World's Worst Dog'n'Pony Shows

A dog'n'pony show is that delightful moment where some $1000 suits and the investors wearing them politely demand to be shown why they've paid you a salary for the last three months without hearing anything back except "we're all working hard here" and "stop bothering us and it'll get done faster." You pray the software works as well now as it did at 5AM when you finally killed the last display bug and headed home for a quick shower. Just two words of advice: don't cheat. Like VisuaLABS did with its "tiled LCD screens," or the Pentagon with its "missile defense test," you'll get caught. ...or will you? Tell us your best demo war stories.

Thanks to coli for passing along last Thursday's press release from VisuaLABS. This is a company that has been telling investors that they have what they call "GroutFree(tm)" technology, which joins multiple LCD screens invisibly into one, large, flat screen.

On July 3rd, investors were wowed by the demo of the company's "42 inch diagonal flat screen display" prototype. Sheldon Zelitt, VisuaLABS' Chairman and Chief Scientist, said, "It was our great pleasure to share an early look at that technology with our loyal shareholders at the Shareholders' Meeting."

And on July 26th, we got another press release -- this one titled "VisuaLABS Announces That Its Primary Technologies Are Not As Represented And Dismisses Sheldon Zelitt." It turns out that "the large screen GroutFree prototype demonstrated at the Annual Meeting was, in fact, a standard 42 inch plasma television purchased by Sheldon Zelitt ... at a local Calgary consumer electronics retailer ... The Committee believes that no working prototype of a device incorporating the GroutFree technology exists."

While all this was going on, the Pentagon was busy launching two missiles and making them smack into each other. This is the missile defense justification, the one scientists say can't be done, the umbrella that will protect the U.S. and its allies from all those Third World dictators who just have to deliver their nuclear warheads the hard way.

The big test came on July 14, when a target missile (avoiding mishaps) was launched and successfully blown to pieces by its interceptor. Bush was "pleased." CNN showed us the debris radar. And Michael Kelly of the Washington Post stuck it to the "liberal critics," pointing out that "The 'Smart People' Were Wrong." As he wrote:

"In the blink of a video screen going blinding white on July 14, it became impossible to offhandedly disdain a missile defense system as 'weapons that don't work.' It does work."

Yep! So phase one of our missile defense plan is complete. Now we go on to phase two, which is to convince all our enemies to install GPS transmitters in all their missiles.

Oh, you didn't know the test missile had a GPS transmitter on board? Well, you do now.

My favorite part is that the test missile actually launched a Mylar balloon as "chaff" to try to fool the "kill vehicle." Luckily, the balloon didn't have GPS.

So what's your favorite dog'n'pony story? Ever had a demo fail in some especially embarrassing way? Ever cheated? Ever get caught? C'mon, you can tell us...

Update: 08/01 08:00 PM by J : I'm seeing a lot of discussion of the relevance of the GPS. Here's Defense Week which claims the "prototype interceptor was able to find a target warhead partly because the target signaled its location to the interceptor for much of the flight, and the transmissions formed the basis of the targeting orders."

And thanks as always to Slashdot readers for posting more information. monopole points out this link, or take your pick, this one -- they're plans from last year, but still interesting:

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: And we take the GPS data, and we fuzz it up quite honestly, because GPS is a lot more accurate than radars. Okay? [...]

Q: Well, actually, would you then use the degraded GPS, or would you just the regular GPS that you use as a fallback -- (inaudible word)?

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: (Inaudible.)

STAFF: Use the regular GPS.

SR. DEFENSE OFFICIAL: Regular GPS.

Oh, yes indeed

About twelve years ago, my (several jobs ago) boss was demonstrating some software another company had written to a prospective customer. It was a design system for awnings or something, written by an associate of his. While not technically fraudulent (he had permission) it was highly deceptive since we would be writing similar software ourselves from scratch, and would not be supplying a modification of that product, nor would the company that wrote it have anything to do with it.

The software was actually already in use by several companies manufacturing custom awnings.

At one point, the customer asked just that question, if it was in use by any companies.

My boss replied, without missing a beat, "I have no idea." Oops.

I quickly piped up that, yes, it was in use (again, technically true.)

We never did get a contract to do that work, though.

Das Blinkenlights

On my first paying software job, a summer intern position between freshman and sophomore years of college, I worked for a startup building process-control equipment for -- get this -- industrial butter churns. (This has been my working example of the phrase "niche market" ever since.)

I was building system diagnostic tools, working on a full system mockup. One of the system health indicators at my disposal was a set of 16 LEDs which indicated whether 'on' signals were being sent from each switch controller. One of my tools would just strobe these 16 in the best Star Trek rolling-marquee-lights fashion, and ask the user if all 16 were lighting up, and doing so in the right order.

Well, one day, a delegation from the Danish Dairy Council (I kid you not) was coming through on short notice, and wanted to see some demos. Needless to say, we didn't have a 12-ton industrial churn in-house, so a real demo couldn't be managed. My boss ran out, breathless, and asked if I could cook something visual in 15 minutes. "How about this?" I asked, running the LED sweeper app.

He nodded, started to walk away, and then asked, "Can you make them blink out of sequence?" I did, with five minutes to spare. The Danes were suitably impressed.

This was ten years before "Airplane II" came out. I nearly fainted when Shatner delivered nearly the same line to a Moonbase technician. :-)

Gates & Win98

Ever had a demo fail in some especially embarrassing way?

While I don't have any stories (honest!) involving me, Bill Gates once got a round of applause during a Windows 98 pre-release demo for showing everyone the Blue Screen of Death.

W95 and the Mac...

One of the early demos of "Windows 95" was rolling right along, when there was a short power failure backstage, taking out the computers (but not the projectors). When the machines were brought back up, you saw a Happy Mac, instead of anything W95-related. Turns out the "W95 demo" was Director running on a Mac.

Re:Gates & Win98

Maybe this [digitalthunder.net] is what you are looking for?

Why Video Projectors (and monitors) Roll Sometimes

I thought it was fake, since the blue screen shifted in "slowly" from the right insteat of just popping up, which it normally does. So, yet another setup to get some more publicity?

Nope, I used to set up video projectors for a living.

Next time you get a BSOD on a Windows 9x box, take a look at the sync rates. The blue screen, if I recall, runs at normal VGA - 640x480x16 with a horizontal sync of 31kHz and a vertical sync of about 60Hz. As far as a video projector is concerned, that's quite different from the scan rates most people keep their desktops at.

As the video scanning speeds change, it will take a moment for the horizontal and vertical oscillators in the video projector to lock onto the new rate. Hence the little burble and roll.

When you change the scanning rate on a normal monitor, you'll often hear little clicks from relays switching windings in and out of the flyback transformer and the deflection yoke. Since the flyback and yoke must resonate (like tuning forks) pretty closely to the vertical and horizontal frequencies, these relays cut windings in and out like cutting the end off a tuning fork, or adding length to it to change the resonant frequency.

Lots of cheap monitors don't do this. This is why they're cheap, why they often run hotter, and why they more often seem to blow flyback transformers and horizontal output transistors.

Finally, with a video projector - and in 1998 it would have been a three-tube CRT projector for a screen of that size - the deflection currents and second anode voltages are higher. Generally, that would mean bigger deflection yokes and flyback transformers, with more ferrite or iron laminate core to saturate with magnetic flux. When you change the sync rate, the hysterisis of the core will cause its magnetic properties to have a little bit of inertia to the change.

