• You're a liar (unregistered)

    THis has to be bullshit.

  • (cs)

    this sounds like a story from i robot

  • bored (unregistered)

    I get visions of Bender drunk trying to take over a planet but cursing at it.

    captcha: tego - "Where did tego?"

  • (cs) in reply to You're a liar

    Two issues I see that violated fundamentals (assuming the story is somewhat true) :

    There was never an emergency stop from the beginning, you always need a manual hardware stop, when dealing with moving equipment. Always !

    The equipment was not properly grounded.

  • SR (unregistered) in reply to You're a liar
    You're a liar:
    THis has to be bullshit.

    Depends on the flooring. I used to wear big-assed boots to work (army boots, Dr Martens, etc.) and I'd be forever getting shocks.

    PS I for one welcome our microfiche-sorting robo overlords.

  • Schmitter (unregistered)

    It is a software issue, no a hardware issue, no a software issue, no a hardware issue....

  • Anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to bored
    bored:
    I get visions of Bender drunk trying to take over a planet but cursing at it.

    You mean Bender NOT drunk, right?

  • Nat Pagle (unregistered)

    Obviously, anglin' for a fiche story.

    The biggest lies are fiche stories.

    Not enough beer, though.

  • vhn (unregistered)

    TRWTF is using Intel right?

  • ctardi (unregistered)

    If the robot really did run on steel rails, how was it an issue that it came towards the window at high speed? It's on rails, it won't hit the window...

    Note from Alex: Most of us flinch when large, menacing things are coming towards us fast... even if they're behind "unbreakable" glass. Or, even on a TV screen.

  • (cs)

    I call BS2. Why would the robot stop and return in the other direction if it had been fritzed? Why would they always go in the same direction (i.e. towards the visitors)? How did the Feynman on Lektriever discover this? Too good to be true.

    Note from Alex: Because it was on a track? The same reason run-away trains don't crash into your house

  • Ben (unregistered) in reply to ctardi
    ctardi:
    If the robot really did run on steel rails, how was it an issue that it came towards the window at high speed? It's on rails, it won't hit the window...
    If it goes fast enough, it will fall off of the end of the track and go through the window.
  • Anon Ymous (unregistered) in reply to Schmitter
    Schmitter:
    It is a software issue, no a hardware issue, no a software issue, no a hardware issue....

    No, a footwear issue

  • MC (unregistered) in reply to Nat Pagle
    Nat Pagle:
    Obviously, anglin' for a fiche story.

    What kind of a fiche story was that? Where was the big one that got away?

  • Bosshog (unregistered)

    Someone probably used the KAH opcode.

    KAH - Kill All Humans
    Processor will push the status of the flags to the stack, and will then attempt to kill all humans.

    This works much like 'Kill Some Humans' [KSH] but there is no way to set a maximum bodycount. Instead, with KAH, the immediate operand and ALU contents are ignored.

    Note: on the second edition of this CPU, this opcode can be masked by pulling low the "/safe" pin, and this is the recommended usage.

  • Anonymous Coward (unregistered) in reply to TGV
    TGV:
    I call BS2. Why would the robot stop and return in the other direction if it had been fritzed? Why would they always go in the same direction (i.e. towards the visitors)? How did the Feynman on Lektriever discover this? Too good to be true.

    Why wouldn't it stop and return? The movement commands might be overridden by hardcoded limits, so that the robot couldn't execute a command to move to next town.

    And did they always go in the same direction? I didn't get that impression. If the robot has 2 directions it can go to, what's the propability it will charge towards the visitors on random carbage commands?

    Even further, if the robots stopped and returned charging to the other direction, what's the propability they'll charge towards the visitors, when there are only 2 directions?

  • (cs)

    I used to retrieve and file microfiche in the reference section of a library in a previous job. A good portion of the time spent on that task was using a fingernail to pry apart two or more microfiche sheets that were adhering to each other; the film was rather susceptible to static cling. (Ideally each sheet would be kept in its own tyvek sleeve, a la your collection of 5.25" floppies, but the sleeves were usually in short supply.)

    My point is, if the fiche robots had a vulnerability to static discharge, it should have been apparent long before the top brass arrived to make a spark.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon Ymous
    Anon Ymous:
    Schmitter:
    It is a software issue, no a hardware issue, no a software issue, no a hardware issue....

