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RTFM = Read the Funny Manual?
coronaride writes: "This article over on Wired discusses the issue near and dear to every sysadmin and support tech's heart. I, myself, never read any manuals that accompany the products I buy (but when does cheese-whiz really need instructions anyways?) unless something majorly goes wrong! The article talks about how some countries, including Japan, try to spice up their product manuals in order to entice the users to read them. Is this just too much work for our lazy American manufacturers to do?"
The difference between a Manager and an Engineer; The Manager reads the introduction, the Engineer scans the useful bits. -GiH
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I can certainly related to the funny japanese manuals! Our fridge freezer includes instructions recommending that you "Turn your knob sharply to remove cubes" (The ice machine), and that the fridge will help keep food because it has "An alarming function built in" (The door buzzer).
Hours of fun...
Heh, there's a feature in Lightwave where you can make a model of a hand, then apply bones to it so you can manipulate the fingers. In the illustration, they showed how you could take all the bones in the fingers (except the forefinger) and rotate them simultaneously, causing the hand to point.
There was a tiny caption under it that said "this isn't the finger that was raised when they showed this to me."
"Derp de derp."
From the article:
:)
Touching Italians is fine, but you must never, ever tell them how to use a product.
I tried this with the local Italian, and believe me, I'd be much better off if I'd just told him how the microwave works.
But what does my opinion matter, I just vote here. It's not like I have any money or anything.
is to put the jokes in the source.
"You are not expected to understand this".
"I, myself, never read any manuals that accompany the products I buy (but when does cheese-whiz really need instructions anyways?)"
Never.
-Cheesewhiz
-----
"Cogito Eggo Sum: I think, therefore, waffle."
Here's one:
Technical Note 31 (Clarus the Dogcow)
Can anyone find a link to the bogus Technical Note which was attributed to Scott Knaster, or the even crazier one he wrote in Macintosh Programming Secrets in response to it? Among other things, it attempted to describe how a program should deal with users upgrading their CPU while the program is running, and the API to a new compression routine called "PackMan" which could compress anything to exactly 4 bytes....
Mackie, makers of great audio mixers, have lots of entertaining content in their manuals. Little things like the setup diagrams for a driving a PA system has pictures of little stick people dancing... and a description of when NOT to use the 75Hz bass cut includes "recording earthquakes".
Many years ago (1986) I worked on a project that required us to create "Flow Charts" of our software design. In times past, I'd used the time-honored "flow chart template" (a piece of plastic with specialized shapes cut out of it) and while I didn't actually like it, it got the job done.
On this project, however, we were provided with a piece of software (Easyflow) to accomplish the same goal, but without the need to put pencil to paper. Instead, we used the software so we could fiddle endlessly with the design before committing a single pin to paper (yes, children, this was in the days when the dot-matrix printer ruled, before laser printers came free in your breakfast cereal).
Easyflow's Bloodthirsty License Agreement was the first hint that the user manual would be an interesting read.
IIRC, there were also 2 entry points to the manual proper, worded somthing like this:
Ah, the good old days.
In walking, just walk. In sitting, just sit. Above all, don't wobble.
-- Yun-Men
Fight Spammers!
I remember a few years back (ok 5 or 6) I skimed the manual for a piece of internal software my company had created and found a note that basicly read, if you've gotten to this point fax in this form and we will send you a copy of Myst. Ever since I've at least skimmed them.
Never could pass up the opertunity for free stuff.
Ah, the old dogcow tech note. Source of what I consider to be the funniest quote ever:
Like any talented dog, it can do flips. Like any talented cow, it can do precision bitmap alignment.
For some reason, hardly anybody else cracks up at this the same way I do. I like to think that this is because everybody else is crazy.
Nope, no sig
it's a Russell Hobbs coffee grinder but the book is so funny I read it from cover to cover ... "count to five when grinding.. better to do so in your head or people will think you're a bit odd..." or something like that. bloody good.
I am a leaf on the wind
a portion of the README included in WindowMaker:
Congratulations! You have purchased an extremely fine device that would give you thousands of years of trouble-free service, except that you undoubtably will destroy it via some typical bonehead consumer maneuver. Which is why we ask you to PLEASE FOR GOD'S SAKE READ THIS OWNER'S MANUAL CAREFULLY BEFORE YOU UNPACK THE DEVICE. YOU ALREADY UNPACKED IT, DIDN'T YOU? YOU UNPACKED IT AND PLUGGED IT IN AND TURNED IT ON AND FIDDLED WITH THE KNOBS, AND NOW YOUR CHILD, THE SAME CHILD WHO ONCE SHOVED A POLISH SAUSAGE INTO YOUR VIDEOCASSETTE RECORDER AND SET IT ON "FAST FORWARD", THIS CHILD ALSO IS FIDDLING WITH THE KNOBS, RIGHT? AND YOU'RE JUST NOW STARTING TO READ THE INSTRUCTIONS, RIGHT??? WE MIGHT AS WELL JUST BREAK THESE DEVICES RIGHT AT THE FACTORY BEFORE WE SHIP THEM OUT, YOU KNOW THAT?
-- Dave Barry, "Read This First!"
Example:
:-)
I got tired of seeing the same thing over 6 or 8 chapters, so each was a variation on the wording.
And so on.
Java is the blue pill
Choose the red pill
My company developed a techonology for viewing video on the web. (No, you've never heard of it, but it was a pretty cool deal. Too bad we don't do it anymore or I'd brag about it.) Since I'm the multimedia guy, they wanted me to write the section on how to improve video quality while making the file size smaller. At one point, I was describing how sometimes you're better off lowering the resolution of a video instead of increasing the compression ratio.
I used a picture of George Bush in mid-speech to illustrate my point. When using the lower resolution, the picture was pretty clear. But when I used a higher compression setting (at the higher res) to achieve the same data rate, his mouth became two big pixels, resembling Bender a little bit.
I drew an arrow to his mouth, drawing attention to the loss of detail, with the caption "See how the mouth loses definition?"
Too bad my manager caught that before it went out, heh.
"Derp de derp."
If you were in middle school for four years, maybe it wasn't the school's fault that you didn't learn much science. . .
Reminds me a bit of a chapter in the 1991 Honda Accord's user manual, entitled "Shitting the Five Speed."
I may not remember it 100% verbatim, but that was the gist of it. Honest truth. (And it was otherwise a very dense and serious book.)
Once, just to see if anybody noticed, I included this notice on the last page of some internal-only documentation:
"This page inadvertently left blank."
I don't think anybody caught it.
[From the operation manual for the CI-300 Dot Matrix Line Printer, made
in Japan]:
The excellent output machine of MODEL CI-300 as extraordinary DOT
MATRIX LINE PRINTER, built in two MICRO-PROCESSORs as well as EAROM, is
featured by permitting wonderful co-existence such as; "high quality
against low cost", "diversified functions with compact design",
"flexibility in accessibleness and durability of approx. 2000,000,00
Dot/Head", "being sophisticated in mechanism but possibly agile
operating under noises being extremely suppressed" etc.
And as a matter of course, the final goal is just simply to help
achieve "super shuttle diplomacy" between cool data, perhaps earned by
HOST COMPUTER, and warm heart of human being.
I read the internet for the articles.