• Anon (unregistered)

    So where can we get this awesome screen saver / idiot detector. I've have suspicious about some people and this seems like a good way to confirm them.

  • Anonymous (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    So where can we get this awesome screen saver / idiot detector. I've have suspicious about some people and this seems like a good way to confirm them.
    Here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx

    I ran that at work for a while, but it once got my machine hard-booted by one of the techies and I lost the code I was working on, so I removed it...

  • Goslingson (unregistered)

    Wait, why didn't he want to work for them again?

  • (cs)

    Obviously the real culprit is Windows. If more stable operating systems like Unix, Linux, and the Apple one were widespread, no one would fall for such "clever" tricks. M-dollarsign-soft FTL! Err! Screw the man!

  • Darth Scotty (unregistered)

    Do you have the email of those consultants? I've got some unbreakable cryptography to sell.

  • Larry (unregistered)

    TRWTF is operating systems that interact with hardware.

  • Hiding (unregistered)

    Oh god, that sounds like my current job. It's so bad here that the CEO of the consulting company has been appointed CIO of my company. That's not a conflict of interest, is it?

  • GWO (unregistered)

    I used to regularly run the X-Window xscreensaver 'BSOD' which would simulate Blue Screens (NT and Win95), Linux kernel OOPS messages, Solaris crashes and Amiga Guru Meditation messages...

  • Kevin (unregistered) in reply to Darth Scotty
    Darth Scotty:
    Do you have the email of those consultants? I've got some unbreakable cryptography to sell.
    That exists.
  • anon (unregistered) in reply to GWO

    Yeah that's the only one I was aware of, but then again I haven't used Windows in forever so I shouldn't be surprised that there is one.

  • (cs)

    The thing that is Actually Worse Than Failure is that even after demonstrating a total lack of technical acuity and ethical standards, these consultants were allowed to continue defrauding not only Holger's company, but the agency they worked for as well.

  • Davel23 (unregistered)

    I pranked a coworker once by installing the BSOD screensaver on his brand-new laptop. Got me a few chuckles at the time, and a few more a couple of weeks later when I found out he had basically gutted the OS trying to fix the "problem". I think he ultimately had to do a reinstall.

  • Anon (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anon:
    So where can we get this awesome screen saver / idiot detector. I've have suspicious about some people and this seems like a good way to confirm them.
    Here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx

    I ran that at work for a while, but it once got my machine hard-booted by one of the techies and I lost the code I was working on, so I removed it...

    Thanks, must remember that one for next April.

  • (cs)

    I once saw a PC that had a Windows 3.1 screen as a screensaver...and knowing how the company operated, I actually believed that he was still using Win 3.1!!!

    What a laugh...I wish that I could find that screensaver :-)

  • (cs) in reply to Larry
    Larry:
    TRWTF is operating systems that interact with hardware.
    Hey, we can't all run VMWare you know.
  • WTF? (unregistered)

    I had a WTF moment with the article. I happened to double click the word "painted" and it resulted in rainbows and unicorns on my screen. Was this the real WTF?

  • Edward von Emacs, VI (unregistered) in reply to frits
    frits:
    Screw the man!

    Well, he was offered. I checked the source for a phone number, but all I got was a video or two. Can't watch them now...

  • SR (unregistered)

    One of the server techies at the reseller I used to work for was fond of putting that on Windows boxes he installed.

    I neither worked on the helpline nor liked the chimps who did, so for me it never stopped being funny.

  • Chris (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    Yep, a coworker ran this screen-saver. One of the "IT Guys" was walking through the office one night, saw the screen saver, thought it was an issue, and yanked the plug on the machine. To make matters worse, the machine didn't come back up. Ever.

  • (cs) in reply to SR

    Wow. You know I could probably write something that actually did that, perhaps branching off from the windows hibernate or suspend code.

    But I think it would take modifying the systems kernel to create a pseudo hibernate state such that when the system blue screened, the reboot would proceed as a "wake" from hibernate.

    That "might" work for a large number of blue screen errors.

  • OTee (unregistered)

    As a consultant myself, two answeres:

    I call the screensaver part a fake !

    As of the sad role of consultantys in too many companies: Unfortunatly true !

    CAPTCHA: consequat, typo, should read "cone-squat", a pointy piece of sh...

