We had to stretch just a little bit to make a purely Microsoft-themed column this week. Gone are the days when it was trivial to make BSOD jokes and rail at Outlook Express. But they still give us material for some lolz now and then.

Well-rested reader Michael W. remarks "After waking up my laptop from a long period of slumber and logging in I am greeted by the attached error message on my desktop: You'll need the Internet for this. Which makes me wonder what do I need the internet for? The dialog has no title and it's not clear if it's connected to any other open windows. Whatever the ''this'' is supposed to reference to stays shredded in mystery providing no context whatsoever. But I guess it's at least a step up from those ''Internal Error'' message dialogues. And yes, of course a solution can be googled for, but alas most of those pages will tell you how to fix a network connection problem but also mostly won't tell you to what application or use this dialogue relates to (apparently it's Windows 365 subscription related)"
Obviously, you'll need the Internet to post it to Error'd!

need

 

Snarky Mark B. drily drips "Sometimes even Microsoft doesn't want to admit they wrote it."

protect

 

Bruce R. punnishes us with this. "I guess this is what happens when Windows is left to its own devices."

code

 

Strong Stewart browbeats Bing. "Seems silence is the best policy for Bing ChatGPT when asked for solutions for problems with Microsoft products. Is Bing scared of admitting Windows is not perfect?"

bing

 

And here is our stretch. German correspondant Lebensmensch had a nit to pick about Microsoft's recent translation from English to German. He wrote "I joined Ignite in German; all words of Satya Nadella were subtitled as expected, in quality as to be expected in 21st century. But the button Change to Livestream, apparently titled Live, also got translated to Leben.
In English: life.
In German, live and life both are called Leben (noun) or leben (verb)... and the AI replaced all of Microsoft. Obviously. "
Now, my German is pretty bad, so the exact detail of this complaint has escaped me. I know we have a lot of native German speakers, so I'm hoping one will explain in the comments. Gutes Wochenende!

ignite

 

[Advertisement] Continuously monitor your servers for configuration changes, and report when there's configuration drift. Get started with Otter today!