Weird Old Computer Mice: Radios, Moods, & Memory Sticks
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- Опубліковано 22 тра 2024
- Unboxing and testing even more weird old mouse devices on a Windows 98 PC! Checking out a Sony clamshell mouse that opens up into a card reader, a Mad Catz mouse for The Sims 3 that lights up to show sims' moods, and an oddity with a built-in radio and antenna for recording FM stations to MP3 files.
● LGR links:
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
/ lazygamereviews
● Archive of the FM Mouse CD-ROM:
archive.org/details/000316-1337
● Jazzy background music licensed from:
www.epidemicsound.com
● For science:
• Randy Savage - Speakin...
00:00 A trio of weird old mice
01:02 Sony Memory Stick Mouse
08:30 The Sims Illuminated Mood Mouse
16:27 E-Tech FM 2000 Radio Mouse
#LGR #Retro #computer - Наука та технологія
Clint's Duke impression is....epic.
I know, right? It was absolutely seamless!
That was him ??? 😳
In the start to the duke nukem game, that was him at the end, stalking about the stick. I've been following LGR for years and his Duke impression just keeps getting better.@@mysticmarble94
Vocal chords of steel
I thought it was done with AI...
You know you're having a bad day when the solution to your problems is Windows ME.
The funniest part is watching Clint remember that the Sims 3 had a big ol' world to explore.
Honestly forgot how large it was even in the base game
@@LGR - should do a retrospective - seeing how your old memories match up to your modern Sims 4 suffering xD
@@LGR how did you get the sims 3 to run so well?
The part about the load times is real though. Still, since it didn't load *afterwards* (barring a vacation) you could then enjoy visiting your neighbors uninterrupted XD
@@dudemanjones1118 It's just the base game. It runs fine on its own. The game lets you disable packs now to make it run better as they are the main culprit. Kind of sad to have to forego some of the experience for it to run decently.
It's so nice of you to release them back into the wild at the end. :)
Ha!
"Feels like it's made of greeting cards" is definitely a new way to describe a piece of hardware...
Such an awesome underhanded description. 😆
Chinesium
I love the early 2000s "cool" design of the Sony mouse. I could imagine Nsync using it in a music video, before it morphed into a ball of mercury, or some other noughties nonsense... On a space ship. With Destiny's Child. In the Matrix.
in an office, but it's a massive tunnel, in a futuristic subway station. the colour orange doesn't exist, the desk is stainless steel and frosted glass and the monitor is a sheet of glass
I can visualize this all too well. Especially imagining a highly compressed version of it with interlacing artifacts uploaded to Dailymotion in 360p res
@@LGR dont forget the two buddies: blue stock background with white letters and "Unregistered HyperCam 2"
I feel like of the late 90's and 2000's translucent plastic products, Sony's designs were actually pretty cool. I remember how much I wanted a Sony VAIO desktop way back then. Actually, I think this time period for the VAIO line specifically was pretty interesting.
@@LGR in Quicktime or RealPlayer? XD
14:10 how it feels to play the sims 3 right after playing the sims 4. Clint sounded so happy man.
That's what I was thinking 😂
Poor Clint was tortured of Sims 4 limited abilities and probably forgot what a breath of fresh air older Sims are
sims 3 literally sucks ass
Only when it comes to the optimisation and it's use of Ram... @@wondertriplover
@@wondertriploveroptimization wise sure but gameplay?? Charm?? Sims 3 is goated
@wondertriplover "Literally"? You mean the game actually sucks on people's asses?
A memory card reader in a mouse is pretty ingenious…
Swear i have seen a newer version of this for SD cards.
If I'm honest I'd use it if I didn't have a a built in card reader. But how often do you get laptops without SD card readers these days?
@@jimsmith9056pretty often the macs dont have them iirc
@@jimsmith9056Card readers are definitely starting to disappear from new laptops. My Acer Nitro, a mid-spec model that is less than a year old, doesn't have one.
A fingerprint reader in a mouse would be too. Except the scanning pad should just be build right into the buttons.
Honestly that mouse with SD cards could be really useful for limited port computers like notebooks
probably why it is small too
I Would also be great for modern computers that don't have SD card slots, you can just shove one on the mouse so you don't have to use C O N V E R S I O N T E H C N O L O G Y.
