• Shenanigans (unregistered)

    I call shenanigans on both pictures. Open both pictures in a picture viewer and zoom in. It is clearer in the second picture in daylight that the windows desktop was pasted onto the Paris shot. The desktop image does not have the same horizontal and vertical skew that the Paris billboard has because of the angle it was shot from. The same can be scene in the night time shot (although with greater difficulty. If you closely examine the upper-left corner of the billboard, you can see the faint lighter edge of the rim of the billboard. It travels at a different angle than the blue screen of death, and they eventually meet at the lower-left corner.

    Both pictures are fake.

  • (cs) in reply to Shenanigans
    Shenanigans:
    I call shenanigans on both pictures. Open both pictures in a picture viewer and zoom in. It is clearer in the second picture in daylight that the windows desktop was pasted onto the Paris shot. The desktop image does not have the same horizontal and vertical skew that the Paris billboard has because of the angle it was shot from. The same can be scene in the night time shot (although with greater difficulty. If you closely examine the upper-left corner of the billboard, you can see the faint lighter edge of the rim of the billboard. It travels at a different angle than the blue screen of death, and they eventually meet at the lower-left corner.

    Both pictures are fake.

    So is the picture that I linked fake? Please, Mr. Graphics Expert extrodinaire, tell me if it is!

    If it is, then I must've been more intoxicated than I thought and what I saw with my own eyes really wasn't there.

    I've been to Vegas, I saw the Paris sign with the BSOD. Even if the former picture is faked, the sign has crashed and shown an error message.

    But of course, I could have created it myself, because I have nothing better to do than edit pics to fool people on the net. rolls eyes

    -- Seejay

  • brendan (unregistered)

    Only fours words. Thats Windows For You

  • hexatron (unregistered)

    These are all common failures. I've seen them in Las Vegas and on Times Square in NY.

    The signs map a small section of the display, so they look cut off (LEDs are pretty low res--300x500 or so is common). They were mostly created in 2000-2003, and are running Windows 2000.

    Besides crashes, you can often find an arrow cursor left on the sign, and sometimes even a random window covering the 'art'. Like the programmers never heard of WM_SETCURSOR SetCursor(NULL) or SetWindowPos HWND_TOPMOST.

    Another problem is the way Windows 2000 freezes for a few seconds every so often (defragmenting memory? emailing uncle bill? who knows?) This makes scrolling text stutter and jerk. The ABC sign on Times Square does this nicely.

    But my favorite is the cheapouts who use IE as the display program, and end up with the IE 404 page in their image rotation (Port Authority at 42nd & 8th, this means you).

  • A (unregistered) in reply to seejay

    EVERY TIME I have been to Vegas I have seen that screen. I though that was the way it was supposed to be?

    seejay:
    I have nearly that exact same picture of the BSOD, taken in February /07. My boyfriend and I were driving past while on vacation there, and I had to do a double take... I *knew* I recognized that screen from somewhere....

    Seems that it's not an uncommon occurance for it to do that either. Scary.

    (And damn for not submitting it myself!)

    -- Seejay

  • djtbs1 (unregistered)

    Oh Yes. I love it when people who know "all about computers" because they use a pc at home try to speak with authority about systems they have never used in INDUSTRY. Having installed Point-Of-Sale systems, I have setup systems that intentionally do not display the whole desktop,as part of it is used for advertising or receipt display. This is builtin to the screen configuration of the application. Usually using html or xml for the display. Whether or not these photos are faked, those with "authority" who speak to such should STFU.

    I can't tell you the number of times hom pc users tried to setup a Point-Of-Sale system by buying stuff off the internet and couldn't get everything working. Then we (co. I worked for) would go out and bill them to set it up correctly.

    My experience with IT in Casino's (I have had contact with 7 Indian Casinos in 3 states), is that, in general Security is pretty tight. Physically (cameras, etc, and password requirements). So unless you know about it for sure, shut your piehole!

  • BullShizzle (unregistered)

    I dont know about the 1st pic, but the second is definetky fake, the window isn't even on the same plane as that screen it's alot wider at the bottom left corner and almost overtakes the border where no screen woukd be, and at the top left corner there is a 4 inch gap, we all know windows sucks, but you dont have to make shit up. Plus BSOD isn't even really that funny anymore. Learn how to treat your windows properly dont look up porn, popups, ect and you will almost never get BSOD my XP hasn't ever had good ole blue 5 years now.

  • Joe Schmoe (unregistered) in reply to BullShizzle

    Agree. Agree. Agree.

  • reality (unregistered)

    you can see for sure the second was photoshoped.

    Plus I have worked with similar signs in the past. You have to send the video/images to a processor on the sign. That processor does not run windows or linux or any other OS you idiots want to paste in there.

    All the blue screens you see posted on sign are false people. So get a life.

  • anonamouse (unregistered)

    I've done quite a few photoshops, and I'd say that the bluescreen is real. If a p'shop, the user did a great job with the lighting.

    The shot of the windows desktop definitely looks like a photoshopped pic. The skew of the screenshot isn't close to being realistic against the sign.

