Stackoverflow has a remarkable 'offline for maintenance' page | Hacker News Reader

Stackoverflow has a remarkable 'offline for maintenance' page

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I don't get it. What is remarkable? Why are there six pictures of the same error message in different color schemes?

I'm not trolling. I don't understand this...

EDIT: removed erroneous rhetorical question

That's 6 screenshots in different colors of an old version of Microsoft's C compiler runtime error messages.

See for a list of those messages: http://stanislavs.org/helppc/c_errors_-msc-.html

Recent programs have different, more user-friendly error messages, but for example if you open ole2.dll or diskcopy.dll in your C:\Windows\system32 directoy with the notepad, and search for "overflow", you'll find those exact error messages.

As to why it's remarkable, that's because if you've ever opened a .exe or .dll with an hex editor looking for some things to hack, you've almost certainly came across those messages, or a variation of them.

EDIT: As pointed out in the comments, to get the exact same result as the screenshot, you must open the executable with vi.

Thanks for the explanation.

same here.

Maybe i m wrong. but it seems to be the string table from some executable around the string "stack overflow", as seen if you print it on the console or open it with vi. I wonder what executable that is.

I feel like this kind of page goes a bit too far. I think it's reasonable that even a somewhat technical user might see this page and think that stack overflow just dumped rather than that this is some sort of inside joke amongst the microsoft debugging community. A minor detail but at this point I don't think it they need to be reaching out to the geeks with inside jokes as much as building bridges to the average user.

Edit: downvote? Wouldn't you rather explain why you disagree with a civilly expressed opinion?

I didn't downvote, but I would like to know the difference between an "Average User" and a "Somewhat Technical User" in the context of the StackOverflow community?

You're right that Stack Overflow appeals to a technical user. My point is that probably the majority of Stack Overflow users are not using microsoft tools and won't get the joke. A site like github manages to make a joke with their 404 and 500 pages that will likely resonate with the vast majority of their users, but even the ones that it doesn't won't be confused by it.

My point is that making a controlled outage look like dumped error code isn't wise if you're trying to appeal to a diverse crowd who might not get it.

I don't use Microsoft tools but I used my brain for a few seconds and figured it out. This sort of argument is why everything ends up so bland and boring. It's a site for programmers. Now we're worried about if certain programmers will "get it?". I know, lets just put a plain text 500 error page up since everyone "gets it".

Bah I say, bah.

IMHO, A blue screen of death page would be even more remarkable.

IMHO, including some malicious javascript that causes an actual stack overflow would be even more remarkable.

The worst thing about stackoverflow is that it makes it impossible to google a bug when you have an actual stack overflow.

stack overflow -site:stackoverflow.com

Not perfect, but it helps

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