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The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time
Technologizer writes "They add insult to injury — and computing wouldn't be the same without 'em. So I rounded up a baker's dozen of the most important error messages in computing history — from Does Not Compute to Abort, Retry, Fail to the Sad Mac to the big kahuna of them all — the mighty Blue Screen of Death. And just in case my judgment is off, I include a poll to let the rest of the world vote for the greatest error message of all." I can't believe that "I'm sorry Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" didn't make the list.
www.thedailywtf.com has a great selection of error messages. Some are absolute genius!
FIVE
It wasn't. It is in the article.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
The article cites Wikipedia in claiming that the Sad Mac dates from 1987, not 1984. Nope; it's 1984. Just hit the interrupt button on the programmer's switch and you got a sad mac (000F 000D, if I remember correctly -- 2 groups of 4 hex digits for the 68000-based machines). Of course, that's from personal experience so Wikipedia: No Original Research means I can't correct the erroneous Wikipedia page. And then some idiot bot is wanting to remove the "bomb" image from the wiki article because of copyright issues....
Someone else removed the 1987 date, but the 1984 date still isn't there.
"Error: The operation completed successfully"
I kid you not. This one was repeatable on any windows box whenever Dr.Watson was invoked after a program crashed. It appeared in win 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, 2000 (don't know about win me, xp or vista). Just click the "save as" button for the error log, then click cancel. Then the magic error appeared in its own box:
"Error: The operation completed successfully"
Dr.Watson terminated as well, of course.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
And our favorite, "Slow Down Cowboy..." , error was not on the list.
That's probably why TFS questions "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" being left out.
Curiosly, though, TFA does say (on page 3 of 5):
I chose to limit myself to one fictional error message in this list, but I could go on: If I ever produce a sequel to this story, I guarantee you that "I'm sorry, Dave, I'm afraid I can't do that" will be on it.
Perhaps Technologizer got tired of clicking through TFA before reaching #5.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
My gods, I remember that little DOS prank, complete with simulated water sounds coming out of the system speaker! That must've been about 20 years ago.
It was
301 Keyboard Error: Press any key to continue
Awesome, if you really didn't know it is a reference to the 80's cult hit movie "Heathers":
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0097493/
- "Scientia non habet inimicum nisp ignorantem"
The story is a first person account, directly from the website of the author. I see no references to an urban legend after a quick Google search. If this is an urban legend, you should cite your source.
For those who just want the lame list:
And in refernce to the summary:
UTF-8: There and Back Again
You weren't supposed to do that, it could fry the motherboard.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Actually, it was an unexpected response as a consequence of the mission planners asking him to keep a secret from the rest of the crew, something his programming was unequipped to deal with (this is explicitly explained in the book... which, BTW, is basically essential to actually understanding the movie).
But, yeah, still a bug. :)
IIRC, the error pre-dates PS/2 keyboards, and the older keyboards with the larger connectors were hot-swappable. I remember being amazed that you couldn't swap keyboards/mice on a Sun.
Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
PC LOAD LETTER
What the fuck does that mean?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PC_Load_Letter
That reminded me of the almost Zen-like TRS-80 Level 1 error messages:
Dark Reflection
To be fair, it should had said "Error: keyboard not found. Connect a keyboard and press F1 to continue." But then, each byte of ROM was expensive once.
That error message dates back to the early days of the IBM-PC (possibly the first model, although I couldn't swear to that). Every expected possible failure during POST (Power On Self Test) had a corresponding error code and message. They all used the same output routine, which displayed the error code, the error message, and prompted the operator to press [F1] to continue. They simply didn't create a special case for keyboard errors -- it displayed the same way all the others did. There were other errors which left the system effectively inoperable, but still prompted to press F1. The keyboard error was just the most commonly encountered, of course.
It was error code 301, by the way. :)
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
the error pre-dates PS/2 keyboards, and the older keyboards with the larger connectors were hot-swappable
The IBM-PC and PS/2 keyboard interfaces were not designed to be hot-swappable. However, it tended to work anyway, provided POST completed initialization of the i8042 first. On occasion, though, a cheap clone would have a mobo that fried the keyboard controller if you tried to hot-swap it. Back in those days, new motherboards were *expensive*...
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
I seem to remember a few times getting all four: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail. Ah, DOS.
Yah. ARF came from the DOS "critical error" handler. Problems that required operator intervention were termed "critical errors", since the system could not proceed without help. When a BIOS or DOS system routine encountered such a problem, they invoked a software interrupt. The theory was that a good program could hook the interrupt and put in a more useful error handler. Obviously, not many programs did so.
Abort killed the running program or command, and returned you to the DOS prompt. Retry had DOS try again, without returning control to the caller. Ignore meant control was returned to the calling routine, as if nothing had gone wrong. Fail meant control was returned to the running routine, with an error status indication.
"Fail" might seem like a good idea, but it turns out that a lot of code didn't check the error status, leading to erratic behavior and/or just calling the same routine again.
There was some rhyme or reason to when which choices were displayed when, but I've long since forgotten it. Some of it might have had something to do with some commands being internal to COMMAND.COM and some being external programs, but the service routines all invoking the same "critical error" software interrupt.
dragonhawk@iname.microsoft.com
I do not like Microsoft. Remove them from my email address.
Ah yes, from back in the days when Apple engineers had a sense of humor, and Mac was the "fun" platform to develop on!
My favorite:
"Slow down, Cowboy! It has been 3 years, 7 months and 26 days since you last successfully posted a comment."
Which only means "connect a keyboard to continue"... duh...
On some PCs, connecting a keyboard doesn't help: BIOS has decided there is no keyboard, and it doesn't bother to check again. The only remedy is to connect the keyboard and press the power button.
WWTTD?