Best software error message ever

http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/12/best-software-e.html

by mattjaynes • 19 years ago

25 13 19 years ago

blog.pmarca.com

webnrrd2k• 19 years ago

My Favorite:

In an early version of Linux I used to get "Mr. Potato Head is on the loose!" every once in a while...

oditogre• 19 years ago

Pretty funny. I don't think anything will ever top the simple 'printer on fire', though.

dr• 19 years ago

I particularly like this one error I got in one of my ubuntu installs:

"The program 'apt-get' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: apt-get install apt"

Xichekolas• 19 years ago

Pretty much sums up my entire history with Windows.

How else could I explain my love of Gentoo? It's transparent in comparison.

mpfefferle• 19 years ago

Gotta love Vista. Blue screens on boot up have become part of my morning ritual.

mynameishere• 19 years ago

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.

staunch• 19 years ago

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.

Goladus• 19 years ago

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.

Darmani• 19 years ago

A friend told me about once receiving a BIOS error like the following:

Error: No keyboard detected. Press any key to continue.

dcurtis• 19 years ago

I got this one yesterday on a brand new Dell.

"No keyboard present. Press F1 to continue or DEL to enter setup..."

derefr• 19 years ago

I imagine they could still be entered through the serial console, though.

MuddyMo• 19 years ago

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

hello_moto• 19 years ago

Marc is still pissed at MS after these years. What a passion & commitment Marc.

Best software error message ever

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