"(Dear pedantic readers: yes, this model takes place in a vacuum. And you know what? I'm not even sorry.)"

The speed of light does not vary because of the presence, or lack of an atmosphere.

Sound (as in "how do you want it wrapped?") however, relies on an atmosphere.

This however, is totally irrelevant as in the United Kingdom the stuff gets wrapped however, and the shopper has fucking better things to do than be slowed down by stupid fucking questions.

Bad day, was it?

"The speed of light does not vary because of the presence, or lack of an atmosphere."

Yes it does. Silly, silly person.

Sorry dude but it does change. (Not much as epsilon_r is about 1.00054 and mu_r is about 1.0000004)

See

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dielectric_constant

and http://www.microwaves101.com/encyclopedia/magneticmaterials.cfm.

SO the speed of light in air is 0.99972990935 X vacuum speed.

I have said too much - To the helicopter!

Paris for President!

Actually, it does. If it didn't, you'd not see rainbows and prisms wouldn't work. Oil slicks would look really flat and dull. Some more advanced fiber comms stuff would also stop working.

Also, in lab conditions, they've slowed light down to under 30mph. And I believe that other scientists have knocked photons to speeds very slightly higher than the speed of light in a vacuum somehow.

But yeah, it is a stupid fucking question to ask. For the more "eco-conscious" person, just stick with plastic like everyone else and save a massive amount of energy, waste materials, trees and other stuff from use/destruction. Or bring your own bags and save EVEN MORE!

...in a given medium is a constant.

The refractive index of dry air at sea level is 1.0003, which means that light actually does travel a teeny weeny bit slower in our atmosphere than in the vacuum of space.

Paris because I have roughly the same chance of shagging her as of anyone giving a flying fig about this post :-)

Kev

How about leaving a pile of paper bags next to a pile of plastic bags at the end of the checkout, customer then picks bag type without wasteful waffling.

Patent pending bitches.....

Often times you get asked the dumb question BEFORE you present any identification, payment card, or loyalty card. So, unless it can determine your preference by how you look, or some such, it isn't going to work.

Personal experience (yes even I go to the grocery store) indicates that the bagging of your groceries starts before you have everything on the conveyor belt. Sometimes it is done by a person other than the one actually doing the scanning.

So, it isn't going to save any time, in fact it might waste some!

1. No I don't have a 'loyalty' card

2. No, I don't want a bag, thanks

3. I come to this shop ~ once a week, see the same till minder every time and every time you pull a bag from your stack and shove it at me without asking - and then go all slack-jawed and uncomprehending when I say no thanks.

4. Will this patent save me any time? - no of course not!

Seriously though, some greedy idiots just want to make sure that they don't miss out on OWNING something - even if anyone with half a brain can see it's a totally worthless piece of sht!

black helicopter - because - 'What do you mean - you don't have a loyalty card?'

print "<$name> likes <$type> bags, because of <$reason>"

Max, plastic, asphyxiation roleplay games

...

The easiest way to cut through the whole dilemma is to use a plastic crate instead of bags. No fuss, no waste and no chance of the sub-epsilon at the till asking stupid questions.

IBM is a bowl of dicks.

Couldn't you just take your own bag to the shops every time you go?

That would get rid of the waste problem and the need (need?!) for systems like this?

Apologies for pointing out the bleeding obvious.

Of course this only applies to Windows users, who are idiots by definition.

A Mac user would wear a badge (made from recycled card) that says "No Plastic bags please." and cut the transaction time in half.

The speed of light is a constant, but is different depending on the material.

If you were to attempt to measure the speed of light by running along side it at the speed of light, you would find that it is still going away from you at the speed of light (in all directions).

Yes, I have just read 'a brief history of time'

But remember, Einstein calculated that nothing can be accelerated to or beyond the speed of light (because it would need infinite energy), but he didn't say anything about things already travelling at or beyond the speed of light! (K-Pax)

That waffling is because the point I was going to make - that sound doesn't work in a vacuum, so the authors model falls down (let alone the people who are apparently alive in a vacuum) - has already been made by another commenter.

If a grocery store employee says "Paper or Plastic?"

and there's no-one in the store to hear it,

.....Will it adversely affect the price of a tin of baked beans?

...The shopping trolley is out there!

IBM seems to be executing a denial of service attack on hte US patent system.

IU think the plan is to flood the patent office with dumb patents so that the real patent trolls cannot file any more "one click shopping" patents.

The poor corporate lawyers can than get back to filing motions at the golf club as god intended.

