Off-topic: Silly error messages (was RE: [Mimedefang] MIME typemessage/partial)

[Michael Sims]

Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote:
> David F. Skoll wrote:
>> Or how about the losers who program some BIOSes?
>>
>> 	"Keyboard error.  Press F1 to continue."
>
> Actually, this is not as silly as it might seem on first look.  The
> purpuse of this error message is to make sure user will connect the
> keyboard before BIOS boots the OS.  The (correct) assumption is that
> 99.999% of time, error will be caused by missing keyboard, not by
> faulty keyboard.  You connect the keyboard, press F1, machine boots.
> No keyboard, no F1, no boot.  If you want to allow boot without
> keyboard, set 'halt on all errors except keyboard'.  Simple ;-)

Not only that, but this error will also come up with a lot of BIOSes when you've got
a key pressed for a long time during boot.  A few times I've seen it when I'm
working on a messy desk and I realize that I have a clipboard sitting on the
keyboard that's pressing the space bar down. :)