Humorous Error Messages
Nov 11, 2011
Error messages can be unintentionally funny, reminding us that technology has a sense of humor when wording goes awry. A classic ATM story highlights how “Insufficient Funds” once referred to the machine running out of cash rather than the customer’s balance. After the fix, receipts greeted users with personalized reassurance like “you have sufficient funds.” Humor in tech mishaps lightens the seriousness of IT and creates memorable moments for practitioners.
It’s Friday and adding some humor to lighten things every now and again is a good thing. I recently found this TechRepublic discussion forum post entitled ‘Looking for memorable error messages’. Ask and ye shall receive and receive it did. As of this time, there are 84 responses. Some of the contributions are very funny and if you have the time, I suggest you to read through them. It certainly brought back some memories for me having started out in the early DOS, Windows 3.11 and Windows 95 days.
Here is one response that was more in the form of a brief narrative that I found quite humorous. Have a look and see if you agree:
Submitted by NerdHerder entitled “Insufficient Funds”
“My college professor told me this story in the early 1980s. Professor asked the ATM for some cash and it replied “Insufficient Funds.” He checked his balance and saw he had plenty of money but it still refused to give him cash. He called the bank and talked to person after person until he was speaking to the programmer. Programmer searches the code for that error message and checks the causes. Programmer told professor that when the ATM runs out of cash, it has “Insufficient Funds.” Programmer promised to change the message text to make it clear that the ATM needs refilling, not the customer’s account.
The next time professor gets cash from his ATM, he did a double-take reading the receipt.
At the bottom was the remark, “Hi Bob, you have sufficient funds.”
Please also visit my post from Thursday regarding Netwrix receives 6 Redmond Readers Choice Awards for 2011.
Please share any funny error messages you’ve encountered in your travels below:
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About the author
Dirk Schrader
VP of Security Research
Dirk Schrader is a Resident CISO (EMEA) and VP of Security Research at Netwrix. A 25-year veteran in IT security with certifications as CISSP (ISC²) and CISM (ISACA), he works to advance cyber resilience as a modern approach to tackling cyber threats. Dirk has worked on cybersecurity projects around the globe, starting in technical and support roles at the beginning of his career and then moving into sales, marketing and product management positions at both large multinational corporations and small startups. He has published numerous articles about the need to address change and vulnerability management to achieve cyber resilience.