It’d definitely save a bit of space in your bag. Then again, with MicroSD, I don’t know if it’d be necessary in newer devices, being able to fit a terabyte on your pinky nail is nuts and the slots take up a tiny amount of space along the edges of laptops and tablets.
@@joshuahadamsbut for standard pcs its great
@@joshuahadams no not at all but I mean it is likely a travel mouse thus being small.
Clicks on the Sims 3 kid, tells him "Go play in the fire." Makes me think of my great-grandfather who always told me and my cousins to go play on the freeway.
That "frosted glass" look on the Sony mouse is so nostalgic, I love the way it looks. It doesn't look super comfy but looks can be deceiving sometimes I guess!
the mouse memory card makes more sense when you consider how inaccessible many case designs of the time made your ports. Just being able to slam in a memory card without having to have a dedicated peripheral or crawling on your hands and knees every time you wanted to read your card would have been exceptionally cool!
I have a Toshiba Pentium 3 laptop which has one USB port. Even more bizzarely it is the only port with a little cover, as if they weren't expecting many people to use it.
When I was at university studying product design, one of the lessons we learned was the design fallacy of adding extraneous features into a product with the guise of making something innovative: “its a TOASTER, with a CLOCK in it!” “It’s a LAWNMOWER, with a BATTERY CHARGER” on it” (etc, etc).
Always gotta walk that fine line of delighters vs. feature creep. This on the other hand is a solution to a problem that no one had.
A lawnmower with a battery charger is very nice nowadays, just a power cable needed, no extra charging box to get dusty or lost in the garage😊
YOU will LOVE IT or IT'S FREE!!!!!!!!!!
"Solving a problem that doesn't exist."
@@bennylloyd-willner9667except that they last less than 30 minutes
That third mouse is the kind of thing you'd find today on Amazon, with one of those brand names that looks like it was made by someone just smashing their head into their keyboard.
Hey now, Mgvbhyj is a pretty mediocre brand
@@woltahjha I'm partial to XZOHWEA myself.
They actually still make cheap mice, haha.
My daily mouse cost me £10.99 2 years ago.@@Airsaber
Nothing spells quality quite like 6 random letters
Weird mice videos are the comfort food of obsolete tech
6:04 That caught me off guard and I love it xD
Me too! I was like "That recording sounds off, is he using a weird version of the game or...ohhhhhhh!"
@@PXAbstractionyep
Fun video, weird peripherals are always interesting. One thing that slightly irked me, though, was how I feel like the Duke3d test for the Sony mouse was practically begging for putting Duke3d on the memory stick and trying to run it from there.
Clint talked like Duke so perfectly, I almost didn't know the difference.
7:09 I remember I used to buy and entire CD just for 1 song, back in the old days.
I still do that :D
the dynamic lighting in Sims 4 is for the plumbob USB, the headset and Razer Chroma compatible peripherals.
works on my Razer keyboard, at least it's visible at all times :D
but yes it does the exact same thing! it does the mood color instead of the plumbob color though, cuz there's much more of them in sims 4 and modern stuff is fully rgb
and the only reason it has Razer support is because Razer paid to get it implemented in every friggin game for years, because no one could be bothered to do it otherwise
It also works with the SteelSeries keyboard on my MSI gaming laptop.
my logitech g502 mouse does that by default too
@@JohnZombi88 That's probably because SteelSeries made that Plumbob and also Sims 4 mouse and headset, so, they obviously implemented Sims 4 support in their drivers even for their other products 😉
Fellow viewer, if you’re watching this without subtitles you’re missing out. ‘Frequency modulated chuckles’‽ Awesome!
Mad Catz owned Saitek for a while there, so that's probably why there was that discrepancy in the driver compared to the packaging. No surprise that there weren't drivers on their official site nowadays; it was before they went bankrupt and their brand relaunched under new ownership.
25:04 What is the FM station, playing those 80's CityPop bangers? For those curious, the song is "Remember sunny days" by Anri
Playing some of my own tunes through an FM transmitter, heh. Same as with the Macho Man song :)
I love that Anri album!
@@LGR I was kinda suspecting that this had to be a local transmission :P. It'd still be awesome if I heard that coming from a local FM station though
I love the opening jazz tune "drive through dinner"....I actually discovered Magnus Rinblom through this channel. Thanks Clint. You could always do a late night jazz show on Radio when you are as old as some of your PC's.
