Sony has announced its own computer operating system now available on its hot portable PC range. Instead of producing the cryptic error messages characteristic of Microsoft's Windows operating systems, Sony's chairman Asai Tawara said, "We intend to capture the high ground by putting a human, Japanese face on what has been -- until now -- an operating system that reflects Western cultural hegemony. For example, we have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful Microsoft error messages with our own Japanese haiku poetry. The chairman went on to give examples of Sony's new error messages:

A file that big?

It might be very useful.

But now it is gone.

The Web site you seek

cannot be located but

endless 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.

The Tao that is seen

Is not the true Tao, until

You bring fresh toner.

Windows NT crashed.

I am the Blue Screen of Death.

No one hears your screams.

Stay the patient course

Of little worth is your ire

The network is down

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 occurred.

You step in the stream,

but the water has moved on.

This page is not here.

Out of memory.

We wish to hold the whole sky,

But we never will.

Having been erased,

The document you're seeking

Must now be retyped.

Rather than a beep

Or a rude error message,

These words: "File not found."

Serious error.

All shortcuts have disappeared.

Screen. Mind. Both are blank.