Best software error message ever(blog.pmarca.com)
blog.pmarca.com
Best software error message ever
http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/12/best-software-e.html
14 comments
My favorite one was "Non-System Disk or Disk Error". It seems subtle, but it had everything:
1) Doesn't make any sense.
2) Doesn't point to a solution.
3) Isn't really an error.
4) Completely prevents the computer from working.
5) Happened routinely--millions of times a day, I'm sure.
6) Seemed to infect pretty girls the most, allowing me to heroicly solve the problem (by ejecting the diskette from the drive during boot up.)
Good times.
1) Doesn't make any sense.
2) Doesn't point to a solution.
3) Isn't really an error.
4) Completely prevents the computer from working.
5) Happened routinely--millions of times a day, I'm sure.
6) Seemed to infect pretty girls the most, allowing me to heroicly solve the problem (by ejecting the diskette from the drive during boot up.)
Good times.
It's a pathetic error message but it does make sense I think. The computar tried to boot a disk but it wasn't a (bootable) "system disk" or it is a system disk, but it's broken.
Specifically, it's pathetic because it's grammatically ambiguous and requires additional knowledge.
It could easily be parsed grammatically as, "There was an error on the non-system disk or the disk" which makes no sense. Even when you parse it the way it was intended, you need to know that the PC tried to boot from a disk drive in order to comprehend the message.
It could easily be parsed grammatically as, "There was an error on the non-system disk or the disk" which makes no sense. Even when you parse it the way it was intended, you need to know that the PC tried to boot from a disk drive in order to comprehend the message.
A friend told me about once receiving a BIOS error like the following:
Error: No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue.
Error: No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue.
My Favorite:
In an early version of Linux I used to get "Mr. Potato Head is on the loose!" every once in a while...
In an early version of Linux I used to get "Mr. Potato Head is on the loose!" every once in a while...
Pretty funny. I don't think anything will ever top the simple 'printer on fire', though.
Give 'em credit for making progress, they don't have a "Reboot Computer?" button as the default selection ala: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=86329
Pretty much sums up my entire history with Windows.
How else could I explain my love of Gentoo? It's transparent in comparison.
How else could I explain my love of Gentoo? It's transparent in comparison.
[deleted]
Marc is still pissed at MS after these years. What a passion & commitment Marc.
Gotta love Vista. Blue screens on boot up have become part of my morning ritual.
"The program 'apt-get' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: apt-get install apt"