The Thirteen Greatest Error Messages of All Time 623
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.
and the fourteenth error should be... (Score:5, Funny)
go away. (Score:5, Funny)
"you don't exist. go away."
Kernel Panic!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Kernel Panic? Why not just teach that damned kernel some self-defense lessons. Or, at least tell it to grow a set of balls. Just stop the damned Panic.
Your site is padded with ads. Continue? (Score:5, Funny)
Somehow, spreading an article across many, many ad-ridden pages is not considered an error.
Re:and the fourteenth error should be... (Score:1, Funny)
Dude, are you trying to make the universe implode? It can only handle 13 errors!
The error no one wishes to hear. (Score:5, Funny)
They missed it: (Score:5, Funny)
Divide by cucumber error (Score:5, Funny)
Hey I got an error trying to access TFA (Score:3, Funny)
the BSOD screensaver (Score:5, Funny)
I just run the "BSOD" screensaver on my linux machine, with all error messages enabled. I love having people come in, pause, say, "Um... looks like your machine is really screwed up". Then I bump the machine out of screensaver mode, and their jaws drop.
Linux took humor in error messages even farther: (Score:4, Funny)
I did the write-in option:
"Aiee penguin on the SCSI-bus."
That's the only time I've thrown back my head and laughed when debugging a crash. I can understand how "lp0 on fire" won out for historical significance, though.
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Technically most are not error messages, but they are quite interesting.
One I'm missing in the list is "Too many colors". Some very old windows programs refused to work when gfx was set to more than 256 colors.
A long time ago... (Score:5, Funny)
My Favorite (Score:5, Funny)
WebTV Anecdote "The Wrong Error Message" (Score:5, Funny)
The following story comes from Andy McFadden [fadden.com]:
Re:Where's the keyboard error? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Where's the keyboard error? (Score:1, Funny)
Old bios I had said:
Error: Keyboard Is Missing, Press Any Key To Continue.
Long long long is too long (Score:3, Funny)
long long long foo;
int main () {}
EOF
$ gcc foo.c -o foo
foo.c:1: error: 'long long long' is too long for GCC
The Mac Programming Works C Compiler... (Score:5, Funny)
"...And the lord said, `lo, there shall only be case or default labels inside a switch statement'"
"a typedef name was a complete surprise to me at this point in your program"
"`Volatile' and `Register' are not miscible"
"This struct already has a perfectly good definition"
"Symbol table full - fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer"
"type in (cast) must be scalar; ANSI 3.3.4; page 39, lines 10-11 (I know you don't care, I'm just trying to annoy you)"
Re:and the fourteenth error should be... (Score:5, Funny)
Who is General Failure, and why is he reading my hard drive?
ed -- the question mark! (Score:5, Funny)
$ ed
help
?
list
?
quit
?
bye
?
die
?
FSCK OFF and DIE you fscking BASTARD!!!
?
^C
Re:the BSOD screensaver (Score:5, Funny)
Reply Hazy, Ask Again (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:The Daily WTF (Score:4, Funny)
Some are absolute genius!
You just missed a perfect opportunity to say they were brillant.
Re:Divide by cucumber error (Score:5, Funny)
++?????++ Out of Cheese Error. Redo From Start.
too many pages (Score:4, Funny)
They missed this one:
"Too many pages on the article."
Re:Talk about a missed opportunity- Printer on fir (Score:5, Funny)
PC LOAD LETTER
What the fuck does that mean?
Re:Where's the keyboard error? (Score:2, Funny)
No Keyboard Detected. Press F1 to Continue.
Gets my top vote hands down.
I also like: (Score:3, Funny)
"Aieee, killing interrupt handler" (Linux kernel)
PS, hey, I still have Excellent karma... why no bonus? Now I'm, like, nobody!
Re:PC LOAD LETTER (Score:5, Funny)
Uber Classic Missing Message (Score:4, Funny)
Re:and the fourteenth error should be... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:ed -- the question mark! (Score:5, Funny)
$ ed
help
?
list
?
quit
?
bye
?
die
?
FSCK OFF and DIE you fscking BASTARD!!!
