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Computer Forteana?

JackSkellington said:
The possibility of computer information networks becoming intelligent and indeed concious was explored in the Japanese animated flick Ghost in the Shell. Although, of course, it also featured big guns and breasts, being Anime and everything.

There's also the word "slemen", which aside from inspiring a poster here's name, has been said to appear onscreen and on anamolous computer print outs every so often.

Another case was that ghost who used a word processor to communicate with the computer's owneres, although I think that's considered rather dubious these days...

I suppose going back to the question of whether computers/networks can become concious it really depends on what_conciousness_is, and I sure as hell don't know!
Click to expand...

Perhaps this is related.
 
DerekH's post is exactly the sort of thing I was looking for. I'm interested in the history of our new little helpers.

I remember seeing Dr Professori Umberto Eco on an Open University programme, years ago, He had an Apple Mac. As a mediaevalist he saw it in terms of an imp, demon, or, djinn. There to do his bidding and facilitate his will. He hinted at possibilities of a Faustian relationship with such an impious thing.

Yesterday, My son asked me what sort of computer games we had when I was a little boy. I told him that when I was his age, computers were at least the size of our house. He didn't believe me.

I must say, I expected more replies. Perhaps computers are too young. How quickly did steam engines develop personalities for their drivers and passengers? Mind you, computers have been around for two or three generations now.

Are they so integrated into our lives, already, that we accept them as mere prosthetic, extensions of ourselves. Like glasses and false teeth, Or, are they a new taboo? Something we dare not name for fear of incurring their wrath? Maybe they're just too boring?

For anyone who is interested in the early days of our little helpers, heres's the address of the site of John Walker, one of the developers of AutoCad. He's been working with and developing computers since the sixties. He may also be one of the first hackers to develop a virus. It transmitted a game from file to file on mainframes. It's a great site:

http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/
 
Here's the Address of the exact page where John Walker tells the story of the birth of an urban legend:

It's rare enough to hear an urban legend about which you know any of the facts, but it's astonishing to be reading a major magazine and encounter such a story which you not only personally recall but which you're responsible for. Right after I read the account of ANIMAL in Dewdney's column, I dashed off the following letter to relate the actual 1975 events on which the ANIMAL legend was based. (I've slightly edited the letter to remove 1985-era references which are now out of date; the substance is unchanged.)
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http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/univac/animal.htm
 
There's a server that I look after, kept in a locked room, which has unplugged itself on at least two occasions.

And I'm currently involved in cabling up a site which has a shadowy spectral inhabitant (I've not seen it, but two colleagues are now distinctly edgy). That's not really the computers, but we conjectured that it was the ghost of our former network, returning to exact revenge.

Y'know, because we're geeks.
 
'Reply to Post' emails

A 'reply to post' email breezed into my inbox at 02:18 on 19/05 - then... zip. Zilch. Rien.

This sudden lack of emails, discovered when I logged onto the board later (much later :) ) in the morning caused a bit of concern, since the project report I've been working on is actually being written by 6 of us scattered across central Scotland, and the university systems are down (being upgraded) this w/end, so we need email to patch it all together, and it appeared - for a while - as though my email was screwed.....

Thankfully, it's not. But still no messages from FT, so this morning I get into the options stuff and check that all the relevant boxes are checked. It all looks OK, so then I PM Alistair to see if he's got any ideas.

Then I return to Outlook, click Send/Receive, and get a Reply to Post email. Aaaaaaaargh!!

Yes, they're taking the mickey.
 
I've been witness to all kinds of computer strangeness. Most of it comes down to access violations, memory leaks, and related - but some are really weird.

For example, my boss wrote a script to build our software nightly plus copy all the most recent source files to a certain directory. Something strange happened on or around April 26, because the automated build somehow copies old files to that directory - the newest of which is dated April 26. Three things make this interesting: First, the build uses the correct (recent) files - and that's exactly what the script is [supposedly] copying. Second, the old files don't exist anywhere. Third, if the script is run manually, it copies new files. It only copies the old files when it runs automatically at night. Still haven't gotton to the bottom of this one.