    No, a footwear issue

    Since sneakers were fine and leather boots weren't, I think it's a firmware issue.

  • Anomynous Coward (unregistered)

    The "people wearing different clothes causes intermittent hardware bugs" part is entirely plausible- the example given in my debugging book was the tester wearing a plaid shirt overloading a video compression algorithm.

    A small static discharge from someone's shoes causing a microcontroller-driven robot to go insane is less plausible, though- surely a large metal-bodied robot would be grounded in case of wiring faults to avoid the entire case becoming electrified? Also, if the robot is behind glass, how do the electrified brass touch it? Or if they are close enough to touch the actual robot, what the hell are they doing standing on the rails?

    I suspect this may be a slight embellishment (for unknown value of "slight") on "static discharge from shoes caused a robot to misbehave causing much scratching of heads" story.

  • SR (unregistered)
    Design Pattern:
    I call BS.

    Googling up "fichetrieve" retrieves only two results: One is thedailywtf.com itself. The other is a copy of the DailyWTF - story on a swedish news-aggregator.

    You'll get similar results with Herizon and Yooha. Made up names = fewer lawsuits.

  • (cs)

    Which of the Three Laws of Robotics are involved here?

  • (cs)

    This story reminds me of where I used to work. We had mail carrier robots that followed a series of invisible lines in the carpet. If you were unfortunate enough to leave something in the path of these 1/2 ton menaces, kiss it goodbye. When the robots were brought on-line, the company let go several union workers who had delivered mail prior to the new system. As you can imagine, union workers weren't happy about it. One of the union janitors found a container of the solution used to mark the lines and decided that all of the robots needed to be rerouted into the executive boardroom.

  • Oxin (unregistered) in reply to Anonymouse
    Anonymouse:
    bored:
    I get visions of Bender drunk trying to take over a planet but cursing at it.

    You mean Bender NOT drunk, right?

    Bender! You're blind stinking sober!

  • Opcode Designer (unregistered) in reply to Bosshog

    LOL. I almost peed my pants. I love the way the flags are lovingly saved on the stack.

  • (cs)

    It had nothing to do with static discharge.

    The robots clearly were sentient, and having detected brass in the room, were following protocol and racing up to the glass to salute the admirals and other VIPs. The lack of proper hands for saluting made them appear menacing. And being good robots, as soon as they raced up to the glass to "salute", they went back to work.

    If these robots had noses, they would be brown.

  • noone (unregistered) in reply to Anomynous Coward
    The "people wearing different clothes causes intermittent hardware bugs" part is entirely plausible- the example given in my debugging book was the tester wearing a plaid shirt overloading a video compression algorithm.
    I like stories where the tester is the hero. Was this a true story?
  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Lars Vargas
    Lars Vargas:
    It had nothing to do with static discharge.

    The robots clearly were sentient, and having detected brass in the room, were following protocol and racing up to the glass to salute the admirals and other VIPs. The lack of proper hands for saluting made them appear menacing. And being good robots, as soon as they raced up to the glass to "salute", they went back to work.

    If these robots had noses, they would be brown.

    I call "Mmmmaggots!"

  • (cs) in reply to ctardi
    ctardi:
    If the robot really did run on steel rails, how was it an issue that it came towards the window at high speed? It's on rails, it won't hit the window...

    They should definitely have used Ruby on Rails here.

  • jim (unregistered) in reply to Lars Vargas
    Lars Vargas:
    It had nothing to do with static discharge.

    The robots clearly were sentient, and having detected brass in the room, were following protocol and racing up to the glass to salute the admirals and other VIPs. The lack of proper hands for saluting made them appear menacing. And being good robots, as soon as they raced up to the glass to "salute", they went back to work.

    If these robots had noses, they would be brown.

    You sir, are born for marketing.

  • Bim Job (unregistered) in reply to Junkie
    Junkie:
    This story reminds me of where I used to work. We had mail carrier robots that followed a series of invisible lines in the carpet. If you were unfortunate enough to leave something in the path of these 1/2 ton menaces, kiss it goodbye. When the robots were brought on-line, the company let go several union workers who had delivered mail prior to the new system. As you can imagine, union workers weren't happy about it. One of the union janitors found a container of the solution used to mark the lines and decided that all of the robots needed to be rerouted into the executive boardroom.
    Well, the story in the OP is obvious BS, but I'll buy this one for a dollar...
  • bigbird (unregistered)

    "a small, 4”x6” sheet of film"

    As opposed to a large, 4”x6” sheet of film...

