• csrster (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:
    I can see it now.....

    Employees by the hundreds sitting in their cubicle, starring at the monitor, waiting for some king of notification that the script is done executing... Just like the empty stare of a dog who doesn't know you put the bone behind your back... Cattle.....



    Why does this make me think of Douglas Adams and crumbling spaceports? I
    imagine, millenia later, archaeologists discovering the dust-covered remains of
    the entire staff, still staring at their screens through empty eye-sockets, waiting for
    the message that never comes. Waiting, waiting, while the stars slowly spiral,
    until the Red Giant finally releases them from their hell.
  • Anonymouse (unregistered) in reply to JBL

    The real WTF is that you're not even supposed to move the mouse while the script is running. How would that be able to break anything?!

  • The Biz (unregistered)

    What if the screen saver was on? And you've already moved the mouse - AND possibly pressed a key on the board - what then? What then?????????????????????????????

  • (cs) in reply to mrprogguy
    mrprogguy:
    John Bigboote:
    snoofle:

    kmerkle:
    ...No mouses moved...

    mouses ???



    Meeses.

    Well, actually, the plural of "mouse" is "meese" (or "meece," if you must).  The meta-plural of "meese" is "meeses," which is a herd of meese, I think.

    See, all that education in Latin wasn't wasted!

    (If, by "all that," I mean "none," of course.)



    I have indeed met the Queen, and told her that 'I work with computers, Ma'am.'  Her reply - in the Queen's English - was 'Oh, mouses and all that.' 

    Debate over.  Thank you very much.
  • The Duke of Edinburgh (unregistered) in reply to JohnAdams
    JohnAdams:
    I have indeed met the Queen, and told her that 'I work with computers, Ma'am.'  Her reply - in the Queen's English - was 'Oh, mouses and all that.' 

    Debate over.  Thank you very much.

    Yes, but everyone knows that the Queen is up to her eyelids on crack from dawn until dusk.

    Debate reopened. Wooo.
  • Spudley (unregistered) in reply to snoofle

    Okay, so if the plural of "Mouse" is "Mice"...

    ...what does that make the plural of "Spouse"....?

    ;)

  • (cs) in reply to lemon
    lemon:
    mrprogguy:
    John Bigboote:
    snoofle:

    kmerkle:
    ...No mouses moved...

    mouses ???



    Meeses.

    Well, actually, the plural of "mouse" is "meese" (or "meece," if you must).  The meta-plural of "meese" is "meeses," which is a herd of meese, I think.

    See, all that education in Latin wasn't wasted!

    (If, by "all that," I mean "none," of course.)



    So, if they look for more than one piece of cheese, would it be

    The Mice went out to find the Chice (plural)?

        dZ.




    Actually it's Mice.

    The Mice went out the find cheese (plural)
    vs
    The Mouse went out to find cheese (singular)

    The Mice we bought all had defective connectors (plural)
    vs
    The Mouse we bought had a defective connector (singular)
  • (cs) in reply to Anonymouse

    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that you're not even supposed to move the mouse while the script is running. How would that be able to break anything?!

    Sometimes, simpleton script writers create installation scripts that actually programmatically move the mouse, then programmatically click it, etc. to perform some action, as opposed to just having the code do said action. Think about the following sequence:

    A setup script needs to run some program xxx:
    
    1. script moves mouse pointer to start and submits mouse-click event
    2. script moves mouse pointer to programs and submits mouse-click event
    3. script moves mouse pointer to xxx
    4. script submits mouse-click event to launch xxx

    What if after (3) but before (4), you grab the mouse, select start, shutdown, and move the mouse over the OK button. What do you think will happen when the script then submits the 'mouse-click'?

    It's a really stupid way to write scripts, but rather than just writing the script correctly, some code-monkeys will resort to dialogs like this, hoping you'll obey.

  • (cs) in reply to Spudley
    Anonymous:
    Okay, so if the plural of "Mouse" is "Mice"...

    ...what does that make the plural of "Spouse"....?

    ;)



    I don't know, but it better coincide with the plural for "house"

  • (cs) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:
    Anonymous:
    GoatCheez:
    Anonymous:

    I DONT THINK THIS IS SO FUNNY. I HAVE WENT THROUGH THREE(!) COMPUTERS ALREADY WHERE THIS HAPPENED.



