“This program has performed an illegal operation”

More computer fun. In addition to helping a friend with Microsoft’s quasi-totalitarian and insanity-producing new version of Word, and in addition to not being able to use my Internet Explorer for the last week, due to some still-unknown bad guy hiding under very deep cover inside my computer, on Wednesday my Outlook Express e-mail program went out cold and seemed beyond help. The situation was grim. Each time I tried to start OE, an error message appeared that said that the program had performed an illegal operation and was shutting down. By the way, why do they call a software glitch illegal, which makes you feel you’ve done something criminal? Why do they have to be so judgmental and punitive about it? Why can’t they just say, “We’re sorry, but this application is malfunctioning due to an undetermined conflict or corruption in its software programming and will not work correctly until the problem is fixed”? In any case, since OE wasn’t working, I couldn’t seek advice my usual ways, i.e., by contacting people via e-mail and newsgroup messages and begging and pleading for help. I was cut off from the world, on my own. Fortunately I was not entirely without succour. As Robinson Crusoe had Friday, I had Google. A Google search led me to some pages at the Microsoft Knowledge Base that seemed to be addressing my issue, and, after a few failed attempts (at which point I was almost ready to give up, but stayed at it), ultimately to a solution. It was very satisfying and a big relief when I pressed my customized Winkey combination for Outlook Express (Windows key+O) and OE started up. But the whole thing occupied quite a bit of time.
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An Indian living in the West sends the following:

At a recent computer expo (COMDEX), Bill Gates reportedly compared the computer industry with the auto industry and stated, “If GM had kept up with the technology like the computer industry has, we would all be driving $25.00 cars that got 1,000 miles to the gallon.”

In response to Bill’s comments, General Motors issued a press release stating,

If GM had developed technology like Microsoft, we would all be driving cars with the following characteristics:

1. For no reason whatsoever, your car would crash twice a day.

2. Every time they painted new lines on the road, you would have to buy a new car.

3. Occasionally your car would die on the freeway for no reason. You would have to pull ove r to the side of the road, close all of the windows, shut off the car, restart it, and reopen the windows before you could continue.

For some reason you would simply accept this.

4. Occasionally, executing a maneuver such as a left turn would cause your car to shut down and refuse to restart, in which case you would have to reinstall the engine.

5. Only one person at a time could use the car unless you bought “CarNT,” but then you would have to buy more seats.

6. Macintosh would make a car that was powered by the sun, was reliable, five times as fast and twice as easy to drive—but it would only run on five percent of the roads.

7. The oil, water temperature and alternator warning lights would all be replaced by a single “general protect ion fault” warning light.

8. The airbag system would ask, “Are you sure?” before deploying.

9. Occasionally, for no reason whatsoever, your car would lock you out and refuse to let you in until you simultaneously lifted the door handle, turned the key and grabbed hold of the antenna.

10. GM would require all car buyers to also purchase a deluxe set of Rand McNally Road maps (now a GM subsidiary), even though they neither need nor want them. Attempting to delete this option would immediately cause the car’s performance to diminish by 50 percent or more. Moreover, GM would become a target for investigation by the Justice Department.

11. Every time GM introduced a new car, car buyers would have to learn to drive all over again because none of the controls would operate in the same manner as the old car.

12. You’d have to press the “Start” button to turn the engine off.

LA replies:

All very good, except point number 12, which is a cheap shot. Is it really a problem that you access the Shut Down command via the Start menu? “Start” in this context simply means, “the process by which you start doing anything with this computer, including closing it down.”

Posted by Lawrence Auster at March 29, 2007 01:45 AM | Send