🚀 go-pugleaf

In article <VA.00000860.00c62a26@one>, sg@cwcom.net wrote:

>> I shall remember to ask you next time I'm trying to work out what
>> `This application has performed an illegal operation and will be
>> terminated' means.
>>
>Simple - it's in plain english and can be deciphered with a dictionary 
>(unlike terms such as daemon or grep for instance) by anyone who can't 
>figure it out.

Really?  <http://www.m-w.com/>, the WWWebster Dictionary, says "illegal:
not according to or authorized by law : UNLAWFUL, ILLICIT; also : not
sanctioned by official rules (as of a game)".  I have come across people
who worried, in a "no, it couldn't possibly be... could it?" sort of way,
that there might be some police involvement imminent.  And "terminate"
brings resonances of "with extreme prejudice" and "I'll be back".  It
looks like plain English to you simply because you're used to it.  If you
were used to Unix you'd have learned what "daemon" and "grep" meant too.  
 
> The term "Fatal crash" is a gross overstatement and should involve an 
> exploding monitor at least.

The following is a quote but I've lost the attribution - apologies to
whoever you are!


What we really need ....

... is a piece of software that actually makes a computer blow up just
like in the movies.  This is long overdue.  "Lay" people are extremely
disappointed when a program or system grinds\wheezes to a halt with some wimpy
message like "B037X: USER ERROR IN GAPX TABLE" or "CATASTROPHIC SYSTEM FAILURE:
BUFFER OVERFLOW INDICATOR OVERFLOW" or "Bus error - core dumped".  They want
to see explosions!  Paper spewing out from wherever paper spews out from!
And gicky fluid oozing out of the machinery as the entire machine room
collapses onto itself because someone either forgot to put a %*&#*$#&@ in
column 92 or asked the computer an impossible question like "What's the
meaning of life?", "Why?", "CAN you get there from here?", "Calculate pi to
the last digit" [THAT'S NOT A QUESTION!], or "Where's the bathroom?"  That's
a worthy goal for computer technologists everywhere.  Forget artificial
intelligence!  Forget relational databases!  Forget distributed network
architecture proposal interface protocols!  Forget documentation!  Forget
associative memory!  Let's make computers explode in our lifetime!!!

-- 
Sam Wilson
Network Services Division, Computing Services
The University of Edinburgh
Edinburgh, Scotland, UK