This is a thread for noting intrusions of computer errors into the real world.
In particular, I’m noting a wonderful 404/“This page cannot be displayed” error I saw this morning on the way to work.
It was the typical IE error.
The most untypical part was where I saw it: on a huge electronic billboard next to the IKEA in East Palo Alto, CA. There I am, driving south on 101. I look up, and this billboard is flashing an IE error for all the world to see.
I arrived at work in a wonderful mood!
Now, your turn! Tell us of the weird, wonderful, funny, distressing computer errors you’ve seen in meat space.
Well, this counts as huge and distressing because I’m a geek.
In the 2nd edition Dungeons and Dragons Players Handbook, they apparently started out calling spellcasters “mages,” and then later on switched to calling them “wizards,” because at one point in the book where they were talking about how much damage a weapon would do, it actually said “dawizard.” Oh, the joys of global search & replace…
We have a huge TV-screen display at the corner of Yonge and Eglinton–it flashes ads, mostly, and sometimes trailers for TV shows or movies. It’s been around for a while, so nobody really pays attention most of the time.
One time I was passing by to go to Indigo/the library, and it caught my eye–a big, bright, blinking error message, in all its glory, instead of the normal stream of pictures.
The building that holds my office has touchscreen terminals on each floor, which rotate between a building directory, advertisements, and current news/weather. About once a month, a script error bornks the system, leaving it at the Windows desktop.
Whenever I see them crashed-out like that, I use the touchscreen to open up Solitaire, Straight Dope or Fark.com, and wait to see how long until someone resets them.
BART (a local train system) has “next train arriving in xx minutes” displays - the one at my home station had the Windows shutdown dialog box (Shut down, Log Off, Restart) over the train map a few weeks ago.
One that I really wish I had a camera for was an ATM that was displaying part of a Windows desktop - just as a guess, it was the bottom-left quarter or so.
At my old alma mater, an ATM crashed and was showing windows desktop. Of course, this being CMU, someone took pictures and video (no longer available), and it made it’s way into a blog article.
<sniff>I’m so proud!
