BackupPC - a brief rant

[Tim]

Allegedly, on or about 22 June 2014, Timothy Murphy sent:
> Incidentally, in defence of my rant, I've found that
> when I actually try to trace an error message in the source -
> I used to do this quite a lot with NetworkManager
> when it used to send out error messages which just said
> "Failure 27" or something like that -
> I usually found that the cause was more or less obvious.
> 
> I wish developers would spend a moment when adding error messages,
> thinking "Will this message actually help someone encountering this
> error to correct the problem?" 

I was similarly pissed off when trying to help a friend with his Windows
PC.  He needed to activate it (another thing I hate), but it kept
failing with some obtuse 8-digit error code.  I had to use another
computer to google that code (fortunately, I can do that here, but he
wouldn't have been able to at his home).  It turns that that said stupid
error code was due to the clock needing to be set correctly, first.  Of
all the crappy stupid error messages that mickysoft has ever inflicted
upon users, that really takes the cake.  Why the hell couldn't the
computer just have said to set the clock manually, since it couldn't
manage to do it itself, instead of some moronic number code?  And
finding how to manually set a the clock on Windows 8 was no fun, either.

Sodding computers, they're designed to send you mad, I'm sure.

-- 
[tim at localhost ~]$ uname -rsvp
Linux 3.9.10-100.fc17.x86_64 #1 SMP Sun Jul 14 01:31:27 UTC 2013 x86_64

All mail to my mailbox is automatically deleted, there is no point
trying to privately email me, I will only read messages posted to the
public lists.

George Orwell's '1984' was supposed to be a warning against tyranny, not
a set of instructions for supposedly democratic governments.