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Dave Bacon is a theoretical ski bum who is also an assistant research professor at the University of Washington in Seattle. His research is on quantum computing, his scientific passions extend to everything in physics, mathematics, computer science and beyond, and his personal pleasures include making wine, playing poker, skiing, camping, and daydreaming (although not all of those at the same time.)
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Category: Funny Ha Ha • Technology
Posted on: July 15, 2008 5:55 PM, by Dave Bacon
Um, okay, so was this little piece of information really noteworthy enough to be included in a New York Times article on Psystar:
Although Psystar's Web site was available earlier today, by 1 p.m. EDT it was offline and returning the error message: "Database Error: Unable to connect to the database: Could not connect to MySQL" to Computerworld editors and reporters attempting to connect.I mean, isn't that a bit high up even for an inverted pyramid?
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Comments
So their site crashed under the weight of attention. Couldn't NYT just say that? As it is, most people won't get that's what happened. Apple good as DOSed them with this publicity.
Posted by: Chris Granade | July 15, 2008 6:45 PM
It could have been worse. It could have said, "Could not connect to SQL Server" which then one could only pray it doesn't come back up.
Posted by: JohnQPublic | July 16, 2008 12:09 AM
I'm guessing the reporter treated the error message as a quote---which it is in a way.
Posted by: Charles Day | July 16, 2008 9:16 AM
It could have been worse.
So, have you seen the new restaurant in China (just in time for the Olympics!) called Translation Server Error?
Posted by: HP | July 16, 2008 10:17 AM
have you seen the new restaurant in China
Ha! ha! That's hilarious.
Posted by: JohnQPublic | July 16, 2008 10:23 AM
MIT-degreed software engineer comedian Joey Friedman (Google for his home page) has a routine about being in a restaurant when a waiter collapses on the floor, dropping a tray of food and drinks.
"So I whipped out my phone and called Customer Service. I said: 'My server is down...'"
Posted by: Jonathan Vos Post | July 16, 2008 1:12 PM
I am always happy to see news stories with this kind of unnecessary detail. It can be difficult to read newspapers from a hundred years ago, or even twenty years ago, because little details like this, that were obvious to contemporary readers, are missing.
Posted by: DigitalDude | July 17, 2008 2:19 AM
When quantum computers are established, will we see "Database error: Could not collapse wave" instead? Or "Database error: Experiencing excessive quantum jitters at this time"?
Posted by: JohnQPublic | July 17, 2008 12:39 PM