For those of us who nurse dreams of Billie Whitelaw reading out computer error messages, here's more material for a performance.

The actress who made her name reading Samuel Beckett's existentialist monologues of alienation and despair is a natural choice. Here's another candidate, entry 325331 in this (http://support.microsoft.com/default.aspx?scid=kb;en-us;325331) Microsoft Knowledge Base Article:

A Connection Manager Connection Does Not Connect After Being Disconnected

Indeed, it doesn't. Connect. It Does. Not.

But the most Beckettian error message of all time comes courtesy of that corner of Redmond that is forever a place of alienation and despair, the Windows CE.

Using one of the first versions (http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/21036.html) of a Microsoft smartphone, after several unsuccessful attempts to use it to make a phone call, we got a dialog box that said, simply, "Nothing beyond". ®