Magnus Rinblom rocks
I did too. Blue Night Bossa has been my go to dinner album for a while now 😄
I just wanted to say... Computers have been my special interest for my entire life. My video games and my computers are what I live and breathe for. Your content has fit that so very nicely all this time, and... Thanks for being a familiar, consistent, entertaining source of calm for my very frazzled autistic brain.
I feel like video games are what I do when I'm waiting to live and breathe again...
There is one of those Sims mice on eBay for almost 300 dollars, so insane!
Please never stop making these weird mouse videos! They’re so silly and fun
If it was the apocalypse and I was trapped in a bunker with a old windows machine, I would totally use that mouse and radio to try and stay sane and connected to whatever is left of humanity.
New viewers may be caught off guard by that spot on Duke impression. 😅
Regarding the The Sims 3 mouse: I do remember being in awe as a 12 year old with the mouse when The Sims 3 launched, never got it, but have different opinion on it now you actually show it 😅
Also, Sims 4 Dynamic Lighting option works with Razer Chroma-enabled products, possibly some other gaming brand products as well :)
Ah Memory Stick. How did it ever die? Well maybe an 8GB SD card costing $20 while 8GB of Memory Stick was $65 had something to do with it?
I wonder if you could mount the memory stick in the mouse as a local drive, install a game on it, then play the game on the mouse, with the mouse.
In the days where people were recording songs off of the radio via tape... I mean it is pretty cool honestly to be able to record at the comfort of sitting at your PC. Your timing wouldn't even have to be "as exact" on starting / stopping recording as splitting up wave files via a basic sound file editor would be way easier than trying to find the right place in the tape to record over, etc.
It would make "ripping" songs from the radio so much easier, that software is actually very cool. He didn't touch on the scheduling thing, but if you had this going on say a work PC, or someone staying at home, you could listen to your favorite morning talk show, then have it tune to the station of your choice at 9AM or 10AM or whatever for your preferred tunes without needing to think about or stop what you are doing and tune the radio yourself. Pretty cool really.
That Sony mouse is actually awesome. I wish I had something like that in my modern mouse!
The Sims mouse would be cool in a universe where the Sims would just use the existing RGB standards for modern mice. A shame it didnt work beyond a single game.
They made one that could use Memory Sticks and SD cards around 2011. Don’t know how well it’d work with modern cards, but it’d be USB and probably work with modern OSs
The Sony mouse was just a pathetic attempt to rescue themselves when they realized they were repeating the Betamax mistake. Few people had any practical use for them and the proprietary nature meant nobody licensed the tech. I had a reader in my Vaio desktop but if I had chosen to use it, I would have had to carry an adapter around with me everywhere. Plus, I got my first flash drive shortly after I bought the PC. It was 128MB IIRC and a 128 MB memory stick would have been at least $100. I think the flash drive was around $30 and was one of the first affordable ones on the market.
hehe I have the driver for that sims 3 mouse, a friend gave it to me because they don't use it at all! I even did my first soldering job on it, to change the left clicker!
It's super neat when playing sims 3 in the dark, and honestly? It caught my attention a couple of times that my sims' moods were dipping!
LOVE IT!!
I had an FM 2000 Radio mouse in the same packaging and with the same design printed on the mouse itself, but missing all of the FM capabilities. No special circuitry inside, no antenna, nothing coming out but a regular USB cable. It's like they changed manufacturers at some point, forgot to tell them to not just make a regular mouse, then went "screw it whatever" and sold them anyway.
That Sony Memory Stick mouse would’ve been really cool, especially for iMac users in the early to mid 2000s, because I was mostly using the Memory Stick format in high school, and the early 2000s iMacs barely had enough USB ports! Plugging in a memory stick would be very easy than having to plug into bulky SanDisk card reader or digital camera into the back of the iMac!
This ACTUALLY make me think about why on PS2 systems they had the text "magic gate" on there. Always wondered about that. I suppose it was just their brand for memory hardware all along.
I believe the PS2 memory cards actually used MagicGate encryption, so it wasn't _completely_ a non-sequitur. It was just a non-sequitur to people who weren't interested in hacking their memory cards or making third-party ones.