  • (cs) in reply to WTF?
    WTF?:
    I had a WTF moment with the article. I happened to double click the word "painted" and it resulted in rainbows and unicorns on my screen. Was this the real WTF?
    Heh. There's a span set up around that whole phrase that calls up a script at www.cornify.com. Which, to quote their own testimonials list, is without a doubt the gayest thing I've ever seen.
  • Andrew S. Tanenbaum (unregistered) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    Larry:
    TRWTF is operating systems that interact with hardware.
    Hey, we can't all run VMWare you know.
    Or OSs that don't run device drivers in the kernel.
  • Larry (unregistered) in reply to SCSimmons
    SCSimmons:
    WTF?:
    I had a WTF moment with the article. I happened to double click the word "painted" and it resulted in rainbows and unicorns on my screen. Was this the real WTF?
    Heh. There's a span set up around that whole phrase that calls up a script at www.cornify.com. Which, to quote their own testimonials list, is without a doubt the gayest thing I've ever seen.
    TRWTF is that you're randomly double-clicking on words.
  • Sylver (unregistered) in reply to Darth Scotty
    Darth Scotty:
    Do you have the email of those consultants? I've got some unbreakable cryptography to sell.

    Watch out, these guys can sell. Next thing you know, your bank account will be protected by that same cypher.

  • boog (unregistered)
    TFA:
    "Holger, these folks are experts," his manager replied. "It isn't cost effective to hire-on this level of expertise full time. We may pay a little more up front, but when we don't need the consultants anymore, we can hand it off to our internal people."
    *sigh* I've heard that before.

    Good luck with the hand-off. I'm sure the consultants will make it as easy as possible for you to eliminate your dependency on them.

  • Plz Send the Code (unregistered) in reply to Davel23
    Davel23:
    I pranked a coworker once by installing the BSOD screensaver on his brand-new laptop. Got me a few chuckles at the time, and a few more a couple of weeks later when I found out he had basically gutted the OS trying to fix the "problem". I think he ultimately had to do a reinstall.

    Yeah, did the same thing to a coworker while he was away at lunch on his new PC. Found out he figured it would be easier to reinstall than to troubleshoot the problem. I've carried that secret all these years.

  • Matt Westwood (unregistered)

    Coffee: cup -> mouth -> nose -> screen

  • (cs) in reply to WTF?
    WTF?:
    I had a WTF moment with the article. I happened to double click the word "painted" and it resulted in rainbows and unicorns on my screen. Was this the real WTF?

    No, The Real WTF is that this is the first time you've noticed it...

  • (cs)

    Obviously the REAL WTF is that Holger didn't get some sexual favors from the "trophy wife" before he told them it was just a screensaver (not the cash, that would be fraud).

  • whiskeyjack (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    I ran that at work for a while, but it once got my machine hard-booted by one of the techies and I lost the code I was working on, so I removed it...

    So the real WTF is that you don't save your work before you leave your desk?

  • airdrik (unregistered)
    IT was an honest question
    FTFY (or at least IT is a more honest question than consultants)
  • DtB (unregistered) in reply to ObiWayneKenobi
    ObiWayneKenobi:
    Obviously the REAL WTF is that Holger didn't get some sexual favors from the "trophy wife" before he told them it was just a screensaver (not the cash, that would be fraud).

    I thought about that. Then I figured the "trophy wife" was probably a guy, anyway.

  • Mike (unregistered)

    The real WTF is bragging that one's wife is a whore.

  • (cs)

    Linux has a really nice BSOD screen saver, as you'd expect. It's in the zillion-screensaver rotation.

    Once I was involved in a project to deploy linux terminal services to ~200 machines. Thin client, netbooted, pretty snazzy. Ran off of a couple of big honking blade servers. Still, to save cycles, we set it so that it'd only render one screensaver, and share it out to every terminal.

    You see where this is going.

    We get a call at 8:30 am, "ALL MACHINES HAVE CRASHED! THIS IS A HUGE EMERGENCY!" We check them, everything seems to be running fine, but the customer is flipping out, throwing a huge tantrum, so we jump in our cars and race over there.

    Sure enough, every machine is blue screened. Every linux machine is blue screened. Sigh. I walk up to the nearest desktop, slap the mouse, and the logon screen pops right up.

    200 people, and not one of them had touched their mouse or anything.

  • David (unregistered) in reply to Medezark

    Some years ago I had a consulting job for a medical company that had (OS/2 based) systems that used exactly that trick to have a super fast recovery from potential problems. They did not write to local filesystems and always read a prepared hibernate file on boot. You could pull the plug on the device and once you reconnected it, it would be back within 15s. The slowest part of the boot process was the BIOS...

  • BenHead (unregistered) in reply to Kevin
    Kevin:
    Darth Scotty:
    Do you have the email of those consultants? I've got some unbreakable cryptography to sell.
    That exists.