?
^C
Actually, substitute the ?s for loud beeps and strange letters flooding the screen, and you've got vi.
It's a great idiot proof tool for making. If you don't care about security, but don't want dangerously unsavvy people to get at the guest account or whatever, just start up vi in the console as you leave the computer, and only those that can prove themselves worthy against the mighty dragon that is vi shall pass.
Fail Whale (Score:2, Funny)
I like the Fail Whale, but I think that rather than being accompanied by birds, he should have the company of just a bowl of petunias.
Much more fitting.
(...tip of the hat to DNA.)
Re:Sad Mac and Startup Beep (Score:3, Funny)
Raytheon RDS 500 (Score:4, Funny)
That was it. Nothing else. Couldn't even bother to spell the word properly. It meant that somewhere in your 10,000 cards(!) of Fortran there was an error. Over time I learned what to look for when this happened.
We were real programmers then. Didn't have these girly compilers that tell you exactly what and where the problem is.
Not enough disk space to delete files (Score:3, Funny)
"Cannot delete filename: there is not enough disk space
Delete one or more files to free disk space, and then try again
This happens when you try and delete (as in move to the recycle bin) a file on a disk that's almost full, probably due to the extra space needed to store where the file was deleted from
Re:the BSOD screensaver (Score:5, Funny)
That's nothing. I made the "You may be a victim of software counterfeiting" screen [msdn.com] my wallpaper.
Lp0: on fire (Score:3, Funny)
I liked "lp0: on fire". I wonder what other things they could extend this too?
"Dell0: on fire."
"iPod0: on fire."
"TheRoof0, TheRoof0, TheRoof0: on fire."
"Heart2: on fire."
Re:What about this one? (Score:2, Funny)
Is this some sort of trap...?
Re:The most honest Windows error message (Score:5, Funny)
Yep. A Slightly better phrasing I've seen, every time our old Windows Exchange 4.0 box came up"
Warning: An unexpected condition occured:
Exchange started successfully.
As explained, its a race condition calling GetLastError().
Re:and the fourteenth error should be... (Score:3, Funny)
Weird thing about this kind of BIOS error:
I just set up a new computer. SATA drives. No IDE drives. Every time I boot up, it complains that there's no IDE hard drive (boots from the SATA hdd fine, though). Have to hit F1 to force it through.. even after I've disabled the IDE controller.
Really weird.
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:3, Funny)
Excel used to have an error that read "Error: Not Enough" and the dialog box had only an "Ok" button. Very entertaining and annoying all at the same time.
During P.O.S.T. (Score:2, Funny)
ERROR: No keyboard found. Hit F1 to continue.
(No, I'm not kidding.)
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:4, Funny)
My favorites that I've gotten:
"This wizard will complete the installation of:
AQP AA002! P O a @ P @1 Ae IoD'i"
And:
"You don't exist. Go away."
Re:ed -- the question mark! (Score:2, Funny)
Painful (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Unix (Score:3, Funny)
I think everyone remembers their first segmentation fault or core dump.
Dude, I can't even remember when I stopped wearing diapers, let alone the first time I took a dump!
Re:ed -- the question mark! (Score:5, Funny)
Hrumph. That's nothing compared to writing a program that takes 7 1/2 million years to run and then the answer is "42".
What a rich topic (Score:4, Funny)
My favorite ever I found by doing a hex dump of a Tandy computer. I don't think many users saw this message. It said:
ERROR 0: POWER NOT ON
My second favorite came from a General Electric time sharing computer. It was:
EVIL DO LOOP
Re:and the fourteenth error should be... (Score:3, Funny)
He's Major Malfunction's boss, looking for Private Pictures.
Re:The most honest Windows error message (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Divide by cucumber error (Score:2, Funny)
Reminds me of Red Dwarf - I guess you could call this an error message.
Holly: Rude alert! Rude alert! An electrical fire has knocked out my voice recognition unicycle! Many Wurlitzers are missing from my database. Abandon shop! This is not a daffodil. Repeat, this is not a daffodil.
Rimmer: Well, thankfully Holly's unaffected.
