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Sony has announced its own computer operating system. Instead of using the cryptic error messages characteristic of Microsoft's Windows, Sony's chairman Asai Tawara said, "We intend to capture the high ground by putting a more gentle, human, Japanese face on what has been, until now, an operating system that reflects the harshness of Western culture. For example, we have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with our own Japanese haiku poetry." The haiku messages are just as informative as Microsoft's and they make you pause just long enough that you're able to fight the impulse to put a fist through the screen. Here are examples of the error messages: Rather than a crude beep Or a rude error message, These words: "File not found." 
A file that big? It might be very useful. But now it is gone.
The Web site you seek cannot be located but countless others exist.
Chaos reigns within. Reflect, repent, and reboot. Order shall return.
Aborted effort: Close all that you have. You ask way too much.
First snow, then silence. This thousand dollar screen dies so beautifully.
With searching comes loss and the presence of absence: "My Novel" not found.
Windows NT crashed. I am the Blue Screen of Death. No one hears your screams.
A crash reduces your expensive computer to a simple stone.
Yesterday it worked. Today it is not working. Windows is like that.
Three things are certain: Death, taxes, and lost data. Guess which has just occurred.
Having been erased, The document you're seeking Must now be retyped.
These Haiku were posted on the Tucson Computer Society Listserv, May 26, 1998, and were writen by David J. Liszewski, Joy Rothke, Suzie Wagner, Suzie Wagner, Mike Hagler, Simon Firth, Howard Korder, Bill Torcaso, Peter Rothman, David Ansel, James Lopez, Margaret Segall, David Dixon, Cass Whittington, Francis Heaney, Judy Birmingham, Len Dvorkin, and Ian Hughes Home / Humor and Whimsy |