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.

Comments

Re:Missile Test was not a cheat

[sopwath]

You obviously never look/listen/read any non-liberal media. There was plenty for republicans to make fun of Clinton. Al Gore was getting reamed every day, even before he was almost elected. Do me a favor and watch FOX news sometime and see what a neutral news agency covers.(they are slipping towards the norm of left-wing stories)

You never saw anything bad about Clinton because you weren't looking for it. At least with Bush I get the truth instead of a bunch of BS (B as in B, S as in S) about drinking too much iced tea.

good luck,
sopwath

UHHG. i hate idiots. i really do...READ THIS PLZ.

[Vanguard(DC)]

I have traveled this thread from top to bottom, and it has been an emotional rollercoaster. I laughed, I wanted to cry, but most of all, I GOT FRICKEN PISSED!

tree-hugging feel-good fuzzy-fruitcake motherfunkers!

HOW DARE YOU say that the engineers in my great nation "CANT" do something, or the military "shouldnt" protect us!!!!! How-fucking-dare-you!!!

Just know this: in this great nation where we can do ANYTHING we put our minds to, the missile defense system WILL WORK. period.

One day, your little panzy asses, all snug in your "touched by an angel"-TV-watching-bedrooms, you will still be ALIVE !!

know why?

Well, because some idiot in the 3rd 4th or 5th world spent his country's life savings on a pair of slightly-used low mileage missles, and then, well, some hooker in red-city called his pecker small, so he decides to raise the launcher and push the big RED button...aiming at your little insense-burning-crib-yo!!!

AND A MISSLE DEFENSE SYSTEM BASED OFF THE COAST OF THE GREAT U.S. OF A WILL BLOW THE SH!T OUT OF THE MISSLES AS THEY TRAVEL TOWARD YOUR 2.5 CHILD HAVING HOUSEHOLD. THEY *WILL* WORK!! AND YOU WONT EVEN HAVE THE DECENCY TO WRITE YOUR LOCAL MILITARY BASE COMMANDER AND THANK (KISS) HIS WONDERFUL ASS... YOU WILL BE TOO BUSY BITCHING...OR JUST TOO IGNORANT TO CARE. while you should be out there offering FREE reach-arounds to the soldiers and missile defense designers!

THEN, and this is the scary part, EVEN when you DO hear of it, because your liberal buttbuddies on CNN decide to share it with you minutes later, you STILL wont appreciate the DEFENSIVE CAPABILITIES YOUR GREAT NATION HAS - AND THE MEN WHO ARE DESIGNING AND MANNING THEM!!!!

wake the funk up! and quit protesting things just because they are in one of 4 "catch-phrase" categories: a) military b) animals c) money or d) oil

remember, it's all 4 of THOSE things which keep your pretty asses alive and well and warm every fricken day!

damn - you liberal freaks scare me. if you get your way, we're all going to die wearing loin cloths, holding hands, starving on veggies, surrounded by bunnies... when achmelli muhammed muhhamed ali decides to funk with us.

waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaake up, crush out that joint, and go out and help defend this great country you pussies. and NEVER...EVER...SAY THE WORD "CANT" AGAIN.

-oliver p.

"God Bless America and the ingenuity, strength, and patriotism of its great people!" - me

Read the WHOLE story about the missle

[jmorris42]

I know Slashdot is run by a bunch of young skulls full of mush right out of college so some socialist indoctrination is expected. And missle defense has been politicized almost to death by the hate america first crowd so I could ALMOST excuse Taco & Co for not knowing shit from shinola about it because almost all coverage is so one sided.... but phlease!

The pentagon was very up front about the transponder on the target. They didn't yet have the new super duper high res radar installed that they will need to guide the interceptor missle into the ballpark with it's target so they kludged it. They KNOW they can build that part, it's just a really good radar installation. What they needed to test was whether it, if put near a hostile missle, could indeed home in on a fast moving target and blow it up. That part was the new tech being tested and it worked as advertised.

Missle defense is something we have needed for thirty or more years, 'bout damn time we actually started getting close to building one.

MAD at least made a perverted kind of sense in teh old Cold War days, when it was just two sides who were both clueful enough to understand that winning was not a real option. But trusting madmen like SoDamn Insane not to EVER launch one at anybody is not just MAD, it's crazy.

And before anybody starts going on about suitcase nukes, ask yourself a question. Why hasn't anybody tried it yet? There has to be scads of material running loose in the world since the collapse of the Soviet Union and lots of terrorists who would love to try it. So why?

My pet theory is that the spooks thought of that and stuck neutron detectors and such along enough of the border that they get tipped off.

Re:Read the WHOLE story about the missle

[Stonehand]

Not only neutron detectors, but you can bet that the systems of informers and infiltrators still exist -- and you ain't going to be offering to buy a suitcase nuke, or the materials and engineering skills to build one -- without somebody hearing about it. Figure that they're under pretty centralized control.

A Mr. bin Laden, on the other hand, might have the resources to bribe a dissatisfied crew of a mobile launching platform, such as a submarine with SLBMs. And there's little doubt that he WOULD use it if he could, since it's not like either the US or Russia (I doubt he's *their* friend, either; a nuclear-armed, fundamentalist Islamic Afghanistan would not be in their interest) would forget about him even if he retired from financing and directing terrorism. Just the thing to start a holy war.

Hence, MAD is primarily useful for bipolar contests. The world isn't bipolar anymore, and there are entities with the financing and motivation to do some damage.