Re:and the fourteenth error should be... (Score:3, Funny)
Obviously if the target existed it would give a different error message.
Re:The most honest Windows error message (Score:3, Funny)
"Error: The operation completed successfully"
I kid you not. This one was repeatable on any windows box whenever Dr.Watson was invoked after a program crashed. It appeared in win 3.0, 3.1, 3.11, 95, 98, NT, 2000 (don't know about win me, xp or vista). Just click the "save as" button for the error log, then click cancel. Then the magic error appeared in its own box:
"Error: The operation completed successfully"
Dr.Watson terminated as well, of course.
I recall using a JOVIAL compiler in the 1980s. My favorite message was:
COMPILE COMPLETE: NONE OF THE ERRORS WERE DETECTED.
418 I'm a Teapot (Score:3, Funny)
A close relative of the common '404 page not found' error, 418 I'm a Teapot is the response specified in the RFC 2324 - Hypertext Coffee Pot Control Protocol [ietf.org] (HTCPCP).
Any attempt to brew coffee with a teapot should result in the error code "418 I'm a teapot". The resulting entity body MAY be short and stout.
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:5, Funny)
It's not Panic's fault. He's only following the orders of General Protection Fault.
No BeOS love? (Score:4, Funny)
Error: Success (Score:2, Funny)
Happened to a friend of mine while installing Ubuntu (IIRC):
http://img241.imageshack.us/img241/2758/dsc00035ca8.jpg
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:4, Funny)
The most poignant error message I ever recieved was on a HP-UNIX platform which gave me the sad, childhood-crushing line:
"There is no magic."
So sad...
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:5, Funny)
My favorite:
Keyboard not found. Press F1 to continue, Del to enter Setup.
Re:The Daily WTF (Score:1, Funny)
I await the greatest battle of all time: TDWTF's MFD vs Slashdot's idle.
My money's on MFD -- at least some of the comments there are worth reading.
Does this count? (Score:3, Funny)
The other night John Connor is swimming in the Pacific off Santa Monica Pier after jumping in to evade Terminator Cromartie, who proceeded to jump in after him and try to drown him. After escaping, John looks up and sees his protector Terminator Cameron (now subsequently referred to as "The Caminator") peering down at him.
He says, "A little help?"
The Caminator says, "I can't swim."
He says, "I just figured that out."
Re:and the fourteenth error should be... (Score:3, Funny)
And of course the 21st century counterpart:
Bluetooth mouse detected. Click OK to activate.
Pikers all of them... (Score:4, Funny)
My favorite error message has probably never been seen by any other Slashdotter...
I worked on the FCS MK88/2 (Trident-I Backfit fire control) in the Navy - a room sized collection of computers, old fashioned hard drives the size of footlockers, and associated electronics. In normal operation is was medium noisy what with the disk drives clattering, dozen of power supplies humming (including two big 2kw 120VAC to 28VDC converters), the printer occasionally printing a status or system report, and sometimes a switch rolling as the system operated. It also looked somewhat like you'd think a computer looked like if all you had to go on was Hollywood... Though the lights didn't blink (except for one set on the MDF's), there were a couple of hundred indicator lights scattered across the system plus the console had a couple of dozen more usually lit.
One day, cruising along at [mumble] feet under the North Atlantic, the generator that provided power to the system ate itself... In an instant all that humming stopped and all the lights went dark.
Except one.
On the alarm and monitoring portion of the console (powered by a separate supply) one red light came on, the only light lit and the only portion of the whole massive pile of machinery that had power...
"Input Power Fault".
Well, duh...
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:How about.... (Score:4, Funny)
Even better, in the linked kb article:
"Note that the number of required characters changes from 17,145 to 18,770 with the installation of SP1."
Dazed and confused, but trying to continue (Score:3, Funny)
My favourite error message is when the Linux kernel encounters an NMI error (can be due to bad memory) on boot:
"Dazed and confused, but trying to continue"
There use to be something about bad chips in the messages about 10 years ago when I encountered it, but the error messages have been changed in the kernel since then.
