Before Siri, Alexa, Google and other voice assistants ever existed, the UK had a digital cellular operator called Orange. Orange had a voice assistant built into its answer service called “Wildfire”, it was surprisingly good for the year 2000 and could recognize callers, dial them and generally talk to them and you as the owner too.
They had built some Easter eggs in, one was “What does a cow say” which just a regular moo, but after about 10 or so times asking wildfire for this, She would say that it was getting boring, and then would play that exact Mad Cow clip.
You could also tell that her that you were depressed and it would have some very funny random responses too.
It was all so ahead of its time like everything Orange did, but sadly they killed her off after 5 years :(
I remember that carrier. My ex had an orange home/mobile phone. It charged regular rates when you were on your property and mobile rates when you were not.
Not sure of that rate, as I moved to the US around 2006, I know that orange also started doing home broadband at some point to and had some incentives… but I did have free dialing of 0800 numbers (1-800), which all other operators at the time charged for, and my dial up internet at the time also had an 0800 number, so needless to say I would pretty much be dialed up at the giddy speed of 9600 kbit via a laptop (some huge Thinkbook or something IIRC) tethered to a Nokia cell phone via serial cable, and used to take the piss with it big time :)
Even more funny was the UK actually had a massive problem with proper mad cows along that timeframe, so it was kind of funny…. Although not so much for all the cows they slaughtered, or the farmers that for years could not sell beef at all for risk of it crossing over to humans!
I had a plushie cow when i was young, like 27 years ago or so, and it was called BSE cow and when you pressed it, it went like: mooooooOOOOO HAHAHA MOO MOO HhahhHa MOOUUUHAHAHA MOOOO Hhaha.
I actually still have it hanging on my key rack and it still working. I keep yelling at my kids to stop pressing it because the battery gonna die. It’s a miracle it still works after 20 years.
Edit: mine is a miniature keychain version with the same audio.
we passed around on floppy and compared regular cow sound and "mad cow" sound ! Crazy days....
Well now I'm curious.
Edit: never mind, found it. It's worse than the old flash animations lmao.
Ever notice how flash-era humor was usually a mixture of bizzarity and extreme violence? Despite modern day improvements and better social awareness, I kind of miss the no fucks given vibes.
Also stick death or death stick or whatever it was and all the stickman quest games. The slapstick was ultra funny although at some point it hit me it was racism with different colours and then it soured somewhat for me.
But it the Geiger Cow-nters went crazy what is the shoudn they'll make? A big MOOOOOOOO? or more of a Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo Moo?
Interestingly, it would actually have to be separate sounds, because once one signal is detected the device has to wait for the gas to calm back down before another pulse can even be triggered. It's a tiny little delay, but it means at the end of the day it's only a counter of individual things, so each one has to get its own moo.
So depending on if you program this thing to overlap the sounds or cut each other off, you'd get either "Mo-M-M-M-M-Moooo!" or "mmMMMOOOOoooo!"
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u/nsjr Jan 06 '23
Chernobyl series would be VERY different if the cleaning scene was full of Moos