"As of November 2000, I will no longer respond to questions concerning this subject."

December 8, 2000 8:59 PM

"As of November 2000, I will no longer respond to questions concerning this subject." So says frustrated inventor of the UPC barcode George J. Laurer. You know, the question about barcodes, 666 and the Mark of the Beast. "It is simply a coincidence like the fact that my first, middle, and last name all have 6 letters. " Sure thing, George, we really believe you...
posted by lagado (8 comments total)

link via ntk
posted by lagado at 9:00 PM on December 8, 2000

Nevermind UPC; most products in modern inventories are designated by SKU numbers. If you want to irritate a checkout clerk, ask them what SKU stands for.


posted by lileks at 10:47 PM on December 8, 2000

SKUs are internal to every retailer; UPCs are global (or at least national and inter-national).

posted by costas at 10:57 PM on December 8, 2000

Am I the only one who would love to read NTK but just finds it too painful?
posted by rodii at 10:24 AM on December 9, 2000

Whats the deal with the non-proportional font? I thought those things went out with the Apple ][?
posted by milnak at 1:07 PM on December 9, 2000

Nah. Every Wintel PC still ships with a monospaced font in its ROM. It has never gone out of style.
posted by kindall at 8:55 PM on December 9, 2000

Wimps. Some of us grew up typing everything on a Selectric. And we liked it!
posted by dhartung at 10:17 AM on December 10, 2000

Yes, rodii, NTK is a painful pleasure. I miss half of the jokes, the format's horrible but at its best it's simply brilliant.

The layout (non proportional font etc) for the web site is basically identical to its weekly text based email.
posted by lagado at 6:53 PM on December 10, 2000