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Bug Microsoft Technology

Office 2003 Bug Locks Owners Out 247

Posted by kdawson from the file-available-but-not-to-you dept.
I Don't Believe in Imaginary Property writes "A Microsoft Office 2003 bug is locking people out of their own files, specifically those protected with Microsoft's Rights Management Service. Microsoft has a TechNet bulletin on the issue with a fix. It looks like they screwed up and let a certificate expire. There's no information on when the replacement certificate will expire, though, or what will happen when it does."
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Office 2003 Bug Locks Owners Out More

Office 2003 Bug Locks Owners Out

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  • Tag: Not a bug, defective by design. (Score:5, Insightful)

    by ozmanjusri ( 601766 ) <aussie_bob@nOspAm.hotmail.com> on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:24AM (#30428652) Journal
    Actually, it's not really a bug, just the usual friendly reminder from Microsoft that there's a new version out and it's time to ante up again.

    • Totally off the mark. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by IBitOBear ( 410965 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @03:32AM (#30428948) Homepage Journal

      Microsoft gets people to update by giving their product to the CEOs and "bigwigs". When everybody _else_ in the organization cannot read or use the new format for the documents, they have to keep bouncing transfered documents back to the aforementioned bigwigs. Eventually the bigwigs get tired of the fact that they cannot understand how to use save-as-older-format, and they dislike having their underlings telling them to do things, and they cannot bear to find all the files they saved and re-save them before they downgrade back to the old version... So the entire company naturally has to pay to upgrade everyone.

      Repeat that at the border of the company. Every iteration of Little Company that works with and is dependent on Big Company, cannot allow themselves to be seen as unhelpful nor out of date, and they cannot bounce the documents they receive via email etc. without giving that exact impression...

      Letting certificates expire is _not_ a Microsoft "strategy", it's an artifact of their adoption of "We don't care. We don't have to. We're The Phone Company" where there is no longer just one phone company, but Microsoft wants to be "The Software Company".

      This _is_ egg on their face, but the only ones who will not yell "brilliant omelet" are the people who can connect the "Trusted Computing" dots. Letting the world _again_ see what it means to leave the keys to your property in the hands of any entity that doesn't _have_ to care is just another Microwhoops...

      • Re:Totally off the mark. (Score:5, Informative)

        by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @04:34AM (#30429152)

        Eventually the bigwigs get tired of the fact that they cannot understand how to use save-as-older-format, and they dislike having their underlings telling them to do things, and they cannot bear to find all the files they saved and re-save them before they downgrade back to the old version... So the entire company naturally has to pay to upgrade everyone.

        Or, the admins download and roll out the Microsoft Office Compatibility Pack [microsoft.com] and leave the CEO with his new shiny-shiny.

        • Re:Totally off the mark. (Score:5, Informative)

          by deniable ( 76198 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @05:45AM (#30429410)
          And then the admins get to deal with documents that can't be handled by the converter. I had one last month, had to install 2007 to open it. I forgot to check Open Office first though. 2007 isn't as bad as the problems '97 caused, but it still causes some.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by mattr ( 78516 )

          And how do you upgrade the PAYING customer with the draconian security policy?

          A totally cynical decision by Microsoft to make color palettes INCOMPATIBLE in when Office was upgraded has caused major troubles in our project. The Excel files we made, which need to use color in order to communicate complex data sets, get shown in front of large meetings and emailed to participants. I had to hand-edit many times to avoid embarrassment, the guys who didn't got embarrassed of course.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by pixelpusher220 ( 529617 )
          that's assuming MS actually lets you save documents in the older format. Back when 97 came out, initially (i.e. for months) there literally was no way to read a 97 format in 95 or earlier and no way to save in 95 format from 97. After a while they came out with the ability to save back into 95 format.

          But the message was clear, you shall upgrade whether you like it or not.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward

        Or the companies could hire tech people that know how to set the default "Save-as" to automatically save as the older format in the options..

      • Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)

        by account_deleted ( 4530225 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @06:53AM (#30429654)
        Comment removed based on user account deletion

        • Re:Totally off the mark. (Score:4, Informative)

          by drinkypoo ( 153816 ) <drink@hyperlogos.org> on Monday December 14, 2009 @08:37AM (#30430198) Homepage Journal

          Now if they are still using Office 97 I think they got bigger things to worry about than getting a newer version.