You can hire me! Imagine a computer geek who knows how to configure BIND and can also whip out a soldering iron and hack a monitor! www.glowingplate.com [glowingplate.com]

Two notes about the missile test

A previous poster mentioned that the GPS was not used by the ABM missile to aim for the target, but was part of getting telemetry info for the test.

But even if it weren't true and the ABM missile was using the GPS signal for targetting, this is still a huge success. Getting two minute objects to fly that close to each other under computer control has been the biggest problem until now. Now that we've got the technology to do that we can move on to other methods of tracking the incoming missile. We need to remember that this is a complex system with several objectives. Every time we fail we learn something new, and when we meet one objective (even if the others are 'hard coded' or 'rigged') then we can move on to using real data for the hard coded or rigged objectives. This isn't far from programming a very complex application, and the techniques are surprisingly similar.

The cost and potential results, however, are far different and are what should really be discussed. It's not a matter of if it will work, but when, and the real problem is how does the gov't relationship with other countries and with our country's people change when we make it there.

-Adam

In related news

The ACME rental company's Rent-A-Rocket subsidiary has issued a an invoice for $253,828,938.96 to the United States Air Force for repeated and excessive violations of California speed limits. Apparently, the USAF did not notice the section of their contract pertaining to tracking via GPS and AirPAC.

Toll Gates vs Trucks

I was demo-ing an electronic toll collection system we were developing for an agency, and pretty much everything was ready except for the touch-screen interface used by collectors in the tollbooth. We had to make some last minute adjustments the night before, and thought we'd covered everything. Unfortunately, we did miss a couple of things, and we had a slight bug in the interface. This wasn't a really serious bug in and of itself, and we instructed the guy operating the screen for the demo to hit the [RESET] pad on the screen if something went nuts.

Unfortunately, for our own testing purposes, we had the [RESET] pad reset the state of all the outputs from the system, not just the touch screen handler. And of course we forgot to change that back. And this particular bug happened as the third of three vehicles was entering the booth area, which meant the previous vehicle, an 18-wheeler, was departing, and therefore was next to the upraised toll gate. So the guy in the toll booth sees the problem on the touch screen, and obligingly taps the [RESET] panel, which resets the screen, and the red lights, and... the gate.

So, I'm standing on the left side, and all the suits are standing to the right of the lane, when all of a sudden, BAMM, the gate tries to close and hits the truck trailer. Fortunately, it bounces back, the truck keeps going, and nobody on the other side of the lane was any the wiser. I almost collapsed, but the show went on without any problems after that.

But I always think of how different that would have been if we'd sequenced that particular test so that a car was in that spot instead of a big truck.

Freedom of speech, the Microsoft way

There's always the anecdote about a company that was giving a demonstration of speech recognition in MS-DOS. (In one version I've heard it was Creative Labs; in another it was Microsoft.)

The marketing flack giving the presentation arrives at the most dramatic and impressive bit, where he demonstrates the system's capability to recognize a set of related commands. He keys the mike, preparing to speak a command, and someone in the front row of the audience shouts "FORMAT C COLON! ENTER!" Someone in the row behind him shouts "YES! ENTER!" and history is made.

In all fairness I have no source for the story, but I once used a DOS-based Creative Labs product that would easily have been capable of such a feat. I believe it was called Voice Commander, and I trained it to recognize the letters of the alphabet, plus some punctuation and DOS command words.

Ever cheat?

Of course. I've lost track of the numbers of times that my boss has told me to add in a screen with a progress bar that slowly fills up while accessing random bits on the hard drive, and then going straight to the pregenerated data we had sitting around.

The sad thing is that it works so well. Quite the demotivator.

Rainbow Bridge

My best war-story has to be when I was with a company that developed some biometric identification systems, hand geometry, coupled with OCR-B readable cards for the INS. One of the test sites was on both the U.S. and Canadian side of the Rainbow Bridge, that spans Niagra Falls, for use by athletes participating in the World Games.

Big brass was on the way to to see the system, running when some column changes were made in in a rather important database we used back in D.C. causing the system to go a little crazy with NULL data.

Our savvy manager asks me if I can get the Candian machine running. If so, he can work it where he shows one part (a working) part of the system on the U.S. side, buying us 30 minutes of programming time.

So there I am, on the border, at the Canadian check-point, with all sorts of tourists gawking at me, as I code my butt off while an associate keeps an eye on the bridge. I'm just about done when he yells "They're Coming" ... I yell back ... tell me FEET as I kick in the compiler and pray there are no syntax errors.

Sure enough a typo gags the compile and my assoc. is yelling 100 feet ... 75 feet. Meanwhile I fix the errant code, get it to compile, get the kiosk closed and the system running by the time my associate jumps down from the window at the guard's desk and runs up to tell me 10 feet.

With the system up, I race into Canada so they don't see a nervously sweating and rather disheveled programmer ... and perhaps to avoid any prosecution if things fail ... fortunately enough though everything went as planned.

I love it when a plan comes together.

This is my worst

I was busy writing code on my computer which was hooked up to a robot. This robot picks up chemicals and moves them around with syringes on its arms. The head of the company comes around with a bunch of potential customers. He says "Show them the new software running". I quietly say "I just changed something I just compiled it but I haven't run it yet". He makes me run it anyway. The robot promptly raises its arm and sprays the customers with Alcohol. I was testing with alcohol instead of the real stuff for good reason. Needless to say we did not get the sale.

"Fax" Server

I was working at a CRM company whose name I won't mention because they actually do make a very good product. I was in charge of making a "global fax/email server". This is CRM talk for a program that sends bulk email and faxes. I had the emailing part working fine, but the faxing didn't work yet. It had been working, but it was using the Microsoft Fax API, which got removed after Win95. So all it could do was email. And the client, who had paid $15,000 for the software already, wanted to see it work.

So we rigged the program so that when it should have faxed, it instead secretly emailed the document along with the destination fax number to a fixed email address -- the email address of the guy we had sitting in the next room. So when the client wanted to fax something themselves to see it work, it really got emailed to our guy, who then faxed it manually. The client went away happy, thinking the program was fully functional. I got the fax functionality working using Symantec WinFax the next week, so no major harm was done. But I got a great story out of it.

---
Geoffrey Wossum
Project AKO - http://ako.sf.net [sf.net]

True Story

Small web company with sleazy redneck management.

For farts and giggles, one of the programmers brings in his old (working!) Apple ][. For fun we decide to see how it stacks up to a modern system. Having no system software for it, we use good-ole BASIC and write a simple 20 goto 10 program that counts up by one digit. Write the same program on one of the production servers, it takes only a few seconds to reach the billions. How long will it take the Apple? Sloooowly it progresses.. finally we just let it run and go to lunch.

After returing to lunch we hear the redneck.. er.. boss wants to know who has brought in an unauthorized computer and is "hacking" with it. Great belly laughs are had by all.. until we realize this is the idiot who signs our paychecks.

Sometime later some joker fires up the same Apple with a similar program, this time printing the message "Number of Yahoo Websites Cracked: $I".. just in time for some new investors who are visiting the office to see it in all its glory.

You can guess what happened to the company.

MS Trial?

Didn't Bill Gates and company put on a fake demonstration for Judge Jackson?

Re:MS Trial? - YES!

Didn't Bill Gates and company put on a fake demonstration for Judge Jackson?

Yes! In fact, they did it multiple times!

