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.