Not that I need any, mind you.... and pardon my uneducated (ab)use of latin, however, the meaning behind the terms "post-facto justification" (as I understand them) seem to fit nicely here:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/20703.html

Anyone else have any examples of computers or any other machine (non-fictional or not... c'mon, be creative) to perform a task "better suited" for humans or a less "sophistimicated" machine (all you gutter folk need not apply)... Here's my personal example:

Lighting a cigarette with a gas stove.

Somebody wrote a program to have computer act as psychiatrist. Patient would make statement, computer would ask psychoanalyst type question. It was something less than a success.

Heavens! Talk about stress ... do I have to count all the times I use "I" or "I think" (the slogan of all Aquarians) oooh. I ..., I ..., I ..., just feel so ...so... depressed.
Wadda' ya say, Musick, let's go out and Party hearty !

wow,
not to mention Aquarian snakes, I think

Somebody wrote a program to have computer act as psychiatrist.

Back in about 1982, my family bought a computer (it was top of the line, I think it had 64K RAM!). We had a BASIC program that played the psychiatrist, and I tell you, it freaked me out (I was only about 7 at the time). I could type in "I like to play kickball" and it would respond with "What is it about kickball that you like so much?" I would answer, of course, that I like kicking the ball. He'd come back and say "Sounds pretty violent."

It was almost as scary as the Shining was (which I also saw that year, stupid me).

Stress reduction for all!

This link is not for those of a delicate disposition, but does, I think, fall into category proposed by musick.
http://www.delphion.com/details?pn=US05501650__


By the way, and this is a very big hint as to what the link contains, the term "wanker" is often coupled (no, I'll rephrase that), is often combined with "useless" to form the phrase "useless wanker", implying that the target in question is both useless and ..er .. useless, rather than useless at .. well, you know what I mean. As in the phrase "Pompey (football team) are nowt but a load of useless wankers". After we found the link above a couple of years back, we used the phrase "he's a one-six-fifty" for a while to imply someone required assistance at the task and hence was a "useless wanker".

Apologies for the blushes
Rod

Leaving aside any prurient curiosity as to why you accessed this site in the first place, rod
I was particularly taken by the following;
"The receiver is designed with an inner liner compliant enough to accommodate a plurality of sizes and shapes of..."
Could one read that as meaning that it can - um handle (!!!) more than one at a time?

Ho-lee cow, Rod! No blushes, just...shaking head. Yup,
people will do anything. (Remember, I am born unshocked--hi, Bob!) BUT--I noticed a mighty irony: I couldn't figure out if this was a catalog, a list of patent applications, or what, so I went to the "about Delphion" tab and found that it "provides the most comprehensive intellectual asset management (IAM) software and services available today.
Intellectual??? Yeah, right!
Psst--you ain't no one-six-fifty. NOW, I'm blushing!

why you accessed this site in the first place, rod

If you'll pardon the expression, I just came across it by accident! It was when IBM hosted the patents data base and was boasting about it internally. I was looking for patents on Directory Synchonisation and this one was included in the results (synchronization is in the text).
And that, yer 'onerr, is the case for the defence.

Rod

And then, there BOB. Stands for barrery operated boyfriend.More particulars by PM.

Having followed the link I'm still trying to imagine what they mean by "leverage the most powerful tools available."

Bingley

the most powerful tools...

let alone the expression "Show known family members"

I wanted to see the drawing description, but since I'm not a member(Blush), only a newbie, it wouldn't let me see!

consuelo

Dear consuelo: I don't think you missed anything worth seeing. Any male dumb enough to use a contraption like that is nuttier than any fruitcake. I have heard a lot of jokes about such contraptions. I had one funny experience when working in a the machine shop of a foundry that is not too vile that I'll tell you about by PM if you wish.

My father played the guitar, not very well, but somewhat. Back in the '50s he brought home a device someone had given him. It was a plastic box-like contraption with straps on one side and buttons on the top. It was supposed to be a guitar-chord player. You strapped it onto the neck of your guitar, then if you pressed down on the button marked A, it played an A-maj. chord, etc., supposedly. Actually, it didn't work worth a damn, since it was only cheap plastic and didn't get the strings stopped well enough to make a clear chord. But we thought it was a hilarious effort to substitute for fingers.