1.) Emit a high-pitched shriek. (My laser printer could wake the neighbors when it’s low on paper.)

2.) Provide a woefully inaccurate estimate of what to expect. (My laptop will say you’ve got ten minutes left on the battery, and then it shuts down one minute later.)

3.) Taunt people with a useless error message. (I’ve been trying out a software program that asks you to contact tech support to report the details of each error. But since it generates an identical message no matter what caused the problem, there’s not much useful info to report.)