The Gamers Arms

The Jackal wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 29, 2019 2:01 am

Hatredsheart wrote: ↑

Mon Oct 21, 2019 6:22 pm

The person who thought the self-scan till voices in Poundland would be endearing deserves a slow and painful demise.
Imagine working there and having to listen to it for literally hours every day, Hell hath no greater torment.

Do you mean the Halloween-themed dialogue? Or the Valentine's Day set I encountered last year, which was just flat-out fucking creepy?

All of them.At least halloween will be over soon.
Then it's the Christmas set of dialogue to look forward to. Counting the days....

Parcel Force. Rubbish. They say they don't even recognise the tracking number they provided me.

Also: Mondays. Mondays are terrible for everyone, I know, but the worst thing about them for me is that I have no motivation to do anything.

I've always found Tuesdays harder work than Mondays. Not entirely sure why, but I think it stems from school life when Tuesdays always seemed to have the worst combination of lessons.

Stormbringer wrote: ↑

Tue Oct 29, 2019 9:07 am

Parcel Force. Rubbish. They say they don't even recognise the tracking number they provided me.

Turns out this was my fault: I'd mistaken a 0 for an O. Schoolboy error, as they say.

When people talk down and dismiss new technology, as if it wasn't necessary, or was just "technology for technology's sake".

A few years on, people won't remember how we coped before that particular piece of tech.

Too true. I remember back around 2010 when everyone in the office laughed at the idea of an ipad and dismissed it as a pointlessly big phone. Now tablets are fairly ubiquitous.

"Why would I ever want to stream TV over the internet?" - me circa 2015.

It's the only way I watch TV now. Even if I'm watching something like the Apprentice on the BBC when it's being broadcast, invariably I'm streaming it over iplayer. Largely because I'm too lazy too boot up our Freesat box

Yes, I'm as guilty of it as anyone else.

To be fair, occasionally there are technological innovations which seem promising, but which don't take off, so some reservation can be wise.

However, my criticism is when people dismiss things out of hand without really looking into the reasons why the technology could prove beneficial or necessary in the coming years.

Stormbringer wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 30, 2019 12:09 pm

Yes, I'm as guilty of it as anyone else.

To be fair, occasionally there are technological innovations which seem promising, but which don't take off, so some reservation can be wise.

However, my criticism is when people dismiss things out of hand without really looking into the reasons why the technology could prove beneficial or necessary in the coming years.

This actually still happens with ancient labour saving devices such as say, a dishwasher.

"Why do you need one of those, too lazy to wash up?"

"No, would you like to have your taps removed and go back to carrying water from a stream in a bucket?"

True.

A colleague of mine, who I had in mind when I made my original post on this subject (he was dismissing biometric security technology as pointless), a couple of years ago questioned why scientists bothered sending probes into various parts of space. "To what end?" he asked, thinking he sounded clever. I found this attitude quite bizarre, considering he's a massive Star Trek fan.

I don't tend to dismiss new technology (or technologically enhanced versions of existing products) out of hand, but there are some items that you just have to wrack your brains attempting to work out the use case for. Sometimes it solves a problem that doesn't seem to exist, or introduces new problems that didn't exist before. I love my Hue system, but it does feel a bit ridiculous having to occasionally reboot a lightbulb.

As a case in point, you can now have a subscription service for dental floss: https://www.getquip.com/store?utm_sourc ... 8&affsrc=1

Yeah, the subscription buttons you can get from Amazon to quickly re-order various products baffles me. I can almost see the use case for something like laundry detergent, but it was concerning when they suggested I should get one for a bottle of whisky I'd bought.

Wrathbone wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 30, 2019 2:50 pm

Yeah, the subscription buttons you can get from Amazon to quickly re-order various products baffles me. I can almost see the use case for something like laundry detergent, but it was concerning when they suggested I should get one for a bottle of whisky I'd bought.

Whisky on Subscription you say?

We have a few Amazon subs going - when the kids were babies we had a monthly order for nappies, and we still get a monthly pack of water-wipes (these are the literal best things you can possess as a parent) and our bog roll. We did have a feeding hay sub for our guinea pigs, but we stopped that as we just ended up with vast stocks filling the loft so now I just buy that as needed.

Wrathbone wrote: ↑

Wed Oct 30, 2019 2:50 pm

Yeah, the subscription buttons you can get from Amazon to quickly re-order various products baffles me. I can almost see the use case for something like laundry detergent, but it was concerning when they suggested I should get one for a bottle of whisky I'd bought.

Funnily enough I had a web-based one for whiskey too. I never asked for it and never used it.

I have no issue with subscription services when you can choose any product you regularly buy (it is afterall just Amazon shipping you one of their products to a schedule), but to make a specific service solely for toothpaste, to create a company and base your business model on people signing up for regular toothpaste and floss deliveries just seems barmy.

And with things like this come websites designed to let you monitor and cancel all of your subscription services from one location. Subscription models are clearly what our capitalist society is diving head-first into, and I have a feeling it's going to be the next "dot-com bubble" that will eventually burst.