Dumb Windows Error Messages
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Messages of All Time They're rarely helpful. Actually, they usually add insult to injury. But what would computing be without 'em? Herewith, a tribute to a baker's dozen of the best (or is that worst?). By Harry McCracken |
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Thursday, September 18, 2008 at 5:28 am "To err is human, but to really foul windows error code 80244019 things up you need a computer." So goes an old quip attributed to Paul Ehrlich. He was right. One of the defining things windows blue screen error codes about computers is that they-or, more specifically, the people who program them-get so many things so very wrong. Hence the need for error messages, which have been around nearly as long as computers themselves.. In theory, error messages
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should be painful at worst and boring at best. They tend to be cryptic; they rarely offer an apology even when one is due; they like to provide useless information like hexadecimal numbers and to withhold facts that would be useful, like plain-English explanations of how to right want went wrong. In multiple ways, most of them represent technology at its most irritating. In fact, people have an emotional attachment to many of them-like Proust's Madeleine, an
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error message from a machine out of your past can transport you back in time. That's a big part of why people form clubs to celebrate them, have them tattooed on their person, chronicle them for Wikipedia, and name albums after them. An entire company, the wonderfully-named Errorwear, exists to emblazon the images of such classic errors as the Blue Screen of Death (in four variations!), Guru Meditation, Red Ring of Death, and Sad Mac on T-shirts. And then there's this article-my stab at rounding up the major error messages of the past thirty years or so. I ranked them on a variety of factors, including how many people they bedeviled over the years, their aesthetic appeal or lack thereof, and the likelihood that they were notifying you of a genuine computing disaster. Your rankings probably differ from mine, which is why this story ends with a poll on the last page. Ready? Let's work through the list, starting with number thirteen and working our way up to the greatest error message of 'em all. 13. Abort, Retry, Fail? (MS-DOS) In many ways, it remains an error message to judge other error messages by. It's terse. (Three words.) It's confusing. (What's the difference between Abort and Fail?) It could indicate either a minor glitch (you forgot to put a floppy disk in the drive) or catastrophe (y
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programs on-air transcripts news quiz CNN WEB SITES: TIME INC. SITES: Go To ... Time.com People Money Fortune EW MORE SERVICES: video on http://www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9810/06/errormess.idg/ demand video archive audio on demand news email services free email accounts desktop headlines pointcast pagenet DISCUSSION: message boards chat feedback SITE GUIDES: help contents search FASTER ACCESS: europe japan WEB SERVICES: From... 'Stupid' computer error messages leave users befuddled October 6, 1998 Web posted at 2:05 PM EDT by Steve Ulfelder (IDG) -- You know what ticks off Ben Ezzell? Bad error windows error messages. Messages that "offer no intelligence, don't tell the user what's wrong [and] frustrate people," he says. Ezzell is a veteran programmer and author (how many books has he written? "I think 23," he says with uncertainty) who lives in Guerneville, Calif. While researching his latest book, "Developing Windows Error Messages," Ezzell and publisher O'Reilly & Associates held a contest in which they asked windows error code people to send in their favorite bad error messages. Ezzell was the sole judge. Of course, there are degrees of rottenness. "Some bad error messages," Ezzell says, "are just placeholders that slip through. We've all been there." Ezzell acknowledges he once wrote a message that addressed the user as "Dumbkopf" and was mortified when the dialog made its way into production. Thus, he sympathized with Orem, Utah-based Viewpoint DataLabs, which managed to include the following in its LiveArt install: MORE COMPUTING INTELLIGENCE IDG.net home page Computerworld's home page Computerworld "Emmerce" Get Media Grok and The Industry Standard Intelligencer delivered for free Reviews & in-depth info at IDG.net IDG.net's personal news page Questions about computers? Let IDG.net's editors help you Search IDG.net in 12 languages Subscribe to IDG.net's free daily newsletter for IT leaders News Radio Computerworld Minute Fusion audio primers Setup is unable to locate a suitable version of DirectX on your machine. You will need to install DirectX before you can use LiveArt98, dumbass! Sympathy notwithstanding, Ezzell awarded the entry third prize. Red-faced