How beginners interpret error messages

[Henry Lieberman <Henry at MIT-OZ>]

I thought you might be amused by this:

I recently introduced a beginner to Emacs. She accidentally
typed two escapes before trying to find a file with C-F C-X
and got the error message "Not top level -- can't hack files".
She thought that the computer was insulting her, telling her
that she wasn't a top notch hacker, and therefore wasn't 
good enough to be hacking files.