How many solar cells do you need to power a pizza oven, anyway?
Re:A great idea but bound to be executed badly
on
Smart Self-Service Scales
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· Score: 5, Insightful
Great idea, flawed execution - you're not wrong. Whilst I still use them at my local Tescos, I use them because I take a calculated guess that I can deal with the self-service system and its bugs and short queue quicker than queuing up in the long line at the conventional checkout line.
I'm usually the guy who's standing there muttering "C'mon, c'mon!" under his breath whilst waiting for the damn thing to recognise that I really have scanned my purchase and placed it on the checkout roller. The annoying thing is you could see how it could be really great - better scanners, faster recognition: swipe, bag, insert card and you're done.
(Thinking about it, having self-checkout that's a bit of a pain to use unless you're slightly geek-savvy might not be a bad thing - keeps the queues down for us)
On a related note, to those of you who also buy clothing at supermarkets, bear in mind the self-service tills neither offer to remove the security tag from clothing, nor remind you that there's one present. Happily, there's lots of guides on the internet that'll walk you through removing these things at home using nothing more complex than a butane lighter.
very, very well put. a "design authority" and the implied strong hand directing it is exactly what linux needs in order to succeed on the desktop. obviously this is kind of antithetical to linus though...
SOME not ALL. in the UK Natwest have recently offered a generator token that you put your debit card in, but this is the exception, not the rule. None of my 5 bank accounts have anything more than boggo passwords on them...
yes, i get this, but it doesn't seem much of a stretch to have a digitiser that *can* respond to a finger tip. you could make the whole top wristrest (or at least as much as is ergonomically sensible) the digi/trackpad then which would a) sidestep left/right handed issues, and b) make better use of the space.
After years of all my music being MP3, and a year or two of all my video being played off my NAS via XBMC, I just find the idea of copy-protected optical media, well...primitive. I've no interest in a format that gets scratched, stops me fast forwarding thru retarded antipiracy messages (hey, who do you think that inconveniences?) etc.
I want to watch films where and when and on what equipment I like. I'd rather rent it than spend 30 bucks on a disk that I'll watch once.
I want the company to send me by victorian steamer. I could spend 10 days travelling from London to NY in wood-panelled luxury, adorned in smoking jacket and reading the paper with a glass of port in one hand and a pipe in the other. It'd beat AA's "envoy class".
an old photographer's trick for filling in scratches on negatives (celluloid) was to wipe a finger along the side of their nose, then wipe it on the negative. the natural nose grease (!) is approximately the same refractive index, and so when polished off it filled the scratch nicely and allowed the scratch to be hidden.
this *kind* of works on some CD and DVD scratches too. it's also non-destructive as you can wipe it off, and for bonus points makes people do a double-take when you do it...!
what should you do? get an identical replacement, i guess, and wait for that to eventually fail, too. there isn't a non-nvidia version of the MBP. i've just bought applecare for this exact reason. my MBP runs *hot* whilst gaming - i.e. nearly too hot to touch, and this is with both fans on max...
..which is why you pair Devs up with Users to create a good UI. Without understanding the users workflow, you can't design a good UI for anything of more than basic complexity.
2. Dont add buttons.. On My Imac there is a small remote 2 buttons, and an outside ring.. This is FAR more powerful than the 50+ button remote for Dad's TV+dvd player remote
Can I have an extra mouse button on my Mac, please?
THIS IS A JOKE PEOPLE
Single post, now retracted on someone's blog.
Plus, how much does a bowl of strawberries cost? Buy lunch in? Perhaps it works out cheaper than maintaining a kitchen and staff.
This is a non-story.
The cynic in me also thinks that maybe Cuil want people to think they're young, confident and worth investing in.
Their search engine seems pretty average at best from what I've seen so far, yet strangely they're getting lots of media coverage. Is this "story" part of that?
Sync is apparently pretty good: it appears to be a car-variant of MS Voice Command as run on Windows Mobile. My WM devices work the same: tap button on headset and you can speak commands like "what's my next appointment?", "what time is it?", "call mum at home" etc. Works pretty well and the nice thing is you don't have to train it. Personally, for me it'd be better if there was a UK-specific dictionary for it as it comes in a US version: but it works.
alternately, you could get a higher-end TomTom 720: these have FM transmitters in them to send audio to your car stereo, and you can stream music to them from your phone via bluetooth A2DP or play music off the SD card in the TomTom unit. The TomTom also acts as bluetooth handsfree for your phone. Not so dumb...
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How many solar cells do you need to power a pizza oven, anyway?