Also, I typed a rather lengthy post here, so I won't re-iterate.

My diagnosis. If you're computer is acting fortean, reboot it. If it's stubborn, a low-level format will remove any tendency it may have had to act strange.
 
Yesterday I had a phone call from the Serif software company "just checking your details on our customer database..."

I told them in no uncertain tones that they'd already called me the day before, and about three days before that, and I was getting fed up with it. (It seems I'm in the database twice...)

If a software company can't handle a database, what hope for the rest of us?!
 
Originally posted by JackSkellington
[There's also the word "slemen", which aside from inspiring a poster here's name, has been said to appear onscreen and on anamolous computer print outs every so often.
Click to expand...

'Slemen' is the surname of a columnist in my local paper. He writes books on the supernatural, particularly sentimental ghost stories. He has a very poorly coded website and my pet theory is that some kind of corruption induced by the thing is responsible for mysterious appearances of the word 'slemen'. ;)
 
Is there any truth that the name 'Bill Gates' is somehow turned into '666' when translated into ASCII.
(all I know is a bit of HTML, and BASIC for the old ZX speccy.
10 PRINT 'CHATSUBO IS COOL'
20 GOTO 10 )
 
rynner said:
Yesterday I had a phone call from the Serif software company "just checking your details on our customer database..."

I told them in no uncertain tones that they'd already called me the day before, and about three days before that, and I was getting fed up with it. (It seems I'm in the database twice...)

If a software company can't handle a database, what hope for the rest of us?!
Click to expand...

Hmmm, did they read out your details and ask you to confirm, or ask you for your address etc?

In the mid '80's I had a temp job with a certain British telecoms company. All their customer details for a large part of North London were stored on a single hard disc and, to save money, some bright spark decided that daily back-ups were unneccessary. Naturally, the day before the first of the new monthly back-ups was performed, the disc crashed & burned.

All that was left was a printed copy of all new numbers issued that month - it was my job to ring each one to "check their details"!

Jane.
 
Not really computer weirdness as such but there are some great AI Koans that will really appeal to any abject geeks here.
 
chatsubo said:
Is there any truth that the name 'Bill Gates' is somehow turned into '666' when translated into ASCII.
(all I know is a bit of HTML, and BASIC for the old ZX speccy.
10 PRINT 'CHATSUBO IS COOL'
20 GOTO 10 )
Click to expand...

this was a good trick on a speccy
Print "Loading Pogo"
Poke Usr 1219,0

Which gave the appearence of a game called Pogo loading

Great trick to pull in shops as groups of kids would gather to play and be there for ages.
 
Ahhh- many the times we were thrown out of High Street stores for getting the Zx Specs printing 'Dixons are shit'.
My only serious ZX speccy BASIC programming was trying to come up with a BASIC I-Ching. Getting the hexagrams working was fine, but when it came to all the commentary on the changing lines, I decided I couldn't be arsed, and it was time for another game of Commando or School Days.
 
The biggest Spectrum program I wrote was for finding 'leylines' between map grid references.

I later wrote another version for my Amstrad 9512.

Gotta go - Robot Wars is starting!
 
Modem weirdness

I just walked away from my computer. When i came back, it was disconnected from the net. Not unusual, my ISP tends to disconnect me arbitrarily. But when I tried to reconnect I was told there was no dial tone. When i checked, my telephone cable had been disconnected not only at the PC but at the telephone point!

I live alone. No idea how that happened.
 
Did you trip over the cable ? If not it was a ghost . Or lightening .
Or someone who is secretly trying to drive you insane and creeps in every time your back is turned to change things .
 
It's always best to eliminate the obvious first... You don't have any pets do you?
 
