"For a genuinely humorous take on UML then the student letter, originally published in Ed Yourdon's American Programmer journal in 1997, is a better bet" ...... which of course today would read ..... For a genuine take on UML then the student letter, originally published in Ed Yourdon's American Programmer journal in 1997, is AI Beta Bet.

Real Serious Enigmatic Humour too.

Of course, when the Inscrutable East has so many new Flowers to Offer, one is confronted with an Embarrassment of Riches to Feed and Feast upon ...... and Houses of the Rising Sun Hospitality is Altogether just too Heavenly for Simple Words that take your Breath away. :-) ...... and the Sweetest of Sweet Addictions.

And Paris because it must be Springtime ......

Is whether UML itself is unfunny, or just the entrants to the competition who need a bit more tuition on chortle-worthy jokes.

Last time I checked, the great soliloquy from Hamlet was an outstanding piece of literature. Not a joke. Regardless of whether one attempted to turn it into a flowchart or not.

To successfully generate humour from Hamlet, one need go no further than the Reduced Shakespeare Company. The entire works of Shakespeare played out in a single show is something great to behold. Seeing the 3 versions of of Hamlet is hilarious - the 20 minute, 2 minute and 30 second versions.

As the owner of the aforementioned name I take offense to the suggestion that my life is a sad reflection of morality. If anything I believe my life is a sad reflection on society as can be best summarized in the following quote, certainly too complex for a silly UML diagram. (50 points to the person who can identify where the quote comes from)

“I never seek to protect society who does not protect me, and whom I will even say, in general, occupies itself about me only to injure me; and thus giving them a low place in my esteem, and preserving a neutrality towards them, it is society and my neighbor who are indebted to me”

So, in closing, I say to you this famous quote: To crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and to hear the lamentations of the woman! This is good. Now run screaming in terror you silly twits.

Crikey, Solomon, that was a tad ......Pompous and Dark.

Can we please have the Yin to that Yang?

And yes, it is most likely that Society is Sick and Poorly Serviced. Shall we blame Stupidity for that?

I'm pretty sure it says that the life of Solomon Grundy is a sad reflection of mortality, not morality.

There you go...

UML == User Mode Linux.

But on the side note of amusing error messages, I develop a commercial plugin for a well known open source system, and was telephoned by a customer not so long ago to ask why, when he tried to send a message through the system, he received the reply:

"Message failed. This wouldn't happen if you weren't an idiot."

This was a hidden message that was only supposed to appear in debug mode, when I would deliberately screw up the system to cut out a linked application and save myself a lot of trouble. Obviously, I'd made a slight coding mistake somewhere along the line, and when a user managed to misconfigure their system in a certain way, it appeared on their screen. Whoops!

I comforted myself with the knowledge that he hadn't downloaded the previous version, in which the message read something along the lines of:

"Message failed! Dear God, you're a fucking useless programmer, aren't you? Get off me, you wanker!"

Close call!

Holy shit! You're right. I misread the article. And I'm usually so good about picking up on the details.

I still like my quote though. I memorized that years ago and I've been lying in ambush, waiting for the time to break it out. Too bad it wasn't as good of a time as I thought.

.. how someone can't get humor out of UML. Maybe we need the xkcd webcomic author to do something on that? I did some diagrams about convoluted procedures that had stuff like "Stupid User" actors, "use-less cases" and other stuff.

Even some (usually) unfunny error messages can be manipulated to show funny stuff, like:

$ make love

I don't know how to make love. Stop.

(though it won't work on newer versions where it says "target 'love'" instead.

Ah, and that other article about errors made me remember my good old C-64:

?ERROR

my Mac Plus:

"[BOMB] Sorry, a system error occured." (or the SAD MAC)

or the two most confusing messages I've found:

"This is not an error."

"Error: Success" (you get this if you use perror() after a system call that *doesn't* fail)

All right, on a positive note:

A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.

Proudly plagiarized and probably misquoted by Solomon Grundy. Originally by Robert A. Heinlein.

"© All the text in the inverted commas is the copyrighted property of William Shakespeare"

As if.

Only had to use UML once - not a fan - so here's an old error message joke instead.

$man why did you get a divorce

man: Too many arguments

(No longer works these days with multiple arguments supported, but like make love above used to raise a laugh once in awhile, getting old now)

Icon: this joke deserves a health warning (and not in the Python translation sense)

Of course success is an error - how else to keep the sheeple in line?

Just look at the Global War Of tError....

(mine's the flak jacket with the 'Remember 4 March not 11 September' sign on the back)

Brilliant quote !

I have to find a way to remember that in full.