Representatives of the estate of composer John Cage, author of a work consisting of 273 seconds of silence, filed a copyright infringement suit against the British musical group, The Planets, for having introduced a 60-second piece of complete silence on their latest album.

The Planet’s Mick Bart said that the Cage estate failed to make their case because the plaintiff could not prove which 60 seconds of Mr. Cage’s piece had been plagiarized. Said Mr. Bart, “Mine is a much better silent piece anyway. I was able to say in one minute what took Cage four minutes and 33 seconds.”

The following was taken from an article in the Wall Street Journal:

1. Compaq is considering changing the command "Press Any Key" to "Press Return Key" because of the flood of calls asking where the "Any" key is.

2. AST technical support had a caller complaining that her mouse was hard to control with the dust cover on. The cover turned out to be the plastic bag the mouse was packaged in.

3. A Dell technician advised his customer to put his troubled floppy back in the drive and close the door. The customer asked the tech to hold on and was heard putting the phone down, getting up and crossing the room to close the door.

4. Another Dell customer called to say he couldn't get his computer to fax anything. After 40 minutes of troubleshooting, the technician discovered the man was trying to fax a piece of paper by holding it in front of the monitor screen and hitting the "send" key.

5. Yet another Dell customer called to complain that his keyboard no longer worked. He had cleaned it by filling up his tub with soap and water and soaking the keyboard for a day, then removing all the keys and washing them individually.

6. A confused caller to IBM was having trouble printing documents. He told the technician that the computer had said it "couldn't find printer." The user had also tried turning the computer screen to face the printer, but that his computer still couldn't "see" the printer.

7. An exasperated caller to Dell Tech Support couldn't get her new Dell Computer to turn on. After ensuring the computer was plugged in, the technician asked her what happened when she pushed the power button. She said, "I pushed and pushed on this foot pedal and nothing happens." The "foot pedal" turned out to be the computer's mouse.

8. A woman called the Canon help desk with a problem with her printer. The tech asked her if she was running it under "Windows." The woman responded, "No, my desk is next to the door. But that is a good point. The man sitting in the cubicle next to me is under a window and his printer is working fine.

9. Tech Support: "O.K. Bob, press control and escape keys at the same time. That brings up a task list in the middle of the screen. Now type the letter "P" to bring up the Program Manager."
Customer: "I don't have a "P".
Tech: "On your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "What do you mean?"
Tech: "P" on your keyboard, Bob."
Customer: "I'm not going to do that!"

[Notice that none of the above involved people who use a Mac!]