Top
Best
New

Posted by luu 4 hours ago

Windows brings out the Rorschach test in everyone(devblogs.microsoft.com)
206 points | 82 comments
srvmshr 2 hours ago|
Raymond Chen's articles are true wealth of contemporary tech-lore. My favorite is the one where a user reported error on Flight Simulator map [0] and it escalated all the way up to Bill Gates & the then chief of FS division.

[0] https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20170418-00/?p=95...

stefs 2 hours ago||
years ago my father got a decomissioned, wiped clean notebook from work and asked me to set it up for him. i didn't want to shell out a hundred bucks for windows, so i suggested trying linux (ubuntu) and he agreed. "intrepid ibex" was installed without issues. a few weeks later i asked him if everything was ok and how he liked it, and he had no complaints, except one: he didn't like the edgy skull on the desktop wallpaper: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ubuntu_version_history#/media/...
bluedino 2 hours ago||
One of the earlier releases (when they would send you free CD's) got flack for people in their underwear

https://www.zdnet.com/article/canonical-turns-20-shaping-the...

Jenk 2 hours ago|||
Well, the Ubuntu logo has suddenly clicked. How did I not see it before?!
lukan 33 minutes ago||
Thanks for your comment, otherwise it still would not have clicked for me ..
DonHopkins 1 hour ago|||
I'll see your CD cover with three people in their underwear, plus a hologram of the top half of a possibly naked baby on the Microsoft Windows box, and raise you the top half of several naked SGI "Skinny Hackers" in a projected texture map illustration of an ACM publication:

"Fast Shadows and Lighting Effects Using Texture Mapping", by Mark Segal, Carl Korobkin, Rolf van Widenfelt, Jim Foran, Paul Haeberli, Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. Computer Graphics, 26,2, July 1992, Page 252, Figure 3: Simulating a Slide Projector:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34129571

"Yes, we have a dress code. You have to dress." – Scott McNealy

On the other hand, down the road at SGI there was a practice called "Skinnyhacking"!

https://rdtk.net/internet/how-do-you-check-a-computer-s-comp...

>Snowsinger. November 21, 2020 at 07:48.

>A truly excellent review of the history of Silicon Graphics. I worked in the Australian Sales office as their 1st engineer in the Asia Pacific region. Was trained in MtView the 1st week the MtView campus opened. The 1st system I worked on was the IRIS 1000 and subsequently all the products from then on till I left in mid-2009 when the Australian Engineering division was shut. A great company with great people who just wanted to engineer the best Graphics experience on the planet until we lost focus and vision of what we did well. Brings to Mind the Skinny Hackers, the Rocktain event, PCP monitoring, CXFS (Clustered File Systems), Failsafe, Diskless boot, Voxel vision, and so many other engineering wins. A great company, great people, & the drive to make a better computing world. Thank you for the memories and documenting the history of a company that did make some huge breakthroughs in Computer Graphics & Computing architecture. Just go ask NVIDIA, Cray and now HP!! Also a shout out to Jim Clark & his team for the vision and determination to bring the Graphics Engine to world, the heart of the IRIS workstation and subsequent graphics systems.

https://groups.google.com/g/comp.sys.sgi.misc/c/X50cCoYrU20/...

>Tom Davis, Mar 22, 1993, 6:06:21 PM, comp.sys.sgi.misc

>In article <gom...@zola.esd.sgi.com>, ol...@anchor.esd.sgi.com (Dave Olson) writes:

|> In <112...@bu.edu> j...@bu-pub.bu.edu (Jason Heirtzler) writes:

|> | Okay, I gotta know. Whom does the phrase "The Skinny Hackers" refer to?

|> A small group of (fairly skinny ;) ) folks who are also great hackers/developers and mostly long time SGI employees. Among other fruits of their group hackerdom was the original showcase.

>Being skinny didn't have anything to do with it. Although Showcase was the best known product of the skinnyhackers, the first product was an image of them made from a photo of all three sitting naked at computer terminals, busily hacking. On top of the photo was the international "no" symbol (red circle with a line across it), and underneath, the words "No Skinnyhacking".

>Note: Skinnyhacking is a dangerous activity, and should only be performed by professionals. Do NOT attempt it at home.

>If you're interested, you can see the image in the most recent (1992) SIGGRAPH proceedings, in distored form on the back cover, and in non-distored form on page 252.

>I can't imagine that anyone would want a copy of this image, but I have one in SGI format. (Actually, the secret goal is to have this image overtake the mandrill in popularity.)

|> I won't speak further to protect their secret identities ;)

>I will! It was me! Tom Davis! The bald guy in the front! Oh, and the other two are Rocky Rhodes and Scott Carr. Ann Sydeman joined the group a short time later, but unfortunately missed the initial photo session (although there was a subsequent video ...). Paul Haeberli was the photographer.

