Blue screen of death or Eurovision's Windows95man performance – what's less annoying? It is rare that the world of vintage desktop operating systems and trashy Euro-pop collide, but on Saturday's Eurovision Song Contest they did, and the results were as baffling as they were explosive. At the weekend, the Eurovision Song Contest celebrated its 68th year, and with it offered up its usual menu of upbeat dance …
If you saw one of the segments breaking up the performances it was from an English sounding woman with a clipboard (Graham informed us she is very big in Sweden) which included a little song about how all the single girls go for the main scorekeeper as he’s the only heterosexual man in a place where homosexuality is the norm.
Wait until the leftpondians wake up, they'll be very confused, since over there they use "cottaging" to describe their weekend trips to their vacation home... Confused the hell out of me the first time I heard someone over there describe how they spent their weekend, after my initial reaction of "shit, you're very open about it".
Some years ago I had to lookup dogging (hint: from the verb to dog s.o's steps it ain't) and now cottaging.
To save the indolent the trouble of looking up these two words let us say both can involve el fresco fornication.
Some years ago I had to lookup dogging
"I can sure as hell tell you what "cottaging" in the real world looks like..."
What is it about gays and feeling the need to advertise?
Honestly that's where most of the anti-gay sentiment comes from. It's not aimed at the majority who just want to live their lives, it's aimed at the minority who inexplicably feel the need to slap you in the face with their sexuality at every possible turn. Just keep it in your pants. FFS.
Oh right, so they should just keep their heads down despite "all the single girls go for the main scorekeeper as he’s the only heterosexual man"? I notice you didn't call out that sexual face slap.
It's not the gays that are the problem, it's your overreaction. The initial mention of cottaging isn't what got your ire, it's someone having the cheek to know about cottaging from experience.
The only thing you can control about this is your reaction to it.
"Oh right, so they should just keep their heads down"
Pretty much. Just keep it to yourself, regardless of your orientation. The whole cock-waving profligacy has got out of hand - it's undesirable to the majority, and it's domineering; in the sense of - normal people going about their normal lives end up being confronted by it in situations where they could not reasonably have expected it.
If you walk into a gay bar, you can expect to see blokes kissing.
If you go to a Pride festival, you can expect to be surrounded by flesh and rainbows of all varieties.
If you're watching the BBC before the watershed, you (and your children) shouldn't end up having to watch seedy gay porn.
It's as simple as that.
Oh and this - "The only thing you can control about this is your reaction to it." - is flat out wrong.
This post has been deleted by its author
This post has been deleted by its author
inexplicably feel the need to slap you in the face with their sexuality at every possible turn
Yeah, "the love which dare not speak its name" has become "the love that really doesn't know when to shut up". Like the tedious macho guy who comes in to the office on a Monday morning boasting about the girls he "pulled" over the weekend, nobody else cares about your sex life. Homo or hetero, it's your own business, keep it to yourself.
I have absolutely no problem with gay people wanting to flaunt their sexuality in public. After all, straight people do it all the time.
On the other hand, straight people don't make my nearest public toilet (Bruntsfield Links, in Edinburgh, cottaging fans) unusable by the general public by commandeering it as a sex club. That's a bit anti-social.
I'm not gay, but even I understand that straight people don't need a Pride Festival because they don't have a bunch of bigots telling them to be ashamed of themselves every single day of their lives.
When my kid sister was a toddler, she wandered into the pantry and I closed the sliding door behind her as a joke. It was easy to open and I didn't completely close it so she wasn't scared, but she wrenched it open and stormed out angry as hell. That's how people react when an asshole tries to shut you away where you can't be seen. Don't be surprised that gay people want to be up in your grill when you try doing it to them.
If you want to be all gay rights then fine, but that's not my point, and you'd have seen that if you'd read my post(s) properly instead of seeing an empty saddle on a high horse and lining up to go for a ride.
My point - once again for the hard of thinking - is that most people just want to live their lives and be left in peace without (in this case) having another person's sexuality shoved in their face when they least expect it.
Most people, including me, legitimately could not give a shit if you're straight, gay, bi or any other orientation that tickles your pickle - I do not care. I *do* care if every single time I turn on the TV, read the news or - even open an IT rag - I'm confronted by the latest oppressed minority du jour bragging about their sexual prowess & practices, or mincing around on screen being as revoltingly provocative as possible.