    Looks like you need to replace your keyboard as well. Seems like the either the Caps Lock or the Shift key are broken.

    It could only be the Caps Lock key...

    Captcha: batman



    Ah yes, I didn't think to realize that if the shift key was broken where it was permanently depressed, the message would >'s instead of .'s.

    However, "THREE(!)" would then be "THREE910"

  • (cs) in reply to DZ-Jay
    DZ-Jay:
    lemon:
    mrprogguy:
    John Bigboote:
    snoofle:

    kmerkle:
    ...No mouses moved...

    mouses ???



    Meeses.

    Well, actually, the plural of "mouse" is "meese" (or "meece," if you must).  The meta-plural of "meese" is "meeses," which is a herd of meese, I think.

    See, all that education in Latin wasn't wasted!

    (If, by "all that," I mean "none," of course.)



    So, if they look for more than one piece of cheese, would it be

    The Mice went out to find the Chice (plural)?

        dZ.




    Actually it's Mice.

    The Mice went out the find cheese (plural)
    vs
    The Mouse went out to find cheese (singular)

    The Mice we bought all had defective connectors (plural)
    vs
    The Mouse we bought had a defective connector (singular)

    However,

    The Mice (several mouse animals) are all assembled in the corner.

    But the Mouses (several mouse devices) are all assembled i the corner.

    The device you handle all day long is not an animal, it is a device.
    "...

    1. pl. mice or mous·es (mousz) Computer Science. A hand-held, button-activated input device that when rolled along a flat surface directs an indicator to move correspondingly about a computer screen, allowing the operator to move the indicator freely, as to select operations or manipulate text or graphics. "  - dictionary.com
  • (cs) in reply to The Biz

    Anonymous:
    What if the screen saver was on? And you've already moved the mouse - AND possibly pressed a key on the board - what then? What then?????????????????????????????

    The screensaver intercepts and captures the first mouse movement or keypress.

  • (cs) in reply to Colin
    Anonymous:
    How long would I wait?  42.


    42...seconds? If the message wasn't gone by the time I came back to my desk with my coffee, it's goin' bye-bye...
  • (cs) in reply to DZ-Jay
    lemon:


    Actually it's Mice.

    The Mice went out the find cheese (plural)
    vs
    The Mouse went out to find cheese (singular)

    The Mice we bought all had defective connectors (plural)
    vs
    The Mouse we bought had a defective connector (singular)


    So, if they look for more than one piece of cheese, would it be

    The Mice went out to find the Chice (plural)?

        dZ.


  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:
    GoatCheez:
    Anonymous:
    GoatCheez:
    Anonymous:

    I DONT THINK THIS IS SO FUNNY. I HAVE WENT THROUGH THREE(!) COMPUTERS ALREADY WHERE THIS HAPPENED.



    Looks like you need to replace your keyboard as well. Seems like the either the Caps Lock or the Shift key are broken.

    It could only be the Caps Lock key...

    Captcha: batman



    Ah yes, I didn't think to realize that if the shift key was broken where it was permanently depressed, the message would >'s instead of .'s.

    However, "THREE(!)" would then be "THREE910"



    Ah, yes... Interesting.... lol... Although if the shift key was broken to where it was permanently depressed, I would definitely look into getting another keyboard in case the shift key decided to shoot up all the other keys before commiting suicide.
  • (cs) in reply to ParkinT
    ParkinT:

    However,

    The Mice (several mouse animals) are all assembled in the corner.

    But the Mouses (several mouse devices) are all assembled i the corner.

    The device you handle all day long is not an animal, it is a device.
    "...