• The first time [infoworld.com]
• The second and third times [cnet.com]

If there is one place where you don't want to be faking a demo it's in a court of law. If this doesn't show Microsoft's hubris, I don't know what does.

Yep..

I work for a shadowy conspiracy group working to bring down the US government.. We've been working on a Worm/Virus to accomplish this task. We gave it a snappy name, hired the best shadowy hackers to put it all together, but our investors were pushing for results.. Imagine our embarrasment when we realized we released it with the Whitehouse IP address instead of the domain name.. They changed their IP and I'm looking for work again..

We've been running your demo

Dear Shadowy Conspiracy, Inc.:
We've tried your demonstration program, and have been disappointed to learn that it only runs on MS IIS.

We'd like to point out para. 3, of section 23 of our contract, which states the the entire internet is to be brought under our dominion.

We presume that you will be fixing this oversight soon, as the consequences of failure would be... unpleasant.

Regards,
Us

Graceful Exits

A company I worked for several years ago was picked by a major prospective client to showcase our technology in front of hundreds of people (and competitors). The code would not be in beta for weeks, but the company decided to pretend it did not matter. As we were waiting to go on stage, the team started to "optimize" the demo and pushed the code- the code broke. There was major confusion and worry. Our senior sales guy said, "don't worry, I'll handle this. Just leave the machine alone and I'll do the rest."

The team ignored him and tried to fix the demo in the hour before we went onstage. They completely messed up the machine. The sales guy came in looking confident, asked if the machine was still broken, and then took the machine up to the stage. On his way to the podium, he "dropped" the machine to the horror of everyone in the audience except our engineers.

We later learned he was not too eager to show off the beta code either, and would probably have done the same thing regardless of what happened in the prep room.

Robot Demo Horror!

The best one of these I remember was when Nolen Bushnel's "Androbots" company was demoing at the Consumer Electronics Show. They wanted to show how their robot could be used in an average home and had setup a mock-up living room and kitchen. The kitchen was equipped with a "robot fridge" which could dispense cans of beer down a chute and into special "arm" attached to the robot's shoulder that could hold about 4 cans.

So the demo is, the guy is watching the superbowl and wants a cold beer. Instead of getting up he sends his trusty robot to get it for him. The robot trundles through the door to kitchen and rolls up to the fridge which obediently dispenses a can of beer. The can rolls down the chute and BREAKS THE ROBOT'S ARM CLEAN OFF at the shoulder. The second beer is dispensed, bouncing off the robot's body and rolling across the kitchen floor.

The poor spokesman is still sitting in his easy chair and wondering why the crowd is laughing so hard...then the robot rolls back into the living room and the guy reaches for his beer.....

The tidy lab

Not exactly a dog-and-pony show, but I once worked for a company that moved me and a few others to a new facility. The Board of Directors of the company was coming by to inspect the new facility, and the Vice President of Engineering was running around making us clean everything up. (It was his idea to open up this new facility; he wanted it to look good so he would look good.)

Well, the new facility was all cubicles, with no closets designed in... no place to put junk, so we shoved boxes full of junk under desks and in out of the way corners. We were working on a lab, and the VP of Engineering decided that the test leads on the oscilliscope looked untidy, so those were removed and hidden as well.

When that was done, the VP looked around the lab and said "Now, this looks like a productive lab!" Yeah, a scope with no test leads... that's real productive.

I sent this story to Scott Adams. I don't think he ever used it in Dilbert, but he did send me a reply saying he found the story amusing.

steveha

How does GPS make a difference?

I grant you that a GPS transmitter on the target warhead would help you to get close to it. But that isn't the hard part. The hard part is hitting the missile. If GPS has an accuracy measured in anything more than inches, it would be useless for terminal guidance. Furthermore, even ground-based radar will tell you where the warhead is, with arbitrary accuracy, following which you can uplink this data to the interceptor. The hardest part of the task is guiding the interceptor to intersect with the missile at a closing velocity of of around 20,000 mph, even when it knows exactly where it is, and this was in fact accomplished. I still think this was a success.

And as for "liberals" being the ones opposed to NMD, let's not forget that it was a Democratic president who revived the notion.

A company I worked for

Back around 1991-1992 a Company I worked for was making a Warehouse Database Management Control System for a very large cigarette company. They spent something like seven maybe eight months working on it and they had a pretty nice demo for the customer to show them how on-track they were for installation a mere month or three away.

There was only one problem. The design team hadn't actually coded in the database portion of the DBMS. They just used flat files and convinced both their own employer as well the customer that everything was working just fine.

I don't know how anybody found them out but by the time they were done they fired the whole development team and started over again. The second time they actually instituted oversite into the project. What a novel concept.

pass the buck

My systems programming professor told us about the time he had to demo a buggy program. He added an interrupt handler which caught SEGV signals and printed "NFS server not responding".

I got one

My (former) company at the time was working on a trusted X server to run atop a partner's trusted operating system. For those who've never used a trusted X server, each window runs at its own security level, and a small stripe on the top of the screen displays the security of whatever window has the current focus. Well, our programming team fell behind schedule (way, way behind) and we had a demo coming up for some high-level military types.

So the lead programmer hacked together a quick program where the screen stripe would change at a preset interval. The idea was that the demonstrator would move the mouse around and hopefully hit each window border just as the stripe changed. Our demoer practiced nonstop for three days before the demo, but the demo was much too long, and he could never get the timing exactly right. We couldn't cancel the demo because our CEO had pretty much bet the house on getting this government contract.

We went to the demo, and the demoer was very nervous, with the fate of the company riding on the next ten minutes or so. He was so nervous, his hand shook, and he was worried about moving through the demo too quickly, so he slowed down on purpose. Sure enough, he slowed down a little too much, and was just slightly behind changing the window focus, so the stripe changed just ahead of the focus change.

At the end of the demo, in a suspicious tone, one of the brass asked why the stripe changed slightly before the focus. The demoer opened his mouth to answer, but nothing came out. The lead programmer, who had been standing behind the demoer, jumped in and said:

"The X server tries to predict when a focus change is about to occur and attempts to update the stripe ahead of time. We did it this way because of the high overhead of determining what the contents of the stripe are. Otherwise, the overhead would be too much, and the stripe would change long _after_ the focus shift. Unfortunately, that code is extremely optimized, and we just need to shorten the time before it begins its prediction cycle."

The brass was very impressed and we ended up getting the contract. We later found out that our competitor's product actually did take a while to update their screen stripe after a focus shift, and during their demo (which actually worked) they were asked why they didn't try to predict focus shifts to syncronize with the stripe updates.

knock knock

Back in the early '80s, "microprocessors" were the rage of the electronics industry. I worked at a modem company at the time. The higher-ups didn't want to bother with this newfangled stuff, so it filtered down to me. I designed the control and diagnostic portions of our newest product. Being the most straightforward portion, it was finished early. Other portions weren't as far along, and the big trade show was coming up.

The marketting guys had to had to had to show this box off. Couldn't we just bolt a box together and make the lights blink on and off?

Well, I couldn't resist. Being microprocessor controlled. it was easy to make the lights blink on and off, but what fun would that be? So I wrote a program which would flash the lights on and off by sending morse code.

• TX: Knock knock
• 
  RX: Who's there?
  TX: Milgo
  RX: Milgo who?

Milgo who? Get it? (Milgo was one of the big modem companies back then and one of our competitors.)

