General protection fault

The story of a general protection fault.

Personis dramatae

• The operating system - a well clothed, very much in charge police officer.
• A no-good, lazy, shiftless, not-halfway-law-abiding program process - what it said.

CURLY DIVIDER THING:

~ o ~

Um, OK, uh...

ACT ONE

Enter operating system, process.

Operating system: What's that?

Process: What? I'm not carrying anything.

Operating system: Is that a null pointer?

Process: N-

Operating system: You weren't thinking of dereferencing that thing, were you?

Process: Well I-

Operating system: Wait, you already did. YOU @#$%!

Operating system: Hands on your head.

Process: Look, man. I've got a lot of important data here, and if I don't save it, my user-

Operating system: I don't care if your user is Bob Nelson. HANDS ON YOUR HEAD, NOW.

Process puts his hands on his head one at a time. (He is single-threaded.)

Process: At least let me talk to a debugger.

Operating system draws gun.

Process: Oh God.

Operating system: You're dead. I'm going to blow your memory all the way back to the free list.

A surprise character swoops in, Virus. (He's not in the dramatis personae. Viruses can do that.)

Virus: Never fear, I'll save you,... what was your name again?

Process: "MYDOOM.EXE."

Virus: Alright, MYDOOM.EXE. Let's get out of here. CHARGE AHOY!

Virus puts police officer in standby mode. Virus and process climb to virus's helicopter.

SCENE END

Next time...

The computer is infected with the most deadly virus of all.

There are NINE OR FEWER processes (also twelve or more) that are 38% incapable of 87% protection null null null null null.

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