[Fortunately I found a pdf of the paper with the image:]

"Fast Shadows and Lighting Effects Using Texture Mapping", by Mark Segal, Carl Korobkin, Rolf van Widenfelt, Jim Foran, Paul Haeberli, Silicon Graphics Computer Systems. Computer Graphics, 26,2, July 1992, Page 252, Figure 3: Simulating a Slide Projector:

https://dl.acm.org/doi/pdf/10.1145/133994.134071

st_goliath 2 hours ago|||
> "intrepid ibex" ... edgy skull on the desktop wallpaper

Ah, that would be 8.10 with the coffee stain wallpaper :-P

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ubuntu_screenshot.png

DonHopkins 1 hour ago|||
At least you didn't install BSD!

https://halfblog.net/2011/12/04/daemon-worship/

>I just got a call from the owner of a hotel for which we provide hotspot service. She says that a guest spotted the “Powered by FreeBSD” logo at the bottom of the login page, and was offended; the guest was convinced that either we or the hotel management “worshipped the Devil” and refused to stay at the hotel unless the logo was removed. The owner could make no headway by explaining that the besneakered mascot was a cartoon character and was a daemon, not the Devil. And she feared upsetting the guest even more if she said that large portions of the same software are inside every Mac and iPad. The hotel stands to lose more than $1000 if the guest, who had originally planned to stay for a long period, moves out.

>One of our tech support people also got a call directly from the hotel guest, who claimed that having the logo on the page constituted “abuse.” The guest also claimed to be “losing money” because she wouldn’t use the hotspot if there was a “devil” on the splash page. He didn’t even realize what she was talking about at first…. He couldn’t imagine why on Earth this person was calling him and going on about devils.

>Attempts at misguided religious censorship notwithstanding, I don’t want to see one of my ISP’s customers lose business. And I’d like to keep a FreeBSD logo on our hotspot page. Is there artwork that doesn’t include horned creatures that might offend the ignorant or superstitious?

>–Brett Glass

bradrn 1 hour ago||
Reminds me of this classic: https://web.archive.org/web/20010803131841/http://www.lemis....

> ``Pardon us, ma'am. Mind if we ask you a question?''

> Well, people keep telling me that Texans are real friendly, so I nodded.

> ``Are you a Satanist?''

> Well, at least they didn't ask me if I liked to party.

> ``Uh, no, I can't say that I am.''

> ``Gee, ma'am. Are you sure about that?'' they asked.

> I put on my biggest, brightest Dallas Cowboys cheerleader smile and said, ``No, I'm positive. The closest I've ever come to Satanism is watching Geraldo.''

> ``Hmmm. Interesting. See, we was just wondering why it is you have the lord of darkness on your chest there.''

And it continues…

teekert 2 hours ago|||
Hmm, I also only see a skull
boomlinde 2 hours ago||
It's impossible for me to determine whether it looks like a skull now because my mind was contaminated with the notion that it's a skull before I had a chance to look.
SV_BubbleTime 2 hours ago|||
The most shocking thing for me on this was that Ivex was such a shit version of Linux and gave me such trouble I put Linux off for 10 more years after that crap. It was not at all ready for normal people. Night and day different to Linux today.
sneak 2 hours ago||
https://massgrave.dev/

Windows has been free since at least VXKC4. Microsoft wouldn’t exist as anything but an Excel vendor today if it were any other way; it’s intentional.

(Ubuntu was the right choice.)

notpushkin 2 hours ago||
Yep. Same thing with Adobe.
nehal3m 1 hour ago||
"The original wallpaper for Windows XP was Red Moon Desert, until people claimed that Red Moon Desert looked like a pair of buttocks."

That's not what 'this looks like ass' means.

yreg 3 hours ago||
This article includes the photo of the (clothed) hologram (it's the third image).

https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/038-design...

dchest 3 hours ago||
The original: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/uaQyaBRaM9w
heywoods 3 hours ago||
Yikes. It looks like an ancestor of Apple’s Liquid Glass.
klausa 2 hours ago||
...in what way?
eska 1 hour ago||
The wallpaper in question: https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Red_moon_desert

I suppose it looks like buttocks?

breakingcups 1 hour ago||
Interestingly, that page notes:

According to Microsoft programmer Raymond Chen on his blog The Old New Thing, Red moon desert was originally intended to be Windows XP's default wallpaper, but was allegedly changed due to some testers feeling it resembled a pair of buttocks, leading to O'Rear's other photo Bliss becoming the default wallpaper. While this wallpaper was temporarily set as the default wallpaper during Whistler, this story does not appear to be true; Bliss had already been selected based on extensive research by design manager Rob Girling and his team, and the Luna visual style shares the same color scheme as the wallpaper. It is more likely the wallpaper was set to default as a decoy; the unleaked Lab06 build 2415 predates build 2423, and shows Bliss set as the wallpaper.

lazide 1 hour ago||
The only people who might plausibly think that were probably also jerking it to late night scrambled skin-e-max in the 90’s when it was basically just hard R.

