back to article The Great Borkish Breakfast: I'll have a cup of tea, a sausage roll and a side of bork, please

While the French may project their borkage as art onto the wall of a Lyon tunnel, Brits seem to prefer theirs glaring down balefully from a screen in a sausage roll emporium in Yateley. Spotted by Register reader Darren, the screen is usually found displaying breakfast treats like bacon rolls or hot beverages for a price that …

  1. LastTangoInParis
    Facepalm

    A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

    Why oh why is Windows being used in this way? Lots of perfectly good Linux builds for kiosk or signage uses, eg Porteus or Binary Emotions, plus behind the scenes software for managing them (Foyer on Wordpress for those really simple use cases). Although you could attribute this to 'nobody ever got sacked for buying Windows', it's going to cost more in the long run to deploy Windows, surely?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

      I suspect that quite a few people here are old enough to remember our managers pleading with directors, executives and accountants to NOT go with Windows.

      It was a mixture of a "status thing" proving you had your tecchies under control and following the latest management fashions. It continues today with the descendants of those business leaders being disgusted with the idea of paying a hundred pounds for the PC to run a web based app when they could get something much cooler for £1,000 or more. We can run whatever operating system they think they want. We are just used to sensible recommendations being dismissed as "not really our style".

      Once you have got these overpriced status symbols in place the wearers of bespoke suits like to forget about them and move on to the next shiny thing. The IT department will know exactly what is needed - upgrade or replacement, but they will have been blocked by people who see their ignorance of computers as a sign of their superiority..</rant>

    2. The other JJ

      Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

      Possibly they're also linked to the till system so price updates are accurately reflected and maybe even display real-time availability of vegan sausage rolls and steak bakes?

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

        Possibly they're also linked to the till system so price updates are accurately reflected and maybe even display real-time availability of vegan sausage rolls and steak bakes?

        That's still not a feature that requires Windows.

        Also, they don't. I don't think they even have stock levels the way a grocery store would as they bake fresh throughout the day and don't keep things overnight. So you can tell the availability of a product by looking in the cabinet.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

          Yes, but said cabinet needs Windows for that.

    3. J27

      Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

      Yeah, but it's not like it's guaranteed to be stable either. Plenty of images of broken Linux signage online too.

      1. Spasticus Autisticus

        Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

        Links or search terms please - I've not found any so far but have to believe there are a few.

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

          Here's a few...

          https://www.google.com/search?q=public+crashed+linux+display&tbm=isch&hl=en-GB&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiCp7uZtZLvAhXHsCoKHcvTARIQgowBegQIARAX&biw=1643&bih=1069#imgrc=8BDQtaYddB7zpM

          1. el_oscuro

            Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

            But most of those are just images of kernel panics or application crashes, along with a few windows BSODs. I only saw one that was on an actual public page (the Warsaw train)

            1. Anonymous Coward
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

              Most of the images under the previewed image were public displays (which is why I linked to the preview). A lot of them were on Warsaw public transport, but there were a few others there too.

    4. BenDwire Silver badge
      Linux

      Pie?

      Given that it's being used to flog pastry-based produce, I would have thought the best candidate is a Raspberry Pi

      1. 0laf

        Re: Pie?

        Plenty of foody placed get by with a big board on the wall. Onto this they actually write items and prices. This piece of exotic technology is able to survive blackouts, earthquakes and possibly the apocalypse. It consumes no energy when in use and can be recycled into a shutter for preventing zombie ingress.

        Updates are required periodically and are performed manually but support is available indefnitely although no guarentee can be made that all colours of chalk or paint pens will be avilable at all times.

        As I explained to my son, sometimes a pencil and paper are the right tools for the job. The best answer isn't always high tech

        1. WhiteDragon43
          Devil

          Re: Pie?

          Known as a graphite processor with optional erase

      2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

        Re: Pie?

        Oddly enough, I've recently been playing with the Raspberry Pi Pico, which can be had for the princely sum of £3.60 (slightly more if you want someone else to solder GPIO pins onto it for you). Whilst it doesn't have enough memory itself to buffer anything more than a few hundred pixels square at 16 bits colour depth, there is a demo VGA board available for it for £18 which will read from an SD card.

        I reckon you could cobble something together to drive a couple of HD monitors with a fixed display for less than some punters pay for sausage rolls in a week. No OS required at all, let alone a Windows installation, and you could tape it to the back of the screens.

        1. John Arthur

          Re: Pie?

          I have upvoted you but I really think you might need an OS for it to work. Raspbian anyone?

          1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

            Re: Pie?

            The Pico is "bare metal" controller. It either runs a MicroPython interpreter (which is compiled to the native machine language) or a machine language file compiled from C/C++ which is flashed to the device either through the onboard micro-USB, or through the debug lines. It only has 246 kilobytes of RAM, so any OS you might try to run on it would need to be very small indeed.

            It has a lot in common with the home computers of the 1980s in this respect, except it runs about 50 times faster and has somewhat more storage. This leads me to wondering if I could get a port of Elite running on it, it has enough GPIO pins to wire in a joystick...

    5. Binraider Silver badge

      Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

      The good people at EasyJet plug a USB stick distro into screens for public displays... Rather than pratting about trying to network things and permanently troubleshoot them.

      Sometimes, simple really is best. Just because you can do a thing, doesn't mean you should!

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: A coffee, sausage roll and a Windows license please

      Porteus is brilliant. I have used it a few times.

      I only wish it would run on a raspberry pi, then it would be perfect.

  2. Version 1.0 Silver badge

    If you need to change the lightbulb, stand on your shoulders.

    "Failure to update will result in no security fixes, no software updates and no tech support."

    But updating will result in new security issues, and software updates that have new features that change the way things used to work, and no tech support - if you try to get tech support from Microsoft then you are just redirected to a forum when you see lots of people complaining about the same issues.

    1. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

      Re: If you need to change the lightbulb, stand on your shoulders.

      Updating will probably also require fishing out the mouse and keyboard from a cupboard, which, if they are in a cafe will by now be covered in a thin layer of dust and grease which no amount of Swarfega will get off your hands again.

      1. Ken Moorhouse Silver badge

        Re: Updating will probably also require fishing out the mouse and keyboard from a cupboard

        Tip: If the sausage roll has a tail sticking out of it, do not eat it.

        1. harmjschoonhoven
          Pint

          Re: Updating will probably also require fishing out the mouse and keyboard from a cupboard

          If the sausage roll has a tail sticking out of it, do not eat it. Well, that depends on who's tail it is and how well the locals prepared it.

          https://www.wingingtheworld.com/eating-guinea-pig-ecuador/

        2. Loyal Commenter Silver badge

          Re: Updating will probably also require fishing out the mouse and keyboard from a cupboard

          Sausage inna bun?

          Rat onna stick?

          I'm cutting me own throat...

  3. heyrick Silver badge

    If that's Yately as in the place near Camberley...

    It's spelled "Yateley".

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    or hot bevrages (sic) for a price that would make any local artisan coffee house weep fair-trade tears

    If it's who I think it is, it made me weep the last - and only - time I had one of their coffees.

  5. Winkypop Silver badge
    Trollface

    Windows is out of date

    That’s OK

    So are the sausage rolls.....

  6. wjake

    "Should I really be doing this to myself?"

    Hmmm, eating sausage rolls?

    Or ponying up for Windows 10 on a new PC?

    I think we know the answer here!

  7. LilianVinberg

    For the average person, Windows is what is needed, but not for me.

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