    Yes. Yes, it does. And they'll pay through the nose!! The NOSE, I tell you!! BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

  • jrh (unregistered) in reply to boog

    Depends on the consultant. I mentor my way out of projects all the time. It is one of my selling points as a consultant.

  • anon (unregistered) in reply to Darth Scotty
    Darth Scotty:
    Do you have the email of those consultants? I've got some unbreakable cryptography to sell.
    ROT-13 algorithm? :-)

    Captcha 'commoveo' - commoveo and see how secure this is...

  • Anonymouse Cow (unregistered) in reply to Matt Westwood
    Matt Westwood:
    Coffee: cup -> mouth -> nose -> screen

    Coffee: cup -> mouth -> nose -> screen -> BSOD

  • Brian White (unregistered) in reply to Anon
    Anon:
    So where can we get this awesome screen saver / idiot detector. I've have suspicious about some people and this seems like a good way to confirm them.

    I left it running once on a server. My co-workers were not amused.

  • (cs) in reply to Sylver
    Sylver:
    Darth Scotty:
    Do you have the email of those consultants? I've got some unbreakable cryptography to sell.

    Watch out, these guys can sell. Next thing you know, your bank account will be protected by that same cypher.

    They can just stay the hell away from my mattress.

  • Douglas (unregistered)

    One place I worked brought in the awesome consultant who made sure to remind everyone, at least three times a day, that he was from Harvard! Example: I don't care if everyone else is naked, a Harvard Man (TM) still wears a suit.

    So I was teaching him how to create data entry screens for our database when one fine day he announced that effective immediately I report to him, and am to have no further contact with my allegedly former supervisor.

    Huhhh?

    Like, uh, how do I know this is even true? Shouldn't the past supervisor at least hand me off to the new supervisor?

    And, anyway, isn't there a slight conflict of interest when an employee reports to someone who is not an employee? Indeed, he immediately started having me do things that were in his interest, but not in the company's interest... digging-in-deeper-so-consultant-is-irreplaceable type of things.

    I left, company struggled, eventually fired him, but not before he milked them for about 10 months of his Harvard consultant rates...

  • Tee Hee (unregistered)

    Take a screen shot of your desktop with a bunch of windows up. Then make that shot your background, or screen saver. Ask passers-by for help, especially the heap big smoke no fire "power luser". Chortle silently so they don't pound your face.

  • wtf (unregistered) in reply to Tee Hee
    Tee Hee:
    Take a screen shot of your desktop with a bunch of windows up. Then make that shot your background, or screen saver. Ask passers-by for help, especially the heap big smoke no fire "power luser". Chortle silently so they don't pound your face.

    Hey, it's a good way to make the power-luser feel good.

    "You've got a problem with your machine? Let's see..." <moves mouse> "Oh, some joker made that picture your screensaver. Anything else wrong with it?"

  • W Klink (unregistered) in reply to Larry
    Larry:
    SCSimmons:
    WTF?:
    I had a WTF moment with the article. I happened to double click the word "painted" and it resulted in rainbows and unicorns on my screen. Was this the real WTF?
    Heh. There's a span set up around that whole phrase that calls up a script at www.cornify.com. Which, to quote their own testimonials list, is without a doubt the gayest thing I've ever seen.
    TRWTF is that you're randomly double-clicking on words.

    No, TRWTF is that he isn't running NoScript to prevent crap like this in the first place...

  • ken (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous

    I put it on a co-worker's box for fun, and upon his return, he simply rebooted it thinking that it was actually BSOD'd...

  • Bernie (unregistered) in reply to Anonymous
    Anonymous:
    Anon:
    So where can we get this awesome screen saver / idiot detector. I've have suspicious about some people and this seems like a good way to confirm them.
    Here: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/bb897558.aspx

    I ran that at work for a while, but it once got my machine hard-booted by one of the techies and I lost the code I was working on, so I removed it...

    Sounds like my sex life.

  • (cs) in reply to operagost
    operagost:
    Larry:
    TRWTF is operating systems that interact with hardware.
    Hey, we can't all run VMWare you know.
    Besides, VMWare itself has to run on something...
  • (cs) in reply to Douglas
    Douglas:
    So I was teaching him how to create data entry screens for our database when one fine day he announced that effective immediately I report to him, and am to have no further contact with my allegedly former supervisor.

    Huhhh?

    Like, uh, how do I know this is even true? Shouldn't the past supervisor at least hand me off to the new supervisor?

    The short answer is that the consultant can't do that on his own...at least at any company I've ever worked for! Of course, some consultants, like attorneys, believe that they can make something be true just because they said it.

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