Darren O'Neill

Recently upon boot-up my laptop has decided to start prompting me with an “Invalid license” error message with a nice OK button. This unhelpful and useless error has got me thinking of classic computer error messages.

Firstly, for those of you who can remember the Eudora mail client (I was forced to use it back in the day):
“Excuse me but Eudora could use some help”
OK

Then there is the famous Microsoft Office error, which I’m sure you have all encountered:
“You are closing the Office Shortcut Bar. The Office Shortcut Bar will start again automatically when you start Windows. Do you want the Office Shortcut Bar to start automatically when you start Windows?”
YES | NO

Other less than helpful messages:

“User Authentication. Your session has expired. Please re-authenticate”
OK

“Symbol table full – fatal heap error; please go buy a RAM upgrade from your local Apple dealer”

“You can’t modify a constant, float upstream, win an argument with the IRS, or satisfy this compiler”

It’s not just programs that like to entertain though; here is a selection of phrases my university lecturers used on at least one occasion:

“A floppy is essential” – One teacher trying to explain to me the benefits of saving my Pascal program onto a floppy disk.

“It looks at the address bus and says: ‘It’s for me’”. – The same teacher, this time enlightening us on PCI architecture.

“I could leave the program as it is and satisfy myself” – What can you say to this?

“If the cubicle doesn’t have walls the locked door doesn’t do its job” – I think this one was used when talking about multi-threaded programs in Java. Even giving it context, it still makes no sense.

Tags: error messages, Java, Microsoft, programming