Jordan's Journal: Boy-Testing by Mark Jordan (copyright 1991 by Mark Jordan, reprinted by permission from Loadstar 72) This month whilst toolin' around on my C-128, I got to thinking about one of the darker sides of computing: hardware failure. Ever bought a computer component that was broken before you removed it from the box? Ever bought a computer that had an impossible-to-reach joystick port, on/off switch, or reset button? (My 128-D comes quickly to mind.) It's enough to make a person yearn for simpler times when products were lo-tech and worked. You know, hand-cranked satellite dishes and stuff like that. I've got a simple, direct, and cost-effective solution to the problem. It borrows from the software industry's concept of beta-testing. As you're probably aware, before a software company ships a product, they send out copies of it to a bunch of grizzled, cynical computer hackers to whom finding an obscure software bug is a religious experience. Now why couldn't hardware manufacturers do the same type of thing? Instead of having in-house product testing, they could ship out pre-release models to the toughest, most unkind beta-testers of all. And who would these meanies be? Boys. Good old American pain-in-the-behind boys. If you have a boy, or were once a boy, or even just know a boy, you should have some idea how effective this system would be. Boys, as we all know, live by the principle, If it ain't broke, break it. Give a boy a walkie-talkie and after two minutes of -- "Where are you at? What? Where are you now? What? Quit pushing the button while I'm talking. What?" -- you'll see him exhibit traits of his true calling: Surgery. Object surgery. The true joy of owning a walkie-talkie kicks in when the screws that hold it together are taken out. Of course, a boy enjoys the tear-down operation more than the put-back-together operation. Does a boy save the screws? What for? Does a boy memorize how it came apart? No need to, he's a boy, isn't he? All of which is a pain royale in normal life but would work wonders in the computer testing realm. A boy would be the ideal tester of computer equipment because a boy would treat it without one shred of respect. You may ask me, Would a boy test the firmware? the system software? the bla, bla, bla-ware? Of course not. Any ninny can do that. A boy would test in ways that engineers and company employees would never think (let alone dare) to try. Want some examples? A 20-year veteran of the engineering department would never think to test the durability of the disk drive door latch by biting it off. A 54-year-old woman in the quality control department would never test a mouse by dangling into the toilet bowl and flushing. A production manager might think to test out a keyboard by striking the keys forcefully but would he ever dream of pressing them with a plastic straw stuck up his nose? Never. A boy would not only do so, but he would do so while trying to sniff-hold a strawful of Kool-Aid throughout the process. Admit it, boy-testing beats in-house testing hands down. Unfortunately, it isn't only computer manufacturers that don't test their products in this logical way. Recently I heard about a house-paint manufacturer who wanted to prove their paint was great for re-painting old house siding. They tested their product by sending the engineers out to paint a simulated house in the factory. They melted off all the old paint down to bare wood, re-primed the wood using real paint primer, waited the recommended amount of time, and finally re-painted. Is this a legitimate test? Give me a break. Here's the way a real American repaints his house: he starts scraping on a Saturday morning at 10 AM under the eaves. Wasps! He runs inside to get some wasp spray, climbs back up the ladder and fires away at the wasps. The ensuing scene has great potential for "America's Funniest Home Videos" but that's not the point. The point is that it's several Saturdays later before Mr. America is ready to hit the ladder again. Once there, he follows the manufacturer's edict: "Scrape off ALL loose paint" for a good 11 minutes or so. Bored, paint-flecked, and angry he declares, "What do they know, anyway?" To heck with primer, to heck with the light rain that's starting to fall, to heck with covering bushes below, it's time to, as he puts it, "Just start painting." Well, there's no sense carrying this little side-track any further than to say that the paint eventually gets put on the house over the flaked old paint, over dirt, over unprimed bare spots, over wasps, over anything that gets in the American's way. And for two years it looks pretty good. My point is this: if you're going to test paint in the lab, you better test it like it's going to be used. Get a boy, or in this case, an American male, to test it, not an army of employees wearing white coveralls. After the boy has extracted all joy out of the device, his mother would collect the remains of the equipment and send it back to the company for examination with no explanatory note. If what was in the box could simply be identified, the manufacturer would know he had a product with potential. If it actually still worked (that is, listed directories and so forth), it would be deemed ready for market. All that would be left is to place a Boy-Tested Seal of Approval on the console. And what would that sticker look like? Well, what I have in mind is the image a boy standing over a computer with a sledgehammer raised high and the words, "He Couldn't Bust It and Neither Can You." Via The Commodore Information Center web site (http://home.att.net/~rmestel/commodore.html)