Comment On File... Save As... Hard Copy

Apparently this is from the Van-Halen School of Hot Teacher Programming.

"I got my pencil! Give me something to write on man!"

Umm first?

And I'm sure that the network interface is a printer/scanner/franking machine.

KattMan:

Apparently this is from the Van-Halen School of Hot Teacher Programming.

"I got my pencil! Give me something to write on man!"

LOL! (I really did laugh out loud on that one)

I dont feel tardy

That is absolutely "Failure"ing amazing!

This is the best pop-up in a long time.

Awesome. "Booting from scanner" made me laugh.

This makes perfect sense to a hardware expert. Open the housing of a hard drive and peer down the middle of spindle and you'll see the tiny printer that prints out a microscopic copy of your document every time you save. The drive's arm then pulls the copy out on the disk surface for storage.

Staples sells paper for your hard drive. Just go there and ask.

--Rank

Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements.

Verbose?

Even aside from the paper error, that popup is horrible. "Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements" ? Did those people get paid to make intentionally unreadable error messages ? Crap like that is what drives people to Macs. The sentence doesn't even MEAN anything other than "Something went wrong!". It's not like it's cryptic because it gives a lot of important debug details.

I would boot Linux from a scanner faster... muahahaha... any way, very funny.

User: "My PC doesn't boot"
IT-Guy: "Is there any paper on your printer?"
User: "What? I have a network printer"
IT-Guy: "OK. Does all the networked printers have paper?"
User: "How am I supposed to know that? There are like 300 of them"
IT-Guy: "OK. Does your scanner allows colors?"
User: "ARGV!!! You're so Xevious"

CAPTCHA: "You're so xevious :)"

Are you sure they're not just using paper tape or punch card storage?

[twisti]:

Crap like that is what drives people to Macs. The sentence doesn't even MEAN anything other than "Something went wrong!". It's not like it's cryptic because it gives a lot of important debug details.

I've never developed in Mac (thank god) but I think that this is OS independent, every developer writes whatever he/she feels right for exceptions. I like the: Error 403 and a bunch of comments commenting what every error means, in code comments of course, why would I allow users to know wtf is wrong with my software.

CAPTCHA: Bling bling, look at my grill, is all coffee/smoke yellow.

Uberbandit:

I've never developed in Mac (thank god) ...

*shrug* I've found writing native Cocoa code to be refreshingly pleasant.

I don't even bother with disc OR paper. Instead of hard drives I just have large banks of chinese orphans memorizing numbers. Best part, when I taught them hex instead of binary my storage capacity went up by 16x!

[twisti]:

Even aside from the paper error, that popup is horrible. "Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements" ? Did those people get paid to make intentionally unreadable error messages ? Crap like that is what drives people to Macs. The sentence doesn't even MEAN anything other than "Something went wrong!". It's not like it's cryptic because it gives a lot of important debug details.

where i work we actually have a "Something went wrong" error

faer:

where i work we actually have a "Something went wrong" error

Better than this one (taken from Interface Hall of Shame).

[twisti]:

Even aside from the paper error, that popup is horrible. "Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements" ? Did those people get paid to make intentionally unreadable error messages ? Crap like that is what drives people to Macs. The sentence doesn't even MEAN anything other than "Something went wrong!". It's not like it's cryptic because it gives a lot of important debug details.

This is Firebird, fb_sort is the same kind of file as ib_sort on Interbase, temporary index.

The Interbase exception handling is the problem, it simply calls everything a "completely cancel everything" error, some times it even disconnects you.

The meaning of the sentence is: An internal error ocurred causing the task to stop, rollback changes and disallow further work. (So you know if something at all got written on the DB file or not)



Even though: How is the printer involved at all while saving a file? It's absolutely an OS error, maybe the printers's queue directory is set to the TEMP directory?

The only issue he has is that booting from the scanner takes several days.

