Xmas Lights - Seriously Unimpressed

I finally got around to shopping at Fry's, after abstaining for three months(!)

Excuses? Oh, I ranted here about Best Buy this morning and how they were selling 6' USB cables for $27.00 to $32.00. Well, I decided I might as well go over to Fry's and buy a couple, to see how much they cost. They're in the $7 to $9 range, as I had expected. I found that I could get them for even cheaper on Ebay. With a couple bucks for shipping, they're still under $5, and that's buy it now, not biddding; if you bid, you can get them for a couple dollars. And the sellers are still making money on them.

Which leads me to believe that the shysters at Best Buy are probably paying a price per cable that's below a dollar, including the packaging. So at $27, they're marking up the price over 2000%, more like 3000%!!!

Anyway, back to reality, I took a look at the 'new' LED xmas tree lights that they had for $10 to $15 at Fry's. I was seriously unimpressed by them; they weren't very bright, and they had that characteristic flicker of half-wave rectified 60 Hz. Each 'bulb' is actually a solid colored plastic diffuser to get the LED in its base to shine the light in all directions. I guess that's why they're not so bright.

I stopped by wal-mart and I forgot to check to see if they had the lights and what the price might be. But after seeing that PBS prog "Is Wal-mart good for America?" I'm not so sure I want to do business with them any more. I left the store without even buying anything this time.

I'll have to check on the 'Net to see if they're available at some websites, and maybe Ebay. Check back later for updates. ;-)

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You'll be glad you did! Just when you thought you had all this figured out, the gov't changed it:
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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th
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LOL. Have you ever seen "Is [name of major PBS underwriter] Good for America"? If they did a documentary on how the sun rises in the east I would feel compelled to double check their facts and question their motivation.

Reply to
Richard Crowley

"Richard Crowley" wrote

If one is a beggar there is no room for self-respect and high moral position.

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Nicholas O. Lindan, Cleveland, Ohio
Consulting Engineer:  Electronics; Informatics; Photonics.
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Reply to
Nicholas O. Lindan

Huh? Isn't that just what I said?

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

Beggars practice self-deception. So there's plenty of room.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

I wouldn't agree with that, I have seen plenty of people who retained their dignity and respect, even though they were in a pretty bad way. You don't have to throw that away necessarily.

'Corporately' things might be different...

Peter

Reply to
Peter A Forbes

I

are

packaging.

lights

flicker

"Is

time.

Mssrs. Crowley and Linden are trying their best to bastardize the thread with some discussion about PBS sponsors. Maybe they're too immersed in politics to think about other things, like what I'm talking about that's on-topic. So I'll just say that I should've mentioned Fry's wanted $60 for a Triton "Warp Drive" USB 2.0 HDD enclosure with 6-in-1 card reader and USB 2.0 hub built-in. But I found it on Ebay for half that price (buy it now), or even cheaper with bidding. I should've checked the details like what shipping and stuff cost, but all of a sudden the PC rebooted, I'm not sure why. I didn't see the lights flicker, but it's raining and windy and I would guess that caused a very momentary interruption in power. So, i'll have to try again.

I looked, and it's ten bucks shipping, The doofus sellers call it 'Tritton' but if you look on the package it says Triton Technologies, not Tritton. Searching for warp drive USB might be best. I think the next one I'll be getting will have fire wire, because most of the PCs are still only USB 1.1.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

My Christmas Light display, 2001 (no kidding 10kW)

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we skipped WalMart entirely and ordered the lights directly from the Chinese manufacturer -- getting the name of a box at KMart !

Reply to
John Walton

No, you implied that you gave PBS some amount of credibility.

Reply to
Richard Crowley

Excuse me, but you, Mr. Name are the one who injected PBS and their schockumentaries into the thread in your original post. I'm getting really tired of leftist politics tainting Usenet. Just showing you what it is like to get some from the other side. Stay on topic and I'll never make another political posting.

Reply to
Richard Crowley

We don't have Wal-marts here in correctland, but I went to one for my first time while visiting The Brat at college. I thought it was great... lots of stuff, great prices, and very friendly people everywhere to help you find things. I bought four pairs of great velcro shoes for $14 per pair.

Why do people keep tying shoes? What an anachronism! Shoelaces waste time, are unreliable, and look silly.

I guess all those PBS editors shop at Williams Sonoma and Nieman Marcus ("Needless Markup") on their $200K salaries.

John

Reply to
John Larkin

It's your option to access Usenet, tired as you may be of having to tolerate others' opinions. Just like TV...if you don't like it...change the channel.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

Tom

Reply to
Tom MacIntyre

I thought we were talking about LED Christmas lights? :-) Open flame candles are dangerous and cause hundreds of fires every holiday season.

Tolerance goes both ways, or is that only a rightist opinion?

Reply to
Richard Crowley

Have _you_ ever seen that particular program? I'd say they gave a balanced view, with both pros and cons. They did give some factual figures, such as that wal-mart had some very substantial percentagee of the goods coming into the port from China. I'm not certain but I think it was 40. Here are some more figures.

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This article says 10% of the total.

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Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

"Is

with

time.

?? Really? Ok, I've never had velcro shoes. But I've never had those kinds of complaints with laces. I've noticed that the kids of today don't know much about a lotta things, like shoelaces, and the big hand and little hand on clocks. Or where potatoes come from. I guess as they grow up, they'll get over it and learn. :-)

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

It's called "Frontline" It's the PBS equivalent of "Dateline" or any of the other "..line" hard hitting news expose programs - with the expected bias and truth bending to make their point. This one was especially good, and it had the same impact on me - I won't shop at Wally World, but the other stores are selling the same foreign crap, so what can you do except stop buying all of it. Yeah, like that's gonna happen. I particularly liked the trade deficit numbers quoted. No surprise there.

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Reply to
Bob G.

Dark

of

of

expected bias

and it had

stores are

all of it.

numbers

The program and the URLs I gave showed the cheap China imports problem isn't the only. or even the major problem with Wal-mart. The problems are that they are under employing people - below poverty level wages - and they make it impossible for most workers to afford health benefits. And to top it off, the supercenters devastate neighborhoods by undercutting the mom-and-pop stores, thereby chasing them out.

This isn't bias and truth bending. The facts and figures are there.

Reply to
Watson A.Name - "Watt Sun, th

If somebody shoots someone with a gun who do you blame: the person who pulled the trigger, or the gun?

Walmart is only doing what the CONSUMERS want. If consumers want low prices Walmart will give it to them.

Do you REALLY think that if Walmart DIDN'T do it noone else would?

That is what capitalism IS, live with it.

Reply to
repatch

Well, that's a fairly "Reality Based" view of things... Watt, haven't you learned that 2+2=5? I expect you are in for a visit from the ministry of truth.

Karl Marx pointed out that the ultimate stage of capitalism is the reduction of all social and human values to a numeric figure, its monetary value. Economic worth becomes the only criterion by which we can compare and judge the value of a thing, because economic worth is the metric of worth to the society, as opposed to its worth to an individual. Were he alive today, he might say that the existence of Wall Mart is simply a playing out of the forces that were put into play during the feudalism of the middle ages.

In the meantime, those prices just keep rolling back!

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   Robert Monsen
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Reply to
Robert Monsen

If Watt Sun won't, I will. Investigative reporting by commercial television broadcasters is mush and has been for about a decade. Even 60 Minutes is half pop-culture junk now.

If you want to see television that doesn't bend over for corporations, PBS is the last bastion--Bill Moyers and Frontline, The NewsHour has softened a bit.

Reply to
JeffM

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