h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

 My computer just had what can only be called a psychotic episode. I only hit the reply button in one of the forums and it all went pair-shaped. The whole thing froze, then the ominous blue screen appeared. The one which says "YOUR SYSTEM IS BUISY". The one which was not supposed to be in Win95/98. The one which means "hit the reset button quick and give the PC ten minutes to chill out", well I suppose it has been on for over twelve hours solid.

Twelve hours? Wow. Not bad going, all things considered. Some other things you might want to try before pressing the 'reset' button:

1) Sit there for an hour or so in dull incomprehension when you realise it's just eaten your x-thousand word document.
2) Laugh uncontrollably, before hitting the screen with a bat of some description (not the one with wings, though)
3) Run away and hope no-one noticed (oh, sorry - that's what you do if it's someone else's machine)

Alternatively:

4) Sing merrily, praising Microsoft's coding acumen
5) Go back to using charcoal and tree bark

My sympathies go with you - I deal with the things all week and the only successful way of venting my rage is to completely reformat the disk before reinstalling Windows whilst making snide comments. It's not all that good though, and if anyone has any better suggestions I'd love to hear them

All the best,
Azimuth

Well the paper and pencil option has definate plausability

Have a Microsoft joke

"Start ............... Snigger"

I understand that screen is nicknamed 'The Blue Screen of Death' and for good reason. Not that I want to show myself up as someone techy. I'm not a CompSci - no really, I'm not. I just know these things. Sad, isn't it?

Quite like the joke, though. Do you have similar disregard for Intel?

Oh yes, naturally. Ive got this wonderful little picture somewhere of the intal logo. But its been cunningly changed, its now red and has the words Satan Inside.

Mm. Could do with that one myself (something to swear at...) You got the Intel Outside one too? Or 2001.4 (though that's a bit old hat, now)?

Not seen those ones. I've seen an animation of Mr Gates being beheaded though.

Delightful. Always wonder how much of the world's money that man and his greedy multinational have wasted.

Just posted 2001.4 to:

http://www.h2g2.com/P184484

Hope you like it.

Nice. Most appropriate.

To get slightly more serious did you ever own a win95 OSR1 computer?

Don't think so. I only got a PC in 1997 and that was because you can't get ArchiCAD (use it for my Uni course) for my trusty old Acorn. To be honest, I'm not really sure what a win95 OSR1 computer is. Is that win95A? In that case I'm going to contradict myself because I did. It had some classic features, for example the auto-play on the cd didn't work and it never recognised my hard drives properly! On the other hand, both Outlook and Explorer crash periodically now I've got win95B which seems to be something to do with them not liking my hard drives powering down (something I can't seem to turn off). Both versions screwed up the sound card software from time to time. Why do you ask?

Well the original version of Win95 (OSR1 for Operating System Release 1) had a small problem (I know it had loads but this is one in perticular), I think it may have been a memory leakage problem. Anyway, each time on program communicated with another it tagged on a little bit of extra junk onto the end of the transfer. This extra junk was processed along with the normal info, leading the computer to do needless and meaningless commands. Some of the junk actually resulted in things being permanently saved on the hard drives. To cut a long story short the more you used the computer the faster these errors piled up. I ended up having to completely reformat my OSR1 machine once every 3 months to keep it working else it went horribly pair shaped. The moral of this story is, don't get Win2000 until 2002.

Funny, I recall having to do much the same thing, too. Mind you, I wasn't as clued up on it as you - I ended up waiting for the pears.

nb. I'm not in a hurry to upgrade to Win2000 (when it comes out) as a: I haven't even gone to Win98 and b: I'm a firm believer that the simpler the basics behind the running of the machine the better - I still use Notepad to write HTML, for example.

Me too, I also use Textpad to write the Perl and C++ scripts.

My personal favourite is !Zap, but that's an Acorn program. Which sites do you write Perl and C++ scripts for - h2g2? *thinks - this person could be useful*. Do you do platform specific software coding (if that's the right term) or internet coding? Or both? I only ask because I've just (stress just) started up an internet design partnership and my coding stretches to Javascript and a little Java bit not much else. My partner in crime is more experienced in this field, mind, as he works in software support for a big UK company, but I'm just a minion Architecture student and I don't get much time to practice my coding as part of my course!

Well, I've got a degree in Biochemistry. But I've just completed a MSc in Bioinformatics, which is the computational side of Biochemistry. I've had the free run of a 16 processor Origin supercomputer for the last year, thats the server I was playing around with.

Hmm. Lucky you. Last time I got to play with someone else's computer it was a friend wanting to know if his BBC B was working.

I miss it now, I loved tinkering around with the intranet service I helped build. But I'm just bragging.

Got to go I'm afraid. One more q. - do you know much about secure web pages / connections / servers etc.?

Other than that they are not, no.