And for the record; the gay people I know tell me that the mincers and showboaters don't speak for them either; they're just as repulsed and disgusted by them as most other people. Most normal gay people wish - like the rest of us - that they'd gyrate themselves off a cliff somewhere, and stop bringing non-straight orientations into disrepute.
My point - once again for the hard of thinking - is that most people just want to live their lives and be left in peace without (in this case) having another person's sexuality shoved in their face when they least expect it
So how do you feel about straight couples holding hands in public?
"So how do you feel about straight couples holding hands in public?"
The same as gays holding hands.
You see, bragging about their sexual prowess & practices, or mincing around on screen being as revoltingly provocative as possible is not the same as holding hands.
A good friend of ours is homo-inclined; and makes absolutely NO qualms whatsoever about utterly despising the flag-waving jam-it-in-your-face at every opportunity types.
He refers to "them" as the alphabet people, and not without good reason.
If you're into Melons, Apples, Peaches or Cactus, we really do not care, and nor do the majority want to listen about ludicrous and imagined culture wars just because someone gets off on a different shaped fruit to others.
No doubt some minority will be offended by the above; such is the internet, and they will get all vocal about it. Grow up. What you do in your bedroom is your business and I sure as hell do not want to have to watch it.
This post has been deleted by its author
Really. Let's have a look, shall we?
January - Poverty/Vegan Awareness Month (January 4 - World Braille Day, January 16 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 18 – Bodhi Day (Lunar), January 27 – International Day of Commemoration in Memory of Victims of the Holocaust)
February - Black History Month (February 1 – National Freedom Day, February 4 - World Cancer Day, February 10 – Lunar New Year, February 15 – Susan B. Anthony’s Birthday)
March - Women's History Month (March 8 – International Women’s Day, March 10 – Ramadan*, March 21 – World Down Syndrome Day, March 24 – Purim*, March 25 – Holi, March 31 – Easter)
April - Celebrate Diversity Month; (April 2: World Autism Awareness Day, April 6 – World Tartan Day, April 22 – Earth Day, April 22 – 30 – Passover)
May - Mental Health Awareness Month (May 5 - International African Heritage Day, May 8 - World Ovarian Cancer Day, May 17 – International Day Against Homophobia, Transphobia, and Biphobia, May 19 – Malcolm X’s Birthday, May 21 - World Day for Cultural Diversity)
June - LGBTQIA+ Pride Month (June 12 – Loving Day, June 16 - International Day of the African Child, June 18 – International Day of Countering Hate Speech, June 19 – Juneteenth, June 22 – Windrush Day, June 23rd - International Women in Engineering Day)
July - Disability Pride Month (July 2 – Thurgood Marshall’s Birthday, July 12 - Malala Day, July 14 – International Non-Binary Peoples Day, July 26 – Americans with Disabilities Act)
August - Indigenous Peoples and African Descent Month (August 9 – International Day of the World’s Indigenous People, August 23 - International Remembrance of the Slave Trade day, August 26 – Women’s Equality Day, August 31 – International Day of People of African Descent)
September - National Hispanic Heritage Month (September 11 – Patriot Day, September 20 – HeForShe, September 21 – International Day of Peace)
October - Global Diversity Awareness Month; (October 1 – 4 – Rosh Hashanah*, October 9 – Indigenous People’s Day, October 10 – World Mental Health Day, October 14 – Defender of Ukraine Day, October 19 – International Pronouns Day, October 31 – Nov 4 – Diwali)
November - National Native American Heritage Month (November 20 – Transgender Day of Remembrance, November 24 – Native American Heritage Day)
December - International Human Rights Month (December 1 – World AIDS Day, December 10 – International Humans Rights Day, December 26 to January 2 – Hanukkah*, December 22 – Winter Solstice/Yule, December 25 – Christmas, December 26 to January 1 – Kwanzaa)
You were saying?? Back in your box and stop fucking gaslighting.
@AC
I was unaware of the fact a toilet in a town near me was a cottaging venue.
