"Traditional, but Puzzling"

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45 points·colinprince··7 comments

As an element of backwards rationalisation, my brain interprets "ENOTTY" as "E-NO-TTY" (Error: NO TeleTYpe available) which is the rough current meaning, rather than "E-NOT-TY" (Error: NOT a TYpewriter) which is the original meaning.

Your interpretation seemed so obvious and natural to me that I never once considered it could have a different etymology, until now.

I’m pretty sure it is ENO-TTY. Because who among us hasn’t started up our computers only to realize that our terminal had been replaced by the renown ambient electronic artist?

Reminds me of a more recent parking lot error. I have a parking card with attached account, and credit card for automatic payments. I also had a specific car and it's plate attached so I didn't have to tap the card.

I had to cancel the credit card so automatic payments decline, and I don't always drive the same car in which case I have to tap the parking card.

The result of all this:

When I leave the parking lot in a different car after paying manually at the gate, the message displayed is "Payment Declined: Exit permitted"

It reminds me of an unexpectedly wholesome message displayed on certain parking machines here in the UK - "change possible"

I read the title as "traditional butt puzzling" and expected something slightly different

See also "lp0 on fire", an error message for generic printer problems on Linux.

https://musings.danlj.org/2019/05/15/incomplete-information....

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