I'm usually the guy who's standing there muttering "C'mon, c'mon!" under his breath whilst waiting for the damn thing to recognise that I really have scanned my purchase and placed it on the checkout roller. The annoying thing is you could see how it could be really great - better scanners, faster recognition: swipe, bag, insert card and you're done.
(Thinking about it, having self-checkout that's a bit of a pain to use unless you're slightly geek-savvy might not be a bad thing - keeps the queues down for us)
On a related note, to those of you who also buy clothing at supermarkets, bear in mind the self-service tills neither offer to remove the security tag from clothing, nor remind you that there's one present. Happily, there's lots of guides on the internet that'll walk you through removing these things at home using nothing more complex than a butane lighter.
+1 funny
So what you're saying is their defence is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I_was_only_following_orders "I was only following orders"?
very, very well put. a "design authority" and the implied strong hand directing it is exactly what linux needs in order to succeed on the desktop. obviously this is kind of antithetical to linus though...
this is what Mac Keychain does if you use Safari or Camino as your browser. Just sayin'
SOME not ALL. in the UK Natwest have recently offered a generator token that you put your debit card in, but this is the exception, not the rule. None of my 5 bank accounts have anything more than boggo passwords on them...
...and use the cash to fund more future tech landfill, obviously.
yes, i get this, but it doesn't seem much of a stretch to have a digitiser that *can* respond to a finger tip. you could make the whole top wristrest (or at least as much as is ergonomically sensible) the digi/trackpad then which would a) sidestep left/right handed issues, and b) make better use of the space.
It was, until someone sued them for back trauma after lifing one. It's now called a Non Tethered Personal Workstation
why not *just* have the digitiser? surely it'd make a pretty good trackpad?
Um, a tech had physical access to her machine and installed unpleasant software. Not much that can be done about that.
Hell yes, on any Macbook Pros with an Nvidea GPU.
I want to watch films where and when and on what equipment I like. I'd rather rent it than spend 30 bucks on a disk that I'll watch once.
I want the company to send me by victorian steamer. I could spend 10 days travelling from London to NY in wood-panelled luxury, adorned in smoking jacket and reading the paper with a glass of port in one hand and a pipe in the other. It'd beat AA's "envoy class".
This is why the Indian Nose Farms were created to outsource production.
why can't you rip it using EAC and make as many copies as you want as backups?
an old photographer's trick for filling in scratches on negatives (celluloid) was to wipe a finger along the side of their nose, then wipe it on the negative. the natural nose grease (!) is approximately the same refractive index, and so when polished off it filled the scratch nicely and allowed the scratch to be hidden.
this *kind* of works on some CD and DVD scratches too. it's also non-destructive as you can wipe it off, and for bonus points makes people do a double-take when you do it...!
what should you do? get an identical replacement, i guess, and wait for that to eventually fail, too. there isn't a non-nvidia version of the MBP. i've just bought applecare for this exact reason. my MBP runs *hot* whilst gaming - i.e. nearly too hot to touch, and this is with both fans on max...
it would probably improve the quality of their enterprise support if they put those pastry chefs back to work on the phones...
..which is why you pair Devs up with Users to create a good UI. Without understanding the users workflow, you can't design a good UI for anything of more than basic complexity.
2. Dont add buttons.. On My Imac there is a small remote 2 buttons, and an outside ring.. This is FAR more powerful than the 50+ button remote for Dad's TV+dvd player remote
Can I have an extra mouse button on my Mac, please?
THIS IS A JOKE PEOPLE
Plus, how much does a bowl of strawberries cost?
Buy lunch in? Perhaps it works out cheaper than maintaining a kitchen and staff. This is a non-story.
The cynic in me also thinks that maybe Cuil want people to think they're young, confident and worth investing in.
Their search engine seems pretty average at best from what I've seen so far, yet strangely they're getting lots of media coverage. Is this "story" part of that?
Sync is apparently pretty good: it appears to be a car-variant of MS Voice Command as run on Windows Mobile. My WM devices work the same: tap button on headset and you can speak commands like "what's my next appointment?", "what time is it?", "call mum at home" etc. Works pretty well and the nice thing is you don't have to train it. Personally, for me it'd be better if there was a UK-specific dictionary for it as it comes in a US version: but it works.
alternately, you could get a higher-end TomTom 720: these have FM transmitters in them to send audio to your car stereo, and you can stream music to them from your phone via bluetooth A2DP or play music off the SD card in the TomTom unit. The TomTom also acts as bluetooth handsfree for your phone. Not so dumb...