Comments on: Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

sixcolors — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:41:10 -0800

Hall of Technical Documentation Weirdness

For those who have their mind in the gutter, you may enjoy some of the submissions.

By: clearly

clearly — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:48:42 -0800

Press Button. Receive Bacon.

By: shmegegge

shmegegge — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:52:59 -0800

I feel like I've seen these in one for or another a thousand times before.

By: DU

DU — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:53:22 -0800

Being very immature, I normally love stuff like this. But the presentation is so awful I can't enjoy it. Why not put the caption and image (of viewable size) on the same page?

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:57:22 -0800

The primary purpose of the DATA statement is to give names to constants; instead of referring to Pi as 3.141592653589793 at every appearance, the variable PI can be given that value with a DATA statement and used instead of the longer form of the constant. This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of Pi change. —Early FORTRAN manual for Xerox Computers

By: clearly

clearly — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 14:58:52 -0800

One armed men should not use the woodchipper. Other No signs on Flickr.

By: nickyskye

nickyskye — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:28:19 -0800

Dear sixcolors, on this glum 9/11 day here in NYC, I really needed a good laugh. Thank you for this great collection of silliness. Just my cup of fun.

By: ZenMasterThis

ZenMasterThis — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:55:08 -0800

I think this one [NSFW?] [hysterical] was discussed in a similar MeFi post years ago.

By: Standeck

Standeck — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 15:57:05 -0800

"Scram the reactor, and get the Hell out!" Westinghouse reactor operations manual.

By: effbot

effbot — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:11:24 -0800

This also simplifies modifying the program, should the value of Pi change. What is this, the Daily WTF, where all the mediocre programmers hang out and laugh at things they don't understand in a failed attempt to feel a bit less mediocre than they actually are? That line's is a joke, of course. Old computer manuals are full of weird programmer humor. (Joke and joke -- there's in fact a reason why you might want to change the value of the Pi constant in an old Fortran program, btw. Any programmer here that can figure out what that reason is?)

By: parmanparman

parmanparman — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:12:24 -0800

Absolute Favorite

By: Kirth Gerson

Kirth Gerson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:13:59 -0800

I don't consider signs technical documentation. There's a lot of stuff that is, that's also funny, but not much of it is on that site.

By: effbot

effbot — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:21:03 -0800

Absolute Favorite Related: http://ask.metafilter.com/15940/Need-QUIET-Vacuum-for-my-Cat

By: meta_eli

meta_eli — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:22:24 -0800

So is the idea to have--at most--a single funny one per page in order to boost page views?

By: koeselitz

koeselitz — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 16:56:54 -0800

effbot: ... there's in fact a reason why you might want to change the value of the Pi constant in an old Fortran program, btw. Any programmer here that can figure out what that reason is? You sometimes need fewer or greater numbers of significant digits. See, old FORTRAN programmers tended to do a lot of computation on their fingers (also called "digits") and sometimes their fingers got very tired. Some programmers - the better ones, anyway - had stronger fingers, so they could compute longer and faster. In the old computing circles, this was referred to as having "significant digits." And John Backus, since he was the one who invented old computing circles, knew that the people whose digits were less significant would want to make the value of Pi shorter so that they didn't have to use their insignificant little digits so much. That way, all the programmers could save time, too, so they'd all have more time to go to their favorite boating spot, which everyone called 'floating point.' Also, sometimes I personally find it very useful to change the value of Pi from "3.141592653589793" to "CHERRY."

By: Toekneesan

Toekneesan — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:00:59 -0800

Not technically technical documentation but this struck me as funny in my dentist's building. Maybe it was the nitrous.

By: DU

DU — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:33:50 -0800

pi is only a constant in a euclidean universe

By: Rumple

Rumple — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 18:18:45 -0800

the site creator is a mefite, BTW

By: dbarefoot

dbarefoot — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 22:47:34 -0800

Yep, that's my web thingie. It's one of my oldest (it dates to 2003, I think), and I see that this is the third time it's been on Metafilter. I agree that the presentation could be better and much more, well, modern, but it's just not a priority for me. I'd say at least half of these were originally mine, or sent to me by their primary source. So if you've seen them elsewhere, they very possibly were originated from this site. I've seen this one, for example, elsewhere, but I took that photo at the Cape of Good Hope. Of course, when it comes to images, today's web tends to make original sources irrelevant. The trick is being an effective searcher and curator, not necessarily a creator.

By: ryanrs

ryanrs — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 06:33:39 -0800

I'm not irrelevant! I sent in the ball-peen cock!

By: Kadin2048

Kadin2048 — Fri, 12 Sep 2008 21:17:39 -0800

I always did get a kick out of the "Rock or Something" on the MRE heater instructions.