When bloke walked over & stood at next urinal to me & began arousing himself, I realised it was a cottaging spot.
I just explained to him I was there because I desperately needed a P & had no idea it was a cottage (which he could probably see - he was having a good gander (and hear) from the jet striking the urinal)..
Ended up with him being far more embarrassed about it than me - if I'm desperate to go that takes precedence, peoples sexual dalliances don't bother me (it would only be an issue if he had persisted with his advances after realising the situation).
Now I know about those toilets, but if I'm desperate again will still use them rather than P myself! - but now being aware will be ready shout out "Only here for a P" if there's anyone around looking a little frisky.
This post has been deleted by its author
Yep - that was my take - perhaps it was a homage to George Michaels classic "Lets Go Out There", but without the wit / tongue in cheek (no pun intended, well maybe a little) humour, production values, musicality, or lets sait it how it is; talent.
Clearly the UK made a decision that we did not want to re-host Eurovision in 2025 - Mission accomplished!!!
Somehow the Blackadder phrase "I would rather have my tongue hammered wafer thin with a mallet and stapled to the ground with a croquet hoop" springs to mind. Alternatively "That, Baldrick, is the worst idea since Abraham Lincoln said 'I am tired of hanging around in the White House; let's take in a show.'"
The IT angle is that some viewers had problems with the Power button on their remote controls, or so I infer from the article:
>"for some viewers, Eurovision this year did not come with a please-please-oh-god-make-it-stop button."
A simultaneous Europe-wide mass failure of IR TV remote control units is big news!
Hang on, did we watch the same film? Highlander was/is a brilliant film - a work of total genius. May be you're confusing it with Highlander 2?
In any case, I feel a quote coming on. "I have something to say. It's better to burn out, than to fade away!" Which is probably what Windows95Man said when they carried him out of the venue.
Our culture has lost all moral standards, and truth and beauty went out the window with them. We can kiss Gustav Holst, Ralph Vaughan Williams, and all the other great composers goodbye. Eurovision is the new height of modern music.
*wretching sounds*
According to grammarly, retch is a verb that means “to vomit,” and wretch is a noun that means “an unhappy or unlucky person." Even Merriam Webster agrees with this UK speaker that they are separate words with different meanings. The sense here is definitely retching.
Eurovision is the new height of modern music.
Only if you ignore the many brilliant musicians and bands making music - much of which doesn't get played on the radio (where most of the music played is often fairly devoid of imagination, passion and technique)
"What purpose can it possibly serve ?"
Because Europe has a somewhat dark history, and stressy people throwing tantrums over who has the better dress and trying to sneak political references into songs "allegedly in English", creating endless storms in teacups and potentially more drama behind the scenes than on the stage (certainly this year...).
It's all rather less destructive than settling differences with guns and tanks.
Well, it may warm your heart a little to hear that your €9 is better in your wallet no matter how you feel about Gaza. Eden Golan may have been born in Israel, but she's Russian-Ukrainian by parentage, grew up in Russia, got her start in Eurovision through the Russian programme, and only went "home" to Israel after Russia was banned from the event in 2022. In addition to being ecstatic to do her bit with the IDF she's a cheerleader for Putin and the annexation of Crimea - and presumably therefore supports the ongoing war in Ukraine.
Oh I'm sure. I would have voted not so much for Israel as against the carefully constructed and enormously well-funded pro-Palestine lot trying to silence anything to do with Israel.
The anti-Israel lot are a vile shouty mob out to pitchfork and lynch anybody they don't agree with, and they deserve nothing but contempt.
of why is this happening ? What purpose can it possibly serve ?
It serves the EBU, or European Broadcasting Union, along with some of it's members. Since the EBU's inception though, a lot of 'public service' broadcasters have faced increased competition and/or funding pressures. Ireland was I think the best example of this problem. It 'won' Eurovision I think 3x in a row, and it's state broadcaster was nearly bankrupted because the 'winner' has to host the next year's event, which isn't cheap.
So I think that lead to more cash-strapped EBU members choosing songs they really hoped wouldn't win. Even the Bbc isn't immune. Even though it's a £5bn+ a year broadcasting giant and sends a huge entourage each year, it also picks terrible music.
As for Win95man and Win95 marketing..
