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The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time

Posted by samzenpus on from the let-them-down-easy dept.

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.

4 of 623 comments (clear)

  1. Sad Mac and Startup Beep by samkass · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Mac, having 4-channel wave sound from the beginning, went one better than the PC when it came to the startup failure beep. While the PC would beep out some sequence of single notes indicating hardware errors, the Mac would simply play one chord. A successful bootup was a pleasant chime (sometimes heard on Futurama or other shows when something boots up). However, hardware errors not only produced the sad mac, but a discordant anti-chime. For those with good ears, it was sometimes possible to diagnose some errors by the particular musical dissonance. In particular, some familiar with upgrading the Mac Plus became familiar with a chord indicating bad RAM.

    Good times.

    --
    E pluribus unum
  2. Re:Your site is padded with ads. Continue? by ThinkTwicePostOnce · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I'll bet you'll like the Re-Pagination firefox extension. When you get to the bottom of the first
    page, do a right click on the "2" or the word "next" in that list of pages. Then you just scroll
    down and see all the pages without clicking on anything more. The extension fetches the pages and
    appends them to the bottom. I consider it "jerking the reader around" when sites have lists like that,
    and thwarting them always provides a nice feeling of satisfaction and triumph!

    --
    Hide all sigs: Click HELP+Prefs (top), VIEWING (last on right), DISABLE SIGS (3rd on left) and SAVE (hidden at bottom).
  3. How about.... by ConstantiusChlorus · · Score: 5, Interesting
    "Your password must be at least 18770 characters and cannot repeat any of your previous 30689 passwords."

    See KB276304

  4. "Nobody knows why it's blue..." by dschuetz · · Score: 5, Interesting

    I do. :)

    There was this crazy guy I knew in college, who went to work for Microsoft. We'd drifted apart, though we both still lurk in some private email groups of friends from that timeframe. About 5 years ago, I saw his name in a Newsweek article about some crazy-hip new MS project, calling him "a relative codger" at 33, brought in to rein in the young guns on the project. The official Microsoft web page for the project featured a "meet the team" section, which next to him, included the phrase "Wrote the BSOD."

    I couldn't let that lie, so I wrote him a quick note asking if it was true, was he proud of it, and most importantly, "Why blue?" Here's part of the response:

    I chose white on blue because that was the same color that the firmware on the Mips workstations we had used for their boot selection screen. Plus that was the default for the old character mode SlickEdit code editor that most of the devs used.

    and:

    No, it is not something I am particularly proud of, but once the kids I work with found out about this little skeleton in my closet they never let me forget it.

    (He also avows responsibility for the Win 9x blue screen, "which gets a lot more air time.")