Slashdot Mirror
Bob The Builder Gets A Personality Transplant
McCarrum writes "Here at 'undisclosed company,' there's been a push to bring a mascot into our IT team. After much discussion and many excellent ideas, the PHB made the executive decision on Bob the Builder. Enter one Bob the Builder talking doll. Talking?! By Crom, that means a chipset! (cue evil laugh) A quick bit of exploratory surgery and a little research later, we purchased the equipment to create EVIL BOB. Want to make your own EVIL BOB? Click the clicky clicky thing!"
This is their secret plan to get more slashdot subscribers. Post a bunch of geocities crap, so that anyone who wants to read it has to buy a subscription and get to it before it's posted. Of course, this plan will inevitably fail, since nobody actually bothers to RTFA.
Shame the site is down the video of the demo where Bob passed the Turing Test was really impressive.
This is what you get for previewing your submitions -- all that testing your link maxes out the bandwidth cap for the site! See why there are so many bad links/dupes on slahdot? It's because the editors don't want to kill the sites fore everyone :)
My other car is first.
...since not even paying subscribers had the time to read the content on that Geocities cite and we'll forget all about this before it becomes available again...does that mean that we all can post without reading the article, guessing and writing IANAL and IANAEB (I Am Not An Evil Bob) posts?
:-)
I don't think anyone will notice the difference
The clicky clicky thing is bwoken!
A Geocities site slashdotted. Well I never.
yes, we have no bananas
"Bob the IT support guy!"
"Bob the IT support guy!"
"can he fix it?!?"
"No he can't, because that's not his department, it's a software issue and it was raised with management over a month ago"
Be you Admins? nay, we are but lusers!
I bet you're one of those people that always wonders why slashdot doesn't get slashdotted.
(sorry)
Slashdot monitor for your Mozilla sidebar or Active Desktop.
No we can't 'cos its on Geocities.
Looks like Spud was the editor who decided to post a story with a link to Geocities
Donte Alistair Anderson Roberts - hi son!
Karma: Chameleon
Lemme see... the site is Slashdotted and not cached, so I'll take a guess that 'Evil' Bob is going to express dodgy political opinions and make sexist comments at passing women.
Sounds like a fairly run-of-the-mill builder to me...
For bonus points, pull Bob's trousers down far enough to expose at least 2" of arse cleavage and give him a copy of 'The Sun' (doesn't work if he's meant to be American though...)
"Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).
go ahead and load up the page on the sound chip and bathe in the bgsound midi splendor that is jingle bells, banjo style (http://www.aplusinc.com.tw/reason.mid).
it's too early for this...
Bob didn't need a mod to make him evil, he already was!
Think about it for a moment... when was the last time that you met a builder who was polite, well spoken, efficient, well dressed (no builder's bum), fixed things quickly, didn't have a copy of The Sun in his back pocket, didn't drink tea and talk football (soccer) constantly, didn't whistle at women constantly, answered the question "Can we fix it?" with anything other that "It'll cost you" and actually wore a hard hat?
One you take the talking (possessed) site equipment into consideration Bob seems very much like the Anti-Builder!
"As a morale boosting exercise, Bob the Builder was brought into our office."
At any of the places I've ever worked, that sort of thing would have killed morale. The more I think about it, the more insulting it seems.
First there is the idea of having a mascot. So the company thinks you're a bunch of high school kids and they're trying to pump you up for the big game?
Then there's the idea of a cartoon figure for 5 year olds as your mascot. I guess they don't even think of you as high school kids.
Thank the gods that I don't own a stake in your company. I would imagine that the owners of your company would prefer you guys to be working on turning a profit, not playing with toys you should have put away in first grade.
. Quit playing Monopoly with Bill. Switch to one of many non-Microsoft products today.
My favorite came from the time that a box was needed to put a prototype board into. One of the engineers made a trip to the hardware store and found a battery operated radio controlled doorbell. The case was just the right size. Afterwards the guts of the thing was still lying around so afterhours the ceiling tiles in a VP's office were lifted and the bell was placed in there. The button went to the bulletin board along with a sign reading "Press Me". So, naturally, it got pressed. A LOT. The VP being your typical PHB type never could figure out where the door bell noise was coming from. And he couldn't put two and two together as he was seen, in the lunch room, vigorously pushing the button and asking "What does this do?"
The piece de resistance was when the engineer in question had a meeting in the VP's office. He took the button off the board and kept it in his pocket, pressing it at appropriate times during the meeting.
Who wants to start going to Toys 'R' Us (notice it's spelt Us and not U$) and/or Amazon.com and/or where ever and going to buy a Bob the Builder, mod it...
and return it.
Well, Evil Bob can be altered at your whim. All you need to do is flip the record switch to on, plug in the cable from your Audio Out to his input (that's right folks .. Bob does it Matrix style), and press the required trigger (ie his hand, the hammer, his head, whatever) and wait for the beep. Hear the beep, press play on the sound you want recorded.
...
My favourite is his left foot. Currently, it's 'Screw you guys, I'm going home'. But it's a close second with his spanner saying 'I'm going to get medieval on his ass'
M
Robert Anton Wilson
"Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to 'Evil.'"
(It's the treehouse of Horror 3 episode)
everryone reads the article.
They just post first
From [9F04]
Doll: Guess who, Fat boy!!
Homer: [blinded, bumping around, with the doll strapped to his head]
Marge! Marge! Look!
Marge: [from the kitchen] Oh, my God!
Homer: [staggering into the kitchen] The doll's trying to kill me and the
toaster's been laughin' at me!
Homer and the Killer Doll roll about the floor and Homer has his face dunked
in the dog dish (``Eeeew! Dog water!'') Marge calls the number on the
Krusty doll box (1-900-DON'T-SUE).
Marge: Your doll is trying to kill my husband! [pause] Yes, I'll hold.
Marge lets the Krusty Co. repairman into the kitchen, to see Homer on the
floor, the doll yanking at his tongue. Picking up the doll, the repairman
identifies the problem.
Repairman: [pointing to a Good/Evil switch on the back of the doll]
Yup, here's your problem. Someone set this thing to ``Evil''.
M@
Krispy Cream is people
User: "What do I need to do to get this work request approved?"
Bender: "Kiss my shiny metal ass!"
www.sniggle.net ("the culture jammer's encyclopedia") links to a couple of little hacks like this. In the most famous one, a group switched a bunch of voice chips between Barbie and GI Joe dolls, so Joe was saying things like "Let's go shopping!" Another interesting if less pointed experiment involved filling a bunch of teddy bears with cement and placing them on the shelves of a major toy store ...