I didn't get to go to the trade show, and I never heard anything back from our marketting guys, so I'll never know whether anyone even noticed. I often imagine how it might have gone though...

• Salesman: Good morning. This is our latest product...
• 
  Customer: Shhhhhhh...
  Salesman: It has eleven thousand new features...
  Customer: SHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!

After a few seconds of silently staring at the demonstration units, the customer laughs out loud and walks away.

Alas, I'll never know...

Robotic Camera

Heard a story from a trade show developer about a big autoshow back in the last 80s. The client wanted a heavy industrial robot (Fanuc style robotic arms) with a video camera to fly around an actual car, go inside, etc. and people around the booth could watch large screen monitors of the action. The first day, everything works beautifully. That night, the cleaning crew goes in and dusts/cleans the car. Only problem is someone leaves the seat up. Next morning the crowd gathers and nobody from the booth bothers to check before starting the robotic flyaround. The crowd then gets to watch as the robotic arm smashes through the seat (actually tore it out) and destroys the door. Not to mention an expensive camera turned to pulp.

Not computer related but...

I was at a BOSE show when i was selling electronics in college and the guy I went with and I both hated BOSE speakers b/c they didn't have any bass (ie when we played Jane's Addiction our genitals didn't itch.)

At the show the BOSE 901s were literally pounding with bass, almost too much bass. Then I noticed that the curtain they were in front of was moving. When the BOSE rep was done we walked up to the curtain and pulled it back... 8 Cerwin Vega (8!) subs were sitting on the floor POINTING at the crowd.

Covering a failure

In the mid-80's we were building standalone boxes with detachable keyboards. Damn things randomly locked up 3-4 times a day, we didn't know why. The VP of engineering was giving a demo at a trade show and the unit locked up. The mark hadn't yet noticed, so Mike casually leaned over and while saying "and if you look on the back panel here" pressed the power button with his stomach. It was all the other engineer and I could do to not bust out laughing as Mike did the "damn, hang on while I turn it on again" schpiel.

The problem was eventually solved by running a ground wire from the keyboard to the unit chassis.

snotnose

Fake patients

Once I worked as a sysadmin in a place that did some work for
a hospital system, and they hired a doctor to come
in and host an online chat session. When there was
no one in the chat queue before we started, I was told to go into the next room and make fake accounts while people slipped me post-it notes
with medical questions on them.

The trouble is when the doctor asked me to elaborate, and I am somehow supposed to imagine how some middle-aged woman with some disease I have never heard of feels...

Courtesy Computer Stupidities

My favorite demo-gone-bad comes courtesy of Computer Stupidities' Nice Try [rinkworks.com] page:

My old boss spent some time writing statistical analysis packages for the Archimedes. One of them got fairly popular for Archie software, and he started a small business selling it. For those who don't know, Archie software usually came as source code and was executed through an interpreter.

One day at a scientific meeting, he noticed that another company was showing Archie software with remarkably similar functionality to his own, so he wandered over. The longer he watched, the more familiar it looked. Eventually, when the sales representative had gathered a good crowd, he asked in a loud voice:

• My Boss: "Are you using my copyrighted code for this?"
• Sales Representative: "Of course not."
• My Boss: "So what happens if you press [key combination]?"
• Sales Representative: "Nothing."
• My Boss: "Do it for me."
• Sales Representative: "Ok sir, but I can assure you it does--"

The screen displayed my boss' copyright notice. All they'd done was remove the front end.

It widely accepted as the biggest laugh of the show.

Graphics demonstration for a 'new' computer.

I have GOT to be an AC on this story. It was about fifteen years ago. We were working on our new platform and the execs really wanted to WOW the people at COMDEX with what we were working on.

The only problem was that it wasn't even close. But senior management put the heat on us very badly to go to the show with something.

We ended up using our COMPETITOR's product (but controlled in a tight loop) to do the demonstration with. And our platform was sitting on the table, with wires and all, pretending to be generating it.

And if you would have traced the cables (which one person DID!), you would have seen that they would have gone into our box. Only, it wasn't our box on the inside. Just the outside.

We really should have been caught for doing this, but we got away with it.

I have a couple...

The first is only marginally related to computers:

When I was in the 10th grade, we had a science fair project due a week after xmas/new year's vacation. We had several months notice to do it. But me, being my usual self, procrastinated until that last week...

Hmm - what should I do, what should I work on...

Quick! Decide what to do!

I had a computer - I had just read about Conway's Life program - there it is! - I will write a modified form of Life, compare it to regular Life (control group?), and chart performance vs. starting colony types for both versions of Life (slap a title of "Artificial Life" on the sucker)...

I quickly coded up both programs in BASIC on my TRS-80 Color Computer, dropped in the high speed pokes, turned the printer on, and let it churn. At the end of the week, with a nice presentation display completed, neatly printed pages and a report done in SCRIPTSIT - I was ready...

Not only did I get an A+ on the project, but I also won the "grand prize" and went on to display at the county science fair (not that I got very far there, mind you - though hind sight being 20/20 and all, I tend to wonder WTF happened to my brain there when the judges came around)...

The second demo I know about happenned to a friend of mine, for a final project report we had to give in American History class senior year...

The report had to cover anything up to 1900 in American History - and we had about a month to do it all. Fortunately for me, that period allowed me to speak of Herman Hollerith and the 1890 census (this time, I didn't procrastinate, and actually did the work). No problem, and my report went smoothly...

My friend, on the other hand - procrastinated until the morning of the day we had to give the reports - we had already picked out what we were to do at the beginning - he had chosen the "Building of the Railroads" - or something like that. That morning, he grabbed a piece of 2x4, some coat hanger wire, and a hammer (which no doubt today would be considered a weapon - ahem), and took them to school.

Now, you got to understand - our history teacher was a man who never smiled, never joked - a very stern individual, so we all thought...

My friend was called, and so got up to do his report - no note cards, nothing - winging it all the way. He regurgitated what info he could remember from our history book, plus a little bullshit he no doubt made up. All the while trying to nail coat hanger wire onto a 2x4, in order to "demonstrate" the building of the railroad...

Let's just say things didn't go that smoothly - nails flew everywhere, the hammer hit his fingers - you know the bit. The whole class was laughing at the antics...

...including our history teacher....

In the entire year we were there, we had never seen this man so much as crack a smile - but there it was. My friend concluded his report (which was actually accurate on the "report" part, if not the demo piece), and sat down.

My friend later learned he had gotten a B+ for that report and demonstration - and was told by our teacher that his report was by far the most entertaining example he had ever seen.

Homer Simpson

The team I was on once had a very funny thing happen during a demo for some VIP's.

You need a little background for this story. We all worked in a lab most of the time. It was common to get caught up in your work, and work right through lunch. So to fix this, we had an old sun sparc station 20 with the sound kit play a bunch of .au's we found on the net. They were Homer Simpson with all his "Mmmmmm cheeseburger... Mmmmmmmm cake with sprinkly things... Mmmmm beer.." etc.. It was in a cron to start playing at 11:45 each day. All the .au's together were about 4 minutes of Homer reminding you to eat.

Well, we had worked the whole weekend and had a demo at 10am on Monday. No problem. We got all the code finished and working around 8:30am Monday morning. Then we got a call from the VIP's. The plane they were flying was delayed. They told us they would get to us around 11 they said. So they show up at 11. The PHB's do thier thing with the VIP's and then it was time for the demo. Due to some special hardware needed for the demo, the demo was in the lab. So it is now 11:40..

