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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.

9 of 338 comments (clear)

  1. So much for the seeds of .... by BitterOldGUy · · Score: 5, Funny

    German engineering.

    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 R2.0 · · Score: 5, Funny

      "I for one welcome our rocket chair creating overlords. "

      In fairness, the picture is wholly unrelated to the story - unless they have started making Barcalounger shaped office chairs and 8 hp piston engines that shoot gigantic flames out the back. Both of which would be AWESOME!!

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

      It's an office chair isn't it? I'd like to roll up to a departmental meeting in one of those.

       

      Depends on which company we're talking about. If Microsoft, I shudder to think what Balmer could do with one of these. It'd be as if millions of programmers suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

      --
      "People who think they know everything are very annoying to those of us who do."-Mark Twain
    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
  2. Re:Ahh, the nanny state. by Shadow+Wrought · · Score: 5, Funny

    Isn't this the country that banned potato guns?

    Yes. They kept shooting potatoes at all the motorized office chairs.

    --
    If brevity is the soul of wit, then how does one explain Twitter?
  3. Re:ACHTUNG! by megaditto · · Score: 5, Funny

    Well you gotta nip that sort of youthful "creativity" in the butt.

    Remember that German kid who wanted to become an architect? They let it slide, and the next thing you know, he was annexing Poland.

    --
    Obama likes poor people so much, he wants to make more of them.
  4. 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?

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    What I'm listening to now on Pandora...
  5. Picture by Sven+Tuerpe · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a picture of the actual vehicle on the Web. It seems that the office chair really constitutes just a minor component of it, which becomes obvious if you compare the vehicle to the racing chairs used in official championships (page in Germany, I'm sorry).

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    http://erichsieht.wordpress.com/category/english/