Is it Friday yet?

Doesn't everyone pay with plastic in one way or another? Seriously, between debit and credit cards, who keeps cash in their pocket? Now where the hell is my RFID money? Oh, there it is!! www.theregister.co.uk/2008/08/07/fastrak_vulns/

the ones without a conveyer belt practically force you to take a plastic bag, if you have a rucksack or pannier bag and place it on the machine where the plastic bags hang it refuses to scan your items, this is because that shelf has weighing scales in and checks the weight of the item you just scanned to make sure you don't put a different item in the bag than the one you scanned, and it doesn't like the weight of your rucksack/pannier bag.

Stupid eco unfriendly Tesco :p

14 comments so far and 6 of them have been to point out that the speed of light is affected by the medium*? Crikey, don't you READ the comments before having to show the world how clever you are?

We need a little piccie of a dead horse and a whip.

* Something most of us know already, anyway.

Ah yes, speed of light... and IBM in one article. Made me flash back to the "jokes file" from the 70's which featured this gem (all over the net. Just google for OSVU if the link gets moderatrixed...).

http://ldworen.net/fun/osvu.html

"...IBM, through its wholly owned subsidiary, The United States of America, is working on a program to upgrade the speed of light and thus reduce the overhead of extraterrestrial and metadimensional pageing..."

Ahead of its time I say!

I bring my own bags, thank you...

They have big handles and large storage capacity, much more manly than those wimpy plastic or paper bags :-)

surely this is just IBM getting a patent on the software they use when you call their Helpdesk...

caller # A

RING RING

>:IBM helpdesk now scanning......

>:RESULT.. caller requires assistance....

>:RESOLUTION... no action taken

caller # B

>:IBM helpdesk now scanning......

>:RESULT.. caller requires large volume purchase....

>:RESOLUTION... putting you through to human interface....

... Come to think of it, MS is likely to challenge that patent... Heck we all know they have been running that very same application since the mid 80's, last century.

Helicopter cos there is one hovering above this story somewhere.

Jack, I'm just registering a new patent..

What you need to do is hold an RFID card programmed to say you don't have a loyalty cad and/or need a bag.

I'm rich!! Thanks Jack. Thanks IBM.

Well, that's another $1,500 in some IBMers pay packet, and more brownie points for their manager to climb the slippery pole of internal promotion... Time well spent then.

A local chain 'Kiwi' here in Norway sells solid nylon bags for a little over 1£, and with the promise that if it gets ruined, they'll replace it at no cost.

In other shops they have boxes of baggies under the conveyor where you place your goods. Then it's your responsibility to pick as many as you need, and of the size/material you want and place on top of he belt with your other stuff.

No need for the teller to ask, and the time you spent picking the gags best suited for you would have been waisted waiting for the granny in front of you finishing complaining that the food was cheaper before and paying with all the smallest coins she can find...

Mine's the one with a green nylon baggie balled up and stuffed into a pocket.

The patent system is irrevokably broken: unless of course you are a big business interest. Invention? Novelty? Purpose? None are important. Its even more borked than the modern abuse of copyright.

The only issue is "have you enough money to litegate?" If you do, you don't even have to spend it: just having it is enough. If you don't - you are screwed.

This is a good idea for pubs across the country ; no more having to shout your order across the crowded bar, just flash your card and they'll know what you're having. The card could even be pre-programmed with your "limit" so they wouldn't be able to serve you when you've had too much.

Mind you, I went to a pub the other day for a pub meal and was asked if I wanted "cashback" when I paid with a card. I won't be returning there in a hurry!

I never realised shopping was such hard work. According to the patent people may have different packaging preferences for each item they buy. Worse, they're suggesting the packaging preference for each item could be communicated by a voice message or tone, so going through Tescos on Friday evening could sound like the end of Close Encounters.

This also raises the possibility of customised packaging, so the Ferrero Rocher for the wife's birthday gets gift wrapped and the hemeroids cream is put in a plain brown bag and hidden under the frozen peas (though the voice message announcing this might defeat the point).

The first cited article is a gem - "means for comparing said characteristic of said article as identified by said article identifying means with the characteristic of the actual article to confirm the identity of the article bagged by a bag formed by said bag forming apparatus, whereby to prevent both deliberate fraud and inadvertent mistake in the self-service checkout of said one or more articles."

"Stephen Hawking is on his way round to run you over very slowly."

First time I've laughed out loud in the office for quite some time! Thanks!