• (cs) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    GalacticCowboy:
    It's really sad that the developer felt the need to provide a massive ASCII-art stop sign and articulate error message when he really should have simply prevented the destructive action in the first place - if navigating away will cause corruption, prevent the action and then inform the user you have done so. When given the option, users will merrily shoot themselves in the foot and then come to you for reconstructive surgery - all while blaming you for giving them the gun in the first place.
    How do you prevent the user from entering a different url in the address field?

    onbeforeunload()? I assume that's what he's already using... and it fires regardless of how the user attempts to leave the page.

  • (cs)

    I used to have fun while temping at a publishing company several years ago. That printer used to have conversations with people - I was close enough to see and hear reactions, and far enough away that people looking around didn't realise it was me...

    "This paper tastes funny" "No, it's not just me" "Wow that's a bad tie" "Is that a new hairstyle?" "Oh-oh, here's the boss" "Did you mean to print that?" "I'm too hot, open a window" etc...

    Three weeks of intermittent boredom spaced with trips to the bathroom to laugh in private ;-)

  • Harry (unregistered)

    Sure that wasn't the same software as Bomb #20 from Dark Star?

  • D. T. North (unregistered) in reply to salandur
    salandur:
    the empty desktop can actualy have unused icons. it is posible to hide al your icons, so they al become unused!

    It's still funny.

  • (cs) in reply to Corey
    Corey:
    The "unused icons on your desktop" popup is one of the most annoying things in Windows.

    Yeah, just barely related to the subject, but it's been popping up on all my computers this week.

    Then why don't you disable it?

    XP Pro = Right-click Desktop -> Properties -> Desktop tab -> Customize Desktop button -> Uncheck "Run Desktop Cleanup..." -> OK -> OK

  • test_subj (unregistered) in reply to Tei

    Actually, the printer one is from a small perl script that can change the idle display of HP printers to anything of your choosing. "Insert cheese slice to continue" has been on our office printer for several months. http://www.techravenews.com/2007/10/18/amuse-yourself-hp-printer-message-change/

  • Matt (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know

    Party pooper...way to ruin a cheap laugh

  • (cs) in reply to test_subj
    test_subj:
    Actually, the printer one is from a small perl script that can change the idle display of HP printers to anything of your choosing. "Insert cheese slice to continue" has been on our office printer for several months. http://www.techravenews.com/2007/10/18/amuse-yourself-hp-printer-message-change/

    Sometimes when people post on forums, they read a few of the earlier posts first.

  • C_Boo (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    A personality, in the context of printing, refers to the language used. For example, HP PCL versus Postscript. Someone probably tried to use a PS driver to print to this printer, although it doesn't have a PS option installed. Not a WTF, although it's a confusing message to people who are not technical and shouldn't be trying to interpret printer errors in the first place.

    I hate feeling compelled to stick up for end users, but "shouldn't be trying to interpret printer errors in the first place" is not an appropriate response when said message is being displayed on the front of a piece of consumer electronics. Log a descriptive error, but don't give Joe from sales a message that makes it appear the printer is hallucinating.

  • jw (unregistered)

    this printer is better!

  • Paul (unregistered) in reply to Nameless
    Nameless:
    tin:
    WtfReader:
    I saw the ASCII art as a robot until my eyes focused.
    I saw it as an alien.

    I saw it as a nuclear bomb explosion.

    I still see it as an RPG (a grenade, not the launcher) even though I can make out the STOP letters.

  • (cs) in reply to GalacticCowboy
    GalacticCowboy:
    onbeforeunload()? I assume that's what he's already using... and it fires regardless of how the user attempts to leave the page.

    ... and it intentionally gives you no option to actually cancel the unload process. All you can do is change the middle paragraph of the text in the dialog box - which is exactly what the developer did. If there were be any way to prevent users from leaving a page, all kinds of shady popup advertisers would already exploit it and the web would be a pain to use.

    The Real WTF is of course that their server-side software is not back button compatible. But if you can't solve that problem easily, such a note (MAYBE sans the fancy ascii art...) is the best you can do.

  • Matthew B (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know

    That first one strikes me as unremarkable, given that many printers' displays can be changed using a simple perl script executed over the network. There is a printer just a few feet away from me that has recently said things like "Feed Me", "Underpants", and "Beef Cartridge Low". It also showed "There will be cake" while the printer across the hall said "The cake is a lie."