...was going to sing the Rolling Stones hit Start Me Up, for which Microsoft is rumored to have paid between $8 and $14 million to launch the Windows 95 marketing campaign.
That was an excellent choice given the chorus. You make a grown man cry. That pretty much summed up the Win95 'experience'.
Ireland was I think the best example of this problem. It 'won' Eurovision I think 3x in a row, and it's state broadcaster was nearly bankrupted because the 'winner' has to host the next year's event, which isn't cheap.
And number two with consecutive wins is Israël, which outsourced the hosting resulting from the second win.
That was an excellent choice given the chorus. You make a grown man cry. That pretty much summed up the Win95 'experience'.
AMEN! Amazingly enough, that was the only part which wasn't played in the commercial.
However, the prime example of that kind of stupidity was Philips with "Let's make things better" from the Beatles (and the unplayed second line "They couldn't get any worse").
So I think that lead to more cash-strapped EBU members choosing songs they really hoped wouldn't win.
Ireland tried that.
It seems to have gained some kind of cultural life of its own, but I seem to recall that it started out simply as an excuse for TV engineers to find out how to make international transmissions work.
Along the way it gave us ABBA, for better or worse, and the likes of Puppet on a String. My fave, though, would be Poupée de Cire, Poupée de Son (1964, Luxembourg), a shameless vehicle for Serge Gainsbourg to break out of the French market.
-A.
You'd have been mortified to learn PAL video cassettes can't be played on NTSC equipment.
Not at all, which is why I had (still have somewhere, I think) a multistandard VCR to play 525-line NTSC tapes in the UK. They were available in the US as well, popular with european expats. The bigger problem wasn't the VCR, but finding a TV that could handle the 625-line PAL output. Probably why they used a projector, they tended to be more flexible. DVDs did make it easier.
Do you work in a puritan organisation or country? Seriously. No bollocks, hairy arse or worse were on display.
Nearly safe for work. Really. Now sharing anything maybe at work is or can be an issue - but labelling that performance at nearly NSFW... Herregud!
Mind you, it is thought in one rehearsal his goolies nearly popped out - at least that was one of the rumours going around before our national UMK show was aired last year :)
Was it like the old days, freeze framing interesting programmes late at night, often on a VHS with no "perfect freeze frame" for a hint of tit. Oh teenage years in the stone age of recorded media :)
Or do you just have eagle eyes and excellent image processing pathway to the mind ! I don't recall a lingering shot but it was very late at night when it aired (timezone wise).
I'm somewhat confused. I've always thought the target market for Eurovision was the 20-30 something crowd - and they, surely, won't remember Windows 95. Let's face it, those of us old enough to do so have spent the last two decades trying to rinse all memories of it from our minds! :)
Dos 6.22 and Windows 3.11?
Yoof. Dos 3.3 and *no* Windows (Desqview X and an expanded RAM card let me do a bit of multitasking, even on a 286 - I could run a game (Ultima 6 from memory) in the background and have a boss key to flip back to the 3270 terminal session when my boss appeared. The terminal session got enough CPU time to maintain the link to the mainframe..)
Then someone bought in a copy of Windows 2 and we laughed..
mosaic browser.. It was sloooooow.
well, you had to put for each image a bunch of colored stone or glass on a specific plaster layer, then remove them when moving to a new page.
and I won't even tell of the bad idea of trying to open a link to a new page, you got really fast out of walls...
20-30? Far too old, or too young.
Basically, they need you to send in those SMSs or stream, or buy the merch. Which only the very stupid, or very old do. Or perhaps the very young (not knowing what they do).
Anyone that was between 22 to 65 in the "office" was taking the absolute mick out of it.
(Personally, I watch a doc about an Irish pair of priests and their failed quest for ESC glory. Some naff song about a horse).
I was more wondering about casting a vote (one euro a call) until I saw online it cost Britons 15 pence. I was in two minds to fire up a VPN or just not bother. The latter won and I did not vote.
Not that the actual monetary difference would have ruined my day, but well, maybe some "roots" I didn't know I had kicked in...
My Lovely Horse - Eurosong Contest Entry 1996
Y'know, you may be right there.
