The major difference between a thing that might go wrong and a thing that cannot possibly go wrong is that when a thing that cannot possibly go wrong goes wrong it usually turns out to be impossible to get at or repair."
The marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation decided to build the now much maligned GPP feature into its robots.
Marvin, an android on board the starship "Heart of Gold", is an early personality prototype for Genuine People Personalities.
Thirty million generations of philosophers have debated the definition of intelligence. The most popular definition appears in the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation android manuals:
"Intelligence is the ability to reconcile totally contradictory situations without going completely bonkers. For example, having a stomach ache and not having a stomach ache at the same time, holding a hole without the doughnut, having good luck and bad luck simultaneously, or seeing a real estate agent waive his fee."
This machine provides the user with a plastic cup filled with a liquid that was almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
The way it functions is very interesting. When the Drink button is pressed it makes an instant but highly detailed examination of the subject's taste buds, a spectroscopic analysis of the subject's metabolism and then sends tiny experimental signals down the neural pathways to the taste centers of the subject's brain to see what is likely to be well received.
However, no one knew quite why it does this because it then invariably delivers a cupful of liquid that is almost, but not quite, entirely unlike tea.
The Nutri-Matic was designed and manufactured by the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation whose complaints department now covers all the major land masses of the first three planets in the Sirius Tau Star system.
A mechanical apparatus designed to do the work of a man- from The Encyclopaedia Galactica.
"Your Plastic Pal Who's Fun To Be With."- from the marketing division of the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation.
The the company motto of the hugely successful Sirius Cybernetics Corporation Complaints division, which now covers the major land masses of three medium sized planets and is the only part of the Corporation to have shown a consistent profit in recent years.
The motto stands - or rather stood - in three mile high illuminated letters near the Complaints Department spaceport on Eadrax. Unfortunately its weight was such that shortly after it was erected, the ground beneath the letters caved in and they dropped for nearly half their length through the offices of many talented young complaints executives - now deceased.
The protruding upper halves of the letters now appear, in the local language, to read "Go stick your head in a pig", and are no longer illuminated, except at times of special celebration.
The Sirius Cybernetics Corporation is "a bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes." An edition of the Encyclopaedia Galactica that had the good fortune to fall through a time warp from a thousand years in the future defined the Sirius Cybernetics Corporation as "a bunch of mindless jerks who were the first against the wall when the revolution came." Note: We would welcome applications from anyone interested in taking over the post of robotics correspondent.
It is very easy to be blinded to the essential uselessness of them by the sense of achievement you get from getting them to work at all
In other words - and this is the rock solid principle on which the whole of the Corporation's Galaxy-wide success is founded - their fundamental design flaws are completely hidden by their superficial design flaws.
The above texts are excerpts from the Hitch hikers guide to the galaxy.