ASUS thinks outside the 4″ x 4″ box with plans for custom NUCs Fresh from winning the rights to build machines based on Intel's quirky little Next Unit of Compute (NUC) mini-PC spec, ASUS has cooked up plans to offer custom NUCs to industrial clients, or even for edge deployments by cloud service providers. The Register today spoke with ASUS senior vice president Jackie Hsu, who also …
for self-service kiosks, point of sale machines, driving digital signage, and warehouse operations.
Is humanity not tired of it already? Wherever you go there is a user interface wanting you to input something. Everywhere you turn, there's another screen begging for a tap or swipe. "Did you want a receipt with that? Are you sure? Really sure?" Just f have a short circuit already.
Self-service kiosks... Let me think...
For buying a railway ticket? Probably ok (although there should still be staff present you can ask if the machine is out of order or just doesn't sell the type of ticket you want.)
For scanning, bagging and paying for my groceries because the supermarket has gone so far down the late-stage capitalism route that they will only pay to have one member of staff available who checks your receipt as you leave the premises? Absofuckinglutely not!
The railway ticket machines (int he UK at least) vary between 'pretty shit' and 'utterly shit' - at the local station I find it's always quicker to go to the ticket office, especially if (as is usually the case) I just want a day return to X and I don't want to have to tell the machine my detailed travel times (I often don't know exactly what time I'll be coming back anyway),
They've actually got worse - some of the earlier ones did have an option for 'tickets for today' and would easily provide a day return to X. Now they seem to base everything on specifying specific trains.
...if a mini version of the original IBM PC, a basic system board with expansion slots might be something to look forward too? Rather than ISA slots, I'm thinking vertically mounted M.2/PCIe slots running lengthways so would accommodate external ports on the end of the expansion card through the back of the case. Of course, not quite as basic a system board as the original PC, since so much more is already in the onboard chipset. Whether an eco system of 3rd party expansion cards could grow may be the real sticking point. It would probably depend on whether the specs were open enough and no silly patents on board shapes, sizes etc.
It won't happen, of course. The way to make huge gobs of money is to make everyone buy the special custom box they need, not allow them to spec and expand as required to make their own custom box with just the bits they need.
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