I’ve seen that background hundreds of times, and it never even occurred to me.

josephg 35 minutes ago||
I can see it now that it’s been pointed out. The desert looks like a naked person lying face down, head toward the right of the image.

Now I can’t unsee it. The butt is real.

blkhawk 2 hours ago||
I find it worrying because being super sensitive to stuff like that is usually red flag that the person is kinda into it - Senators in Bathroom stalls and all that (bonus if you get the reference).

But I think the person who directly contacted Microsoft about this was probably not the person who noticed it and brought it up on the Government side just the Person who was tasked with communicating about it so its good they remain nameless.

mrosenbjerg 3 hours ago||
Raymond Chen is my favorite MS blog writer
jck86 3 hours ago||
Red Moon Desert is now my wallpaper for the rest of the week.

Looking at it from a distance indeed may raise some brows.

fluoridation 3 hours ago||
Someone has to accept that they're looking at the flattest pair of cheeks ever to interpret that as an ass.
CursedSilicon 1 hour ago||
Sir Mix-a-Lot tried to warn us, but we didn't listen!
teekert 2 hours ago|||
https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/everything-reminds-me-of-her-...
Conasg 2 hours ago||
Appropriately photographed by Charles O'Rear
harshreality 2 hours ago||
[edited to more align with the essay's thesis, thanks to the reply for pointing out misalignment]

I don't think anyone complained about the hologram or red moon desert background because they disliked windows; they complained because they were hypersensitive to possible inappropriate/sexual connotations in imagery.

(Conversely, I very much doubt that the baby hologram or the red moon desert background swayed anyone to dislike Windows.)

People who hated Windows for being Windows would complain about it on technical grounds. It was terrible, and it crashed all the time. People who hated Windows because it was by Microsoft, would complain about Microsoft's bundling and monopoly tactics.

ksbd-pls-finish 1 hour ago|
This does not seem to be related to the article. OP is about red moon and naked baby and clouds. It does not claim that anyone hated windows because of that.

Usually I wouldn't comment just to point out offtopic, but I think "instant bad thoughts every time windows is mentioned, no matter the context" is another psychological effect caused by Microsoft.

teekert 3 hours ago|
Another example: [0]

Have to say this never would have occurred to me. There are also examples of US people being offended by scenes considered harmless in other cultures, ie the Totoro bathtub scene [1], search for "family bathing scene".

I guess if this hologram offended people, there must be some nice stories about Nirvana's Nevermind (1991).

[0] https://velvetshark.com/ai-company-logos-that-look-like-butt...

[1] https://uk.movies.yahoo.com/my-neighbour-totoro-10-things-di...

ricudis 48 minutes ago||
Though now it's long buried in internet folklore graveyard, there once was a popular shock image (and an associated website) called "goatse". (If you never heard of it, you better NOT google it).

For awhile, people had been spotting goatse in several logos.

walrus01 6 minutes ago||
Better question is why was the goatse guy wearing a wedding ring.
skeaker 3 hours ago|||
Hmm. I gotta say I do see these though. Especially Claude...
croes 2 hours ago|||
The baby sued

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2025/oct/02/nirvana-neverm...

walrus01 2 hours ago|||
> Sound familiar? It should, because it's also an apt description of... well, you know. A butthole.

Good news! Cornholio.ai isn't registered by anyone as a domain name, so someone with sufficient motivation and a love for Beavis and Butthead could totally instruct an LLM to make a satirical AI-butthole-logo themed website.

Bonus points if it has affiliate links to Amazon or other online stores selling TP (for the bunghole, of course).

latexr 2 hours ago|||
> There are also examples of US people being offended by scenes considered harmless in other cultures

I’m not going to be able to find this, but I remember some piece of news having to do with a woman and a photograph of her with naked breasts.

Someone found examples of how it had been reported in the US and a European country. Both used the same picture and only censored one area: the face in the European country, the breasts in the US.

rsynnott 3 hours ago||
I refuse to believe that at this point the AI companies are not doing that deliberately.
lopis 2 hours ago||
You can just as well say the logos look like flowers, suns, plasma balls, retinas. If you choose to only see anuses on all of them, that's really on you.
lazide 1 hour ago||
squints not sure if a joke or not….
More comments...