          What things are those? Office 97 met my needs just fine, the only reason I stopped using it is that it didn't support multiple monitors correctly, you'd put the app on the second monitor and pop up a menu, and the menu would pop up on the primary display! Goooooo Microsoft, yeah! Now THAT is quality. Now I'm back to one monitor, but I'm also on Ubuntu so I'm using OO.o.

          • Re:Totally off the mark. (Score:4, Informative)

            by MadKeithV ( 102058 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @08:58AM (#30430368)
            My parents are on OO.o, my girlfriend is on OO.o, and my NetBook is on OO.o. The universal response in this admittedly small sample has been: "hey, that looks a lot more like the Office I'm used to!".
            That's a Windows PC, an iMac, and a Linux netbook by the way.

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by klui ( 457783 )
          The compatibility pack does not work with SharePoint versioning. If you open up an Office x document, it will convert it but the system will not know you've checked it out and have it open for editing. I've had to ask coworkers to use non-x versions hosted on SharePoint servers.

      • The reality of the situation is much simpler.

        When you buy a new PC or laptop for your company - guess which version of office comes on it - the latest.

        Guess if it is cheaper or more expensive to purchase one with the old version - more expensive. And whi is going to approve to pay more for something older?

        So, as new machines come into *ANY* company, no matter *WHO gets them, they have the newest versions of Windows and Office, and this is what makes the problems. In many companies, I imagine it is the CEOs

        • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

          by jargon82 ( 996613 )
          Might be true in small companies. Big shops (even medium shops, that I've worked with) like to use a standard image. New machines are either wiped and rebuilt on arrival or come wiped in the first place.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 )

          And who is going to approve to pay more for something older?

          Total Cost of Ownership [wikipedia.org]
          Those who don't want to pay for:
          - Training for users to be able to use the new software interface
          - Training for technical staff to be able to quickly troubleshoot common issues
          - Cost in man-hours of re-writing that bodge macro which auto-fills / sorts details which is now broken in every document
          - Accompanying hardware upgrades for any computers which don't run fast enough for the new software

          IIRC, MS Office on new computers is a 60-Day trial, or you get MS Works instead. You'

    • Re:Tag: Not a bug, defective by design. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by rtfa-troll ( 1340807 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @03:48AM (#30428998)
      I guess in some way you're right. When Office 2003 goes unsupported, the certificate will expire and people will be forced to upgrade and that probably is something Microsoft has documented and understands (and thus a "feature"). However, I still think we could call this an operational screw up. I really don't think they want to remind people of their power to do an Amazon [theregister.co.uk] on all and any of your files until they have people nice and solidly locked in.

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by deniable ( 76198 )
        'Destruction' of archived records is a no-no in some places. We'll see if anybody important gets bitten.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by Skater ( 41976 )
          My employer recently announced that we're all upgrading from Office 2000 to Office 2007, since 2000 is going EOL. My fiancee was pleased, because she has 2007 on her personal laptop and will no longer have to worry about saving as older version. I was scared, because even minor upgrades for Office have broken files for me (the last service pack to Office 2000 did that - I was no longer able to open a file I'd been working on; I had to get the support staff to downgrade me again so I could re-read the file

  • Screw Up Or Forced Upgrade? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Afforess ( 1310263 ) <afforess@gmail.com> on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:25AM (#30428654) Journal
    I know a LOT of people still using MS Office 2003. Some people dislike the Ribbon System with '07's version. Some people are too cheap to upgrade when the old copy still "works". Now, Microsoft isn't making any money from all those old copies of 2003, so what's stop them from "Programming Obsolescence" into their software?

    It sounds a bit sinister, yes; but it's not technically illegal. It might even be in the oft-skimmed EULA. Or maybe it's just similar to the way HP printers always fail a week after the warranty expires.

    • Re:Screw Up Or Forced Upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by darkpixel2k ( 623900 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:41AM (#30428718)

      I know a LOT of people still using MS Office 2003. Some people dislike the Ribbon System with '07's version. Some people are too cheap to upgrade when the old copy still "works".