Since we had been up for 3 days, we didn't even think about Homer. About 5 minutes into the demo, Homer started up. Our PHB was moritfied. One of the VIP's says, "You know I am getting hungry."

Deliverables and incompetent PMs

I think this was the biggest ego blow of my career.

Another guy and I had been working on a java application to create ringtones. Our client had a timeline of about a month, and it was met pretty easily. Anyway, to make a long story short, the final deliverable meeting consisted of Me, the other developer, our client, and the PM for our project.

It was the normal walkthrough of functionality, and the client was very pleased with the results. He was so pleased in fact, that he asked our PM to tell him what language it was written in. And he said:

"These two guys are the best damn javascript developers in the market!".

What an embarrasment

not me, honest

A guy I worked with once (he was later fired) was supposed to demonstrate the functionality of a database-driven website that he had written (an online community sort of thing) back when this was still a relatively new concept. His resume listed this sort of thing as his specialty. The client arrived, and he started demonstrating by logging in, and voila, the home page customized itself to his account. He went to the preferences page and clicked a few options, and voila, the home page was different now. That's when the client noticed that his name was misspelled. "Oops, must have typed it in to the database wrong, hehe." He started showing the pages again, and each time the client would ask to see a particular link, he'd blow it off and click somewhere else instead. My co-workers and I were passing around looks. Then I noticed that his name was once again spelled correctly at the top of the page.

The clients eventually left, only mildly impressed since he follow any of their suggestions on using the site while in the meeting, and I got suspicous. I tapped in to his computer (honestly, if you're wearing a Flyers tie, don't make your password "Flyers") and grabbed the files. I realized there was no database connectivity in here at all! It was all static pages that could only be browsed in one path, and the changes you made just actually linked you to a page statically programmed to show the changes. That's why his name had changed spelling!

Ok, not too impressive, but true =)

Ahh.. Memories...

Reminds of a company I used to work for, we developed ERP software. The president and CEO would go out to do demos and they had spent the last couple of days writing batch files to make it look like the software really worked! The only sad thing is that by the time the software REALLY did work the investors were so pissed they dissolved the company... I can understand a few "tweaks" to make things look good, but not a whole set of code behind the code to make it look like the base code really works!!

Missile Test was not a cheat

The GPS was used only to put the target on the test trajectory -- not only is GPS too innacurate for a missile intercept where the spped of both objects can be measured in miles per second, but the intercepting missile did not use GPS to find its target anyway.

They didn't try to hide it.

The spokesperson at the initial "success" press conference was very open and forthcoming about the GPS beacon placed on the target vehicle. They didn't try and hide it at all - in fact, its existence was part of the presentation. The test was of the final-stage-to-intercept section, which includes a decoy-detection function. However, this part of the system needs an initial lanch vector from a launch-detect radar system. the radar picks up the launch, feeds the missle trajectory into the intercept stage, and then the interceptor carries out the actual intercept. The launch-detect radar portion of the system is not yet finished, so the GPS beacon was placed on the target to supply the missing information that the intercept stage requires. Note, however, that the data from the beacon was presented in the same manner as it would have existed if it came from the radar system. It supplied no additional information. If one assumes that the radar works as designed, then the test is perfectly valid. The military learned a lot about faking demos from the Sheridan "tank" and the Sgt York gun air defense system. They don't do that any more. It hurts too much when they get caught. What really sucks about this case is that they were open and proactive about admitting what parts of the test were not the same as the proposed operational system, and they're STILL getting beaten up over it. Dammed if you do, dammned if you don't. No matter what one may think about Bush's politics, the successful destruction of that missle (plus the decoy avoidence) is impressive - and legit.

You're underestimating how good they are

Having a fair amount of hands-on experience with military hardware, I think you're greatly underestimating how good these systems really are.

We're long past the days of where an infrared seeker was a "hot blob" device. Modern seekers have high enough resolution to act as HDTV cameras. The NODLR camera on my LAV-RECCE was sensitive enough to tell the temperature difference in clothing worn next-to-skin and over clothing - meaning that you could "see" right through someone's clothing to tell who was wearing boxers or briefs - at several hundred meters.

Missle seekers have been good enough to pick up heat from atmospheric friction on subsonic aircraft for at least 15 years, and the more modern varients on the AIM-9 Sidewinder can distinguish between an aircraft and a flare with no trouble at all.

Your "pre-chilled" scenario is totally bogus. Air friction at launch would defeat it in seconds.

Defeating countermeasures is a sticky problem to be sure, but it is entirely solvable, as the past 50 or so years of homing torpedoes and anti-air missles shows. And the stakes are VERY high. These are NBC weapons you're shooting at, not piddly little high explosives. If one of these things gets through, there is real and serious pain to be had.

Their effectiveness against the "mass launch" Soviet-style attack scenario may be dubious (so instead of 5 warheads per city, you get 1. Oh well.) but against less affluent states who don't have those kinds of stockpiles, it's entirely reasonable to expect to neutralize the attack. That adds a powerful deterrent factor - I've got 5 warheads. If I mount them on my Long March and fire them at the US, none of them may get though, and then I've kicked the hornet's nest for nothing.

The nice thing, technically, from a missle defense system is that it gives you and added response to an agressor. If every ABM gets through and delivers a payload, then your only real response is retaliation in kind - hello MAD! If the bad guys nuke LA... well, if they nuke LA they might get applause... if they nuke Daytona Beach, then you're pretty well forced to nuke a city back, and if the nuke-er has sufficiant capacity, you start escalating. With a defense system, you can absorb the attack without harm, and possibly use a less destructive form of retaliation.

Ever notice that Superman never carried a gun?

Politically, there are other issues that go along with developing and deploying a missle defense system that make it a less attractive option. i find it odd that the current administration is pushing so hard for it - better, I think, to develop the technology quietly. But that's a discussion for another day.

To call it "snake oil" though, as if it couldn't possibly work, is to reveal a great deal of ignorence.

Re:You're underestimating how good the Enemy is

As you precisely suggest with your hornet's nest analogy, the US is so far and away the best armed and attack-capable nation, no enemy would consider an ICBM-based attack against it any more.

In the post Cold War world, the threat from ICBMs is pretty low on the list.

The Global Economy means that the US border is incredibly porous to freight, vessels, and shipping containers, not to mention suitcase-bearing tourists, etc. No hostile nation will run the risk of getting into a rocket war with the US. They'll stealth the weapons in, maybe piece by piece.

This way, when they detonate (admittedly lower yield than an airburst, but good enough, and possibly worse fallout), it's not even clear whodunnit. So the US public cries out for revenge, and the government picks one of the potential perps ("blow up the usual suspects") for a raid.

There's no space-based defense against this. Spending trillions of dollars doesn't make us any safer.

It's analogous to feeling while safe driving your car around through a dangerous neighborhood because you have power locks on the doors, when in fact, anyone wishing you harm can just break the window and drag you out.

Re:Missile Test was not a cheat

Just as long as you take any pro-Missile Test writings with similar grains of salt. Any news source with an agenda is going to be biased.

This test was a successful test of the interceptor hitting a target - assuming that the target is accurately tracked. The GPS substituted for a yet-to-be-finished ground-based radar which would be providing the tracking information. (http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Jan2000/x01142000 _xbck0114.html - I'm not sure, exactly, what test it's for, but it describes the use of the GPS systems.)

