at an outlet? Do you even have an outlet remaining to plug it into?
I worked for the company during some of the glory years. The IPO was the beginning of the end, as it so often is. I'd like to track down Theresa now and ask her, "what were you thinking?"
What part of hitting the process-reduction-scale wall haven't you understood? Right now there's not much boundless confidence that the scale of NAND can be reduced much more without rendering it useless. The already onerous guaranteed obsolescence of the medium is getting worse, not better, with every die shrink. Without some miraculous discovery NAND is rumored to be close to bottoming out, so it seems to me that an upstart technology can make some big leaps in the time it will take NAND designs to make even incremental improvements.
You should have at least capitalized Eagles to give people a better hint that you were referring to Space: 1999. The way you did it was just kinda cruel to younger geeks and SF nerds.
Yes, I beat you to that theory when I noticed your stated homepage after my initial comment (see my followup reply to myself). It's a fair bet that most of the petitions have originated - and been signed by people - in the U.S. It may be designed for international use now and word may be spreading worldwide of its existence, but it probably wasn't that way initially.
Slashdot Mirror
The sale of fresh produce by Wal-Mart is a recent development, at least in my state; it has only occurred when the traditional stores were replaced by so-called "SuperCenters". For this neighborhood that happened three years ago, when the company shuttered its store that anchored a shopping center (and turned it into a ghost town) and moved a mile down the road to a newly minted SuperCenter. When I worked at a store briefly in the late Nineties I'm not sure Wal-Mart even yet had a Web site to promote its employment benefits, and those benefits did not include an employee discount at the time.
You missed how I parenthetically qualified "poor people"?
Regarding Kroger's versus local mini-chain: Raley's originated locally was once upon a time in such a position versus Ralph's and Von's and such in my neck of the woods, but was it ever competitive in the way you describe? Now it's not even close to being competitive with the likes of WinCo and Wal-Mart SuperCenters. One garish difference that has stuck in my mind was a difference of about $1.50 on a bottle of Newman's Own salad dressing between Raley's and WinCo. The markup was fucking ridiculous. (WinCo is supposedly employee owned IIRC, though not at all "local" to me.)
It wasn't offered to any employees when I worked there. If one is offered now, it wasn't historically so.
Shopping local - which doesn't mean shopping at Wal-Mart - isn't something (smart) poor people can really afford to do any more. The mass producers and "service providers" have been funneling so much of the material wealth in their direction - mere pennies each at a time but multiplied by hundreds of them and tens of millions of blood donors^H^H^H^H^Hcustomers - that when a person is poor there really isn't enough left after the aforementioned get their cuts to share with local mom-and-pop businesses, whose overhead is high and economy of scale very low and who need higher profit margins to justify what they're doing.
This is why poor people shop - and all too often also work* - at Wal-Mart. They don't have the option to shop local like Barack and Michelle.
* It's also worth noting that Wal-Mart KNOWS their employees are also customers: not only does Wal-Mart pay low wages and deliberately toy with hours to keep a third or more of its workforce part-time and ineligible for benefits, it also doesn't offer an employee discount. The end result is that Wal-Mart actually gets back as profit a portion of the low wages it pays its employees.
"Homeland" in this instance doesn't mean what you think it means. Think "corporate". :-|
Laziness has no minimum capitalization requirement.
Zombies can cure cancer: they'll just as happily devour your brainz whether you have it or not. "You will be assimilated. Resistance is futile. Your distinctiveness will be added to our own."
It's entirely consistent to both detest the actions of Apple, Inc., 2012 and be an admirer of what Woz did for computing.
Quite true!
Xaxa already set you straight, so as you now know there have been two types of "optical" mice: (1) the original variety that still used a ball with internal optical sensors to read its motion from "spokes" in little wheels attached to the spindles that made contact with the ball, and then (2) MUCH later a true optical mouse with no moving internal parts (except button switches) that sensed motion directly from the surface on which the mouse moved.
I was of course referring to (1).
Considering that the connector isn't the eventual female DB9 standard for PCs, it has no markings at all other than "Microsoft" in the housing, uses a potentiometer rather than an optical sensor, and has those roller bearings strongly reminiscent of a Xerox Alto mouse, I'm pretty sure that it at least doesn't post-date the first PC generation by much if at all....
This mouse is much older than a Macintosh. It's so old that the only marking on it is the name "Microsoft" molded in relief into the housing... no part number, no other external markings, period. The little internal PCB has markings in Japanese. It's so old it doesn't even use an optical sensor: instead it has some sort of endless potentiometer with its spindle in contact with the ball. The connector probably predates the RS-232 PC connector standard.
Hey, I have a back hole, too! I have yet to collapse into it, though....
So did the "Made in Japan" sticker give it away? :-D
Yep, it works, but since my PCs are all missing RS-232 DB9 ports now I'd have to track down a USB adapter to tinker with it again. It's been a few years....
Very early Microsoft mouse, with solid steel textured ball and steel bearings instead of Teflon slider pads.
So maybe I can claim some space myself with these photos? I should probably de-BPA that housing (with the Oxiclean trick) and then enshrine it in a plexi case with a vacuum, huh?
The author of the piece has a Slashdot account that he can use to submit and promote his own work, and at least one Slashdot staffer is willing to let him do it. Is that good or bad? McCracken apparently isn't an exceptionally shoddy writer, since he's been making a living at it for decades.
Wait, did you mean to say Robert Picardos?
I haven't eaten anything branded Hostess in 19 years, and the last time 19 years ago was an isolated atypical incident. The world can do without one corporation that concentrates wealth and makes its customers directly unhealthier while doing it.
So... an expensive little dedicated device that does little more than Proxomitron and privoxy have been doing for free for a decade? Do you really want yet another little plastic box taking up space, and with yet another wall wart demanding space at an outlet? Do you even have an outlet remaining to plug it into?
I worked for the company during some of the glory years. The IPO was the beginning of the end, as it so often is. I'd like to track down Theresa now and ask her, "what were you thinking?"
What part of hitting the process-reduction-scale wall haven't you understood? Right now there's not much boundless confidence that the scale of NAND can be reduced much more without rendering it useless. The already onerous guaranteed obsolescence of the medium is getting worse, not better, with every die shrink. Without some miraculous discovery NAND is rumored to be close to bottoming out, so it seems to me that an upstart technology can make some big leaps in the time it will take NAND designs to make even incremental improvements.
This work might also have implications for non-verbal autistic people, who historically were presumed to be severely retarded.
Ummm, no. Wasn't Microsoft, it was Quarterdeck (DESQview, DESQview/X).
Poorly executed name-drop of Space:1999
You should have at least capitalized Eagles to give people a better hint that you were referring to Space: 1999. The way you did it was just kinda cruel to younger geeks and SF nerds.
Yes, I beat you to that theory when I noticed your stated homepage after my initial comment (see my followup reply to myself). It's a fair bet that most of the petitions have originated - and been signed by people - in the U.S. It may be designed for international use now and word may be spreading worldwide of its existence, but it probably wasn't that way initially.