  • RandomUser423661 (unregistered) in reply to Anomynous Coward
    Anomynous Coward:
    A small static discharge from someone's shoes causing a microcontroller-driven robot to go insane is less plausible, though- surely a large metal-bodied robot would be grounded in case of wiring faults to avoid the entire case becoming electrified? Also, if the robot is behind glass, how do the electrified brass touch it? Or if they are close enough to touch the actual robot, what the hell are they doing standing on the rails?
    The implication, or explicit statement (too lazy to check), was that it was the terminals that were not properly grounded, and they spit random garbage down the serial lines to the controllers, resulting in unwanted behavior.
  • Christopher (unregistered) in reply to TGV
    TGV:
    I call BS2.

    I call BSG. The big oscillating red light on the front was a big giveaway.

  • Murdog (unregistered) in reply to Anomynous Coward
    Anomynous Coward:
    The "people wearing different clothes causes intermittent hardware bugs" part is entirely plausible- the example given in my debugging book was the tester wearing a plaid shirt overloading a video compression algorithm.

    A small static discharge from someone's shoes causing a microcontroller-driven robot to go insane is less plausible, though- surely a large metal-bodied robot would be grounded in case of wiring faults to avoid the entire case becoming electrified? Also, if the robot is behind glass, how do the electrified brass touch it? Or if they are close enough to touch the actual robot, what the hell are they doing standing on the rails?

    I suspect this may be a slight embellishment (for unknown value of "slight") on "static discharge from shoes caused a robot to misbehave causing much scratching of heads" story.

    Sounds like a mythbusters episode if you ask me

  • what (unregistered)

    the real wtf is the word "instincually".

  • Design Pattern (unregistered) in reply to SR
    SR:
    You'll get similar results with Herizon and Yooha. Made up names = fewer lawsuits.
    Well that explains it, but i wouldn't call 19,200 (for "Yooha") similar to two. Let alone 128,000 for "Herizon".
  • ThingGuy McGuyThing (unregistered) in reply to Design Pattern
    Design Pattern:
    SR:
    You'll get similar results with Herizon and Yooha. Made up names = fewer lawsuits.
    Well that explains it, but i wouldn't call 19,200 (for "Yooha") similar to two. Let alone 128,000 for "Herizon".

    Well, it depends. Which two of the following three are similar: a) 2 b) 128000 c) Pineapple

  • Harrow (unregistered)

    I don't think the microprocessor "issue[d] a string a confusing and inaccurate commands to the robot" so much as crashed, reset, and restarted the control program. If the device was anything like the robots I helped design and deploy, the hardware can tell the software how far and in which direction the picker has moved, but not precisely where it is. To know that, the controller must run the picker down the rails until it encounters a limit switch.

    Although the picker might look like it's charging menacingly, in fact it's moving at what the controller considers a safe slow rate, sort of groping blindly for the limit switch. But it still looks dangerously fast, especially when the movement is straight toward, and ending very close to, your face.

    It's just unfortunate that in this case the machine was programmed to use the limit switch at the window end of the rails.

    The real moral of the story is: if you must tease high-ranking officers by hurling heavy machinery at them without warning, make them check their sidearms at the door first. It's all fun and games until you get several cal.45 holes in your Fichetrieve.

    -Harrow.

  • Donkey Hotay (unregistered)

    Thought this was going to be the story I heard about a tape retrieval robot whose operator thought "Gee, I wonder what would happen if I put in a negative number for the tape ID." Said robot did allegedly run off its rails and through a plate glass window. Supposedly this happened at a gas company in Detroit in the '70s or '80s and the person I talked to claimed to have witnessed the aftermath.

  • modo (unregistered) in reply to Harrow
    Harrow:
    I don't think the microprocessor "issue[d] a string a confusing and inaccurate commands to the robot" so much as crashed, reset, and restarted the control program. If the device was anything like the robots I helped design and deploy, the hardware can tell the software how far and in which direction the picker has moved, but not precisely where it is. To know that, the controller must run the picker down the rails until it encounters a limit switch.