  • Jasmine (unregistered)

    Whether they are photoshopped or not is beside the point. This kind of thing just isn't funny anymore - it's common.

  • Jasmine (unregistered)

    But no, they're not photoshops. I've seen this everywhere I go... gas stations, grocery stores, car dealers... anyone with a sign like this. The BSOD or the "Page not found" error is the new "test pattern", which is what we used to see when these devices malfunctioned. It was funny maybe once or twice back in 1998, but now it's just a pathetic example of technology mismanagement, and the occasional glitch that someone happened to catch on camera. Boring, common, and no need to photoshop these cuz it happens all the time. If I had a few hours I'm sure I could find several of these around Denver right now.

  • Herman McSporren (unregistered)

    I wont claim to be an expert, but in 2000 I worked on prototyping some embedded system which involved a small 320x200 screen which connected to vga and displayed the top left hand corner of your screen. Same principle here perhaps?

    Also, yeah bsod's are common. But it never hurts (us) to point and laugh, fake or not. We just have to accept that nothing will top that one when BillG was demoing win 98 that time. You know the one. Classic.

    CAPTCHA: yummy...mmmm

  • SheeEttin (unregistered) in reply to CAPTCHA:pointer
    CAPTCHA:pointer:
    And then there was that other youth hostel... not much to hack there, it was already free... but someone found out it had three "bluescreen keys": whenever hitting any of wake/sleep/power, it bluescreened and someone had to come to reboot it as Ctrl-Alt-Del didn't do the trick. This went on for some days till they replaced the keyboard - by one without these keys...

    And, then there was also this other one... To get access to the terminal too, I used a keyboard combination (I forgot which one it was again, too long ago) to switch from German to US layout when leaving. Then the others couldn't enter their passwords in their chatrooms, or if they could, they got annoyed quite fast because it's so hard to type... and the problem of the long queue in front of the computer magically disappeared.

    Reminds me of the computers is a tech class at my school. One person laid their head down on the keyboard for a nap (this was a study hall), and when the computer started beeping (too many keys pressed), he realized the image on the screen was at a 90-degree angle from normal.

    Turned out, you could hit Ctrl+Alt+Arrow key to orient the display in that direction. Unfortunately, it only worked on the computers in that room.

  • Immigrant (unregistered)

    This is exactly why I use Linux!

  • fgdg (unregistered)

    http://thedailywtf.com/Comments/Makin-Funds.aspx?pg=L#170827

  • (cs) in reply to OldContractor
    OldContractor:
    One time waiting in an airport, I found these free-internet kiosks. You had to answer some marketing questions and you'd get about 5-7 minutes of limited access. I had time to kill and wanted to check my email, but, of course, none of them were working.

    I caught one kiosk in process of rebooting after hitting a BSOD. It looked like it was NT or 2000 or something from MS. (This was a while back so forgive me for being light on details.)

    Anyway, in moment of boredom I hit the escape key while it was going through its CMOS checks and got into the CMOS setup.

    I thought "Woohoo! I'm gonna have fun now! Unlimited free internet." but as it turned out the keyboard had one of those cut-outs covering the Windows key and F-keys. I soon figured out I wasn't able to save any changes and then I found out that I couldn't even exit to allow it to finish its reboot. No ctrl-alt-del for you!

    I tried to reach under the cut-out with a nail clipper (just need one F2 key and I'll be off the hook) but their "security" defeated me. A paper-clip might have done the trick, but I was on vacation and I was starting to feel like I was standing out. So I slunk away but noticed it still on the same CMOS screen over an hour later.

    If I had let it reboot and used the MAGIC shift key, I might have been OK, but I only had a moment to decide whether to go into CMOS or not. I didn't think I'd be stuck in it.

    I once went to a Harris Teeter self-checkout and noticed one of the units was on the NT 4.0 desktop instead of the checkout screen. I asked the attendant if she wanted me to reboot it. Before she could say no, I rebooted it from the touch screen.

    Another time, I came by a portable construction road sign which previously given construction dates/times. It now said: "Hacked by Alpha". I wish I had gotten a picture. Anyway, they couldn't fix it and turned it off for the rest of the construction.

  • Sheridan Attorney (unregistered)

    Obviously fakey. Just another puny attempt to deface MS in some way. Go and shove a MAc OSX install disk up in your ass.

  • HoLyVieR (unregistered)

    Get some talent with Photoshop ? On the second picture, the image is over the lower frame and doesn't follow the same shape as on what it appears.

  • WolfWitch (unregistered) in reply to KattMan
    KattMan:
    Yeah but you do realize most of these places may not know how to secure their network.

    Of course, to be fair, Vegas may have better network security than our Dept. of Homeland Security after reading a story released today.

    I can say from personal experience- no, they don't. Their casino networks are almost air-tight, but for things like this- it is probably a computer sitting in an unlocked equipment closet in a service corridor. I wouldn't doubt it if it were attached to the same network hotel guests use. It may actually be inside the sign itself, although I don't know how that end of things actually works.

  • shane (unregistered)

    yeah, that is photoshoped. i copied both pics and made my own version of that and it looks exactly the same, wtf

  • baka (unregistered)

    I think that is the big fake. Funny thing.

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