something strange at the checkout

Yes, probably HI (Human Intelligence) watching the video from the camera.

Were they about the same weight? If the apple was considerably heavier than a tomato might be, the machine would know something is wrong. It's the same as placing a bottle of expensive drink in your bag when you scan a small packet of something. The machine instantly knows the expected weight of the scanned packet doesn't match the weight of what was placed in your bag. Over here in the UK, we get the well-known "Unexpected Item In Bagging Area" if someone does that!

I don't think you're restricted to buying tomatoes singly :-)

The red colour or lack of it is easy to detect :-)

But hard to do anything about. Especially if it's a golden delicious.

4oz weight would be about 1 newton, and tomatoes don't grow on trees, so it had to be an error.

Not necessarily. Beefsteak tomatoes can be ~500g each ~16 oz.

Equally some are as small as cherries but sold in bunches or packs.

There was a scam in the UK where some shoppers would put avocados in their trolley labelled with the barcode for a same weight cheap carrot.

I guess Clive should have added a smiley.

Newton - trees... give it some thought.

If you are ever in the UK Newtons birthplace Woolsthorpe Manor is a National Trust property with the apple tree clone still alive there. They had quite an impressive selection of science toys and demos there.

Yes, I've seen the images there in various Benny Hill episodes.

Green apples/tomatoes are still possible. Although green tomatoes are not too common in markets.

Anyway, don't you think they have some data/image feeds to some monitors somewhere? HI vs. AI.

Curious. In the UK you can buy most fruit and vegetables either loose or in packs in just about all of the big supermarkets. They do have 1kg,

2kg, 5kg bags of carrots, sprouts and spuds as well at a discount. (though sometimes 2x 5kg costs less than 1x10kg!)

Increasingly the up market stores in the UK sell reusable mesh vegetable bags to put them in. Plastic bags have a 5p environment tax on them.

Organic(TM) food is invariably over packaged with extra plastic bags!

One German discounter supermarket here also offers a veg box with their choice of mixed fruit and seasonal veg in for a fixed low price. That may yet take off big time as the energy price squeeze hits home.

Yes, they must have some type of camera and automated monitoring.

Probly this sort of thing goes on continuously. Hence a focus for the AI image processing boffins.

So who knows, maybe it really can tell an apple from a tomato. You've seen those reports on the face recognition stuff going on in China? Orwell has the last laugh - again -

Possibly, but I question whether the savings due to this job, pays for his wages.

It could just be random sampling/testing. They don't catch all the errors, but getting it once in a while. There are stories of people scanning bananas for equivalent weight of steaks.

I think you'll find it's the original tree (or at least regrown from its roots after the original was blown down 200 years ago).

It most certainly looked pretty old when I saw it there about 6 years ago.

Woah! That's self incriminating you know... :-)

"Carlos E.R." <robin snipped-for-privacy@es.invalid wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@Telcontar.valinor:

But differs among types. A large beefsteak, for instance is less red. Cherry... very red.