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A young woman was doing some business at Marshall University and parked in an area clearly marked "no parking." After taking care of business, she returned to her car to find a campus security guard writing her a ticket. "Why are you giving me a ticket?" she asked. "You're not allowed to park here," the guard said. "See that sign? It says 'Fine for Parking Here.'" "Well," said the violator, "I thought it was a fine place to park." The guard began to laugh. The more he thought about it, the harder he laughed. He tore up the ticket and waved the woman on her way.
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This is supposedly a true story from a recent Defence Science Lectures Series, as related by the head of the Australian DSTO's Land Operations / Simulation division. They've been working on some really nifty virtual reality simulators, the case in point being to incorporate Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters into exercises (from the data fusion point of view). Most of the people they employ on this sort of thing are ex- (or future) computer game programmers. Anyway, as part of the reality parameters, they include things like trees and animals. For the Australian simulation they included kangaroos. In particular, they had to model kangaroo movements and reactions to helicopters (since hordes of disturbed kangaroos might well give away a helicopter's position). Being good programmers, they just stole some code (which was originally used to model infantry detachments reactions under the same stimuli), and changed the mapped icon, the speed parameters, etc. The first time they went to demonstrate this to some visiting Americans, the hotshot pilots have decided to get "down and dirty" with the virtual kangaroos. So, they buzz them, and watch them scatter. The visiting Americans nod appreciatively...then gape as the kangaroos duck around a hill, and launch about two dozen Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter. Programmers look rather embarrassed at forgetting to remove that part of the infantry coding...and Americans leave muttering comments about not wanting to mess with the Aussie wildlife! As an addendum, simulator pilots from that point onwards avoided kangaroos like the plague, just like they were meant to do in the first place.
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Suit Alleges MS Racism Software Linked Black Couple to Monkeys The Associated Press S A N D I E G O, June 30 — A lawsuit accuses Microsoft of including a “racially-charged” message linking black people to monkeys in its Publisher 1998 software. The company has agreed to alter the program. John Elijah, 32, filed the suit Tuesday in San Diego federal court, claiming users will see images that include a black couple sitting on monkey bars when they type “monkey” to access pictures of the animal. “I felt the blood rushing out of my whole body,” said Elijah, a black construction worker who was shown the image by a co-worker. “I was humiliated.”
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