Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!purdue!decwrl!hplabs!otter!gjh From: gjh@otter.hple.hp.com (Graham Higgins) Newsgroups: comp.misc Subject: Re: computer follies Message-ID: <1860004@otter.hple.hp.com> Date: 20 Sep 88 19:02:44 GMT References: <1109@idec.stc.co.uk> Organization: Hewlett-Packard Laboratories, Bristol, UK. Lines: 42 When I was a grad student, one of my colleagues was having some problems coming to terms with computers - he came from a South Mediterranean country where computer literacy is scarce. The course in non-numeric programming started off on Superbrains, which he eventually learned to operate, then we moved on to remote terminals connected to a Vax. One day, as I was passing the computer lab I heard this bellow "Gromm, Gromm!, is no work!" - the guy was bouncing up and down on both shift keys together - the Superbrain has the shift keys in red plastic, hitting both together resets the machine - it took me some time to explain that he *couldn't* reset the Vax in similar fashion (but the mind boggles - what if ...?). Another time, again passing the computer lab ... "Gromm Gromm!, is no work!" He had a LISP function, suitably indented, sprawling across the screen. I peered at this for some time and couldn't see anything wrong with it. I thought I could at least try it, so I cursored down the screen and pressed Return --- "login:" it said! On that topic, a colleague tells me of a LISP vendor who sold a LISP to some defence company, only to be phoned some months later by the purchaser who complained "Your compiler won't handle our function." Alarmed and puzzled (at the usage of the singular "function"), the company sent out an engineer, only to find that they *did* have just the one function, six months and several inches of printout's worth of function! In another life, I used to work for a wholesaler which had recently moved to a computerised terminal system in the buying office. The "girls" in the buying office were used to hand-administered systems and computer terminals were somewhat new to them. One afternoon I came back from lunch and found them all cowering behind a low filing cabinet, peering over the top, in quite a state of panic. I asked what was the problem and they pointed to one of the terminals. Some joker down in the computer room had used the messaging facility to write on the 25th line the following message ... "WARNING! Temperature overload! This terminal will explode in 30 seconds!" Cheers, Graham (Gromm) Higgins HP Labs Bristol, U.K.