Re:Raytheon RDS 500 (Score:1, Funny)
It meant that somewhere in your 10,000 cards(!) of Fortran there was an error. Over time I learned what to look for when this happened.
The bottle?
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:3, Funny)
(Some characters removed because of filter errors...)
arch arm mach-orion rd88f5182-setup.c: Maintainer: Ronen Shitrit <rshitrit@marvell.com>
arch arm mach-orion rd88f5182-setup.c: Maintainer: Ronen Shitrit <rshitrit@marvell.com>
arch arm mach-orion kurobox_pro-setup.c: Maintainer: Ronen Shitrit <rshitrit@marvell.com>
arch arm mach-orion kurobox_pro-setup.c: Maintainer: Ronen Shitrit <rshitrit@marvell.com>
arch ppc syslib ppc405_pci.c: the kernel try to remap our BAR #1 and fuck up bus
arch sparc mm srmmu.c: this shit off... nice job Fujitsu.
arch sparc lib checksum.S: give up. I'm serious, I am going to kick the living shit
arch sparc kernel sunos_ioctl.c: Binary compatibility is good American knowhow fuckin' up.
arch sparc kernel pcic.c: to shit into regions like that.
arch sparc kernel head.S: XXX Fucking Cypress...
arch mips sgi-ip22 ip22-setup.c: fucking with the memory controller because it needs to know the
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1064 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1065 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1066 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1067 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1068 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1069 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1070 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1071 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1072 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irix5sys.S: sys irix_unimp 0 1073 XXX AFS shit DC
arch mips kernel irixioctl.c: irixioctl.c: A fucking mess...
arch mips kernel irixelf.c:#if 0 XXX No fucking way dude...
arch mips kernel genex.S: Big shit, we now may have two dirty primary cache lines for the same
arch mips kernel sysirix.c: 2,191 lines of complete and utter shit coming up...
arch mips pci ops-bridge.c: IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe
arch mips pci ops-bridge.c: IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe
arch mips pci ops-bridge.c: IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe
arch mips pci ops-bridge.c: IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe
arch mips pci ops-bridge.c: IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe
arch mips pci ops-bridge.c: IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe
arch mips pci ops-bridge.c: IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe
arch mips pci ops-bridge.c: IOC3 is fucked fucked beyond believe
Worse than failure (Score:5, Funny)
Actually, I've had "ERROR: No error" before.
I've seen the following in the Windows "Event Viewer" logs. (Reproduced from memory, so it's not verbatim, but it's pretty close.)
The following problem occurred during installation of Microsoft Office 2003:
Success
(Apparently, when installing via GPO, MSI sometimes reports an error despite everything being okay. So the message gets logged. It can happen with any package. I just liked the double entendre from when it happened to Office.)
(BTW, the subject line comes from this essay [thedailywtf.com]. If you haven't read it, you should. What's worse than failure? Success. HHOS.)
Here's one for old Pascal hackers (Score:3, Funny)
I recall using a JOVIAL compiler in the 1980s. My favorite message was:
COMPILE COMPLETE: NONE OF THE ERRORS WERE DETECTED.
I once heard tell of a Pascal compiler that could produce the error message:
You lied to me when you told me this was a program.
Psychoanalyze me... (Score:5, Funny)
When I spotted a bug in the output I typed...
list 1000-4000
and my program responded...
Really? Why?
Totally derailed my train of thought.
Re:A system call that should never fail has failed (Score:2, Funny)
"Something is broken - Fix something"
It was well and truly borked - only time in my Unix admin career that I resorted to a re-install!
Re:Kernel Panic!!! (Score:5, Funny)
My first admin responsibility was an AT&T 3B2 400, running SYSVR4. The bad days always had a slightly comical edge to them. Who couldn't feel sorry for a console that said only:
KERNEL: DOUBLE PANIC
The kernel panicked while trying to panic
I couldn't find that on Google just now. Damn kids and their hardened systems.
Re:the BSOD screensaver (Score:3, Funny)
One guy I know once installed the BSOD screensaver on a server. The next day, he went on holiday for a week.
When he came back, the sysadmins had gone insane...
Amiga Jazzbench (Score:2, Funny)