I've believed this to be the work of Al for decades, yet digging around the 'net now, I find no mention of this song among his published works.
Though he's still the one most-often credited with it, various places mention that it was actually Bob Rivers who was responsible for this song.
Man dressed as a woman?
Massive ratings hit.
White man made up as black?
Embarrassingly racist relic from the '70s*.
-A.
* I ought to mention that I was embarrassed by the B&W minstrels back when it was prime time BBC fayre, and that I've never had the slightest inclination to watch RuPaul's televisual money machine despite endless promotion on iPlayer.
This post has been deleted by its author
Due to rampant racism is not that they were banned itself but due to white producers the portrays were in minor roles or negative save for a few exemptions.
https://reelrundown.com/film-industry/The-First-10-Films-to-Have-African-American-Casts
Having a white actor pretending to be black was a way to have a film were the protagonist was "black" and that would actually be shown in most cinemas but the practice really shouldn't have lasted as long as it did.
For many, many year. At the very least they were not allowed to appear on screen with white actors. Harpo Marx was breaking a major taboo when he performed "Who Dat Man?" with black singers and dancers in "A Day at the Races."
Uh huh. And "A Day at the Races" was banned - where and when, exactly?
I Googled "earliest films with black actors", the list goes back to 1903, which is pretty damn' early.
Was there discrimination? Hell yes. Were black actors typecast into certain stock roles? Absolutely (although that happened a lot to white actors as well, but let's stipulate that the siloing was a good deal stricter and probably harder to break out of if you were black). But banned? I can't find any evidence to support that.
《I ought to mention that I was embarrassed by the B&W minstrels back when it was prime time BBC fayre》
I was young enough and in a far land and in a part thereof devoid of diversity that I was extremely puzzled why the men were black and the women white. On top of that the song and dance was rather boring to a youngster who only wanted to watch westerns. Autres temps, autres moeurs.
Of this Eurovision BSOD I am with Cicero O tempora, o mores!
How many tens of thousands of innocent bystanders' deaths would it need to make you reconsider whether there is any trace of genocidal intent?
Hamas murderously presented the Israeli government with nothing but bad options. They chose the worst. The fact that said Israeli government happens to be of a right-wing character does not make disapproval some kind of "lefty" nonsense.
-A.
There is a difference between not caring about a group enough to avoid killing them unnecessarily and caring about them so much that you actively try to eliminate them. The Israelis don't seem much bothered by Palestinian deaths, but the numbers suggest that if they are trying to commit genocide, they are remarkably bad at it.
All the pro-Israel votes went to Israel, but all the anti-Israel votes were spread around all the other countries. Lies, damned, lies, & statistics.
I don’t know why Israel is in the EBU anyway, or the Euro footie championships. Well I do know *why* they are, I just don’t think they should be given that Israel isn’t in Europe.
《I don’t know why Israel is in the EBU anyway, or the Euro footie championships. Well I do know *why* they are, I just don’t think they should be given that Israel isn’t in Europe.》
Neither is AU although arguably the closest bit of the EU would be New Caledonia.
AU has competed (and votes?) in this takiest of songfests for a few years now. Its a big thing (a least for the fairly large part of the population that are of recent european descent and for those attracted to anything prancing about in a posh frock or just glittering) and a public broadcaster telecasts the semis and finals live in the wee hours.
The rest of us cringe at this time of years as its not impossible that AU's entry might win and then we would be lumbered with hosting the next year's contest (bad) and contestants (worse.)
Although we are told that, even if we were to win the contest, we could not host it in AU because of time zone difference (utc+10 Sydney to utc+8 Perth), I still would not want to leave that to chance.
I don't think the public vote was ever rigged, it was just biased by national and cultural preferences (or prejudices). This was bad, but the juries also seem to have a set of preferences/prejudices of their own, so it's not clear the situation is much improved. IMO in part you just have to embrace the crazy and "unfair" voting, as part of the experience ... remembering that most likely, other people in other sitting rooms are spluttering into their tea/ouzo/beer/fizzy/etc at entirely different points.
I think my main objection to the juries is that they seem to agree too much with each other: the "going live to Tblisi" (etc) segments tend to lack interest when they are almost all going "Switzerland! or whatever. However it's not clear how to fix it given you want the public votes given second to give the public a sense of being in control.
