Tom Del Rosso wrote:
"Anthony Fremont" wrote in message


2) Self check out at the grocery store (some things just aren't
designed to be automated that way)

"Thank you for purchacing the 16 ounce Goulden's spicy brown mustard.
You saved 48 cents."

...by which time I have scanned the next 3 items, and the scanner
subsystem acknowledged every one with a beep.

"You didn't wait for me to finish talking. My scanner has a lower
priority than my speech system. I don't know what to do now. Please
wait for assistance from one of the human workers I was meant to
replace."

Oh man, don't get me going on all the stupid failure modes of that crap.
"Please stack the entire 16 cubic feet of groceries in your cart on the 10"
square scale pad".

Now, they have these big LCD screens at the checkout line using speakers
with some kind of advanced sound-field trickery. When you stand in the
targeted area, it's annoyingly loud. Outside of the target area it's fairly
quiet and sorta distorted sounding when you can hear it. Weird aspect
ratios on the displays also, must have cost a friggin fortune to put that
in. Of course it's all activated by simply walking up to the checkout. Got
them mooing at you in the milk section too. :-(

Marketing gone wild, I can't wait for RFID tracking to fully kick in. "Hey
dude, how'd that Preperation H work out for you?" or "Mary, according to our
records your period starts in three days. Maxi Pads are on sale thru today
only, don't you want to pick some up now?" :-(((((