[tomafro]

The comments here remind me of an old Irish joke where a hopelessly lost tourist asks an old man by the side of the road "Can you tell me how to get to Dublin?". After a few minutes thinking, the man replies "Well, you don't want to start from here".

I doubt 37signals wanted to be in a place where an apparently simple change would involve so much work, but that's where they found themselves. They did what they had to do. There's no point snarking about their starting place without knowing how and why they got there.

[bambax]

Is this an old Irish joke? I thought I knew for a fact that it was French!

- "Pouvez-vous me dire comment aller à Paris"? - "Ben si j'étais vous je ne partirais pas d'ici!"

Very French in its non-helpful but matter-of-fact way... but maybe the Irish are the same!

[tomafro]

Your French version feels authentic to me, but then so does the Irish one. I doubt one can say where jokes like these originate. All cultures and languages probably have versions of them.

[smithbits]

The way I heard the joke in Vermont always involved a tourist asking an old farmer for directions and getting the answer "Well, you can't get there from here."