The thing is that with the voting system, a song that ranks eleven with *everybody* will score no points; whereas a song that almost everyone absolutely hates - except Moldova, who love it -- can score twelve.
Personally, I'd consider having the juries just chose their "best ten", and giving those all six points each; that way it would avoid the unsatisfactory "can a public vote overturn the jury consensus" chase we seem to have been seeing.
Well, in practice, the jury is supposed to consist of a random, demographically diverse group of the general public so in theory their vote should be representative of a countries popular vote. How it works in practice may be another matter. The reality though, in terms of the "political" voting seems to me that the juries often more or less agree with the public vote. Maybe someone could play with the stats and check how jury votes and public votes differ.
To me the sound is often a bit unsatisfactory, with vocals quite often a bit indistinct in a way that really affects how much impact they have (IMO Ireland suffered from this, and Norway, and others). However the sound from my TV is also not ideal, so who knows whose fault it is...
The whole show needs apologising for. Except maybe [Doiliestein] (Croatia) & Bambi Thug (Ireland).
The UK entry deservedly got zero in the public vote; and whatever politics people want to read into that outcome, consider how bloody awful it was even by Eurovision standards. There's a reason Sam Ryder did so very well, and in any other year would have won. Politics, again.
If one is serious about winning it this says more about what we should be fielding than anything else.
I was thinking Linus Torvalds must be cringing at the sight of his native land's entry .
He would be grateful that Eurovision is not well known in the US and that he is a US citizen (...I'll have to have a think about that...)
One thought crossing his mind on seeing this deranged w95 presentation might be "isn't this why I created Linux?"
I saw it as a piss-take on M$ for the way they defecated all over Nokia back in the day with vampire Elop and all that followed. Props to the Finns for their sense of humour too regarding Eurovision - an organisation almost as far up it's arse as the EU. Note that last's complaint about an EU flag being barred from the contest. "Our flag is far too important not to be shown at all European events!"
Note that last's complaint about an EU flag being barred from the contest. "Our flag is far too important not to be shown at all European events!"
If it was an EBU rule that only national flags can be flown, they might have got away with it. But they also allow the Pride flag, so there's a chink in the rules that pretty much anyone can try to slip through now. But yes, the EBU is not an EU institution so the EU have no right to have their flag flown at the event.
Finland, Finland, Finland
The country where I want to be
Pony trekking or camping
Or just watching TV
Finland, Finland, Finland
It's the country for me
You're so near to Russia
So far from Japan
Quite a long way from Cairo
Lots of miles from Vietnam
You're so sadly neglected
And often ignored
A poor second to Belgium
When going abroad...
The press spokesman for Microsoft Finland stated in February that "We are very pleased. This was a fun surprise for us", as directly translated from some local news articles. Windows95Man also previously performed at the finnish subsidiary christmas party over Teams during covid, so they were well avare of the performer. Nothing like free PR I guess. I haven't worked at MS Finland since 2010, but there were some bemused comments of the performance in a local alumni group. And having started at MS way back in 1995, I got the original launch shirt and still have it. It doesn't fit anymore, mostly due to time related expansion of my person. I consider myself and everyone in my vicinity lucky thereof, else they might have gone blind of the mere sight.
As for Eurovision, it died after 2006 with our so far only win; Lordi and their monstrous "Hard rock Hallelujah"
I went to a meeting in LA of a group developing streaming protocols in the mid 90s, and we all got a goody bag. The best item by far was a T-shirt with "Windows 95 = Macintosh 89". Another one was a frisbee with "Novell the billion node network"...
Sadly the T-shirt went to T-shirt heaven long ago and as above, probably wouldn't fit me now.
Curiosity having got the better of me I checked out the promo video for the song, which is hugely disappointing & doesn't match up to the bizarreness of the Eurovision routine.
This is definitely a missed opportunity, as the song begs for a parody video. Something along the lines of Dumb Ways to Die/the gas station scene in Zoolander, where Win95man follows through on his 'No Rules!' credo with predictably hilarious results.
The Register 
Biting the hand that feeds IT
Copyright. All rights reserved © 1998–2024
