IgnoranceI once was in a programming class where the task was "build a calculator". A student did one with buttons 1, 2, 3 all the way up to about 25 and then ran out of space on the screen. We've asked this before but liked it so much we're asking again: What's the best example of ignorance you've encountered?
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Scaryduck LIKES EGG, Thu 30 Aug 2012, 12:30)
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I did work a while ago alongside a highly trained, academically brilliant engineer at an automotive development facilityHe complained that he couldn't establish diagnostic communication with the Automatic Transmission control unit over the multiplexed internal control area network bus system. All the proto fleet needed an auto 'box update and he couldn't go home until it was done.
On pointing out that the car he was sat in had a manual gear lever he got quite stroppy and listed his entire CV as to why it was the fault of the prototypers, the workshop technicians, the integration engineers, the tea ladies....everyone but him. Why oh why was the instrument cluster chock full of blinking information lamps, warning messages about broken systems and and strident bing-bong indicator chimes? Ah.
In trying to 'fix' the problems he'd altered the car's configuration file, in effect its BIOS, to try and force the car to believe that it was a Automatic when it....just plain wasn't. So didn't actually have an Auto gearbox control unit on account not having an auto gearbox.
Nevertheless, he proceeded thus- hamfistedly changing settings and options 'just in case' and hitting the 'program' button, altering the car's idea of what it should be and what it should have. Click click click, just like a hijacked web browser user trying frantically to close all the windows down.
When I retrieved the central config settings it was not really surprising that it was upset- it had been 'told' that it was an auto-box 12+6 cylinder petrol-diesel with supercharger AND a turbo with both 2- and 4-wheel drive, in the body of a Ford Focus, left hand drive to be sold in Australia. In the words of hackneyed old Sci-Fi stories about defeating maniacal deadly robots with their own logic, the car was sobbing and rocking itself into inactivity while chanting the metallic monotone mantra 'DOES NOT COMPUTE!' to itself.
But, you know, self belief above all else (including common sense) is very important to some people....
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Rotating Wobbly Hat That's not a banana. THIS is a banana., Mon 3 Sep 2012, 20:01,
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I think I bought that car...(, Tue 4 Sep 2012, 11:06, closed)
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