Slashdot Mirror
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.
Surely "Keyboard Error: Press Any Key To Continue" should have been in there somewhere?
Username or password invalid. It's probably got the most face time...
SYNTAX ERROR
:^)
That's all I ever got out of one when I'd play around with them at Sears back in the day.
Having recieved many of these errors in the past, I can't help but point out there is very little that I would consider "Great" about them.
This should of been on the list.
"Segmentation fault (core dumped)", :-)
"Parity Error"
and of course "With what? Your bare hands?"
In similar vein: PC LOAD LETTER
Btw: Of course they didn't modify this message for countries which don't use the Letter format, making it even more confusing...
I don't read replies by ACs.
"Few users will like an error message no matter how well it is designed."
--Roger S. Pressman, _Software Engineering: A Practitioner's Approach_
I've never run into the FailWhale, because I've never tried Twitter. Although I'm confused by TFA's comment:
If you can explain what the image has to do with a Web 2.0 service buckling under extreme traffic, please let me know.
8 little birds trying to carry a whale they have tethered seems like a perfectly appropriate image to accompany a server strain error IMO.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
2001 is one of my all-time favorite movies.
...the future crusty old bastards are already drinking the Kool-Aid.
I think everyone remembers their first segmentation fault or core dump.
Most annoying error message? NONE. The computer just freezes-up for no apparent reason, forcing the user to pull a plug. This has been a bane since the earliest days of Ataris, Apples, or Commodores, and it still happens thirty years later. Grrr!
Another common message:
?SYNTAX ERROR
I saw this on my Commodore 64 (MS-BASIC 2.0), but it also happens in other versions of BASIC too. It was the universal error on all computers from the 1960s upto circa 1995 (when GUIs took-over as the dominant interface). I hate the SYNTAX TERROR.
The government is not your daddy. Its purpose is not to raid middle-class neighbors' wallets and give it to you.
They mention Abort, Retry, Fail as somehow more memorable than the original Abort, Retry, Ignore, which I'd disagree with.
I seem to remember a few times getting all four: Abort, Retry, Ignore, Fail. Ah, DOS.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
The fact that you bothered to include this error implies to me that you knew there was a chance that the system call could fail.
Maybe. Or maybe the programmer was just really anal retentive, like me.
I don't really consider myself a programmer, but I do write a fair share of CGI scripts. In my scripts, I detaint the user inputs and provide appropriate error codes for user inputs that fail the detaint. The error trapping almost always leads to one (or more) of some finite set of possibilities, but I *always* include a catch-all along the lines of...
1) Didn't match valid input;
2) Didn't match expected error #1;
...
n) Didn't match expected error #n;
n+1) Catch-all (just on the off chance that I failed to account for a possible error).
For the catch-all case, I include an error message similar to "This error message shouldn't be possible. Please send an e-mail to tell me how you got here."
MCSE? No, sir...I don't do Windows. Yes, I am an idealist. What's your point?
Your system has been halted in order to prevent a loss of data.
Ummm, shouldn't that read "Your system has been halted in order to guarantee a loss of data"?, since I was never given a chance to save anything before the system halt.
The more you regulate a company, the worse its products become.
But a TECO expert could do wonderous things.
Error, no keyboard - press F1 to continue. (early PC BIOS message)
Having obnoxious sound clips attached to every event you can think of was the epitome of the early 90s.
"Game over man, game over!"
No way, I can't believe they left out my most favorite nastolgic error of all time:
The Row of Bombs
I grew up on the Atari ST, and bombs still warm my heart...
I got nothin'
Isn't it Windows that's often doing that? Crapping out with the most vague error message you can possibly imagine and ending in: 'Please contact your system administrator'
Luckily, as a system administrator you have the ability to look right through the computer case and into the RAM modules to see exactly what has gone wrong in this particular case. Otherwise this kind of error message could just blow your day.
aaah
and THIS is the value of reading the comments in slashdot.
Thanks!
Ubuntu is an African word meaning 'I can't configure Debian'