    1. pl. mice or mous·es (mousz) Computer Science. A hand-held, button-activated input device that when rolled along a flat surface directs an indicator to move correspondingly about a computer screen, allowing the operator to move the indicator freely, as to select operations or manipulate text or graphics. "  - dictionary.com


    But the name was coined because of its similarity to the animal, so it is strange to assume that new gramatical rules would be implemented for the same word.  From the Merrian-Webster dictionary:

    Main Entry: 1mouse
    Pronunciation: 'maus
    Function: noun
    Inflected Form(s): plural mice  /'mIs/
    Etymology: Middle English, from Old English mus; akin to Old High German mus mouse, Latin mus, Greek mys mouse, muscle
    1 : any of numerous small rodents (as of the genus Mus) with pointed snout, rather small ears, elongated body, and slender tail
    2 : a timid person
    3 : a dark-colored swelling caused by a blow; specifically : <font size="-1">BLACK EYE</font>
    4 : a small mobile manual device that controls movement of the cursor and selection of functions on a computer display

    HINT:  No mention of the usage of "mouses". Do not believe everything you read on the web.

        dZ.
  • Jimmy The Robot (unregistered) in reply to DZ-Jay
    DZ-Jay:
    But the name was coined because of its similarity to the animal, so it is strange to assume that new gramatical rules would be implemented for the same word.
    Not that strange. Language is constantly evolving.

    Mooon.

    See, it just happened again.
  • arashi (unregistered)

    I'd just drag it to my 3rd virtual desktop and leave there to be dealt with sometime next week. That's what I do to all those "Click OK to restart your computer." notices too.

  • (cs)
    Captain Pr0n Searcher:

    Satanicpuppy:
    This kind of stuff is almost always a sign of amature hour, with sloppy macros and kludge code doing something that they'd have been better off doing by hand.
    <FONT size=4>No entry found for amature.</FONT>

    Did you mean armature?

    Suggestions:
    armature
    mature
    Abature
    immature
    amatory
    amateur
    maturer
    Amate
    Acture
    Limature

    No entry was found in the dictionary. Would you like to search the Web for amature?

    Ah, searching for 'amature' on the Web, eh? Nudge, nudge!

  • dept non style dep (unregistered) in reply to impslayer

    <font face="Verdana" size="3">I have a idea for a phone new service: </font><font size="3">
    </font>

    <font size="3">Cook Recipe Resource

    </font><font face="Verdana" size="3">Imagine if the wav file is corrupt, and the receipt end uncompleted. Burn, baby, Burn!.

    --Tei
    </font>

  • (cs) in reply to shnar
    shnar:
    Eric Shinn:

    <font face="Arial">Er, I'd just click OK right away.</font>

    <font face="Arial">Reading dialogs is for wusses.</font>


    Oh that's classic. Typical attitude of my users. That and reading Help files and Readme.txt files :P

    Well, that's because your average Help and Readme files are useless junk. They'll contain the full text of the license and a detailed description of the UI elements, but no explanation of what they actually do beyond repeating their name, or troubleshooting help beyond "Is your computer turned on? Are you running Windows 98 or higher? Have you installed the program?"

  • Dave (unregistered) in reply to Spudley
    Anonymous:
    Okay, so if the plural of "Mouse" is "Mice"...

    ...what does that make the plural of "Spouse"....?

    ;)



    Umm......

    Bigamy?

    ;-)

    Dave

    (captcha = null)

  • Syrion (unregistered)

    In my company, on each logon you have a big messageBox exeplaining the "company charter" in a few 20 lines (about a half 1024x768 screen), and asking you to click "OK" if you agree.

    The WTF is "if you agree"

    1. There is no "NO" button

    2. if you are not OK with the charter, you must leave the company because the contract of employment is bind with the company charter (like in every company).

    So WTF a "if you agree with the above charter, click OK" of death ? I can neither click "NO" nor choose to refuse the charter !

    catcha : paula (jones ? Bill, tell me...)

  • KillJones (unregistered)

    I make for good Message boxing Words all the time. Dont click anything but click OK.  OK?

  • (cs) in reply to Syrion
    Anonymous:

    ...

    So WTF a "if you agree with the above charter, click OK" of death ? I can neither click "NO" nor choose to refuse the charter !

    catcha : paula (jones ? Bill, tell me...)



    That's because if you don't agree, you are not allowed to use the computer. It's ok to stare at the message, but nothing more.

  • (cs) in reply to Anonymouse

    Anonymous:
    The real WTF is that you're not even supposed to move the mouse while the script is running. How would that be able to break anything?!

    Actually, if you moved the mouse while Windows 95 was booting up, it would often cause the system to crash, requiring a hard boot (B.O.S. moment).  Pressing a keyboard key would often do the same thing.

