(no subject)

[theweaselking]

"Waving your arms, hoping for pizza: Microsoft’s Kinect strategy gets worse and worse"

Despite the inherent problems of ordering pizza via a Kinect gesture interface, I feel this article misses the main point: Talking to people sucks. Customer service sucks. NOBODY is happy working that job and NOBODY wants to talk to them. And so, online ordering? WAY better than finding a legacy phone and making unhappy legacy phone calls to unhappy legacy people who are required to transcribe your order accurately instead of just getting what you want, for certain, on the record, directly to the right people.

The fewer people I have to talk to to order something when I want to order a specific thing? The better. Even better when my order gets to the fulfillment people in writing.

And, okay, sure, maybe Kinect sucks, and Pizza Hut pizza sucks. GRANTED. The point is, ordering food by NOT TALKING TO PEOPLE is always better and makes me put up with a lot.

Comments

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

Look you can say what you want about anything else, but you badmouth Pizza Hut's stuffed crust pizza in all its delicious glory and WE WILL HAVE WORDS!

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Their "hot dog stuffed crust" pizza is a thing of transcendent beauty, granted. And the general stuffed-crust stuff is kinda good.

This is all about "pizza hut pizza is generally bad, disregarding the crust" combined with PA's luddite tendency to prefer phones over objectively-better-than-phone communications like EVERYTHING ELSE EVER.

The Kinect UI might suck, sure, but it's almost certainly still better than phone. Phone is awful.

[argonel.livejournal.com]

I have to note that I am not a fan of the stuffed crust pizza when it is fresh. After it has cooled and been reheated strange alchemy happens and it is rather good.

[lurkerwithout.livejournal.com]

Phone is awful. I hate that my Chinese food place doesn't have online ordering. Making me talk to people to get my lo mein. Bah!

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

...disregarding the crust

What does this mean?

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Point 1: "Their "hot dog stuffed crust" pizza is a thing of transcendent beauty, granted. And the general stuffed-crust stuff is kinda good."

Point 2: "pizza hut pizza is generally bad, disregarding the crust"

Ignoring the crust, pizza hut pizza is bad.

[lafinjack.livejournal.com]

That's what I thought, but the lack of qualifiers threw me. Thanks.

[bunnybutt.livejournal.com]

Thank you.

[disgruntledgrrl.livejournal.com]

So they're using the Wii or Kinect's motions to make said pizza and then have it ordered?
Talk about useless and entertaining.

Take it a step further - order food you see laying around in a game.
So Pizza in Borderlands 2

(WAIT! I never noticed the QR code before!! I fail at geek))

Of course you wouldn't want this feature in say ... Silent Hill.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I found a new QR code in Borderlands 2 while playing post-update. I stopped, and said "Wait, I need to scan this new QR code". My co-players replied with "... said nobody, ever".

And they were right. But.

[negumi.livejournal.com]

In the 4x game Endless Space one of the special resources you can find on planets is represented by a broken QR code. People fixed it and found that it went to one of the team's art page. So yes, some people not only say "Wait I need to scan this code" but also "This QR code is broken I wonder what happens if I fix it"

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

During the run-up to Portal 2's release, a ton of other games started including Portal content. Defense Grid, in particular, put out levels as part of an unlocking thing, and one of the levels was in the shape of a QR Code. If you copied the code and scanned it, it took you to a URL that had the code to unlock the third level.

[negumi.livejournal.com]

Oh wow that's cool, I always meant to play more of Defense Grid but I have many steam games to play and little time to play them. Heck the GF and I only just got around to beating the Hammerlock DLC last night.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

Heh. I haven't started Hammerlock. I haven't even finished Torgue.

(But I've been playing, since the most recent update. I have an L61 character, at least.)

[negumi.livejournal.com]

o.O We just hit 50 with our "mains" my next highest is 26 so you're doing a lot better than us in that respect.

Hammerlock was fun and frustrating. It feels like a lot of the hit boxes are off center so we found ourselves either doing very little damage or doing a TON of damage but not being sure how we did it. Kind of like going from l4d to l4d2 (or vice-versa) things just don't seem to match up the way the should.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

I, uh, kinda had 3 L50s before the Mechromancer came out. I stopped after the pirate DLC and only a few missions into Torgue because I was burned out - Playthrough 3 brought me back and has me doing stuff again.

[negumi.livejournal.com]

Damn, just damn.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Sadly, the QR code on that pizza box isn't quite high enough resolution to scan from the screen.

Yes, I tried.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

With a higher quality screenshot, perhaps.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

I don't think it's possible at all. The texture never renders at a high enough resolution in-game to make it readable.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

...Uh, no. It's totally possible to scan the QR code.

It doesn't say anything important, but you can scan it. On a phone. While staring at an in-game screen.

[duskwuff.livejournal.com]

Might depend on the scanner. I wasn't able to get the one I was using to even pick it up.

[theweaselking.livejournal.com]

That screenshot, it's hard. In-game, at normal resolution, getting up close and with the code in focus? Totally works.

actually I squished the image, there are clear shots of this online

[disgruntledgrrl.livejournal.com]

I scanned it to see if it works - it does.

[kafziel.livejournal.com]

I doubt that. It looks pretty readable in that picture, it's just that's a photo of a TV rather than an in-game screenshot.

[scixual.livejournal.com]

Mmm, Barbecued dog pizza...

I am sure I've seen a pizza place in Silent Hill, but I am not able to come up with a name. Eddie ate a pizza in SH2, but my google-fu isn't coming up with an image good enough to read a logo...

WAIT! Strike that. All Star's Pizza.

Now you know.

[reyl.livejournal.com]

If I never ever have to call an actual person to order delivery again, it will be too soon. Unfortunately it is a curse that I've an no longer eat tomatoes and the one Lebanese pizzeria that has the one pizza I can eat is still subsisting offline. So I get my boyfriend to call. These calls usually last 15 minutes. And I'm like, I could have ordered souvlaki online like ten times already :( But the spinach pie pizza is soooo worth it. Note, worth his pain but not mine ;)

[peristaltor.livejournal.com]

While I appreciate your disgust for calling Joe-job flunkies for, well, anything, will the disdain for talking to people lead to less practice talking to people that will lead to further inability for people to talk with each other, and so on down a slippery slope to nerd-mute-dom?

Seriously, exercise (as in getting out of a chair and walking up a flight or two of stairs once and a while) will not kill you, unpleasant though it may be; not exercising thusly will kill you eventually. I shudder to consider what the world, with its misunderstandings gone totally awry, will look like with fewer and fewer people needing to exercise their interpersonal communication skills.

[sparkindarkness.livejournal.com]

I always order online - but I boggle that someone looking to order online would only have a kinect and not a more sensible internet connection