- Joined
- Sep 26, 2009
- Posts
- 118,502
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Yesterday, I stopped to fill my car's gas tank. That was done easily enough, but the machine didn't give me the paper receipt. I went inside, to ask for the paper receipt. They could not give me as receipt, because the cash register was frozen. There were two people who had pumped gasoline, and they had come inside to pay. Somebody else had a few liters of soda-pop. None of these people were able to pay, because the cash register didn't work. The two people there didn't know what to do. I asked them if they could "reboot" similar to what you do with a computer, and they were afraid they would lose everything that had been done, and it was the same thing when I suggested they could merely "close out the day" and start the second part of the day.
Again, everything was frozen, and they couldn't do anything they would normally do. I don't know what happened to the other customers.
Computers can be a problem when they misbehave. What happens if you're in the middle of a surgery, and somebody happens to press the wrong key?
ANOTHER THING that computers are becoming a part of, FAR TOO MUCH: looking for a job! A friend wanted to apply for a job at one of the major pharmacy chains, and he could only apply by navigating their website and applying there. It was impossible to do anything by phone, or in person. IT HAS TO BE DONE ON A COMPUTER AND THERE IS **NO OTHER WAY**. This is so wrong!
Try running a CNC milling machine or lathe when it glitches and flies off in the wrong direction. The worst crash I had was when our CNC lathe lost its home position and rammed full force into the spindle. It ripped the turret(multi-tool holder) off the carriage and busted up a bunch of tooling, broke a set of steel jaws off of the spindle and threw the part into the safety glass on the door shattering the inner layer of glass. The glass replacement was $700 on its own.
Things like airplanes and space flight scare the hell out of me

