Friday, February 15, 2008

Working With the SkyNet Beta Program

SkyNet is pretty good, but it's not perfect. Why does SkyNet even have a destroy the humans feature? And why aren't there more failsafes?

As I understand it Ctrl-Alt-Delete starts the computer, whereas Shift-Alt-Delete initiates the destroy the world feature. Here's one solution: have all operators use the Ctrl on the left and the Shift on the right or vice versa to minimize the chance of accidental initiation of world destruction followed by postapocalyptic dystopia. And add a dialog box. "Are you sure you want to destroy the world?" Make the operator click on "Yes" before the program starts. Finally, let's have paper clip guy pop up and remark: "It looks as though you are trying to destroy the world. How can I help?" This will give the operator yet another chance to cancel.

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