Dumb Captions in Windoze programs

[zeitghost]

Yesterday as I was shutting down my pc, the task manager informed me that the process called "Mrs Do says Bippy is a nice girl" was waiting to close.

Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! says I, I've got a virus.

Well, as it transpires, this is in fact part of gbTask.exe, which is a portion of the NTL dialup program.

Has anyone else encountered such a weird caption in a Windoze program?

I presume that it's an attempt at humour by some benighted soul somewhere.

 

[philhege]

Here's one of my favorites (though it's not a caption) from the source code of a call to the Crystal Reports ActiveX viewer (no kidding, this is the real thing):

<OBJECT ID="ReportParameter"
CLASSID="CLSID:71C140F3-1A84-430b-9035-68815582DC79"
HEIGHT=1% WIDTH=1%
CODEBASE="/viewer/activeXViewer/reportparameterdialog.cab#Version=8,0,2,847">
</OBJECT>
<div>
<!-- this empty div prevents IE from showing a bunch of empty space for the controls above.. I don't know why though. -->
</div>
</body>
</html>

I admire such refreshing honesty from the developer. Maybe we should require clauses like that in EULAs: ("It works sometimes, but we have no clue why or when.")

Phil Hegedusich
Senior Programmer/Analyst
IIMAK

http://www.iimak.com

-----------
I'm not as think as you confused I am.
-----------
Flabbergasted (a.): Amazed at how much weight one has gained.
-----------
Oyster (n.): One who sprinkles their conversation with Yiddish expressions.

 

[jrbarnett]

This is a genuine message I get from time to time from my Eudora email program, trying to encourage me to register:

Somehow I need to persuade the astronauts in the International Space Station to register, then Qualcomm would have to do it.

John

 

[Glenn9999]

Yeah these kinds of things are actually sprinkled about in programs more wildly than you would think. Just look up "Easter Eggs" sometimes.

mIRC actually is a perfect example of such inane things - there are at least 4 separate instances if you know how to locate them.

 

[Auger282]

eeggs.com

 

[GwydionM]

While closing down normally, I regularly get told that a DLL cannot be loaded because the machine is closing.

Also that a network cable is unplugged: I have never had a network.

------------------------------
An old man who lives in the UK

 

[grande]

Yeah, I also get the "Couldn't be loaded because the machine is being shut down."

-------------------------
Just call me Captain Awesome.

 

[Diancecht]

I remember a good one, but for Linux systems.

There was, and still is, I think, an IRC client called XChat. Well, if you tried to use it, it displayed a message: "Connect to IRC as root is stupid, do you want to continue?"

Cheers,
Dian

 

[LadySlinger]

I remember Outlook 2000 having a Read notification message that said something to the tune of
"<name> has read your message. This doesn't necessarily mean they understand the content of the message..."

 

[grande]

I like the error messages in some C/C++ compilers. One of my favorites is "Confused by earlier errors, bailing out!"

-------------------------
Just call me Captain Awesome.

 

[zeitghost]

And my personal favourite:

"Keyboard error: press F1 to continue"

which is difficult if you've forgotten to plug it in...

 

[SteveGlo]

Taken from this year's Plain English Campaign nominations

Uk2net for an e-mail to a customer -

"YOUR EMAIL DID NOT REACH A HUMANOID. IT ONLY REACHED REPLICANT LEVEL 1. E-MAIL ARRIVING FROM HERE ARE SPOOLED FOR AUTOMATIC CHECKING AND WILL NOT BE READ BY HUMANOIDS."

 

[SamBones]

This morning I was in Outlook and a dialog box popped up saying, "Unknown Error", with an "OK" button.

If the error was unknown, how did it know to display the dialog box?

 

[GwydionM]

The [OK] button itself is dumb. You get it for all sorts of things, some of them not OK, but [not OK] is unavailable as an option.

It's there to be sure you read the message before moving on, fair enough. Instantly vanishing error messages are very frustating. But it should default to say something like [CONTINUE].

------------------------------
An old man who lives in the UK

 

[zeitghost]

Where do you live in the UK, GwydionM?

If you don't mind me asking, that is...

 

[grande]

I hate when you get asked a Yes or No answer like "Do you want to save?" or "Do you want to close this program?" and you're presnted with OK and Cancel.

-------------------------
Just call me Captain Awesome.

 

[medic]

grande,

I hate when you get asked a Yes or No answer like "Do you want to save?" or "Do you want to close this program?" and you're presnted with OK and Cancel.

Looks like a software application written by a programmer, who had insufficient knowledge of the Windows message box function.