This reminds of a candid camera episode about a voice-response-system-from-you-know-where. In it, they had the poor schmuck elevate his phone to eliminate radio interference, and the "automated system" repeated the request until he did and then as soon as he did it (she) said "Thank You". All voiced by the AUDIX lady (who's name I've forgotten, even though I worked on AUDIX). This episode is a classic - a riot.
On 06/22/2013 02:14 PM, Tom Limoncelli wrote: > Have you heard about the keyboard that only worked when you were sitting down? > > http://netlib.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/sec0510.html > or > http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:VH59EeSTs7UJ:netlib.bell-labs.com/cm/cs/pearls/sec0510.html+&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us > > BEGIN QUOTE > That attitude is illustrated in an anecdote from IBM's Yorktown > Heights Research Center. A programmer had recently installed a new > workstation. All was fine when he was sitting down, but he couldn't > log in to the system when he was standing up. That behavior was one > hundred percent repeatable: he could always log in when sitting and > never when standing. > > Most of us just sit back and marvel at such a story. How could that > workstation know whether the poor guy was sitting or standing? Good > debuggers, though, know that there has to be a reason. Electrical > theories are the easiest to hypothesize. Was there a loose wire under > the carpet, or problems with static electricity? But electrical > problems are rarely one-hundred-percent consistent. An alert colleague > finally asked the right question: how did the programmer log in when > he was sitting and when he was standing? Hold your hands out and try > it yourself. > > The problem was in the keyboard: the tops of two keys were switched. > When the programmer was seated he was a touch typist and the problem > went unnoticed, but when he stood he was led astray by hunting and > pecking. With this hint and a convenient screwdriver, the expert > debugger swapped the two wandering keytops and all was well. > END QUOTE > _______________________________________________ > Discuss mailing list > [email protected] > https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss > This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators > http://lopsa.org/ -- Alan Robertson <[email protected]> - @OSSAlanR "Openness is the foundation and preservative of friendship... Let me claim from you at all times your undisguised opinions." - William Wilberforce _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators http://lopsa.org/