    How? :o

  • Jon (unregistered) in reply to sweavo
    sweavo:
    Grovesy:
    DOA:
    Someone You Know:
    It also showed "There will be cake"
    Brilliant
    que another Brilliant! / Brillant! debate...
    queue another que/cue debate
    But there is no debate about that.
  • p (unregistered)

    Am I the only one enjoying the visitors thing the most? :)

  • (cs) in reply to PSWorx
    PSWorx:
    GalacticCowboy:
    onbeforeunload()? I assume that's what he's already using... and it fires regardless of how the user attempts to leave the page.

    ... and it intentionally gives you no option to actually cancel the unload process. All you can do is change the middle paragraph of the text in the dialog box - which is exactly what the developer did. If there were be any way to prevent users from leaving a page, all kinds of shady popup advertisers would already exploit it and the web would be a pain to use.

    The Real WTF is of course that their server-side software is not back button compatible. But if you can't solve that problem easily, such a note (MAYBE sans the fancy ascii art...) is the best you can do.

    My original point still stands, however - if an alert dialog is all that stands between your application and abject failure, you fail. The developer recognized the problem, he simply took the lazy way out and pushed the solution onto the user in a way that many users will fail.

  • (cs) in reply to Foo

    Woo, some of my stuff got onto the front page (the last two screenshots) :D

    Foo:
    The real WTF is the blue desktop image, it's a PNG but it has been scaled down slightly, just enough to smudge the text...
    Here's the original, fullsize image: http://stuff.daniel15.com/images/tdwtf/blank_desktop.png. I got that at school (the minimised thing is the KiX32 login script that runs as soon as we log in), and there was indeed no icons on the desktop (they disabled the icons on the desktop, but the Desktop profile directory had no shortcuts or anything in it anyways).

    And no, it's not fake, I used to get that every so often once they updated some of the PCs from Windows 2000 to Windows XP (no clue why they updated, but whatever)

  • 0 (unregistered)

    Interesting how I've had both of the last two on my hard drive for quite a while now, and I'm pretty sure I saved them from here. Hm.

  • JohnFx (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    A personality, in the context of printing, refers to the language used. For example, HP PCL versus Postscript. Someone probably tried to use a PS driver to print to this printer, although it doesn't have a PS option installed. Not a WTF, although it's a confusing message to people who are not technical and shouldn't be trying to interpret printer errors in the first place.

    The "Real WTF" is programmers who think that UI messages are intended for other programmers and not for people who are "not technical." Seriously, job security is not THAT important.

  • :-X (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    It also showed "There will be cake" while the printer across the hall said "The cake is a lie."
    ;D
  • (cs)
    Treeki:
    That's because the answer to the bottom captcha was (((((((((o))))))))) not OOOOOOOOOOOOO.
    ;D
  • LukeRazor (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    "There will be cake" while the printer across the hall said "The cake is a lie."

    Classic :)

  • Beeblebrox (unregistered) in reply to JohnFx
    JohnFx:

    The "Real WTF" is programmers who think that UI messages are intended for other programmers and not for people who are "not technical." Seriously, job security is not THAT important.

    Yes, yes it is.

  • (cs) in reply to Someone You Know
    Someone You Know:
    That first one strikes me as unremarkable, given that many printers' displays can be changed using a simple perl script executed over the network. There is a printer just a few feet away from me that has recently said things like "Feed Me", "Underpants", and "Beef Cartridge Low". It also showed "There will be cake" while the printer across the hall said "The cake is a lie."

    One of my fondest memories of high school was when our normal CS teacher was off sick, so we had a (very young and cute) Art teacher supervise us. Having recently learned how to change the display of the HP Laserjet via a Word macro I and a couple of friends had great fun changing the display to say things like "I'm watching you Emma", and as soon as she saw it, change it back to "Ready". She didn't say anything the entire class, but you could visibly see her getting creeped out by it.

  • (cs)

    On the printer display all the HP printer in my work now say: "Please replace dead squirrel"

  • dent (unregistered) in reply to T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM

    Marvin? Is that you?

  • Bob (unregistered)

    The real WTF is the off-by-one error in the one of the visitor-adds.

  • Your Name (unregistered) in reply to Bob
    Bob:
    The real WTF is the off-by-one error in the one of the visitor-adds.
    nah. it must be in the advertising contract: "you will not make those stupid 1,000,000th visitor ads."