Heh, I was in a Mac lab years ago, one of my coworkers was an "expert", diddled with the scanner and ended up setting it's ID to 0. Oddly enough, the Mac didn't like booting off the scanner...

mav:

I don't even bother with disc OR paper. Instead of hard drives I just have large banks of chinese orphans memorizing numbers. Best part, when I taught them hex instead of binary my storage capacity went up by 16x!

reedickulous

H|B:

Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements.

Verbose?

Naa, he just ascending an unsanitary tributary without any means of locomotion.
You know what they say, defecation occurs.

The scary part is I actually used to practice this kind of thing.

That's why we needed Linux partition types.

mav:

I don't even bother with disc OR paper. Instead of hard drives I just have large banks of chinese orphans memorizing numbers. Best part, when I taught them hex instead of binary my storage capacity went up by 16x!

You are cool. When I did it storage only incremented by 8x :p

"Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements"

For those not familiar with the term 'precludes' which I'm assuming is what is confusing most of the readers in that sentence, it sorta means 'to prevent'. Hence that sentence roughly translates to "A system error occurred and execution was stopped leaving the remaining statements un-executed."

The WTF isn't the wording imo :)

HA HA
...This reminds me of the time my printer ran out of paper!
LOL!!!
HA HA

H|B:

Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements.

Verbose?

Quite.

Henceforth, I will commence committing the production of sentences which should undoubtedly reflect the correct concatenation and meaning of the thoughts of mine, precluding any misinterpretation of the information by my interlocutor.

H|B:

Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements.

Verbose?

"Setting the expando property of the document object to false precludes the functionality of all expandos within the document."

http://redhanded.hobix.com/cult/ahaNoticeTheExpandoWhichPrecludes.html
http://msdn.microsoft.com/workshop/author/dhtml/reference/properties/expando.asp

[twisti]:

Even aside from the paper error, that popup is horrible. "Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements" ? ... The sentence doesn't even MEAN anything other than "Something went wrong!".

While the phrasing leaves much to be desired, there are at least three useful pieces of information in that error message:

- There was a failure. (That's more specific than "something went wrong".)

- The failure was caused by a system error. Since there are failure modes which aren't system errors, that's potentially important.

- This wasn't a recoverable failure; processing halted when the error occurred.

So the message that the application provided indicated the severity, class, and scope of the error.

Personally, I'd much rather have that than some "friendly" but vague message that provides no details.

KattMan:

H|B:

Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements.

Verbose?

Naa, he just ascending an unsanitary tributary without any means of locomotion.
You know what they say, defecation occurs.

The scary part is I actually used to practice this kind of thing.

You used to practice what?! I trust you had a good shower afterwards.

[twisti]:

Even aside from the paper error, that popup is horrible. "Unsuccessful execution caused by a system error that precludes successful execution of subsequent statements" ? Did those people get paid to make intentionally unreadable error messages ? Crap like that is what drives people to Macs. The sentence doesn't even MEAN anything other than "Something went wrong!". It's not like it's cryptic because it gives a lot of important debug details.

Don't forget the permissions error also. Even in NT4 it was taboo to put any files in WinNT/Temp unless you were the OS, and even the OS shouldn't be doing that. This crap is why most Windows users are forced to run as Admin-- because of crummy programmers that don't understand the concept of "permissions."

Error: no paper.
All things must wait until you
refill your hard drive.

Sorry, it's really hard to come up with error messages without thinking in haiku.

MichaelWojcik:

While the phrasing leaves much to be desired, there are at least three useful pieces of information in that error message:

- There was a failure. (That's more specific than "something went wrong".)

- The failure was caused by a system error. Since there are failure modes which aren't system errors, that's potentially important.

- This wasn't a recoverable failure; processing halted when the error occurred.

So the message that the application provided indicated the severity, class, and scope of the error.

Personally, I'd much rather have that than some "friendly" but vague message that provides no details.

How is "there was a failure" more specific than "something went wrong?"

How do you know processing was halted? We are only told that subsequent statements didn't execute properly. It didn't say those statements weren't executed.

So it provided the severity, class, and scope of the error. And it told us to fix the file save error was to put paper in the printer?

Well sir, I'll let you keep your error.