Your videos take me right back to the late 90's and early 2000's when life is way more simpler and we were somewhat naïve. I miss the old games on physical CD and big clunky desktops. I miss going into PC World in the UK and looking round at the kit and games. Its all digital and touch screen now.
The Sims mouse is cool as heck lol and the radio one obvs. I did a double take at Duke, that's a good impersonation!
The Sony memory stick was also used with various models of the AIBO (the virtual pet robot dog toy thing). Basically the sony stick held different programs which could change how your AIBO acted/responded, there's also a ton of custom software out there for them
It was just "SD, but different so you have to buy ours instead"
As a 34 year old millenial, your channel brings me so much nostalgia, laughs with my kids and fun as I get to enjoy all the whacky stuff on the best buy shelf that my dad (rightfully) wouldnt buy at the time 😂 thanks for the content been a fan for years
Your weird mouse / oddware vids are always a fav.
Keep up the good work brother.
And Clint you actually did voice "Duke Nukem" in an alternate universe 😁
The FM Mouse reminds me of the ISA radio card I had many years ago, when I was still listening to the radio, and that used the same interface. Good ol' times...
Had no idea that the memory stick mouse existed... reliable readers are getting harder and harder to find so having an unusual alternative for a more traditional reader is actually quite useful for hobbies that still deal with that format (Like aibo for example, the older models used those memory sticks)
you know its gonna be a good day when LGR uploads!!!
Especially with weird and odd peripherals!
I am impressed at the radio on the Mouse they put a decent effort into the Radio it looks like. Complete with scheduled tuning and recording. I was recording a radio station for a while this would've been so much better than having to have a dedicated FM radio slaved to only use one channel.
My mom was a Sony girlie when I was growing up in the early 2000’s. The on,y annoying thing about Sonicstage is that it uses a form of MP4 that made retrieving my moms extensive music collection for playing on modern devices a pain in the butt!
That Sony mouse with a Memory stick with Magic gate reader would have saved me so much time back in the day, i had to use my Sony camera as a reader for those cards.
I remember back when i first got not only an FM tuner card but also a TV tuner card for the family PC, it really blew my mind that i was sat at a PC but i was somehow able to watch TV on it or listen to the radio, lol. Crazy looking back on that with what we use pc's for these days.
In Europe Teletext was popular. I had a TV card which cached every page broadcast for instant access which was far better than the TVs which would take 20 seconds for the next page to come around. I still have a Hauppauge TV card with hardware MPEG compression in my media centre PC.
@@MrDuncl I grew up with teletext on the tv, not that i really used it much, but i don't recall ever using it on the pc's tuner card. Can't remember exactly when we got the card, but i'm fairly certain it was before teletext ended. I think it just wasn't something i really thought to do.
@@markc1793 Teletext as we knew it ended in 2012. I got the card in around 1999 fitting it in my Celeron 500PC. Back then my internet package was 56K dial up, limited to a about 8 hours a month so I spent more time looking at Teletext than the internet.
I've never heard someone say "Fascinatingly Okay"...and now i'm going to use that as often as possible. :)
I really dig the Sony memory stick mouse. Such a cool little device, very aesthetically pleasing as well! Also, that little Duke Nukem bit was very nicely edited. Nailed the low quality bitrate too!
Putting radio components in a mouse seems like such a random and strange thing lol
Memory card reader on a mouse isn't a bad idea. I wonder if mice were not wireless if there would be more. Now with the size and speeds cards get HOT though.
Clint: "It's just not a good mouse".....(turns the box to reveal it's made by MadCatz)...'Nuff said...
Finally, a mouse for player 2!
The home of controllers for your friend.
Do you have another controller?
Yeah, over in the top cabinet! 😳 eyes MadCatz logo
I remember my old Logitech G5 mouse took a cartridge on the bottom with weight slots inside so you can change how heavy the mouse was by adding or removing the weights from the cartridge.
Lol my old mouse had this round cartridge on the top. And eject button right beside mouse4.
@@old_liquid Did you accidentally press the eject button a lot?
playing with that eject button was more fun than Sims 4!
@@youmukonpaku3168 And now to get KommanderKarl to reload it lol.
Do you remember what mouse it was though? Oh unless you meant my G5 and not the other guy's.
