An Execution! Why can’t Microsoft speak the User’s Language?

A few years ago I heard Steven Sinofsky, currently the Senior Vice President for Office at Microsoft state:

"In China people freak out when they see a dialog box that says 'You have performed an Illegal operation. OK/Cancel.'"

Most of the people in the room (all Computer Science majors who think end users are "too dumb to correctly use their software") roared with laughter. It was hard to tell, but I think he secretly might have found their horrifying user interface error based on a lack of democracy funny as well.

I just had my own little "stupid user" dialog freak out. While putting the finishing touches on my (now 270 page) MIT masters thesis, I got a nice little dialog box that told me that Windows was going to try to stop Explorer from continuing to perform "Data Execution." And that "Data Execution Prevention helps protect against viruses and threats." Now, to put this dialog in a little more context, last night I was working on my thesis and between the hours of 3am and 6am, my computer regularly tried to reboot itself to install a security patch. I kept telling it to stop trying to reboot the machine because I was in the middle of working. One time I got up for a beverage and caught it 5 seconds away from a reboot (was it going to save the changes to my thesis first?)

So, I read the dialog box, and thought to myself:

F%&K!...

...Oh no, I didn't install the security patch, which probably came out on Tuesday, it's FRIDAY, and my Data is being EXECUTED!

So, a few minutes later I realized I was an idiot. Whoever wrote this dialog box at Microsoft meant "execution" as in "code execution," or ".exe." They didn't mean firing-squad-at-high-noon, what-do-you-want-on-your-tombstone, welcome-to-the-French-Revolution EXECUTION.

Nothing is being "executed," explorer just crashed. The developer who wrote this dialog box has probably been talking about Data Execution Prevention for so long he can't fathom how anyone would be confused with the title of his poorly worded dialog box. But that's no excuse.

Ok, back to finishing my thesis.