Walmart self checkout...a parable about automation

The self-checkout at the nearby Walmart has consistently failed in the same way for the last several years.  Though once and awhile I try it again, it always fails immediately and so I go running for a human checker.  Usually I just go straight to a human checker.  I would never bother with the self checkout anyway except often there is no line there.

The failure is like this.  Many if not all of the self checkout stands have an attached message:

"This Machine, Credit or Debit Cards Only"

This is no trouble for me, as I nearly always pay with credit card anyway.

The screen invites me to start checking, so I scan my first item and place it in the bag.

Immediately a huge warning consumes the screen:

"THIS SCANNER ONLY ACCEPTS CREDIT OR DEBIT CARDS!!!  Do you wish to continue?"

Well, I had understood that.  The sign attached to the stand already gave me that message.  So I press OK.

Then, immediately, the scanner has an issue with the fact there is now weight in the bag, but it hadn't yet fully checked the first item because it needed to interrupt that process to give me an unnecessary warning.

"REMOVE ITEM FROM BAG!" it insists.  So I remove the item from the bag.

Then, right after I have removed the item, it completes the checkout for the first item, and finds I have attempted to remove an item which shouldn't have been removed.  So now it wants a human checker to see what kind of trick I am trying to pull.

"Please wait for assistant."

Of course, the assistant is busy helping some other person, and in fact there may be several other people in line for assistance from the assistant.

So I go run for a regular human checker again.

In case this all sounds like I must be doing something wrong, I actually do try to do it differently every time, perhaps by waiting a few seconds here or there, or making sure I press the "OK" button after the no cash warning as quickly as possible.

While people talk about things like self flying cars, I'd like to point out that the self-checkout register at my local Walmart has never worked correctly, for many years now.  This doesn't give me confidence about computers driving or flying cars.

Paraphrased from Hitchhiker's Guid to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

Computer: I can calculate all your personality disorders to 10 decimal places!

Arthur: I wouldn't trust you to get my weight right.

HP Product Research gobbling up 1.2 Gb on my computer

I love my HP Printer, and Instant Ink which has, so far, meant I have never run out of useable ink or had to go to a store to buy ink.

(In previous printers, because I printed so infrequently, the ink often dried out before running out, forcing me to buy new ink every time I wanted to print another page, at great cost and inconvenience.)

However, I have now discovered that a program called "HP Product Research" is consuming 1.2Gb of RAM on my computer.  I would like to eliminate this program!  But the HP Forum gives no advice I have found yet how to do so.

This is pretty typical, however.  Nowadays it seems most CPU cycles and bits are devoted to spying on the computer user.  I had more available memory on my 16 Mb Amiga, which was never filled up, than on my 8 Gb Mac.

The solution adopted by other operating systems may be simply to make it impossible to figure out what resources every program is using.  The Mac helps a bit in that regards, but it's still impossible many times to find out which thing is which.  One thing, you know who is responsible for a program called "HP Product Research."

Update: I figured out how to stop HP Product Research.  In Applications/Utilities I found the HP Utility.  It has a tab called "Product Improvement."  Click on that tab and a new window comes up, in which there is a box entitled "Participate in improving HP products and Services."  Make sure that box is NOT checked.  After unchecking it, you must still reboot your Mac, and then HP Product Research is gone.

Java Needlessly Obsessive Security

Java is joining the ranks of the uber paranoid, and not allowing me to get anything done.  Once again (and for the umpteenth plus one time) I cannot access my home control system, which I've been using for the past 3 years without issues....except these stupid Java Security issues which I used to be able to get around.

I can't even disable security in the advanced panel, by clicking on all the "not recommended" boxes.

Because when I do that, I just get another security message which tells me Java won't run without all those needless checks.

Honestly, I've never had any trouble with viruses, trojans, etc.  But I've had endless troubles not unlike this, just trying to do things I don't do often, because of useless security.

If it were nice, I could get some kind of hint as to what was attempting what, and suggestions as to how to unblock it.

In this case, it appears I can't run my home control system without finding what URL my home security system is at, and then adding it to the list of things to unblock.

Which is something I don't have time for right now.

And then, if my local network refreshes, I may have to do it all over again.

It should just know, that anything on my LAN, at least, can be trusted.

Anything I've told it I trust 100 times before, and used 100 times before, but not recently, can still be trusted.

But the new rule is, anything that isn't from Apple or a corporation liked by Apple, can't be trusted without going through endless hoops.

No matter how many times I've told Mac OS or Java it can be trusted, before.

Return to Doghouse, Apple Maps, and Apple Maps Tyranny!

On my new iPhone, I was disappointed to find that Apple Maps is once again the default navigator for addresses in the Calendar app.

Oh, yes, Apple Maps, I had trouble with that before.  Didn't seem to find things when Google Maps had the correct answer right away.  After once getting lost with Apple Maps two years ago, I decided to never use it again.  I wanted to go to a Bernie Sanders meeting, and for some reason Apple Maps couldn't give me consistent directions to it, or even a consistent location.  Apple Maps censorship?  I decided then and there never to use Apple Maps again.  I opened up Google Maps which found the location and directed me to it very nicely.  Everyone I talked to said Google Maps is better.

But this time, with my new iPhone 8 Plus, I was in a hurry, and just let Apple Maps run, for at least a couple minutes.  Maybe they had made it better by now.

Now I have many of my own special routes, which aren't necessarily shorter, but I feel they are safer. I bypass particularly problematic highway onramps and interchanges, and left turns without green arrows.