My mmo mouse has that right now! :)
I'm so glad the only interaction I ever had with MemoryStick was getting a MicroSD to MemoryStick adapter for my PSP
Yeah I absolutely hate Sony for fleecing their customers that bought the PSP and later on, the Vita, and were forced (at the time) to use their expensive proprietary storage format just to save their games and install files.
I didn't have the weird radio mouse but I would have definitely wanted one of those as a kid. Thanks also for pointing out what kind of chip is in there that makes the radio work. I have a funny feeling you'll get an interesting nostalgic result if you hook in that radio mouse and a couple of those beige tower speakers with the felt like front covers.
7:54 I just about choked to death on my breakfast when that started playing LOL
I can see the practicality of the memory stick reader in the mouse. PCs in the late 90s, if they did have USB, probably had no more than 2 ports, and there's a good chance at least one of them was flakey, or each one didn't recognize hardware without reinstalling the drivers if you switched your hardware from one USB port to the other. Then, as you demonstrated, you often got the dreaded blue screen.
@6:00 that was awesome lol
I remember in the early days of USB it always felt like you didn't have enough ports. So some of these really make sense. Like the card reader or radio(if you're into that).
I would test if the mouse's cable works as an antenna.
Glad to see that Sonicstage was as prone to crashing systems for everyone and it wasn't just my families laptop which had issues.
Oh yeah this reminds me. Someone has probably already told you but Target got some novelty shaped mice for valentines (of all things?) in the dollar area. They aren't quite as weird as the ones you showcase on the channel but it somehow warms the heart to know someone out there is still making weird computer mice. (and I know it will be crap but. I. I kinda do want the strawberry one its very cute and I'd never use it)
I honestly appreciate you. It's so cool to see this kind of weird tech from the 90's/00's. You inspired me to collect these type of things and currently even working on a original hardware DOS and XP machine. Thanks for these videos
Heck yeah, glad to hear that 👍
Immediately clicked on this video when I saw it in my notifications, I wanted that sims 3 mouse SO badly back when it was shown off!
it's oddly funny every time Clint made that mouse skin slap like a latex glove. 🤣
Sold loads of those Sony mice.. Retailed about £55 so it was cheap for a good mouse and card reader. And memory stick was genius for about seven years... Until sdhc ultra cards cane out and came down in price. Water proof, shock proof, sealed and so solid compared to anything else going.
Dude the Sims mouse is kinda iconic, like I'd buy that.
That moment, when you now want that FM-radio mouse. :D
Same here!
I know it's an unrealistic expectation but I was hoping that the radio mouse would actually have a tiny built in speaker.
TIL that there was actually a peripherals set made by SteelSeries in 2014 that was made specifically to work with The Sims 4's dynamic lighting option (besides the big plumbob mood light). It consisted of a mouse and a headset (with a "plain" mousepad added in for good measure) whose light-up plumbobs would change color, depending on the selected Sim's mood, kinda like the Sims 3 mouse shown in here.
Okay the Duke nukem intro with the Sony mouse was awesome! Was that just part of the game or was that a custom thing?
A custom recording by me that I put in the game for that bit 😁
@@LGR it was very well done.
I knew I recognized the name from somewhere, and yup - there are still some cheap mice labelled as "E-Tech" being made! One of them a copy of a pretty good mouse that I owned under the name of "Speedlink Decus Gaming Mouse" - I guess this is why I even remember the name, haha. Anyway, I've always listened a lot to the radio, so I would've been beyond enthusiastic as a kid if someone had given me this mouse, especially since one of its functions is recording songs from the radio!
The card reader mouse isn't such a bad concept, either, and I really like this milky translucent plastic on the top of the mouse.
Sims 3 popping up was like seeing an old friend. Man that game was so good.
16:29 I was the guy who originally found this "late one night" MP3 Player hunting and showed Clint the Ebay listing because this thing was nuts. It was almost 3 years ago this was, but waited patiently to see what this was about even though the seller had two and I was tempted to buy it. The seller that had two is now sold both and a third one on ebay with Glover as a free gift is gone as of this morning. There were no other listings of this mouse that I know of in these past 3 years so it probably is pretty rare.
BTW Clint You didn't disappoint. Great job man!
The duke nukem self aware bit had me going 🤣
These are some of my favorite LGR videos.