So anyone who says "the test was a rigged failure" is lying or uninformed. Similarly, anyone who says "the test shows the system works" is lying or uninformed. The test was a successful test of part of the system in ideal conditions - a necessary step, to be sure, to creating a complete system, which is still a long way from being successfully built and tested.

It took 15-odd years and however many billions of dollars to get this far. I don't know how many more it'll take to get to working system... but, juding by any other military or space project, it'll take longer and cost far more than whatever the estimates are. Whether it's worth it depends on a whole lot of factors...

Re:Missile Test was not a cheat

In the article, they don't talk about using GPS to find the target, they talk about the target using a GPS BEACON. This means the target was transmitting. Doesn't matter what it's transmitting. You just need to home in on the signal. Don't even need to decode it.

This is the same way that HARM missles work, so it's not like it's really cutting edge technology.

They cheated.

Yup - just not well enough to intercept it

That's the way the system is designed to work:

1) A radar system detects the launch
2) The radar tracks the target to determine trajectory
3) The tracking signal is fed to the interceptor missle
4) The interceptor is launched along the track of the incoming warhead
5) When the interceptor is close enough, it switches to it's own seeker systems and homes in on the warhead

The problem is that the radar portion isn't done yet - but they wanted to test the final-interecept stage (which is the hard part anyway)

So they configured a GPS system to transmit the _same information that the radar would have provided_ using the same formats and same systems. the interecptor got no information that the radar would not have provided - so the test is perfectly valid.

At least, as long as one assumes that the radar will work as designed.

The intereceptor did NOT "home in on the beacon" as some people would have you believe. Everything here was completely above board.

They learned their lesson back in the Sgt York days. Faking Isn't Worth It.

Re:Are you for M.A.D.?

Knowing the facts, there are only two ways to argue against missile defense: you are either in favor of M.A.D., or you believe that taxpayer dollars shouldn't pay to protect us from a very likely threat of nuclear devestation.

I believe in both and AM an American. Missle defense is nothing but a gift to the defense contractors. WIll it work? Maybe, but just like most other miltary systems, there are sizable margins of error. In this case I'm sure it'll be high - I figure if the Air Force can say they have a 75% chance of hitting a missle it'll be deployed - I just don' tthink its worth hundreds of BILLIONS of dollars for a threat that isn't very real. Hell, there aren't many countries that can reach our shores with a missle that would be considered 'rogue'

Do I think terrorists will try to nuke the US - hell yes. But they won't use a missle, they'll build it here and drive it to the target and set it off. End of story and city. An dthe missle defense won't get you a damned thing.

SO don't get so high and mighty. People have different beliefes. I think 100 Billion or more can be put to much better uses than trying to shoot down missles that will likely never come.

Remember, MAD assumes BOTH countries can destroy each other. If Sadddam managed to get his hands on a Russian or CHinese ICBM he'd never use it. Why? Because it would cause minial damage to our country as a whole (but would suck major for wherever it hit) and Iraq qould cease to exist as we launched a couple of the thousands of missles we have in their direction. So its not MAD in this case - what they are trying to sell missle defense for. Its raging stupidity and most despots are evil and egomaniacs but they usually are smart. Saddam knows now bunker would protect him if he nuked a US city because we'd turn IRAQ into a freaking crater.

Re:Are you for M.A.D.?

Anyone who claims that the missile defense shield's purpose is to stop all nuclear threat is either lying or a fool. The missile defense shield is to protect us from other nations who wish to threaten us with Mutually Assured Destruction.

These two sentences are logically inconsistant with each other. The Principle of Mutually Assured Destruction is that the other nation has so many missiles, that you cannot knock them all out with your own missiles without some of them launching and destroying your own country. China, at present, does not have the capability for MAD. If we had the inclination to first strike, we could concievably wipe out the 20-30 missiles that China has without them being able to fire off a shot. Not so with The Soviet Union, and now Russia. Were either we or they to launch all the missiles in their posession at the other, the other side would have enough missiles left to still destroy everyone. The Missile shield EXPLICITLY does not protect us from a MAD scenario It would only protect us in a limited exchange scenario, and not very well even then. Ultimately, a briefcase nuke or even a shipping crate nuke on a ship going into NY harbor would be much better. Instead of having to develop both missile and nuclear weapons technology, a rogue nation only has to develop Nuclear weapons technology. And i didnt see any "how to build an ICBM" chapters in the anarchists cookbook. If somone did send us a briefcase nuke, it is doubtful that we would be able to retaliate. First of all, all physical evidence would be obliterated. Second, any group that new the response would not claim responsibility. third, what if its a domestic terrorist? would we nuke ourselves?

Well at least the software worked

Long enough ago that it was the AI winter rather than the dotcom bubble, a company I worked for had a big press demo/debut - invited several hundred of the technology press to the UCLA faculty club, fed them lunch, etc.

Being the AI glory days, we used specalist hardware, in this case a TI explorer. Someone at TI had the bright idea of using fiber opitcs between the box and the head end (tube,keyboard,rat), and jacketed them in plastic. It also had one of the earliest high resolution displays, which meant a one-of-a-kind 175lb projector, and a specially hacked display board to feed it, one which featured coaxial cables soldered to the board, and minimal strain relief.

So I fire the thing up, and no display. So I put in my spare board. Now the regular display is working, but the projector isn't. Out comes the soldering iron, and the cracked joint gets fixed. Ok, we are up and running. The machine finishes booting, and I get the demo loaded and ready. (the process made "easier" by having the keyboard/etc up at the podium, and the box and projector at the back of the hall.) A bit of cardboard in front of the projector, and its time for the fourth estate to get fed.

I am chilling out at the back of the hall, when I hear the squall of a Maxtor 140 doing its power-on init. Some helpful person had "borrowed" an outlet for his luggable, and popped the breaker on the outlet strip. Oh well, it will auto start the application, and Phill will just have to load the data... Word gets passed to warn him.

Lunch is over, and on cue, I pull the "shutter" away from the projector. Up there is the "self test (keyboard) failed". Pop the box's rear door open, pull the fiber cable out of the special connector, and do the "wave" test. Seems someone parked a chair on the cable, and the layer of duct tape wasn't sufficent protection. Out comes the spare cable, and the company president makes comic relief as I back my way thru the tables, unspooling cable.

Plug the new cable in, and get the machine booted, demo loaded, etc (the software was actually ready). The actual demo was an anti-climax. I was relieved of booth duty that afternoon, and taken to some very fancy place for drinks.

Watch my team build a steam race car on Sunday Aug 5. (TLC, 7PM et). Watch us cut a Land Rover in half in the Fireboat final round Monday Aug 6 (8 E/P) or Aug 12 (7 ET).

Impromptu Dog and Pony Show

I was developing a prototype database system for a client. The code was very pre-alpha, but there was a copying running at the client site. The specs kept changing every other week as the client and my manager came up with ideas during meetings.

I was on site one day to load in the new batch of changes when I looked up and standing there was the management of the company, ceo's from 2 other companies and a few other unidentified people.

I was asked "When is the demo due to start?". Internally I paniced, but I replied, "Well I've just installed the new system, and it will take me about 15 minutes to get it ready".

They went off for coffee and I hid in an office and rang my manager. "They want me to do a demo!" I screamed.

There was a few seconds silence from the other end of the phone, and my manager said "I knew there was something I forgot to tell you"

I can't remember much about the demo, apart from a few well covered-up crashes. The other programmer who had come along to fix another problem on the site said it was the best demo he'd ever seen.

