READERS continue to beguile us with accounts of bizarre error messages they
have been given by computers. 鈥淭his should never happen!鈥� Jan-Olav Styrvold鈥檚
Norsk Data machine once told him after failing to bring back some data he had
asked for. 鈥淚f it does,鈥� the machine added uselessly, 鈥渟omething is wrong.鈥�
Patrick Evans used a system which ran a variant of the Pick operating system.
Browsing through the error messages file one day, he noticed a clump of
warnings, listed in order of increasing severity. 鈥淭here is something wrong with
the disk system鈥� was one, followed by 鈥渢here is something wrong with the index
data鈥� and so on. At the end of the list, however, was a message which gave in to
total despair. It read: 鈥淭here is something wrong with the Universe.鈥�
Equally unnerving was the message that Oliver Moldenhauer received after a
misguided installation program ruined the Linux password file on his machine. In
answer to his commands, the computer told him: 鈥淕o away, you don鈥檛 exist!鈥�
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Antti Roppola laments the passing of the error messages put out by early
versions of AmigaOS when they crashed. The screen would go black and then flash
in red letters 鈥淕uru Meditation #xxxxxxxx.yyyyyyyy鈥濃�攁n in-joke reference,
apparently, to the guru-like posture one particular programmer adopted when
trying to solve problems during the development of AmigaOS. Newer versions have
a boring 鈥淪oftware Failure #xxxxxxxx.yyyyyyyy鈥� message.
Peter Hamer tells us that the Unix pattern-matching utility 鈥渁wk鈥� was so
famous for its unhelpful error messages that it inspired a T-shirt. This
depicted an auk-like bird making an emergency parachute jump from a stricken
plane with the notoriously unhelpful message 鈥渁wk: bailing out near line 1鈥�.
Les Hughes, meanwhile, so enjoyed an error message on Elm, the Unix mailer,
that he employs it himself when developing applications for his students. The
message reads: 鈥淪omething dreadful is happening! Taking emergency exit!鈥�
And John Peterson tells us that when he was at college, a student emerged
from the computer room after a Unix crash wondering what 鈥減anic bread鈥� was. He
explains that in Unix-speak 鈥渂read鈥� means 鈥淏-read鈥� (an abbreviation for 鈥渂inary
谤别补诲鈥�).
David Pullin, on the other hand, remembers an early 1960s program called Joss
which only had just one simple error message: 鈥淓h?鈥�
Finally, Steve Fairhead reminds us that computers and their operators do not
have a monopoly on mistakes. Manuals can contain errors as well鈥攍ike the
introduction to a Pentium motherboard installation manual which states: 鈥淭he
information presented in this publication has been carefully for
谤别濒颈补产颈濒颈迟测.鈥�
In the same vein, Mike Forsythe tells us that, as an operator of a past
generation of IBM mainframes, he used to have to work his way through three
separate manuals to unravel the hexadecimal error codes the machines spewed out.
On one occasion, however, his search took him to the message: 鈥淭his page
intentionally left blank.鈥�
WOMEN in engineering face many challenges, but few people would imagine that
being mistaken for men is one of them.
IEEE Spectrum, the American magazine for electronics engineers,
recently spoke to several women who have gone into business for themselves. 鈥淚
have been mistaken for a man with a high-pitched voice more than once,鈥� reports
a women named Pat. She recalls the time she was in the crowded lobby of a large
corporate office building, phoning upstairs to an executive to persuade him to
come down and look at her products. He finally said: 鈥淥h, all right, but how
will I know you when I get there?鈥� Pat was the only woman in the lobby, but it
didn鈥檛 occur to her to tell him this. What she did tell him was: 鈥淚鈥檓 wearing a
pink suit.鈥�
There was a moment of shocked silence before the executive hung up the phone.
Pat realised that he thought she was a man called Pat with an extremely bizarre
taste in business attire鈥攂ut he came downstairs anyway.
IN THE 1880s Thomas Edison scoured the world for the perfect material for
electric lamp filaments. He found his Holy Grail in Japan. A piece of bamboo,
when turned into a thread of charcoal and fed with current, glowed white hot.
But the bottom eventually fell out of the bamboo market when lamp-makers turned
to metal wire.
Now a Japanese electronics company claims to have found a new use for the
nation鈥檚 bamboo: it improves the sound of a hi-fi amplifier. According to
Technics, part of the giant Matsushita group, the secret is put a thin layer of
bamboo between the aluminium foil cathode and anode of electrolytic capacitors.
This gives 鈥渋mproved conductivity鈥� and 鈥渉elps prevent interference from loud
music and environmental noise鈥�. A capacitor acts like a microphone when vibrated
by a loud sound, but bamboo damps the vibration.
This, say the Japanese, is 鈥渁n important step closer to the true sound of
苍补迟耻谤别鈥�.
But this is not the first time the audio industry has 鈥渄iscovered鈥� bamboo.
When engineers looked for the perfect material for gramophone needles to play 78
rpm shellac discs, they, like Edison, chose Japanese bamboo.
What next? CDs made of bamboo to make the sound more natural?
THIS is not a daft manufacturer鈥檚 warning to customers, unlike many we have
drawn attention to in the past.
Peter Mabey informs us that Tesco鈥檚 packs of the popular multilayered pudding
tiramisu, which means 鈥減ick me up鈥� in Italian, sensibly warn customers: 鈥淒o not
turn upside down.鈥�
The trouble is that this useful reminder is printed on the underside of the
pack.
MEANWHILE, Mike Rogers tells us of a packet of runner beans he bought in
Norfolk last year which seemed to be aimed exclusively at the clairvoyant
gardeners鈥� market. Included in the instructions were the words: 鈥淪ow in late
spring, but on no account until at least ten days after the last frost.鈥�
AND finally, here is a strange piece of information accompanying
another food product. On the side of a packet of Mini Shredded Wheat, Ben
Willetts found the words: 鈥淪ingle ingredient: 100% whole wheat. We cannot
guarantee that this product is completely nut free.鈥�
The manufacturers are probably just covering their backs here. Perhaps we
should adopt this precautionary measure ourselves. Do not be surprised if, in
future issues, you read at the top of this page: 鈥淲e cannot guarantee that this
column is completely nut free.鈥