WOAHHH LGR FRESH OFF DA PAN
The thoughts racing through my head as I was bamboozled into thinking Duke did a Sony mouse collaboration. :) Great Video as always Clint!
Nice finds! So cool to see these exist!
I think that the radio mouse is the most interesting to me. I have always been interested in having a radio that you can use through a computer interface. That interest never really went beyond that as it was never that interesting to me. I think what I liked the most is the fact that unlike other music that relies on some sort of internet connection at the very least, the fm signal is free.
If you’re interested in trying this quickly/easily check out the RTL-SDR sticks. They repurpose a chip designed for DVB stuff into a receiver that allows listening to any radio signal
@@dwroberts Just to clarify you can use a standard DVB stick costing about £20. It is modified driver software that gives it all the Software Defined Radio capabilities.
About the only thing the package for that FM radio mouse was missing was the Fry's price tag.
Nice to see you. I hope your holidays were merry!
I think, for certain applications/users, the memory mouse by Sony is pretty cool
Another video about weird mice... Definitely going to enjoy this!
I love your subtitles.
Thanks, I have fun making them!
Speaking of PlayStation memory cards, you should review weird PlayStation memory cards, like the memory card in the shape of Bill Goldberg or the PocketStation.
in the shape of _what_
This was a GREAT video!! Keep’em coming.
you just messed me up. The macho man song has been my ringtone for about 5 years now. I hear it at 4am, I think something is wrong, run to my phone.. Nothing.. Realize I am listening to LGR. LOL
It's actually surprising that the FM mouse is actually USB controlled, I was fully expecting one of those two-button ones (one scans for the next, the other resets, no way to go back one station)
This content always makes me feel old and young at the same time
As an Aibo enthusiast I've heard about the memory card mice before and been curious - it's great to head that they're actually pretty decent!!!
Duuude, as a kid/ early teen in the late 90's/ early 2000's, I'd have loved that radio mouse. The kind of thing you'd find on discount at Big Lots. That tuner software looks like it'd go well next to WinAmp. I was poor af and had a pretty basic eMachines computer, and a "demo" copy of 'Real Jukebox' that'd I'd use to copy CD's over (92kbps was the max unless you paid up). But man, being able to use this to copy radio stations would have been great! I'd have probably maxed it out trying to record the entire radio stream.
Also, I love those WinME backgrounds. That old house one was easily the best.
3:05 - i dont understand why we dont have a mouse with a fingerprint reader in it in 2024 🤷♂ thats just clever and amazing
Someone please make that a thing! Logitech, you've stolen every other idea, please make it the new norm :D
Inside the button above a scroll wheel or the front side-button could be awesome.
Lenovo (and a few others) actually do have biometrics in some of their mouse products!? I checked after watching this video. That is both crazy and cool.
@@davidinark Noooo. It's disappointing to learn that (a) that's already an idea which for some reason has not taken off, and (b) the only known implementation of the concept is terrible.
Who has fingerprints in the middle of their palm?! Why is it not a palm reader if you put it there, then? oh lenovo...
@@davidinark Yep, I own a Lenovo one. Got it at Goodwill.
@@ThePlacehole if they put it on the side where the thumb rested I could see that working better. lol
I can safely assume Clint’s abode has a mice infestation haha
Sims 3 is still my favorite. I tried out Sims 4 recently, and I can not remember what expansions my friend has, but I can say I do NOT like 4. 3 may have its quirks and can be slow, I don't care, the game play (to me) is so much better. And, honestly the graphics "upgrades" in 4 are not impressive enough either. If the Sims mouse were a better mouse (it looks like its cheap) the mood gimmick would be kinda cool. Though, I want the Sony mouse. I have Magic Stick memory sticks I would love to use again when my roommate gets his PS3 repaired/upgraded.
I always loved the late 90s, early 2000s Sony lilac phase. So futuristic
the sims mouse is cute!
Ikr? And the fact that it corresponds to your sims mood (iirc) is so much better
I think what's most amusing about this vid is is shows just how much room you don't need to stuff all the mouse innards into one, it's just made to fit in your hand.
ive been an lgr fan since 2017 keep it up man
I cant wait for a mouse video featuring any of the hundreds of aquatic or water mouses, even though most of them operate like a regular mouse, some are wireless or illuminate, but theyre iconic enough to exist for every company back in the 90s and 2000s