    And then they were like, "ok".

  • Jared (unregistered) in reply to operagost

    A user interface fails if it doesn't clearly communicate the problem or otherwise uses unfamiliar language. One should no have to be a printer engineer or sys admin or anthing technical to know that some clever developer decided to call a language a personality, which is obviously meaningless to a normal user. What's wrong with just stating the error in familar language?

    Error: Job failed to print due to an unsupported driver. Error: Job failed to print. PostScript not recognized.

    Or something to that effect accurate would be better than some BS about a personality.

  • Brad (unregistered) in reply to T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM
    T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM:
    Of course that "OOOOOOOOOOOOO" doesn't solve the captcha problem: There's only 10 O's on the screen!

    Actually, there's only four O's. The there are also 5 left parentheses and 5 right parentheses and 4 lines in the corners. I'm not sure what character those are

    <(((((OOOO)))))>

  • (cs) in reply to savar
    savar:
    No:

    debates.enqueue(new Debate("que","cue"));

    We don't debate que/cue until the Brilliant/Brillant debate is finished.

    I think what you mean is:

    debates.encueue(...)

  • Leandro (unregistered) in reply to T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM
    T_PAAMAYIM_NEKUDOTAYIM:
    Of course that "OOOOOOOOOOOOO" doesn't solve the captcha problem: There's only 10 O's on the screen!

    And well, here I am, brain the size of a planet, and they ask me to print pages! God, this is so depressing!

    What? Brain the size of a planet? What are you? Lexx ???

  • Bob (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know

    This isn't done buy a perl script. It is in fact an error message from an HP printer. Think of a personality as something the printer can print. PCL, PCLXL, PDF, PS, xhtml. The document that was sent to the printer had something in it (maybe PJL) that the printer did not understand. I don't agree on the cryptic message, but I don't work for HFE (Human Factors Engineering)

  • Flippy, the evil printer engineer (unregistered)

    From the safety of my office in London, I once set all the displays on the HP LaserJets in the Edinburgh office to read 'Glasgow Rules'. The Edinburgh IT people weren't impressed.

    In another office, someone kept changing the default language so that the 'Ready' screen displayed 'Prat'. I was content to leave it as it summed up some of the users quite well.

  • www.lacoctelera.com/ornitomono (unregistered)

    in the subscriber part its obvious that you had to write somes "o"

  • Flim Doobie (unregistered)

    I woulda thrown that stupid captcha bug shot in - but you jerkoffs ignore my shit anyway.

    http://www.venompen.com

    I rock anyway.

  • zzo38 (unregistered)

    The message on the printer can mean one of two things: Either the printer is postscript and the computer is PCL, or the printer is PCL and the computer is postscript. If you read the manual, hopefully it will tell you which one it is, and the manual for the computer will tell you what the computer is, and then you can install the correct software on your computer and the corresponding one on the printer (some printers you can install software from a ROM cartridge into the printer, you have to remove the old one first though because otherwise you will break it even more)

  • Erik (unregistered)

    I see the captcha problem quite often, I think it's due to my blocking cookies, always entertaining though.

  • twitchy (unregistered)

    The printer message is most likely from a Color LaserJet 3500 or 3700 series, and the previous poster was correct about incorrect driver usage. However, apps can do the same thing. Peachtree and Excel freak out these printers like no-ones business. Unlike some other printers, if you send a spreadsheet that goes beyond the printable area that's defined within the printer, it does NOT fail gracefully

  • sigh (unregistered) in reply to operagost

    Way to destroy the joke.

  • Ed Cayce (unregistered)

    On #4 - the really long confirm - I can see why they do this.

    JavaScript has an onbeforeunload() event, which is called when the user closes the window or its the back button.

    It can't exit the "window closing" process itself - it can just return some text that is displayed to the user in a standard browser dialog, and the user can then choose to click OK or Cancel. I think it is to keep your browser from being "hijacked" by code that won't let you close the window.

    So, if you can't keep the users from exiting, maybe you can scare them straight...

  • Jake (unregistered) in reply to Someone You Know

    It's a common error we find on a lot of our HP Lasers.

  • Ohwzay (unregistered)

    As for the iconless desktop, the guy could simply have rightclicked and disabled "Show Icons" when he got the bubble. Just throwing it out there.

  • DarrickPiero (unregistered)

    Hello Guys, Glad to Join! :)

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