That demo made the company it's only sales for about 2 years and kept it afloat in the middle of the 80's recession.

The Tour's coming by & there's gonna be trouble...

1. Company that makes a small email client that runs under DOS & Win3.11 (dates it.) A faxing gateway package is added to the mix. They were also a major vendor of email gateways.

   One day there's a tour of the company being given (customers, venture capitol, who knows) and one of the Tech Support staff is asked to show off the faxing feature. She obliges, sends a short note with an attachment to the fax machine down the hall. Folks stand around chatting about this 'n that waiting for the fax to pop out - it's taking several minutes.

   One of the other TS'ers notices the delay which shouldn't happen so he quietly wanders down the hall to check the hardware. There's a problem with the email server so the TS'er runs an abbreviated checklist, identifies the blockage, clears it than as a shortcut to make the demo look good points the outgoing queue to the fax machine.

   A few seconds later the back-up of email starts to pour out of the fax machine - the first item being a senior sales person's resume, followed by another senior persons resume off to a different company, then an off-color joke, then a second resume from the first senior sales person to a different address...

   The tour moved on very quickly to a different part of the company, several staff were missing the next day.

2. A prominent science education institution with a Departmental Director who wasn't too closely involved with the actual operation of his department. One of his department's major functions was to produce various optical effects for projection. The effects were primarily optical but generally including various mechanical parts and were invariably built from odd parts stripped from things like grade school filmstrip projectors.

   One day the Director is giving a tour to someone or other and wanders into the effects lab. There he proudly details the various statistics, the quality of the work, and how he hasn't a clue of how any of it gets done (a source of pride?) In order to demonstrate the impressive technologies we use & his distance from the actual work he reaches out to a partially completed assembly, grabs a random part, and asks the senior lab employee what it is.

   The laconic answer: "...That's the plug Jack..." The Director pauses his babbling to actually look at what he's holding, realizes it's a standard 3-prong electrical plug, drops it and moves along embarrassed he's just picked the one item that anyone would recognize.

3. I'm on the home leg of a long business trip. Seated next to me on the aircraft is some recent graduate excited to be flying in the front of the aircraft and bubbling with enthusiasm. As I flew constantly I was in my usual dress-down outfit of jeans, t-shirt, backpack with combat-boots hanging off (the suitcases with dress-up stuff had all been shipped.)

   Recent-MBA is clearly dismayed I'm not his peer ('cause I'm not wearing a shiny suit like his) but can't contain his excitement at his flight. He's on his way to interview at a prestigious company for an important role in a new project of theirs. It's all very hush-hush but the company is planning to etc. & then etc. and the competition will be surprised because etc...

   The next day I make a point of wandering by the conference room as my former seatmate comes out from his interview, is introduced to me as one of the key people making the project he's interviewed for happen, etc. It was cruel but the look on his face when he realized I'm the stranger he'd spilled our confidential details to the day before...

   Policy about what to tell employee candidates was reiterated soon thereafter.

4. Internationally renowned company that among its many businesses makes medical instruments. As part of a complete product refresh the products are being made networkable (innovative at the time.) While the networked functions were simply to be data recording and not a primary feature of the products (indeed they were entirely intended as sizzle, there was little need for them outside of some research applications) nonetheless many regulatory hoops had to be leapt.

   One day a number of folks are in from some alphabet-organization and are to be given a demo of one of our new whatsits. Due to building renovations the fancy conference room with the deluxe seating and controlled-environment demo facility (local network with only the relevant hardware on it) isn't available. Therefore the demo is simply made standing around in a part of the manufacturing facility that will be used for this product, there's also a setup here for it to be tested with when it goes into production.

   Everyone is standing around, Marketing has explained how medical equipment looking half-melted would change our paradigm, QA folks have just explained how a failure-states of the product are all safe, blah blah blah.when the whatits is plugged in, hooked up & turned on. Some drone is assigned to have his relevant medical stats recorded as everyone watches the screen and a server in the corner presumably makes a record - but it doesn't.

   Indeed upon examination it appears that the networking side of the whatsits isn't working at all. Ahh - it's a prototype, must have put a bad one of the hand-modified network-support cards in. Several more are plugged in but none work either. Folks are looking very nervous, it appears that there's something substantially wrong, the guests are being polite but tension is in the air...

   Finally a certain IT contractor (ahem) has the idea to plug in a local PC and see if it can log in to the demo server properly. It can't either. Quickly fingers are pointed at a bad server, folks grin and talk about the luck of the demo, etc. and the party moves on to tour some other part of the project. Unlucky IT staff on hand for the demo are given charge of making this damn thing work ASAP, preferably before these folks leave at the end of the afternoon. They play with the server, fiddle with settings, try various inane things. Then try the same with the local PC. Still no go -it's all hosed. Eventually the IT Contractor escapes the tour and makes it back, starts troubleshooting in a more structured way.

   There's a problem with the network. There's a problem with the impedance (thin-net.) There's a break somewhere. An examination of the cable is made tracing it through the area's ceiling. Suddenly a mysterious white wire is discovered jammed into an unused T-connector. It's followed along into an engineering office, along a bench of test equipment, behind a number of large instruments, and onto... a radio antenna. Some engineer has decided to get better reception by hooking into the unused-as-yet network in that part of manufacturing; it's enough to bollix everything.

   The wire is yanked loose from the connector, the tour circles back around for a successful for the demo and our intrepid Contractor announces he's taking three days off, suddenly confident his contract will be renewed.

The ultimate in managerial motivation.

My manager was sitting down with our group discussing getting a small demo of a small portion of our application running. Our application was in the very early stages of development so even the small demo we were talking about would have been a herculean effort so to motivate us he promised he'd take us all out for dinner. Being a somewhat crazy bunch we upped the offer by saying we'd deliver a more complete demonstration. To that he promised if we could deliver then he'd take us and to dinner and eat whatever we put down in front of him. The challenge was set!

A day or so after the challenge one of the developers in another group was talking about having had is male cat "fixed" and receiving the cats balls (in a vial of some sort of preservative) from the vet. Being possessed of an evil streak we decided that if we succeeded with the challenge then our managers meal would be the cats balls!

He wasn't particularly worried by this when we told him. After all, in his (and our) opinion the task at hand was impossible.

As it turned out, it was impossible to deliver what we promised. Devious minds however decided it wasn't impossible to cheat which we did, creating a brilliant concoction of smoke and mirrors, finishing it a few moments before the delivery date.

With bated breath we all watched on as our manager sat down at the fake demo and proceded to test it out. After 10 minutes he turned around and told us he didn't know how we did it.

With great ceremony the owner of the cat brought forward a plate with two small cooked balls of meat on them surrounded by a garnish of carrot strips (of course).

I have never seen anyone grimace so much as our manager did that day. After much procrastination and excuses he picked up the knife and fork and managed to cut the smallest possible sliver he could. No matter how much we cajoled him though he wouldn't put it in his mouth.

Then a brave member of our group proclaimed, "Don't be such a wuss" and grabbed a whole ball and popped it in his mouth, chewed and swallowed before saying "Yum!"

Well our manager couldn't stand by after that and ate ate his portion (it was so small I swear it wouldn't feed an ant).

After we recovered from the hilarity and picked ourselves up from the floor the owner of the cat pulled the jar still containing the cats balls from his pocket and told everyone the balls were only ground beef. The guy who'd eaten the first one looked shocked and said "What, now you tell me?"