  • (cs) in reply to Otto
    Otto:
    Anonymous:
    Phil the ruler of heck:

    lemon:
    mrprogguy:
    Well, actually, the plural of "mouse" is "meese" (or "meece," if you must).  The meta-plural of "meese" is "meeses," which is a herd of meese, I think.

    Actually it's Mice.

    You do realize that you just spoiled all the fun we were having, don't you?

    Oh, and of course the meta-plural would refer to several herds of meese, not just a single herd, right?  That's why it would be called meta-plural, not meta-singular?



    Don't you all know that the proper term for a group of mice is a horde? Sheesh... :)


    Any gamer knows that. Zug zug.

    So mice are the new horde race in WoW?

  • Cows (unregistered) in reply to JohnAdams

    Ok - so these mouses... What would they be doing all together and if they couldn't move what would they want to be doing there???

    A better dialog - because people do the last thing they read on the screen I think would be:

    Press OK when you have read the following Instructions:

    Do NOT press any key on your keyboard or move your mouse before the program has terminated otherwise you computer will crash, you will get fired and lose your house, end up on the streets and sell pieces of string to strangers walking by.

    --OK--

     

    Or something to that effect anyway

  • 31415 (unregistered)

    I asked my wife, an averag computer user, what would you do if you saw a message like this.

    "Oh", she said, "I would click on the X"

     

  • (cs) in reply to RyuO
    RyuO:
    mrprogguy:
    Well, actually, the plural of "mouse" is "meese" (or "meece," if you must).  The meta-plural of "meese" is "meeses," which is a herd of meese, I think.

    See, all that education in Latin wasn't wasted!


    If it were Latin, wouldn't the plural be "micii"?

    Seeing as how much fun you can have with a little pluralistic grammar, just imagine how boring old Windows settings dialogs such as

    Accessibilty Options

    could be made a little more interesting...

    MiceKeys

  • RogerC (unregistered) in reply to GoatCheez
    GoatCheez:
    ParkinT:
    GoatCheez:
    Anonymous:
    GoatCheez:
    Anonymous:

    I DONT THINK THIS IS SO FUNNY. I HAVE WENT THROUGH THREE(!) COMPUTERS ALREADY WHERE THIS HAPPENED.



    Looks like you need to replace your keyboard as well. Seems like the either the Caps Lock or the Shift key are broken.

    It could only be the Caps Lock key...

    Captcha: batman



    Ah yes, I didn't think to realize that if the shift key was broken where it was permanently depressed, the message would >'s instead of .'s.

    However, "THREE(!)" would then be "THREE910"



    Ah, yes... Interesting.... lol... Although if the shift key was broken to where it was permanently depressed, I would definitely look into getting another keyboard in case the shift key decided to shoot up all the other keys before commiting suicide.


    That's why I renamed one of my computers "PROZAC". It seemed a little depressed, and I thought that might cheer it up.
  • Jon (unregistered)

    The plural of 'agendum' is 'agenda'. The plural of 'agenda' is 'agendas'.

  • (cs) in reply to Satanicpuppy
    Satanicpuppy:
    I would expect this sort of message to be accompanied by one of those stupid macros, where you get to watch as the mouse laboriously moves across the screen to open a folder to move a file, and then drags the file to were it is supposed to be, then does a few seconds of code, waits for 55 more seconds, then the mouse moves across the screen again.

    Ug. I worked behind a programmer who was enamored of Applescript, and there are applications all over the place that are just one race condition after another. This piece has to wait 1 minute, and this piece has to wait 2 minutes, but if the first piece gets stalled, and runs for too long, then the whole thing crashes in a big fricking train wreck.

    This kind of stuff is almost always a sign of amature hour, with sloppy macros and kludge code doing something that they'd have been better off doing by hand.

    I now have to mention the time I saw a cash machine booting up. It ran Windows 2000, and at startup it appeared to run several batch files, at least one of which had a (2 minute) time delay built into it. (I expect they were run from the Startup folder - yes, this did have the full Explorer shell running). I smell a race condition...

  • (cs)

    The mouses/mice thing.... I always thought it was mouses since it's not the animal but the name of a device. BTW, you can have persons so why not have mouses?


    I would have waited about 30 seconds and then hit the OK button. If they'd made it look too much like any of the OK only dialogs I see regularly, then I wouldnt have even waited that long  :P

  • Sur5all (unregistered) in reply to JBL

    Must be. An ordinary technician would have remembered that there are users like me, that don't own a mousepad, but have to move a 300kg late-empire-style desk.

