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Teens Arrested For Motorized Office Chair

Posted by samzenpus on from the crazyboy dept.

German police have confiscated the world's fastest office chair and arrested its 17-year-old inventors. The duo added a lawnmower engine, brakes and a metal frame to the office chair and were reported to be driving it all over the streets of Gross-Zimmern. Police did not comment on the chair's handling or acceleration but I look forward to it being profiled on Top Gear.

8 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. Re:So much for the seeds of .... by janeuner · · Score: 5, Insightful

    God forbid that a bunch of kids make something on their own. They might, you know, invent something useful.

  2. Re:So much for the seeds of .... by ByOhTek · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I think the problem isn't that they invented something, it's that they were very irresponsible with it (driving a motor vehicle on the streets without proper training or safety measures).

    And I wouldn't call a lawnmower-engine powered office chair "useful". Interesting, and amusing, but not useful.

    --
    Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
  3. How I yearn for the days by nightfire-unique · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I suppose this is probably one of those "happy-days" fantasies, but how cool would it be to live back in an age where regulation didn't exist. Where danger was all around. Where you could invent, and wow people. Where accidents happened. Where imagination was your only limit.

    The lawyer has replaced the priest.

    --
    A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
    1. Re:How I yearn for the days by Otter · · Score: 5, Insightful

      You'd most likely have died in infancy from improperly pasteurized milk. Pretty freaking cool, huh?

      --
      What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
    2. Re:How I yearn for the days by nightfire-unique · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You'd most likely have died in infancy from improperly pasteurized milk. Pretty freaking cool, huh?

      And yet, somehow they got by. People exercised their own judgment, self control and personal responsibility. No government body was looking out for them; they simply smelled the milk before they drank.

      --
      A government is a body of people notably ungoverned - AC
    3. Re:How I yearn for the days by gad_zuki! · · Score: 4, Insightful

      >And yet, somehow they got by.

      Sure did, except your mom had 9 kids of which 5 survived into adulthood.

      Good old days!

  4. Re:So much for the seeds of .... by R2.0 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    "Good engineering accommodates the errors and omissions of users. Bad engineering relies on laws and conventions to overcome inherent systemic flaws. Laws and conventions are, therefore, indicative of bad engineering."

    Good engineering accommodates errors and omissions INSOFAR as it is practical/cost effective. Your solutions all require significantly more capital investment than the ones in existence now.

    There is also a similar hazard in that relying on engineering to make something idiot proof allows the idiots to have a false sense of security, inevitably leading them to strive to newer, previously unimaginable heights of stupidity that the engineers hadn't even thought possible.

    --
    "As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
  5. Re:So much for the seeds of .... by Dogtanian · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Use a roundabout instead of a 4-way stop.

    You do realise that if there are no traffic regulations, then people are free to drive straight over the roundabout, go the wrong way around it, or use it as a meeting place for a pimped-out-bouncy-suspension car convention?

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    "Slashdot - News and Chat Sites Deviant". (Click "homepage" link above for details).