      That's why there's OpenOffice. An experience that brings you back to the good 'ol days of Office 2003 for free. Actually, it may even bring you back to the days of Office '97.

      At least until the next version comes out. Then you have the ribbon too. God, I hope it can be disabled.

      • Re: (Score:3, Informative)

        by AuMatar ( 183847 )

        Luckily open office writes to an open, patent unencumbered format. So if you dislike the UI- find a fork with a better one. Or a completely different program. No vendor lock in.

        • Re:Screw Up Or Forced Upgrade? (Score:5, Informative)

          by gandhi_2 ( 1108023 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @03:08AM (#30428838) Homepage

          This has nothing to do with open formats.

          If you encrypt and digitally sign (aka DRM) your OO.org files, and loose the ability to decrypt them, you are in the same boat.

          This is a story about DRM, not formats. A story about the forgotten idea of key escrow idea and of DRM cert servers, not file formats.

          • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

            by wvmarle ( 1070040 )

            If YOU lose your own key, then that's your own fault. Forgetting to take your keys and closing the door behind you, that's simply your own silliness. And no news.

            Here it is a third-party vendor (Microsoft in this case) that basically changes the locks to your files. As if the developer of the apartment building where you live suddenly changes the locks of all the flats. Locking out everyone who locked their doors. Even if they did not lose their own keys.

            And that is bad. Very bad.

      • Re:Screw Up Or Forced Upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Nefarious Wheel ( 628136 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @03:34AM (#30428956) Journal

        At least until the next version comes out. Then you have the ribbon too. God, I hope it can be disabled.

        Agree. The Ribbon was a tremendous step backwards in user friendliness, all in the name of eye candy. It sucks. Way too long a familiarisation curve. In contrast, I'm having zero trouble -- almost zero thought -- in using the plain vanilla Gnome / Open Office interface to do the stuff I need to do on the home laptop, i.e. load documents, edit them, and store them.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by TheLink ( 130905 )
          The ribbon is bad in many cases because displays have got wider more than they have got taller.

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by deniable ( 76198 )
            Let me guess, Office 2012 will have a vertical ribbon on one side of the screen.

    • Re:Screw Up Or Forced Upgrade? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by shrimppesto ( 766285 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:46AM (#30428742)

      Why did you put "works" in quotes? Office 2003 still does, in fact, work. It works just fine.

      A lot of people are still using Office 2003 because the number of new features that impact daily usage seems to shrink with every new release. Why upgrade when the version you have does everything you need it to, and the new version doesn't do anything you wish it did?

      There's always someone who will benefit from [insert new feature here]. But for the rest of us, Office has suffered from a paucity of innovation since 1995. If anything, things have gotten worse -- e.g. they keep trying to make Microsoft Word "smart," but the result is a program that's too smart to be obedient and too stupid to do what you actually want it to do.

      The writing's on the wall for Office. If the folks in Redmond don't figure out something reeeal soon, Office is toast.

      • "Works" is in quotations, mainly because the whole point of the article is that Office 2003 DOESN'T work anymore.

        • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

          by mr_matticus ( 928346 )

          Sure it does, so long as you didn't lock up your own files with Microsoft's rights management services.

          Considering that this is used mostly, if not entirely, by corporate clients implementing access control, the idea that it's Microsoft doing evil in the background is foolhardy. Locking documents out because of the failure of a security certificate would hardly convince a corporate client to upgrade to a newer version of Office.

  • Locks OUT!? (Score:3, Interesting)

    by AndGodSed ( 968378 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:28AM (#30428666) Homepage Journal

    I was about to type out a long post extolling the virtues of... erm... something... and then I blinked back to my screen and realised I had just envisaged what a mistake like this from an upstream supplier (in this case Microsoft) would have on my work day.

    I am in IT and I would have had hundreds of phonecalls for this by now, and it is only 09:24... sheesh to apply a hotfix like this to all my clients...

    woops there I went again imagining what this would mean for my workday... I can't actually say that any of our clients use the RMS service on their office documents.

    Wowee, dodged a bullet there.

    Good luck to all the IT grunts out there in the trenches trying to get this fixed right now...

    • Re:Locks OUT!? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by msclrhd ( 1211086 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:52AM (#30428764)

      What's worse is when Microsoft does not exist anymore at some point in the future. Eventually, the certificates will expire again; then -- without Microsoft to renew them anymore -- you're screwed.

