back to article Sure, your app is crap, but Windows won't tell. Promise

Windows for Billboards appears to be a thing and, judging by this example of the breed, it is a little under the weather. Unless, perhaps, the billboard spotted by Register reader Paul last month is a bit of snark directed at Redmond by an opportunistic arch-rival. What better way to demonstrate the occasional wobbliness of …

  1. Roger Kynaston

    New town name

    Redmond Deadmond

  2. b0llchit Silver badge
    Coat

    Application applied

    If you cannot start the application, then you must have an applicable problem.

    The real question is what is being handled in the process of application? It can be imagined that applying something, where something is clearly a visual application of the billboard, must be applicable for said billboard by means of application. An actively applied process may help to visualize the application and the application's applied need for showing off, which it currently fails to apply.

  3. The Man Who Fell To Earth Silver badge
    WTF?

    Gee

    I'd have thought you'd run a billboard off of a Raspberry Pi at most. Naive me.

  4. Graham Cunningham

    Pavlovian response...

    I just tried to click the billboard to dismiss the popup! :D

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Linux

    The billboard is performing to spec...

    ...perfectly showing an ad personally paid for by, sources close to the matter reveal, one L. Torvalds.

    1. bombastic bob Silver badge
      Devil

      Re: The billboard is performing to spec...

      I look at this as a consulting opportunity for a dev that's gutsy enough to propose swapping the sign's OS over to Linux (or some kind of RTOS) instead of Windows.

      The people over at Wind River (VxWorks) should DEFINITELY weigh in on this one...

  6. IanD

    Micro$oft crashed my advert!

    Anyone want a potential weather forecasting supercomputer, going cheap?

  7. TomPhan

    Cannot Start Application

    Oh no, I use Application all the time.

    1. Yes Me Silver badge

      Re: Cannot Start Application

      Just press the Any key

  8. David 132 Silver badge
    Happy

    [the company]...considers its digital billboards "State of the Art."

    The art in question in this case is probably pottery.

  9. Pirate Dave Silver badge
    Pirate

    Blairsville

    They've got a Rib Country restaurant there. Mmmm. Good ribs. Really good ribs. Might be time to visit again.

  10. Not previously required

    Bright ideas

    Anyone looked at the pdf referred to? That advertisement really does look bright, against a lot of dull traffic on a dull day. Is this:

    a) A neat bit of graphics editing

    or

    b) A shocking waste of electricity in this climate stressed age?

    1. Onen hag Oll

      Re: Bright ideas

      With regard to the shocking waste of electricity. Just think of the alternative.

      The ads are going to go out anyway.

      So, the alternative would be to print the ad on vast amounts of paper using energy in paper and printing production, load it on a van / truck / lorry, waste vast amounts of fuel getting there and back to put it up; all to repeat this process multiple times once the ad runtime has run its course and is replaced by the next advertiser.

      Whatever method; advertising is a polluter (and that's before you get to the content).

    2. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

      Re: Bright ideas

      Oh same energy (electricity) you crisis mongers want us to pump into those crappy electric cars? Electricity currently produces by coal, oil and natural gas? (Sometimes nuclear which you want that stopped).

      Electric cars whose components are made from rare earth materials whose mining operations are devastating to the environment mostly in countries with poor populations who suffer the consequences.

      Oh and lets talk about Clean Energy which will never be able to power more than 1/3 of a very small city and that solar panel release 90% of the energy hitting the panel back into the air as heat (killing wildlife and also insects like honey bees which is a real issue today) and wind turbines which are known to kill migratory birds! Both of which also use these same rare earth materials.

      But that's all OK your intention are good, you just want to help the people achieve your dreams of a mediocre life controlled by autocratic elites and collapse the capitalist system that has risen millions of people out of poverty

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bright ideas

        Downvoted due to "crisis-mongers" and the assumption that all of us lefty-greenies know nada about the environment, or technology or , generally any of the science involved i any relevant subject., AND your assumptions about politics ( "controlled by autocratic elites" - seems to be pretty much what most if not all countries have now, anyway. Just a case of how in yer face the buggers are about it, no?)

        There's quite definitely a bunch of crises looming imminently, mainly human-caused, and yes, there are folks of all persuasions promoting some head-scratchingly daft "solutions" that will make one or more aspects of our collective situation worse. But not EVERYONE is like that.

        As for capitalism, hmm, remind me, which economic system was it that considered wasteful consumerism a good thing, creating gazillions of tons of polluting landfill etc? Yes, yes, I know abut the irrefutable data about rising standards of living decrease birthrates and slow our worryingly increasig population. Thing is though, is the assumption that capitalism is the ONLY way to improve standards of living correct?

        Capitalism actively promotes waste, greed and other negative behaviours, and evry now and then some bastards overstep the mark and brng down companies and banking systems which suddenly plunges hundreds of millions, if not billions into financial hardship. Companies will always try to reduce headcount and keep salaries low, whilst landlords will try to keep rents high. Thats' just how capitalism works, no?

        Our current economic system is simply the latest in a chain of attempts to come up with systems to make exchange of goods easier, and there's no reason at all that it couldn't be supplanted by something better. Indeed, Past attempts to cure the ills of capitalism haven't exactly been a resounding success, but that's no reason to stop trying, and indeed, there are academics trying to work on exactly that problem.

        I've no idea what a better system would be like (hey, I'm a science geek, not an economist!), but that doesnt mean I cant identify the faults capitalism has (too much concentration of wealth, encouragement of wasteful, exploitative and selfish behaviour) , or some of the specs I'd like to see included in a better system ( a much less highly skewed distribution of wealth, lack of encouragement of anti-social behaviour (I suspect making anti-social behaviour economically damaging to the anti-social types isnt likely to be achievable, but we could at least not encourage the buggers) for two.

        Franlky, if capitalism is the answer, then it was a rather poorly defined problem n the first place -but that's said with the benefit of hnsight. I very much doubt those ancient Greeks with their iron oboloi could have forseen how commerce would have developed over the centuries and millenia, but gve e do have hindsight, and can see how we've gotten to our current situatiion, let's make use of that knowledge to improve things , rather than trying to sustain unchanged the very system that caused so many of the looming crises, eh? Perhasit just needs one genus tweak to make it a lot better; perhaps it needs wholsale relacement; I have no idea. But leaving it as it is obviously is not a sensible option, given the wealth of data we have on it.

        (Apologies for my typos, but I'm not well and this keyboard is on its last legs - bit like me :-} )

  11. Cliffwilliams44 Silver badge

    This reminds me of the ATM I walked up to in 2011 and saw the classic Windows blue screen. Then to my amazement the ATM rebooted into the Windows 98 startup screen! Needless to say I did not, nor did I ever in the future use an ATM from that bank.

  12. arachnoid2

    Wouldnt you have thought

    Such a system would be designed to on failure, display a blank screen and only the error message on a remote screen.

  13. J27

    You see broken Linux and FreeBSD systems too. Billboards are a good place for embedded software that just displays the images, but using a general-purpose OS is a lot cheaper so you're going to keep seeing this.

  14. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

    BillGatesBoard

    All billboards running (or failing to run) Windows belong to this special category of billboard.

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like