Without thinking, I followed the first Apple Maps direction, before I realized that I wasn't going my way.  So I took turned on a side street to get turned around and back going on my chosen route to get on the necessary highway.

Rather too quickly, Apple Maps began blaring: "Return to designated route."  As I was getting myself turned around, it blared "Return to designated route" a second time.  And once I got back going on my route going the way I prefer, it blared that message a third time.  This reminded me of a similarly stuck up navigator I used on a Lincoln I rented in 1991, which also kept blaring "Return to designated route."

Enough of Apple Maps tyranny!  I parked, and though I was already going to be a few minutes late, I took the trouble to download Google Maps right then and there.  I entered in the address of my destination, and Google Maps took it from there.  Big relief.

When I change to a different route, Google Maps always seems to figure that out fairly quickly, and rather than giving me a stupid "Return to Designated Route" message, which would be unhelpful even if I wanted to follow it, Google Maps quickly figures out the new route I'm planning to take, and goes along with my plan, without a single bad word.  I don't recall Google Maps ever telling me to "return to designated route" or anything like that.

But now it appears, tyrannical Apple has caught up with us prisoners.  You can no longer change the navigator used by Calendar to Google Maps.   Resistance is futile!

Damn.  I'll just have to enter the directions into Google Maps each time, rather than relying on the helpful Calendar navigator link.

Unless I can find a new Google Calendar that links to Google Maps.

Sadly, Google Calendar appears to be merely a front to Google.  You have to log into Google before it does anything.  So I tossed that also.

Enough Multitasking Already!

Most of the time when I quit an app on my iPhone, I simply want the app to quit.  I don't want it to stay running in the background.

Some apps consume a lot of power or tie up resources like the internal microphone even in the background.

It is a huge misfeature of IOS that there isn't a simple and uniform way to do this.

Except the inconvenient double home and swipe.  It is a huge bother.  That would be OK for something you rarely have to do.  But for something you need to do all the time, especially for those resource sucking apps, it's a big pain.

Mac OS does this nicely, with one button for minimize, and another for terminate.

Siri go away, go away, go away already

If Siri were just an app, I might use it once and awhile.

But Siri is this monster that is wrapped all around your phone by apple, and it's hell to get it to stop always getting in your way.

First I don't want anything listening all the time, so I shut that off.

Second, I don't want Siri hijacking the home button, because I use that a lot, and if you hold one millisecond too long Siri comes up, and you have to start all over doing what you were trying to do.

(How is the phone supposed to work anymore without a Home button?  I'm dreading being forced into that world some time maybe 2 years off.  Apple keeps removing all the essential things--they've always been like that--and adding more spooky troublesome stuff.  And the world is coming more and more to resemble the movie Brazil.  I vastly prefer simple buttons to spooky troublesome stuff.)

So, I turned off listening, then I turned off respond to bottom button, in the Siri preferences (which I had to use Search in settings even to find...and then there were a bunch of things and I had to go through two to find the right one).

But then, after finally turning off the home button enable, if you hold the home button one millisecond too long,  a new screen comes up telling you that you could enable Siri if you wanted to.  I pressed NO the first time but that wasn't enough.  Finally on the third attempt, I saw an additional "turn Siri off" and that seems to work.  Now I can hold the bottom button as long as I want without Siri getting in the way anymore.  I hope.

My favorite smartphone experience to date was with my iPhone 3G, which was great and lots of fun until Apple started messing with things and then the 3G hardware couldn't keep up anymore and essential apps like Maps didn't work anymore.  That was about year 3.

As smart devices are larded up more and more with "conveniences" they more and more resemble the Spaceship Heart of Gold in Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

Douglas Adams could see very well in the mid 1970's where things were going.

DAMN PASSWORDS AND SECURITY CRAP !!@@#$%)^%-

It's been a huge pain to transfer to my new iPhone.  Several days there's still a lot to do.

I hope I never have to log into iCloud again.  It has questions I cannot remember the answers I gave.  Where do I go to reset that???  Good Riddance Anyway!!!  But the funny thing is somehow it seems I did get on once to get my contacts transferred--it appeared to be the only way.  But it doesn't remember that I got on once and keeps demanding that I log in again.

iCloud is inextricably linked to things you might want, like transfer stuff to new phone, so if you can't get on iCloud you are stuck with hard to find ways of transferring to the new device.

Fortunately I've found that my Apps are only secured through my Apple ID, which I can remember.  I can re-download them one by one just by entering that--a big relief.  But that's going to be a lot of work.

Kindle is a big pain, because on top of having to enter ancient email address (and I have to remember which one) and password (thankfully Amazon doesn't force you to keep changing so its one of the few things I can actually remember) you have to enter the stupid letters, which are almost impossible to read.  Then, if you get anything wrong, it clears your password, and you have to start all over again.  The error message is garbled unless you scroll back to the top of the screen.  Did anyone at Amazon actually try this, assuming you might get something wrong?  It's unclear which button to press (Done?  Go?).  The Login button is at the bottom of the screen, which you don't see unless you scroll all the way down there.  Then, if there's an error at the top (which you don't see because you just scrolled down to the bottom) pressing login does nothing.  Fortunately after about 45 minutes of trial and error, and logging into my Amazon account on a computer to remember my registered email address, and also be sure of my password, I got my Kindle library on the new iphone.

Why do they force you to use those letters anyway?  Isn't that completely redundant?