      Want to access your important, digitally protected documents? Sorry.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by sjames ( 1099 )

        That's what happens when you hand the keys to your kingdom over to someone whose best interests don't align with your own.

        • Re:Locks OUT!? (Score:4, Informative)

          by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @05:17AM (#30429310)

          That's what happens when you hand the keys to your kingdom over to someone whose best interests don't align with your own.

          Saying you should avoid that is all very well but it's practically impossible in any business.

          Want to take out a loan? The moment the bank thinks you may be in trouble they can and will send you a rude letter saying "Repay the whole lot. Now."

          Want someone to do your accounts? Paying an outside company will be a sight cheaper than paying a wage to someone who you only need for a few weeks of the year, but the accounts they prepare will be full of disclaimers to the effect of "We have prepared these using information supplied by our client...." and it's you the tax man will come after if he smells a rat. Too bad if the office junior did your accounts and the senior person who signed them off was in a hurry to get home that day - they'll never admit it in a million years.

          Want an email, calendaring and contacts platform? Free clue: The F/OSS exchange alternatives are generally just as complicated as Exchange itself, with the added bonus that finding someone who knows them can be a hell of a lot harder.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Imrik ( 148191 )

        Don't worry about it, even after the certificates expire, you have Microsoft's guarantee that no one will be able to access your secure data.

      • Re: (Score:3, Funny)

        by Nerdfest ( 867930 )

        What's worse is when Microsoft does not exist anymore at some point in the future

        Not a huge worry. Everyone will be off enjoying the parties anyway.

    • Who the fuck enables the "copy protection" feature in every-day office work? Most normal users don't even know it's an option.

  • Why wouldn't Microsoft allow the end user to setup and manage their own certificates upon installation?

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by deniable ( 76198 )
      Because people could then use self-signed certs and we know those are only used for evil.

  • amazing... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by wizardforce ( 1005805 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @02:31AM (#30428686) Journal

    Putting that amount of trust in a third party that has the power to lock you out of your own files... It boggles the mind as to why that is acceptable in anything of importance.

    • This is Copy-Protection becoming self aware.

      Apparently the software realized that YOU still have the ability to copy your data.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by phantomfive ( 622387 )
      Simple cost/benefit analysis: if it gives you a competitive advantage, it may be worth it, even though you may have to pay for it down the road. The value of documents to businesses decreases as time passes: they are interested in making money, not in retaining archives.

      That said, I'm not entirely sure using Office 2003 gives you such a competitive advantage over other products. But that is not my decision.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by MrMista_B ( 891430 )

      And yet people use such things as gmail, hotmail, facebook, and etc.

  • If you have Office 2003 and no web access, are you hosed?

    • Re:So if you had no web, you'd be hosed? (Score:4, Informative)

      by El Capitaine ( 973850 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @03:00AM (#30428804)
      The cases where the user would be "hosed" are few to none.

      This bug only applies to documents protected with Rights Management Services, which is part of Active Directory and the Windows Server operating system.

      Therefore, the only way you would have an issue is if you were on a network that used RMS but had no internet connection, in which case you'd have your IT guy download a fix from some other internet-connected machine and deploy it to the systems with the bug.

      This will not affect people who are simply running their own copies of Office 2003 without RMS or Active Directory or any other fancy add-ons.

    • I don't think you can use this feature without internet access to start with.

  • Unexpected error? (Score:5, Funny)

    by SpacePunk ( 17960 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @03:02AM (#30428818) Homepage

    From the article...
    "Office 2003 users receive the error, "Unexpected error occurred. Please try again later or contact your system administrator,""

    WTF? Is there anyone out there that can point me to an expected error? Can these wannabe programmer motherfuckers ever pass on real information on an error to the end user? Their error messages might as well say, "Our program fucked up, we're dipshits, we don't know what the fuck is going on. In fact, we couldn't have put together a crappier piece of software if we were drunk, or high."

    • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:5, Funny)

      by jpmorgan ( 517966 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @03:12AM (#30428866) Homepage

      You would prefer 'Expected error occurred. We could have handled with this transparently, but we'd rather pop up an annoying dialog box?'

      • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by L4t3r4lu5 ( 1216702 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @04:40AM (#30429178)
        I'd prefer it to say "The document you are trying to access has been secured by Microsoft Rights Management Service, but the signing certificate has expired. Please see your Administrator regarding updating or renewing your certificate."

        Still, I suppose no MS coder had ever considered that a time limited certificate would ever expire.

    • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Thanshin ( 1188877 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @03:27AM (#30428930)

      Their error messages might as well say, "Our program fucked up, we're dipshits, we don't know what the fuck is going on. In fact, we couldn't have put together a crappier piece of software if we were drunk, or high."

      It would be funnier to get messages like: "Our program fucked up. -- Error code: ss324. Help me. I've been in a cage for the last two years. They feed me the corpses of the programmers who didn't make it through the big flood. I don't want to die. Please help! ... HH/991.DDF. For more information, contact your system administrator."

    • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:5, Funny)

      by BrokenHalo ( 565198 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @04:06AM (#30429064)
      Is there anyone out there that can point me to an expected error?

      What's worse is that insulting little click-box that sits there jeering at you saying [OK]

      ...when as we all know, the correct response is "No, it's NOT fucking OK, you dipshit."

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by deniable ( 76198 )
        Wait till you get a phone call asking you what to do with that box, for the third time, today, from the same person.

    • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by AlgorithMan ( 937244 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @05:20AM (#30429326) Homepage
      this is simple. Error handling basically works like this

      try {
      command1
      command2
      command3
      }
      catch(DiskFullError E) {
      messagebox("not enough free disk space\n"+E.ExtendedInformations()); // this is an expected error
      }
      catch(NoWritePermissionError E) {
      messagebox("you don\'t have write permission in that directory\n"+E.ExtendedInformations()); // this is an expected error
      }
      catch(DirDoesntExistError E) {
      messagebox("the directory you chose doesn\'t exist\n"+E.ExtendedInfo()); // this is an expected error
      }
      catch(...) {
      messagebox("an unexpected error occured"); // this is where the unexpected errors are handled
      }

      you try to do some stuff and if something goes bad, the codes throw an exception, which can be caught by the error-handlers. and if there is no error handler for the error, then this is an unexpected error. this would crash the program, unless you do catch(...), which can also catch unknown exception types
      well, in redmond it goes more like this (see MSDN)

      if(!command1) {
      switch(ERRNO) {
      case 1: messagebox("Error code 1, contact your vendor"); break;
      case 2: messagebox("Error code 2"); break;
      default: messagebox("unexpected error");
      }
      }else {
      if(!command2) {
      switch(ERRNO) {
      case 2: messagebox("Error code 2"); break;
      case 3: messagebox("Error code 3, press F1 to see some useless hexadecimal bytes"); break;
      default: messagebox("unexpected error");
      }
      } else {
      if(!command3) {
      switch(ERRNO){
      case 1: messagebox("Error code 1, contact your vendor"); break;
      case 4: messagebox("Error code 4, why don\'t you switch to linux?"); break;
      default: messagebox("unexpected error");
      }
      } else {
      // wohoo, nothing went bad!
      }
      }
      }

      if something goes bad, a global variable (ERRNO) is set to some error code and the functions return false. the default case takes all the values of ERRNO, that are not handled explicitly Yes, this is prehistoric and non-thread-safe error handling, but what do you expect from the masters of disaster?

      • errno is completely thread-safe on all modern platforms. errno is allowed to be a macro, and often looks like

        #define errno (*get_pointer_to_per_thread_errno())

        i.e. there's a function which returns a pointer to a static, but per-thread thread-local, errno variable. The errno macro dereferences this pointer, so that reading from and assigning to "errno" still works as expected, but is a completely thread-safe manner.

    • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by jimicus ( 737525 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @05:24AM (#30429338)

      Every error message that Microsoft has ever written is like this.

      Sometimes they think to include a way of getting the full error in proper technical language across - maybe by writing to the event log or having a "click for technical details" option but more often than not they don't. As a Unix admin, it's immensely frustrating dealing with software which goes so far out of its way to be opaque.

    • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:5, Informative)

      by dargaud ( 518470 ) <slashdot2@nOSpaM.gdargaud.net> on Monday December 14, 2009 @05:30AM (#30429362) Homepage
      I blame this kind of error messages on programmers who use exceptions. Instead of doing error checking within the routine that has the problem and crafting an error message in there, you just throw an exception, hoping for the caller to take care of it. If the caller doesn't then the exception keeps floating up until nobody has a clue to what the condition was, hence "unexpected error". I hate exceptions.
      • "I blame this kind of error messages on programmers .."

        I blame the people who designed a system where an expired certificate throws up such an error msg ...

      • I hate exceptions.

        Are there no circumstance in which their use would be acceptable? ;)

      • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

        by GreatBunzinni ( 642500 )

        What you are describing isn't a problem with the exception system, as you are free to craft your exception-handling system so that it informs you exactly where the exception was thrown. If you want to blame someone then blame those who failed to learn how to use them.

      • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by b4dc0d3r ( 1268512 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @09:59AM (#30431014)

        Code reuse is the more likely problem. The biggest problem is that each component has to assume there is no UI. It could be in a GUI, or commandline, or silent mode, or a service, or whatever else, so it doesn't pop up an error message - it just returns a value.

        You tell your handy security library to use the internet library to connect to the microsoft server thingie, and the internet library doesn't have any reason to know about certificates. The security library assumes the certificate will always be valid (or the network will take care of that), so it doesn't have a "bad certificate" return value. Then the app doesn't check the return values (only success/fail), or it's not in the list of things to check.

        Detailing your actions makes it easier to disassemble and comprehend, so lots of proprietary coders don't do that. Bubbling up an exception could have a detailed description of why something failed, but proprietary coders don't want end users to see the gory details of what their code is doing. "Confusing error messages" is one of those things Windows users hate, so they generally either detail what you might do to fix it or, if it's too detailed or on a server instead, just skip that part.

        It's nothing the user can do anything about, so why bother reporting it? Plus you need to make translations and test cases to ensure your message pops up in all languages when the cert is expired... more work when you could just ship it, and list a known risk that the server team has to keep the cert up to date.

        I know, tldr. Black box programming combined with allowing ignorant users peace of mind will result in this type scenario every time. I always chuckle when I see "Table or view does not exist" errors in Oracle SQL when I can see the table in the list of ALL_USER_TABLES or similar. I don't have access to it, and revealing that it exists but I'm, not allowed to read from it might be a security violation the same way "bad username" vs "bad password" gives brute-force people more information to work with so you say "bad username/password combination" and now they don't know if the user exists. Maybe they thought of that, or maybe they tried to select, got 'denied' return code, and translated that into one they do have a text string for.

        So many possibilities, of which yours is the least likely. Exceptions can be done well, there just aren't enough good examples out there so it takes a serious debugging headache before someone looks at a better way of doing it. Then Management says the errors are too wordy and you're back to "Unexpected error" meaning everything from "Network down" to "I crapped my pants".

    • Re:Unexpected error? (Score:4, Funny)

      by dbIII ( 701233 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @06:16AM (#30429564)
      The funny thing is I can read in stuff from the 1980s that doesn't even use ASCII and these clowns can't even keep files readable for six years.
      Proudly brought to you by the guys that stranded a ship with a divide by zero error and halted devices for a day because they forgot about leap years. They are only ready for the "Enterprise" is you have a few spare redshirts to lose.

    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      I love these kind of messages. Everybody keeps calling me, it says here you know what is going on. WTF? I don't have a clue what you've done, just because I am the system administrator I am not telepathic or having some kind of better error messages mailed to me...
      Even better, you are installing something and the dialog pops up: "Contact your system administrator". I am the fucking administrator if I wasn't I wouldn't be logged in as 'administrator'...you haven't told me what the problem is...

  • Now that I know that this won't affect the Isolated Basement Department, I can now safely install Office 2003...

    Receipt, check. Shrinkwrap off, check. Must keep original box...

  • A copy protection system called RMS? (Score:5, Funny)

    by mattcsn ( 1592281 ) on Monday December 14, 2009 @04:27AM (#30429126)

    Obviously, someone at Microsoft has a sense of humour.

  • People who call themselves "I don't believe in intellectual property" and make that text link to the EFF obviously misunderstand the purpose of the EFF.

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