Claiming someone stole the “idea” of free and open… 
3 Likes
Reminds me of the guy who put used toilet by the road with a sign that said, “free”. I sat there.
So he changed the sign to “Toilet $15”
It was gone by morning.
Cheers
Qazulight
1 Like
We old phartz remember when Japanese stuff was sneered at. We weren’t sneering by the 80s.
Steve
1 Like
Heck, one of the most memorable moments of my life was during Mrs. Adams’ 1st grade class in 1957. We had a somewhat elderly substitute teacher that day, who was gamefully trying to cope with a class full of children of rocket men (from design managers down through assistant machinists) on the day of the first test of the complete Vanguard missile as a satellite booster.
She did not have a clue.
Our friend Johnny’s daddy was in charge of the test launch at Cape Canaveral, and most of us (me included) had skin in the game. Substitute lady was clueless, but we were all fully informed because Linda’s dad (I am still in touch with Linda) had just come back from japan with a
tiny battery powered transistor radio complete with tiny in the ear earphone.
She was listening to the launch sequence and broadcasting it to the rest of us with her fingers as she got to the countdown, 5.4 3 2 1 0. Then at T+3 she suddenly started sobbing, and then the entire room was sobbing, and then the substitute teacher went into future shock and collapsed in clueless freak out at the front desk and Wally (who was “custodian” of the day or some such) ran off to fetch the school nurse….
I never underestimated Japan again. The next year I learned to play “Go”.
2 Likes
Not a justification for the theft, just a realization that some theft is a cost of growing a business.
American business generally thrives on “skim, scam and fraud”, usually upon its customers.
intercst
It seems that the suspension of the $800 de minimus exemption doesn;t start until May 1st. Packages currently in transit are OK.
Will Shein, Temu be impacted by tariffs? Key loophole set to close.
intercst
2 Likes
In 77, when the first Radio Shack boom boxes were coming out, I was searching high and low, for something at the other extreme: small, high quality, stereo cassette player, that I could listen to with headphones. Everyone looked at me like I was nuts.
I was working at RS, as I finished up my BBA. Most of the RS home cassette decks used synchronous motors, but I noticed this little playback deck used a mechanical governor. That mechanical governor made me suspect the entire works of the thing was running on DC. So, I could bypass the power supply, and connect a 12V battery pack directly to it. (RS was really good about including a schematic in their owner’s manuals then) Install a stereo headphone jack. Then, I would have my portable, stereo, headphone only, cassette player. Everything I needed for the conversion was right there on the parts wall of the RS.
Fifty bux was a lot of money in those days, for an experiment, so I passed.
A couple years later, Carson was showing some foreign TV commercials, as he did from time to time. He ran a Japanese market ad of a couple women boogieing across the Brooklyn Bridge. At the end of it, I finally saw what the women were holding. I about fell off the sofa.
That ad starts at the 43 second mark.
Steve
2 Likes