  • anon reader (unregistered) in reply to rbanzai

    You're taking grammar lessons from cartoons ???   We are doomed to go the way of the dinosaurs (not Barney that purple sh*t).

  • Choco (unregistered) in reply to snoofle
    snoofle:
    Anonymous:

    I'd like to see IT put a little extra in the script so that the OK dialog moves around the screen away from the cursor when the user moves the cursor over to click it. That would definitely keep them from being able to hit any keys, or click any OK buttons. Make it so that they have to press CTRL-ALT-T-|-& in sequence to make it go away. But then, they'd all get fired unless it was April 1st.

    You are truly devious - you have my everlasting respect...



    It's pretty easy to do that with VB. Just take the xy coordinates and get a random number above 20---add the x+the first random number and the y+ the second one and it moves all around the screen, all jittery. Virtually impossible to catch, unless you have a self looping screen...you know, one of the things that when your mouse goes up through the top, it comes up through the bottom. Like a pacman game. :)

    If anyone's interested, I can post the code to move the dialogue around :P
  • Anon Coward (unregistered)

    Actually, there wouldn't be any lost productivity.  As soon as they sit down, users will click "OK" without reading the message and merrily check their email to see what jokes their friends have sent them.

    Only people in IT think that end users actually read messages.

  • Just me (unregistered) in reply to Jersey
    Anonymous:

    I'd like to see IT put a little extra in the script so that the OK dialog moves around the screen away from the cursor when the user moves the cursor over to click it. That would definitely keep them from being able to hit any keys, or click any OK buttons. Make it so that they have to press CTRL-ALT-T-|-& in sequence to make it go away. But then, they'd all get fired unless it was April 1st.



    It looks like you're an human resources employee planing a huge layoff... :-)
  • (cs) in reply to Just me

    My computer is my slave. I do not wait for it, and I do not put up with programs that require me to wait for my computer. I'll just keep right on using MY computer, and if your program screws up, I will never let your programs run on it again.

    Though I'm reminded of the old Joke "Your mouse has moved, you must reboot Windows for your changes to take effect, would you like to reboot now?" Back in the Windows 95 days this often seemed the trust and not a joke.

  • (cs) in reply to RogerC
    Anonymous:
    GoatCheez:
    ParkinT:
    GoatCheez:
    Anonymous:
    GoatCheez:
    Anonymous:

    I DONT THINK THIS IS SO FUNNY. I HAVE WENT THROUGH THREE(!) COMPUTERS ALREADY WHERE THIS HAPPENED.



    Looks like you need to replace your keyboard as well. Seems like the either the Caps Lock or the Shift key are broken.

    It could only be the Caps Lock key...

    Captcha: batman



    Ah yes, I didn't think to realize that if the shift key was broken where it was permanently depressed, the message would >'s instead of .'s.

    However, "THREE(!)" would then be "THREE910"



    Ah, yes... Interesting.... lol... Although if the shift key was broken to where it was permanently depressed, I would definitely look into getting another keyboard in case the shift key decided to shoot up all the other keys before commiting suicide.


    That's why I renamed one of my computers "PROZAC". It seemed a little depressed, and I thought that might cheer it up.

    Don't treat computers as if they are human.

    They hate that.

  • (cs) in reply to Anon Coward
    Anonymous:

    Actually, there wouldn't be any lost productivity.  As soon as they sit down, users will click "OK" without reading the message and merrily check their email to see what jokes their friends have sent them.

    Only people in IT think that end users actually read messages.

    hmm, or would make use of them to have a day to read books and have fun at the cost of another department.

    Just sit there doing anything but using the computer until the message goes away as you're told and book the time to systems administration.
    Then when you get criticised for failing a deadline point to the downtime of your systems due to their failure ;)

  • Dick Head (unregistered)

        Hey, Watch it pal! That message is for use on a touch-screen kiosk. I wrote it!!! :-)

  • Modi (unregistered)

    Do u know how and where to find the mod 2 and 3 codes number?? I need it urgent.

Leave a comment on “The $64,000 Message”

Log In or post as a guest

Replying to comment #:

« Return to Article