Saber Cherry is alive and well

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Zen:
Don't make fun of Cherry's bugs!

I believe they are cute and vicious, precisely what bugs should be!

Aren't programmers supposed to eradicate bugs, not deliberately create them?

Not when they are cute and vicious. That is I also think the term bug is too liberally applied. Though I wouldn't mind seeing an Alien tear through a server case and devour a user every once in a while, but only because I believe that the end of civilization is the self-checkout at the grocery store.

[Arryn]

Originally posted by Zen:
I believe that the end of civilization is the self-checkout at the grocery store.

I agree. A most ill-conceived notion if ever there was one. An attempt to cut business costs (payroll) at the expense of customer convenience. What makes it especially egregious is that it's masked as an attempt to *improve* customer service. Yeah, right. A cashier can check someone through far faster than the customer can do the work themselves. Customers have too many buttons they need to push (a bad UI) and it still requires a cashier's involvement despite paying by credit card. Self-service gasoline and banking make sense. Self-service retail shopping does not.

[Sheap]

Actually, I prefer the self-serve checkout. I do understand that the stores are doing this to cut costs at the expense of the customer. But I find that I am almost as fast as a cashier at scanning my items, and I can scan and bag in one motion (rather than having to do them separately) so that is actually faster.

Invariably when I wait in a regular checkout line, someone in front of me is a moron and holds up the show for ages. This happens even more often with self-serve checkout, but when it happens it only reduces throughput by 25% instead of 100%.

Finally since the self-service checkout is restricted in the number of items you can bring through, and many people are reluctant to use them, and because the line leads to four checkouts instead of one, the lines are much shorter and move faster. Which is important to me, not because my time is exceptionally valuable, but because I really, really hate waiting in line.

On the other hand, I do agree with Arryn that self-serve gasoline is an absolute necessity of life. I am simply glad that New Jersey is a small state that I don't live in. There are many reasons for this, but among them is that when I have to drive through it, I can fill up beforehand and not have to wait in their gas lines. It's like the oil embargo, all over again.

[ July 12, 2004, 17:59: Message edited by: Sheap ]

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Gandalf Parker:
Thats not a bug. But if you are going to build a list of "shocking foods" then you would want to include prairie oysters, kim chee, blood pudding, haggis, tripe, birds nest soup, thousand year eggs, catfish, sushi, caviar, rancid yak milk, monkey brains, fruitcake, poi, chewing gum, baalut, vegemite, okra, steak tartare

Just curious: where/why are chewing gum, okra, and fruitcake considered shocking?

[LintMan]

Originally posted by Sheap:
Finally since the self-service checkout is restricted in the number of items you can bring through, and many people are reluctant to use them, and because the line leads to four checkouts instead of one, the lines are much shorter and move faster. Which is important to me, not because my time is exceptionally valuable, but because I really, really hate waiting in line.

On the other hand, I do agree with Arryn that self-serve gasoline is an absolute necessity of life. I am simply glad that New Jersey is a small state that I don't live in. There are many reasons for this, but among them is that when I have to drive through it, I can fill up beforehand and not have to wait in their gas lines. It's like the oil embargo, all over again.

The self-service checkouts I've seen don't have any maximum item limits. The biggest problem I've had with them is that they've been miserable to use. One had the worst, most confusing credit card interface I've ever seen, and another had a conveyor belt that kept on pushing my packing boxes back at me.

As for gas lines at NJ pumps: if you're waiting on a long gas line in NJ, you're either going to the wrong stations, or your only experience is with the rest area stations on the Garden State Parkway and NJ Turnpike. The local town/city gas stations (which you'd be using if you lived there, rather than the Parkway ones) don't get like that.

[Gandalf Parker]

Originally posted by LintMan:
Just curious: where/why are chewing gum, okra, and fruitcake considered shocking?

Like everything that was mentioned if depends on if you (A) know what they are (B) have ever tried them and (C) not worth explaining if you live in the country where they are common, in this case the USA.

I didnt add them to the list, I got it off the net. Gum is flavored pLastic made from a petroleum waste, and a stereotype of dumb cud chewing americans. Okra is a slimey vegetable which is considered hard to even WATCH being eaten. And fruitcake is defined as "building construction material with colored gels added, rarely if ever eaten but is often passed hand to hand as gifts for years"