Jonh Robo:

HA HA
...This reminds me of the time my printer ran out of paper!
LOL!!!
HA HA

If you're going to do a lame joke, at least do it right:

...This reminds me of the time my hard disk ran out of paper!

Rank Amateur:

...
Staples sells paper for your hard drive. Just go there and ask.

Excellent suggestion. There is a Staples right downstairs from my office. During lunch, me and a cohort went there and had the following conversation:

US: to generic salesperson: I need a refill for my hard disk
GSP: what?
US: our hard disk ran out of paper because we are storing too many files; we need a refill
GSP: uh, just a second (calls computer-sales-person)
CSP: can I help you sir?
US: yes, we used up the paper in our hard disk by saving a lot of files, and we need a refill
CSP: hard disks don't use paper...
US: sure they do; every time you print a file to disk, it uses a little bit of paper off of the internal roll - like an adding machine. We need a refill for a 500GB Western Digital 7200 rpm disk
CSP: (looks around for another salesperson to dump us off on) ...I'm sorry sir, but we don't sell paper refills for hard disks.

At this point, I was waiting for the suggestion to try Office Max, but it didn't come; he excused himself to go check in the back, and didn't come back for 5 minutes. We got bored and left.

faer:

where i work we actually have a "Something went wrong" error

I regularly use:
SomethingWentHorribleWrongException.java
and
UserIsAMoronException.java

They're for pre alpha only, and the second really means UIDesignerScrewedUp

chrismcb:

MichaelWojcik:

While the phrasing leaves much to be desired, there are at least three useful pieces of information in that error message:

- There was a failure. (That's more specific than "something went wrong".)

- The failure was caused by a system error. Since there are failure modes which aren't system errors, that's potentially important.

- This wasn't a recoverable failure; processing halted when the error occurred.

So the message that the application provided indicated the severity, class, and scope of the error.

Personally, I'd much rather have that than some "friendly" but vague message that provides no details.

How is "there was a failure" more specific than "something went wrong?"

How do you know processing was halted? We are only told that subsequent statements didn't execute properly. It didn't say those statements weren't executed.

So it provided the severity, class, and scope of the error. And it told us to fix the file save error was to put paper in the printer?

Well sir, I'll let you keep your error.

"there was a failure" means the process itself failed, "something went wrong?" doesn't indicate what went wrong :P


This is Firebird, fb_sort is the same kind of file as ib_sort on Interbase, temporary index. It is saved on $TMP/%TEMP%. The Interbase exception handling simply calls everything a "completely cancel everything" error, some times it even disconnects you.

You know processing was halted because the sentence tells you "An internal error ocurred causing the task to stop, rollback changes and disallow further work"

JB:

mav:

I don't even bother with disc OR paper. Instead of hard drives I just have large banks of chinese orphans memorizing numbers. Best part, when I taught them hex instead of binary my storage capacity went up by 16x!

You are cool. When I did it storage only incremented by 8x :p

You both might want to count how many binary digits a single hex digit represents, again.

The program could have been using the printing subsystem to generate the file, like when you use print-to-file to generate a binary output for later printing, and ran out of space or encountered a file naming conflict or locked file. Just a WAG.

foxyshadis:

JB:

mav:

I don't even bother with disc OR paper. Instead of hard drives I just have large banks of chinese orphans memorizing numbers. Best part, when I taught them hex instead of binary my storage capacity went up by 16x!

You are cool. When I did it storage only incremented by 8x :p

You both might want to count how many binary digits a single hex digit represents, again.

That would be 0 through 15, (0-F) for a grand total of 16 "values" in one "character".

So technically I guess my storage went up by 8x. But you all get the gist. Damn geeks.

mav:

foxyshadis:

JB:

mav:

I don't even bother with disc OR paper. Instead of hard drives I just have large banks of chinese orphans memorizing numbers. Best part, when I taught them hex instead of binary my storage capacity went up by 16x!

You are cool. When I did it storage only incremented by 8x :p

You both might want to count how many binary digits a single hex digit represents, again.