Nope, no pets (unless that sneaky golfish has been creeping out of his bowl again, I've told him about that) And the cable isn't near where I walk. Ah well, I'll go for the 'enemy trying to drive me insane' option. It wouldn't be the first time :)
 
'Round the office we've got a theory about little green and pink men... 'Tis possible that they've decided to pay your home a visit.

Either that or you've got multiple personality disorder and one of your alter-egos is doing it.

I know, I'm ever so helpful. :D :cool:
 
This reminds me of when my friend accused me of not talking to him on AIM. I signed in apparently, except I was at work at the time. It happened a few days running, and theres no one else who could have signed in here. Freaky... err... I mean... spooky. :D
 
Spooky ~ If you have 24 hour internet access (like DSL or cable) AIM will log you on all by itself, providing you have it remember your password so you don't have to enter it every time. To avoid this you need to fully exit it, meaning exit from the icon in your task bar. Used to happen to a friend of mine, I don't think he ever uses AIM anymore though.
 
Thanks, but I don't have 24 hour internet connection. I'm on dial up. It hasn't happened recently though. *fingers crossed*
 
what people do to their computers ...........

............. then ring through to Tech Support and completely deny having touched anything at all!

I'm not doubting you at all Adrian - just mentioning the fact that this sort of thing seems to happen an inordinate number of times to people I speak to!

I usually put this down to their son/daughter/whatever sneaking in and altering something they shouldn't, but there are so many strange happenings, well, you never can tell!

I am absolutely sure that someone moves things around in my house when I'm not looking (either that or I am more senile than I thought!) - I can take an item upstairs and then walk back into my front room moments later, to find it there again.
 
Back in the day when I had AOL and upgraded from 6.0 to 7.0 (or was it from 5.0 to 6.0?) it automatically set itself to log on when Windows started. I didn't realize this at first and thought my then 2 or 3-year-old daughter was putzing with my computer which she'd been warned not to do.... She got scolded 2 or 3 times before I realized what was happening... Poor kid!
 
Probably just a glitch, but yesterday my computer clock was 7 minutes slow in the evening when I switched on, although it had been fine in the morning. (I like to keep a careful eye on the time so I'm not online unnecessarily outside of my 'free' surfing periods.)

I know the clock will drift by a few seconds over a week or so (and I have a prog to update it online), but 7 minutes in 12 hours seems a bit odd. Never happened before.
 
Sounds like your motherboard battery is dying. Condolences.

Easily replaced.

Incidentally - I've been collecting old computers and stashing them away in the attic for possible future interest. So far I have a Spectrum, 2 Ataris, a BBC B and an Electron.

Current PCs tend to get cannibalised, upgraded or re built. Few will survive. Only the laptops.
 
My personal computers seem to be fairly obedient, probably because I have a no-nonsense attitude about using them.

However, long ago, when I was a programmer at Bank of America, I had to get some information out of a database, and about 2 seconds after I thought about getting that information, it printed out on the line printer (yes, a line printer--none of these fancy monitors in those days, eh?). I hadn't touched the keyboard.

Also, if I'm upset, I have a bad influence on anything electronic that's within about 3 feet of me. I get especially anxious when making large purchases, so if the store has electronic cash registers, I have to pass my money to the clerk, then step away; if I don't, the cash register will freeze up every time. When I use my ATM card instead of cash, I have to enter my PIN, then jump back at least 3 feet from the card reader; otherwise, the transaction aborts.

I do not, however, have any influence on street lights.
 
Why do we put up with crap computers? If we didn't actually buy the blasted things, they might actually improve them. My computer is actually a knocked together job, as I don't see the point in paying out a grand for something that doesn't work properly and will be out of date in six months and completely kaput in a couple of years.

Rant over
 
Sorry about the rant, but I do have an amazing ability to crash computers, it has been noted, I've managed to crash 7 different computers in one day. Even this message board will only post about every second post, I keep getting ' you are not logged in messages' when I obviously am, otherwise it would't let me type the message. Grrrr.
 
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