Useless Error Messages

Doesn't everyone just love useless error messages? Windows is famous for them. They even provide the kernel exception, hex memory address, and maybe even a traceback. All of that is completely useless to the end user that just clicked their mouse on a nice little button and is now perplexed as to why this message box popped up and his entire system seems to be shutting down.

There's also the BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) that is filled with hex. And the old favorite, GPF (General Protection Fault). These both mean that something went horribly wrong, you have no idea what, we have very little idea what and couldn't explain it to you anyway and it may or may not have been your fault and it may or may not happen again. Reboot.

But today, while actually trying to do some work (I know it's hard to believe if you've ever visited the PezOfficeCam, but I do work occasionally), I encountered this error message on a web page. It wasn't even Microsoft related.

Error:
There was no error.
Please go back and try again.

Well, now I'm confused. Is this a Jedi Mind Trick or something? Posted by Chris on 5/27/2004 02:52:00 PM :: Permalink   
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