    Although the picker might look like it's charging menacingly, in fact it's moving at what the controller considers a safe slow rate, sort of groping blindly for the limit switch. But it still looks dangerously fast, especially when the movement is straight toward, and ending very close to, your face.

    It's just unfortunate that in this case the machine was programmed to use the limit switch at the window end of the rails.

    The real moral of the story is: if you must tease high-ranking officers by hurling heavy machinery at them without warning, make them check their sidearms at the door first. It's all fun and games until you get several cal.45 holes in your Fichetrieve.

    -Harrow.

    Ah, Harrow. Thanks for that.
  • Peter (unregistered)

    Those are 1980s vintage Data General 6053 terminals. I'd recognize them anywhere, and never thought I'd see them again. Well, hoped anyway...

  • k1 (unregistered) in reply to bigbird
    bigbird:
    "a small, 4”x6” sheet of film"

    As opposed to a large, 4”x6” sheet of film...

    TRWTF is the use of inches instead of millimeters :D

    This remember me one thing... From wikipedia: (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computer_hardware_in_Soviet_Bloc_countries) :

    This redevelopment led to some incompatibilities with Western standards, such as Integrated circuit pins on 2.5 mm spacing instead of 2.54 (0.1 inch) spacing.

    quote from the article used as reference:

    "Hardware Hassles Leonid Tomblerd, a researcher at Estonian's Institute of Cybernetics, relate some problems with the development of Soviet hardware. For instance, most U.S. chip leads are spaced 1/10 inch apart. The Soviet ministry in charge of cloning Western chips mandated metric spacing, but 1/10 inch works out to be about 0,154 millimeters, an odd metric size. The Soviet solution? A _metric_inch_ - 0.25-mm spacing. This means that Soviet clone chips can be exact electrical and functional equivalents of their Western counterparts, and look exactly the same - until you try to plug them into a Western socket. They won't fit. [...]
    BYTE April 1991
  • k1 (unregistered) in reply to k1
    Leonid Tomblerd
    Ehm, Tomberd
  • aBase (unregistered) in reply to bigbird
    bigbird:
    "a small, 4”x6” sheet of film"

    As opposed to a large, 4”x6” sheet of film...

    No. As opposed to a [I]vast[I] 4"x6" sheet of film.

  • Scott (unregistered) in reply to Harrow
    Harrow:
    To know that, the controller must run the picker down the rails until it encounters a limit switch.

    Which is why my Commodore 64's disk drive was perpetually out of alignment.

  • Dazed (unregistered)

    Ah yes, I've had an application that worked fine during testing, and only went wrong on important demos. Turned out to be a timer that was being kicked off slightly too early. Use the application normally and everything worked fine. Take half a minute to explain something and suddenly the application would go haywire ...

  • A Gould (unregistered) in reply to Junkie
    Junkie:
    One of the union janitors found a container of the solution used to mark the lines and decided that all of the robots needed to be rerouted into the executive boardroom.

    Quoted for Awesome.

  • DC (unregistered) in reply to ThingGuy McGuyThing
    ThingGuy McGuyThing:
    Well, it depends. Which two of the following three are similar: a) 2 b) 128000 c) Pineapple

    Obviously a) and c) since I have 2 pineapples on my desk!

  • eric76 (unregistered)

    Ever hear of a random access tape machine?

    It consisted of a storage cabinet with a large number of pigeonholes and a mechanical arm. The tapes used were rather stiff and about ten to twelve inches long.

    When the operator requested a certain tape, the mechanical arm would reach into the appropriate pigeonhole, grab the proper tape, pull it out, run it through the tape reader, and put it back in the pigeonhole.

    The problem was that sometimes the tape didn't go back into the pigeonhole. Instead, it caught on the outside and acted like a spring. When the mechanical arm let it go, the piece of tape would go flying out away from the cabinet.

    Someone I knew who had worked in a 1960s computer center that used them said it was pretty funny to be sitting there at the operator console and have occasional pieces of magnetic tape go flying by your head.

    I've always wondered just how much data such a piece of tape would hold. Remember that back then and into the 1970s, you could read magnetic tape with bit juice and a magnifying glass.

  • (cs)

    "Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to 'Evil'".

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