Dangerous headlines?

[Ray McCarthy]

Swallow a balloon and lose weight? Cue loads of people ending up in hospital or worse as they only casually listen to a second hand report or skim the article.

Scientists have developed a bizarre but effective way to fight obesity

It's a special medical device.

It might not even be effective!

 

[Vertigo]

Sadly I think you're right that there are people out there that dumb!

 

[Stephen Palmer]

D'oh!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

there are people out there that dumb!

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams.

Though he probably wasn't the first to realise this. "Fool proof" as a term seems to be over 100 years old.

 

[Vertigo]

I remember a very early implementation of light pens - sensor thingies for early version of "touch screens". We had supplied a system that used them to the navy and the light pens kept failing so we asked to go and observe and it turned out the nice sailor boys were doing what they'd always done with pens which was to stir their coffee with them, despite the fact there was electrical cable coming out the other end. D'oh big time!

 

[Dennis E. Taylor]

I remember a very early implementation of light pens - sensor thingies for early version of "touch screens". We had supplied a system that used them to the navy and the light pens kept failing so we asked to go and observe and it turned out the nice sailor boys were doing what they'd always done with pens which was to stir their coffee with them, despite the fact there was electrical cable coming out the other end. D'oh big time!

Do not stick this electrical device in hot liquids.
Do not use this electrical device as a stepladder.
Do not use this electrical device to test if a wall plug is live.
Do not attempt to eat...

oh, never mind.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

light pens - sensor thingies for early version of "touch screens"

I had difficulty getting the users to keep up the brightness and the contrast down. They don't work with a nicely adjusted CRT, as dark bit of screen provides no timing. They were very much cheaper to make than a mouse.

I have a CP/M computer in the attic that takes a light pen.

A game console "gun" uses exactly same hardware with a lens.

Xerox wanted a pen that could work on screen like light pen or on any surface, but the tracker ball mechanism couldn't be miniaturised enough. The first Xerox mouse was a tracker ball upside down. One of the first outside Xerox was the Logitech model made for Lilith, a workstation programmed by Wurth in ETH Zurich using Modula and later Modula-2 in 1970s inspired by the Xerox workstation. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs later saw a Xerox "windows Icon Menu Pointer" graphics workstation (WIMP), Apple's version was Lisa, which became Mac, though current Mac OS X is based on Next Step / BSD, not Mac OS. MS Windows was part of OS/2 Presentation Manager, and the 1993 NT version of windows starts at 3.1 (not to be confused with DOS Shell Windows 1, 2, 3.1, 3.11 Chinese 4.0, Win95, Win98 and ME) as the MS version of IBM OS/2 (mostly) and partly VMS design was the basis of it. The MS IBM project started in 1985 and split in 1989, with MS releasing their own version.

 

[Vertigo]

My understanding of that one, and I honestly don't know how apocryphal it is, was that Jobs was a golfing mate of one of the Xerox executives who invited him to come have a look at this fun WIMP stuff some of their kids were working on. When told, the lady (I forget her name) in charge of the project (that Xerox really only saw as something to keep the whizz kids busy) told him point blank that he couldn't bring Jobs in to see her stuff and then boycotted the meeting when he insisted. Jobs immediately saw the benefit and went off and created, as you say, Lisa. But I thought Gates only came into the equation later on copying from Apple which was why Apple later tried to sue Jobs and then Xerox stirred and said "Oh well, in that case...." after which it all went a bit quiet on the suing front.

Ah but sorry, we digress... I can be like that with some of the old computing history stuff!

 

[Parson]

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams.

This is so true! Let's get to even less techy things. A couple of decades ago there was a move to conserve water and it was noted that one of the big water wasters was the flush toilet. ---- A New York television station said that people could save some water if they put a brick in the toilet tank. --- Plumbers were kept busy for weeks because people put bricks in the toilet bowl!!!!

 

[Ray McCarthy]

Jobs immediately saw the benefit and went off and created, as you say, Lisa. But I thought Gates only came into the equation later on copying from Apple which was why Apple later tried to sue Jobs and then Xerox stirred and said "Oh well, in that case...."

Lisa was allegedly 1978 to 1984 (according to Wikipedia, I think that's ret conning and it can't have existed as a project so early as its 68000 CPU wasn't released till 1979-1980!) and really Mac Version 1. Ill fated Apple III was between Apple II and Lisa. Lisa was a failure.
I think the reality is that they started looking for a better computer design than Apple II in 1978 and the real Lisa project started in 1980. Steven Jobs visited Xerox Parc in 1979 and saw Alto workstation then. It was a 7 year old product!
Steve's daughter Lisa was born in 1978.

Bill Gates separately visited Xerox Parc, I forget when. I worked for a guy that worked at Parc. Windows 1.0 was 1984, so maybe started in 1982.
So this Wikipedia fits with my memories too

The development of Windows began after Microsoft founder Bill Gates saw a demonstration at COMDEX 1982 of VisiCorp's Visi On, a graphical user interface software suite for IBM PC compatibles

MS Windows was rubbish till Win3.0 and their first real OS was Windows NT3.1 in 1993 as DOS was bought in (they never wrote it) and the Non NT versions, inc Win9x and ME are just graphical shells, not proper OS.

Also MS Excel and MS word were developed for the Apple Mac FIRST, at Apple's invitation!
Apple's attack on MS Windows was doomed. Loads of Prior art before Lisa/Mac, not just Xerox.

The Xerox project is from before 1972 as they had a working Alto then. Wurth was working on his version (Lilith) as early as 1976.

The first volume commercial computer based on the Parc project was 1981 Xerox Star. Windowing OS, Networking etc!

I got my first computer in 1979 (SC/MP board) and first programmed in maybe 1967 or 1969. My own company bought an Apple II, a Research Machine 380Z, ACT Sirius 1, Sinclair Spectrum and big S100 based Z80 machine etc, between early 1981 and 1982.

 

[Ray McCarthy]

"A common mistake that people make when trying to design something completely foolproof is to underestimate the ingenuity of complete fools." - Douglas Adams.

Is it Towel Day today?