That would be 0 through 15, (0-F) for a grand total of 16 "values" in one "character".

So technically I guess my storage went up by 8x. But you all get the gist. Damn geeks.

Yes, 16, or 2^4, "values". Like what you get with four bits. Why didn't you try teaching them Chinise?

Barney:

mav:

foxyshadis:

JB:

mav:

I don't even bother with disc OR paper. Instead of hard drives I just have large banks of chinese orphans memorizing numbers. Best part, when I taught them hex instead of binary my storage capacity went up by 16x!

You are cool. When I did it storage only incremented by 8x :p

You both might want to count how many binary digits a single hex digit represents, again.

That would be 0 through 15, (0-F) for a grand total of 16 "values" in one "character".

So technically I guess my storage went up by 8x. But you all get the gist. Damn geeks.

Yes, 16, or 2^4, "values". Like what you get with four bits. Why didn't you try teaching them Chinise?

They already knew Chinese, and prior to my number memorization training the only experience they had was making shoes.

This brings me to another good point: Nothing cures shoe leather better than the tears of orphans.

I wonder that nobody made Wooden Table jokes with this.

Maximilianop:

"there was a failure" means the process itself failed, "something went wrong?" doesn't indicate what went wrong :P


This is Firebird, fb_sort is the same kind of file as ib_sort on Interbase, temporary index. It is saved on $TMP/%TEMP%. The Interbase exception handling simply calls everything a "completely cancel everything" error, some times it even disconnects you.

You know processing was halted because the sentence tells you "An internal error ocurred causing the task to stop, rollback changes and disallow further work"

"There was a failure" implies the process itself failed? How do you infer that? Perhaps it was a disk drive failure (the process didn't fail, it is happily humming along) Perhaps the printer failed. The process itself didn't fail, the file didn't print, but the process didn't fail.

"There was a failure" might imply a higher severity level than "something wnet wrong" but it isn't more specific.

As for "an internal error occured, causing the task to stop, rollback changes and disallow further work" Yeah thats pretty specific, and while I didn't read between the lines, I didn't see that in the dialog box.

The storage comments here are the true WTF of this article.

I'll give you guys some hints:

One binary digit stores 2 distinct states, 0 and 1.

One hex digit stores 16 distinct states, 0 to F.

Now, what does that mean ? Obviously, most posters seem convinced that this means that one hex digit stores 8 times more data (or 16, as one particular dense poster suggested) than one binary digit.

Lets try another example:

One byte (8 bits) stores 256 distinct states: 0-255.

One word (16 bits) stores 65536 distinct states: 0-65535.

Now, 65536 is 256 times as much as 256. Now, try to think REALLY hard: Does one 16 bit word REALLY store 256 times as much data as one 8 bit byte ?

Solution: Of course not, it stores twice as much. Likewise, one hex digit is 4 bits, and hence stores 4 times as much as a single bit. You are confusing distinct states with storage capacity.

Now I hope I didn't make a mistake in this arrogant post, because that would make me look really stupid.

I have just printed my very witty comment and mailed it in. It should arrive in 1-3 business days.

Maximilianop:

It is saved on $TMP/%TEMP%.

In this case, the wtf is that someone (user? Windows?) set %TEMP% to the system temp (which not necessarily everyone can access I think?) instead of profile temp directory.

Original Poster:

Jamin doesn't trust traditional filesystems. You can keep your FATs and your NTFSs; he'll stick with paper.

Maybe you should try a propper file system like EXTx or UFS.

JB:

mav:

I don't even bother with disc OR paper. Instead of hard drives I just have large banks of chinese orphans memorizing numbers. Best part, when I taught them hex instead of binary my storage capacity went up by 16x!

You are cool. When I did it storage only incremented by 8x :p

Maybe he also taught the kids compression -:)

The real WTF is that his table is named "apa".

z:

The real WTF is that his table is named "apa".

Apa means monkey in swedish. Or ape. We dont separate those two. Though, considering the error message, we have some code monkeys behind the scenes. :)