For our Friday fun this week, we link over to Technologizer and a list of the 13 greatest computer error messages of all time, including the “Guru Meditation” error message, the red screen of death, and the “sad Mac.”

This article is worth a look. It’s full of links and informative causes, histories, and tales of woe. If you’ve had an Xbox, Atari, Mac, Windows (Vista or any other OS), or if you’ve used the Web or watched Lost in Space, you’ll find an error message you know.

Of course, the all-time winner is the famous blue screen of death, which also made an appearance at this summer’s Beijing Olympics, as shown below.

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson

Kent Anderson is the CEO of RedLink and RedLink Network, a past-President of SSP, and the founder of the Scholarly Kitchen. He has worked as Publisher at AAAS/Science, CEO/Publisher of JBJS, Inc., a publishing executive at the Massachusetts Medical Society, Publishing Director of the New England Journal of Medicine, and Director of Medical Journals at the American Academy of Pediatrics. Opinions on social media or blogs are his own.

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2 Thoughts on "13 Great Error Messages"

A close friend of mine used to be the IT director at the SFO International Airport. One day I stepped off of an airplane at SFO and found every departure/arrival screen and every TV in the terminal as far as the eye could see was showing the BSOD. I took a couple quick pictures and sent them to him via his cell phone and got an immediate response of “I know, I know and it’s much, much worse than you know”. At that moment I was very glad that I had just gotten *OFF* an airplane.

Number 14 in the list, at least for fans of of the StrongBad web comic, must be http://www.homestarrunner.com/systemisdown.html

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