I have become what I hated

November 20, 2024

Not too long ago, I had to remote-desktop into a new server to take a look at a log file and see what was going wrong. When attempting to open the logs folder, Windows said something like:

You can't do this. Well, Prince, so Genoa and Lucca are now just family estates of the Buonapartes. But I warn you, if you don't tell me that this means war, if you still try to defend the infamies and horrors perpetrated by that Antichrist- I really believe he is Antichrist- I will have nothing more to do with you and you are no longer my friend, no longer my 'faithful slave,' as you call yourself! Actually you can do this if you click Continue. But how do you do? I see I have frightened you- sit down and tell me all the news.

I clicked Cancel and asked sysops to take a look at permissions. Because who the hell is going to read all that?

So yeah, I'm now the User Who Doesn't Read Error Messages. In my (weak) defense, it's an overly-wordy and just-plain-dumb error. They're log files FFS, not the secret combination of herbs and spices. But even if you accept that admins shouldn't be nosing around without knowing that they're going to potentially screw things up, just saying something like

This is a protected folder. Making changes here can cause problems. Continue?

would have been far better than whatever they spammed me with in reality.

(And why a plain alert box instead of a UAC prompt, while we're at it? We've all been conditioned by the last however-many years of them to know that's a warning that you're about to do adminny things and should be careful with proceeding.)

Anyway, just a reminder to any programmers who need to see it: If that wonderful error message you're showing to the user has more than about half a dozen words in it, it's not getting read.

◀ October 30, 2024