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Previous: Yahoo Travel form | Main | Next: Permitted trucks sign
January 13, 2005 12:21 AM
Broken: Kiddie ride
Daniel Drucker points out this computer screen error on a kiddie ride.
Since when do kiddie rides seize up with computer errors? When I was a kid, we were given a piece of string to play with, and we liked it! There weren't any fancy computer errors! And we walked uphill in the snow, and we liked it!
OK, not really.
Heh. Look carefully, and you'll see that it's a "no keyboard present" error. Of course there's no keyboard present-- It's a kiddie ride! :-p
Of course, just as broken is the fact that the BIOS manufacturer expects people to press F1 when there's no keyboard present...
About the BIOS "press F1" thing, that's probably fine when the keyboard is just unplugged. Plug it in and hit "F1" to continue. (technically, you should turn off the computer to plug in the keyboard, though I've never had a problem with it when it gets pulled loose during use, and I just plug it back in and continue)
I definitely don't think that the fact that any given product has a temporary malfunction, such as the one shown in the picture, necessarily means that it has a flawed design.
There are hundreds, thousands, of simple things around us in daily life that have wonderful designs, but sometimes they stop working. Your bycicle, yor refrigerator, a lamp, a pair of glasses with a loose screw, those are just a few examples of things you just fix and move on, and keep enjoying whithout ever thinking that they were poorly designed.
I'm led to think that when the screen on the kiddie ride is up and running, it probably makes the ride more fun and enjoyable for the kids, and I don't see what's wrong with that.
What really is broken is the fact that there should be someone responsible of fixing or restarting the computer behind the kiddie ride immediately, and obviously, this person wasn't there.
Can you imagine having that as your job? Worse yet, can you imagine having to explain that to people as your job?
Ryan, are you trying to imply that there's something wrong about working in maintenance? What's wrong with that kind of job?
I love how they (the BIOS manufacturer) always expects computer applications (embedded or otherwise) to have a keyboard to run.
Mabye if you turn that steering wheel to the left and hit the button.
LOL.
Seriously though, that cannot possibly be a one time error. There has to be something wrong with the design.
I want to know how they set it up in the first place.
=D Classic!
I've seen that too many places to count, Airports, Drive-through menus, old style palms...
What is really broken about this is that it has a Celeron 1.7? GHz processor. Those things should have never came out of the Intel's factory.Scandisk 256 MB flash drive? Simple software. Imagen this kiddie ride starts up, kid
is in it while it turns on, kicks something and keyboard falls out,kid hits DEL by accident and manages to overclock the processor by 1GHz.Bios saves.Kiddeie ride ignites
What is really broken about this is that it has a Celeron 1.7? GHz processor. Those things should have never came out of the Intel's factory.Scandisk 256 MB flash drive? Simple software. Imagen this kiddie ride starts up, kid
is in it while it turns on, kicks something and keyboard falls out,kid hits DEL by accident and manages to overclock the processor by 1GHz.Bios saves.Kiddeie ride ignites
The ride is a moving object to be used by kids, can u imagine if you strapped your computer to a swing and left it on for months at a time, something would go wrong.
p.s. i dont c why the ride needs that much performance (not alot by todays standards) but it has ONE application and never does anything else.
pps. i am running a celeron 1.2ghz laptop, winxp i am jealous of the ride
About that wooden pole and stake, where can I get one of those. My kid has been bugging me for a bike, but that could be just as fun...
Eventually all toys will be computerized and do nothing except show error codes. Then kids will start playing with bits of string and they will like it.
Comments on this entry are closed
Previous: Yahoo Travel form | Main | Next: Permitted trucks sign
This is totally not broken. Sometimes toys, games, and even children's rides are designed with the intent to prepare the children for the real world by giving them a small taste of it early on. Like in the case of Mattel's "Garbage collector playpen", where kids are given a wooden pole with a nail at the end and they can have hours of fun cleaning up the trash in their playpen. Garbage sets sold separately.
This "ride" is nothing more than an attempt to show kids that they will lead unproductive "Office Space" style lives, forever impeded by the very technology that provides them with a job in the first place. Very clever idea, A+.
Posted by: Manni at January 13, 2005 10:13 AM