I've been the pony before...

I was working as an intern for a telecomm. company back in 1993 doing enhancements/rewrites for their cross-connect's database management. One day I was working in the open lab area on the only fully populated lab system we had when an upper manager walked in with a few prospective (and major) customers. We'd been warned about it ahead of time so that our "lab attire" would be slightly more appropriate for a customer visit. No more than 10 seconds before they had arrived, I had started a test of a performance feature I was adding. The manager brought them in and introduced me, saying that I was working on database upgrades for the next software release. No sooned had he finished my introduction than my "upgrade" hit a snag, and the database on the entire system failed, resulting in 4,000 red LED's all going on along with two of the most critical master alarms. Basically, the system was terminal and it was rather obvious. I could see the manager stiffen a bit, and the customers becan looking at one another in apprehension. Luckily, I didn't miss a beat and with a couple key strokes disabled my database version and restored the original. The alarms cleared and green LED's came back on all over the system. My only verbal response was, "Well, the auto-recovery seems to work pretty well now." The manager smiled in feigned confidence, and the customers nodded approvingly at the recovery. Too bad I hadn't been working on auto-recovery or on system synchronization. I later had my direct manager stop by and ask about the incident. Aparrently, the "auto-recovery" feature wasn't on the list of fetures the customers had been given for the next software release and they wanted to know more about it.. and so did management. After I explained the situation he departed, most likely to tell marketing thet they had to put some spin into explaining on they "auto-recovery" wasn't going to be available. I never did hear back about how that turned out, but I do know that we wound up making some sales to those customers. Dave

Commentary and a favorite story...

Jamie:

Jesus Christ, this isn't the place for bitching about the Bush administration. I mean, I know Slashdot is as much of a political forum as it is a technical forum, but the idea is to incite original and thoughtful commentary. You're just parrotting propaganda (don't bullshit yourself-- it's still propaganda, even if you agree with it).

(For the record: I don't agree with the Bush administration's position on missile defense. I didn't vote Republican. I don't even like Bush's policies. I just get sick of Jamie's unoriginal re-packaging of pure rhetoric.)

That said, here's my favorite story:

When I was in 9th grade, I was assigned the task of developing a new programming language, then implementing a compiler for it in C. I had two months to do it.

It wasn't much, but I actually did get the job done. The language was very FORTH-like-- stack based, a small set of basic commands, a few primitives for defining subroutines. The compiler generated assembly code (nasm was used to assemble it), and I had implemented a rudimentary peep-hole optimizer program that could be run as a second "pass".

My computer teacher was rather impressed with it-- he had never programmed in C, so it was a new experience for him to audit my code. After I put on a miniature dog'n'pony show for him, he decided to show it off to the principal and school district superintendent (I lived in rural PA-- the superintendent looked over 3 schools, so it wasn't as big a deal as it seemed).

The day before the principal and superintendent came to see the compiler, my workstation at school crashed, and all my data was lost. The backups we had were more than a month old-- and definitely not functional.

Rather than cancel the presentation, my teacher wrote me a note, excusing me from classes. I was to work on getting the program re-written-- or, failing that, to get some suitable phony in place.

The next day, the superintendent showed up. We ran him through the process of developing a program, then running it through the compiler and using the executable. We showed him a few demo programs, then showed him the output assembly files. He was very impressed that a 9th grade student could do so much. He left happy, and I actually got a neat write-up in the school paper.

To this day, I thank heaven that he never hit Ctrl-Break and stopped that QBASIC mock-up from executing.

Honor Among Thieves

My absolute favorite story along these lines resulted from actions of a former coworker and current friend.

At my former consulting company, we had the pleasure of working as one of many similarly specialized contractors to an entity that will remain nameless. As each of the contractors were constantly jockeying for position and work, oneupsmanship and behind the scenes backstabbing was the name of the game. However, on the surface, we were all good little people, playing nice, and sharing our toys.

In this particular instance, my former company was working along-side another company to create a database management system and to populate the database with data that had been QA'ed (our part was the data). Since the chunk we had employed more people, it was the most lucritive - which meant is was enormously attractive to our development partner. In an attempt to try to "take the work off our hands," our playmate started making a lot of noise about the fact that our data effort was falling behind schedule and that, as a result, the delivery of the system was being delayed.

Well, it was true the data reduction was taking longer; some of the data was real junk and had to be analyzed ad nauseum. However, what our buddies across the way weren't telling was that they hadn't been working on the stuff that hard and weren't ready themselves (though, they had been charging). We knew it, but we were holding the wrong end of the stick. At the weekly project review meeting, we were going to get smacked around for delaying things and needed to be able to deflect some of the blame back to our amigos across the tables.

On the day of the meeting, the criticism starts as usual. But, just as it begins, my coworker whips out a 9-track tape and says, "Well, we've finally overcome the difficulties. Here's the tape for you to populate your tables with." Immediately, the tables turn and our buddies are giving details of when things will be ready for review.

After the meeting, I am talking with my friend. "We aren't finished with the data analysis yet. What gives?"

"Oh, I know," he replies. "But, they don't know that. And, now, we'll see if they are actually finished or if they are blowing smoke. The tape is blank. If they come back saying that that can't read the tape, we know their further along than we thought. But, if we don't hear anything, we'll know they're too busy trying to make up for lost time than to try to read the tape."

Sure enough, two months goes by - not a word. "Is everything all right," we ask. "Fine, still working on getting the data in the system," they reply.

In the meantime, we keep working on the analysis. By the time they are to the point of attempting a tape read, we are done. As soon as we hear, "we are having trouble reading your tape," we have a new legitimate one ready to go and they've been on the spit for two months.

You gotta love it!

Multi-station demo

In 1979 word processing mostly meant typewriters with a few very high end electronic word processing units. I worked for one of the word processing companies with the job to build a central file server. Such a simple idea today, but the issues of hooking up what were essentially electric typewriters with cassette or diskette storage to a computer was daunting back then.

As always happens, half-way into the job we had a huge trade show. The CEO wanted to show 16 wordprocessing units hooked to one file server. This was the sort of company where you got fired if you said no. Our VP dutifully set up the hardware on a stage. There were 16 young attractive ladies at the keyboards instructed to run a cheat script where they would bring up a document, make changes and save it on the server. On another station the changed document would magically appear.

It was amazing to see the whole demo going well in front of a standing-room only crowd. Unfortunately, no one told the CEO that it was all fake. In a burst of huge enthusiasm he took a big hedge clippers out of his briefcase and cut the (dummy) cords to demonstrate the multi-user nature of the product.

Naturally, all 16 operators continued to perfectly run their scipts, busily typing away.

Superbowl Tickets

At a former company, we gave away a whole Superbowl package: tickets, hotel, etc. at a trade show. During the whole show, we collected business cards from interested prospects and put them in a bowl. The goal being to give the expensive package to a potential customer. We had the drawing during an expensive party after the show. The hired talent MC dude gets around to the drawing and decides to say "last chance to enter the Superbowl drawing!" Our mortified marketing people watch as everyone in the room rushes the stage to throw their cards into the bowl. Then the MC has our CEO draw the name. He glances at the card before he even gets it out of the bowl. It's one of the top level people from our closest competitor. He desperately wants to drop the card and draw another, but the MC pulls the bowl away.

The girl from marketing that set the whole thing up said she started looking for a new job before the CEO even got off the stage.