Sounds like your grocery store messed this one up big-time. I use the self-checkout at HEB and it is very easy to use (though you have to punch in the codes for produce, instead of picking from a series of pictures; that would be easier). Doesn't have a conveyor, just have to either put the stuff in a bag or on a scale next to the bags.
Gsquared
@Gsquared
Best posts made by Gsquared
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RE: Supermarket Self-Checkout
Latest posts made by Gsquared
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RE: Magic numbers, strings and exceptions
There are no variables in the statement, as well there shouldn't be unless it's being ported to a different planet. Instead of all the math in the function, why not just put the actual max distance in the string and save a bit of time and effort? (Max distance on Earth = c. 12,000 miles.)
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RE: Intro into Abject-Oriented Programming
The comments were definitely the best part. I love people writing "no, no that's a bad idea", when it was pretty clear from the definition of "abject" that this was the whole idea in the first place.
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RE: Dumbest Coding Mistake you've made?
I've had plenty of while loops without incrementing the counter, so they just ran forever, but I think my dumbest wasn't precisely a coding mistake. I set up a backup for a large database, and set it to add to the backup set, instead of overwriting. It was backing up to the same hard drive as the database. It was backing up every 4 hours. Needless to say, in less than a week, that hard drive was crashing regularly because it was a little bit on the overful side.
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RE: ICQ! aaahh!!!
ICQ is owned by AOL. That, by itself, should tell you that it's much more of a WTF than you can possibly imagine.
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RE: Access features...
What precisely are you trying to accomplish with the code? I saw your sample, but it has too many "I have some code here" lines in it. When I tried to duplicate it (by plugging in my own code), I didn't get the error you're getting.
I've built a very complex, very functional Access front end application (on top of SQL). I might be able to help.
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RE: Federal Tax Payment System Ambiguity
Nah. Better would be pages with links/buttons labeled:
Site.Page.onClick_Exit
Site.Page.onClick_ExitConfirm
Site.Page.onClick_DontExit
Browser.onClick_Close.IE
Browser.onClick_Close.Firefox
....(and so on)....
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RE: Normalisation
@Jeff S said:
@Ice^^Heat said:
Those word columns are for an implementation of "Full-Text Search".
When the user types in "Heater", and a Word column also has the value of "Heater", then the user gets vehicles with an Heater. Word2, word3 etc are then for the word "Heater" in other languages.
I'd consider emailing the consultant about this mess. But I don't want to sound like an arrogant know-it-all smart ass intern.
*sigh*
Normalization is a funny thing. Most best practices are tedious to implement sometimes -- really good error checking, unit testing, not exposing public members in classes, etc -- but normalization is odd in that if you do it, it costs NOTHING and makes everything easier, shorter, and quicker. there are literally no cons to a normalized database, assuming that you know SQL. You can always write denormalized views if the data needs to "look" a certain way (though that word -- "look" -- tells you that you shouldn't do this at your databse at all, but at your presentation layer), so no one even needs to know that your data is "secretly" normalized behind the scenes.
I suspect that if you explain to the consultant that because of his design simple SQL operations are needlessly complex, and a more normalized structure would have great benefits, he will probably respond back that you are too "lazy" to work with "real sql code that is complicated" and that "normalization theory" is just that -- theory, and has no place in the "real world".
Well, you're mostly right. In an OLTP database, you should normalize like crazy. Updates, Inserts and Deletes are much faster in narrow, highly normalized tables with very few indexes on them. In an OLAP database, you often want to denormalize a lot of the data so that Selects run faster, and don't have as many Joins in them. There are serious cons to an overly normalized OLAP database, in terms of speed. (When you have to join 20 tables to generate a report, you're better off warehousing the data into a single denormalized table, or a set of denormalized measures and dimensions, depending on how flat the report is going to be.)
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RE: Wooden table computer?
Some of the people seeing this are missing a major part of the point. It's not just a multi-touch-screen. That's what the links in several comments go to. It also includes the ability to do things like set your digital camera on the surface, have the pictures in the camera's memory download to the "Surface" device, and view, manipulate and share them by touching the surface they are displayed on. Similar functionality with a digital music player (though I'm sure the RIAA will have something to say about that!).
One of the uses planned is that T-Mobile stores will have them, and you can place several phones on the surface, have their features show up, and select optional features by dragging them onto the phone. I can think of a lot of applications for that kind of display in tech stores. (Heck, just watching the hypochondriacs shudder at the thought of touching something other people have already been fingering, could be worth the price of admission.)
I can think of several good uses for that technology in conference rooms if the thing can share documents, images, recordings, presentations, etc.
It's not anything hugely revolutionary, like the original GUI or storing data on discs instead of tape or cards, etc., but it is a cool idea, in my arogant opinion. (And, yes, calling disk-based storage "revolutionary" is a horrible play on words, but I just couldn't resist.) Of course, it's a serious luxury item, but very few electronic/computer goods aren't.
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Robo-bodyguard!
I just got an add from WinZip to buy Zone Alarm Internet Security, with this as one of the bullets:
" <FONT color=#e97508>Protects You Online And Off
</FONT>Blocks the full spectrum of threats on your computer and in the physical world "I never knew Zone Alarm could protect me from a full spectrum of physical world threats! Hurricanes, ageing, tornados, muggers, the common cold, stubbed toes, hijacked airplanes and over-heated McDonald's coffee in the lap, are no longer dangers! Woohoo!
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RE: Thanks, Alex!
@Pap said:
Because it retains the font of the text from wherever you copy n pasted those special characters from.
Then why didn't it change the first time I copied the infinity symbol? More relevantly (is that a word?), why does it allow font options, but not have a "font" option on the toolbar? It has bold, italics, underline, strikethrough, indent, exdent, bullets, numbered lists, links, images, cut, copy, paste, even "Paste from Word", edit HTML and spellcheck, but not a list of fonts.Sure, I could have gone into the HTML and messed around with that. I'm not a web page designer, but I can remove a tag from some text. But why is that necessary? It should either paste without context-sensitive code (plain-text or ASCII paste in most programs), or should have a font control on the toolbar.