The Intelligence Estimate

Yesterday I was helping a friend load some files onto my computer so I could edit them for her. She is a MAC and I am a PC. I'm rather proud to be John Hodgeman in this scenario. He's definitely the smarter of the too. Stupid Justin Long made Accepted. Prosecution rests.

Anyway, as in any cross platform communication, it was a nightmarish cluster-fuck. While we were trying to dump files somehow my external hard drive (which contained the files from my movie, my entire music library and every picture we've taken since getting a digital camera) got erased.

Then my computer started shutting down with no warning or reason. I eventually did a system restore on that an it seems to be ok now.

But when I got in my car today to take the hard drive to ye olde data mines the car was dead. No click of the starter motor, no lights on the dash, nothing. Completely dead.

The machines are mad. I thought the first rule of any nearly sentient equiptment was to do no harm to humans. Isn't that the prime directive? Didn't Asimov or Bradley tell me that machines can't hurt me? I guess that was the FICTION part of the science.

Just to be safe I'm not gonna turn on my TV for fear that it will fill the room with poisonous gas while screaming obscenities about my mother and ruining my credit rating.