[MPlayer-users] Re: Core dumped ; ) ... oh, ha, hilarious, it's a killer

[Matthew W. Miller]

On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 03:10:14PM +0200, G?bor L?n?rt wrote:
>On Tue, Jun 17, 2003 at 03:05:26PM +0200, Ruben Garcia wrote:
>> Ok then, somebody with access to cvs, can you remove the "Programmers 
>> joke" from mplayer now?

Of course not!  This is only the umpteenth time someone's brought it up,
after all.

>Hmm? Only developers have got access of course and since it's a joke of 
>developers I see no point why they would like to remove it.

Yes, God forbid an unhelpful message should be clarified for the sake of 
those lame ol' *users*.

>Also, you should see the ":)" at the end of "core dumped" ;-)

Yes, the smiley is quite evident.  Smileys are the textual equivalent of
"You gotta hear this joke, it's a GREAT joke, you'll love it...",
entirely stripping away any possible potential humour value which the
joke itself may possess, and as jokes go, "Core dumped" is a pretty 
pitiful one to begin with.

>If you don't like it, remove from source before compiling mplayer and 
>you won't see it again. Simple.

Dear sir or madam: I'm sure that you don't *really* think that asking 
someone to perform the same menial source-code edit every single time 
they go to a different version is a realistic request.  Just editing the 
long-winded 'Your system is too SLOW to play this!' message down to, oh, 
say, a one-liner is tedium enough for one package.

Or to be more succinct about it: If you're tired of hearing complaints
about that message, change it from a poor attempt at a joke to something
actually helpful and you won't see them again.  Simple.
-- 
Matthew W. Miller <mwmiller at columbus.rr.com>