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.
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/...
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nehal3m
"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
This article includes the photo of the (clothed) hologram (it's the third image).
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
Raymond Chen is my favorite MS blog writer
jck86
Red Moon Desert is now my wallpaper for the rest of the week.
Looking at it from a distance indeed may raise some brows.
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harshreality
[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.
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teekert
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).
> Windows XP had its own share of complaints. The original wallpaper for Windows XP was Red Moon Desert, until people claimed that Red Moon Desert looked like a pair of buttocks.
oh thanks, now I cannot unsee it. :)
ttyyzz
I must say that "But it makes me wonder about the mental state of our beta testers [...]"
cought me off guard while drinking coffee
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docdeek
[2003]
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artisinal
How do I view the collectors edition Windows XP without Googling “naked baby” ?
Did this comment already put me on a list?
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kleiba2
The same government should sue all new mothers: how dare they deliver babies into this world completely naked!!!
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luciana1u
the ubuntu logo is a skull and the windows logo is four little windows and somehow both are accurate descriptions of the people who use them
DonHopkins
The original 1989 SimCity box was a Rorschach test that cost Maxis $50k.
The cover was a Bakelite toy city simulator appliance with a red MONSTER disaster button, and a stompy T-Rex-looking creature waving over San Francisco on its TV screen.
Maxis never called it Godzilla on the box or in the game. Reviewers looked at the inkblot and saw Godzilla anyway.
In Feb 2024 I emailed Jeff Braun (Maxis co-founder/CEO) and asked what actually happened and how much Maxis had to pay. He wrote back the same day:
> Maxis was sued by Toho. We never referred to the name Godzilla, our monster on the box cover was a T-Rex looking character, but... a few magazine reviews called the monster, Godzilla. That was all it took. Toho called it "confusion in the marketplace". We paid $50k for Godzilla to go away. In all honesty, Toho liked Maxis, they said $50k was the minimum they take for Godzilla infringement.
All the box scans are in the Micropolis repo -- high res front, back with the "floods, earthquakes, fires, tornados, meltdowns and monsters" disaster list, side panels, and the platform variants, each with descriptions:
The back of the box kept advertising monsters as a feature the same year the monster got lawyered off the front.
The function names in the code all refered to it like "MakeMonster()", but admittedly there was a "GOD" symbol in the code used to index the Monster sprite likw "GetSprite(GOD)", but Toho could not have know that, since it was a C preprocessor macro that was compiled away in the binary:
I'm kind of offended they changed them all. At some point you just have to say 'okay this is just complete bullshit' and stand for the things you create. Otherwise everything ends up in this corporate bland soup of nothingness. Of course we know where Microsoft ended up, but I doesn't have to be that way.
By all means be pragmatic if it's a government complaining, but you don't have to take all crazy feedback at face value.
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jb1991
So what was the government that complained?
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pelagicAustral
They should have told them to gtfo and use Slackware then.
globular-toast
I was watching YouTube the other day and it was talking about Nirvana's Nevermind album, showed the album cover but with a square censoring part of it. In these cases it really is the censor themselves who is debauched. Reminds me of the classic story where Samuel Johnson left out some rude words from his dictionary. He was congratulated for having left them out, to which he is said to have quipped "I congratulate you on being able to look them up!"
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khazhoux
This is why large companies should employ a few pedophiles to run things like this by them first. Long term, much savings.
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sneak
What is an “obscene body part”?
If this body part is obscene, shouldn’t the author do the moral thing and remove his own?
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lukasbm
Why should the govt remain nameless?
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sachahjkl
satanic
wartywhoa23
> Until we got a complaint from a government (who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) that was upset with Windows 95 because it depicted naked children.
How dare you violate the government's exclusive right to naked children!
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...
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/...
"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.
This article includes the photo of the (clothed) hologram (it's the third image).
https://hardcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/038-design...
The wallpaper in question: https://windowswallpaper.miraheze.org/wiki/Red_moon_desert
I suppose it looks like buttocks?
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.
Raymond Chen is my favorite MS blog writer
Red Moon Desert is now my wallpaper for the rest of the week.
Looking at it from a distance indeed may raise some brows.
[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.
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...
> Windows XP had its own share of complaints. The original wallpaper for Windows XP was Red Moon Desert, until people claimed that Red Moon Desert looked like a pair of buttocks.
oh thanks, now I cannot unsee it. :)
I must say that "But it makes me wonder about the mental state of our beta testers [...]"
cought me off guard while drinking coffee
[2003]
How do I view the collectors edition Windows XP without Googling “naked baby” ?
Did this comment already put me on a list?
The same government should sue all new mothers: how dare they deliver babies into this world completely naked!!!
the ubuntu logo is a skull and the windows logo is four little windows and somehow both are accurate descriptions of the people who use them
The original 1989 SimCity box was a Rorschach test that cost Maxis $50k.
The cover was a Bakelite toy city simulator appliance with a red MONSTER disaster button, and a stompy T-Rex-looking creature waving over San Francisco on its TV screen.
Maxis never called it Godzilla on the box or in the game. Reviewers looked at the inkblot and saw Godzilla anyway.
Original monster cover:
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/m...
Revised cover after the lawsuit, monster swapped for a tornado (the MONSTER button survived):
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/m...
In Feb 2024 I emailed Jeff Braun (Maxis co-founder/CEO) and asked what actually happened and how much Maxis had to pay. He wrote back the same day:
> Maxis was sued by Toho. We never referred to the name Godzilla, our monster on the box cover was a T-Rex looking character, but... a few magazine reviews called the monster, Godzilla. That was all it took. Toho called it "confusion in the marketplace". We paid $50k for Godzilla to go away. In all honesty, Toho liked Maxis, they said $50k was the minimum they take for Godzilla infringement.
All the box scans are in the Micropolis repo -- high res front, back with the "floods, earthquakes, fires, tornados, meltdowns and monsters" disaster list, side panels, and the platform variants, each with descriptions:
https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/blob/main/docume...
Full email thread:
https://github.com/SimHacker/MicropolisCore/blob/main/docume...
The back of the box kept advertising monsters as a feature the same year the monster got lawyered off the front.
The function names in the code all refered to it like "MakeMonster()", but admittedly there was a "GOD" symbol in the code used to index the Monster sprite likw "GetSprite(GOD)", but Toho could not have know that, since it was a C preprocessor macro that was compiled away in the binary:
https://github.com/SimHacker/micropolis/blob/master/micropol...
I'm kind of offended they changed them all. At some point you just have to say 'okay this is just complete bullshit' and stand for the things you create. Otherwise everything ends up in this corporate bland soup of nothingness. Of course we know where Microsoft ended up, but I doesn't have to be that way.
By all means be pragmatic if it's a government complaining, but you don't have to take all crazy feedback at face value.
So what was the government that complained?
They should have told them to gtfo and use Slackware then.
I was watching YouTube the other day and it was talking about Nirvana's Nevermind album, showed the album cover but with a square censoring part of it. In these cases it really is the censor themselves who is debauched. Reminds me of the classic story where Samuel Johnson left out some rude words from his dictionary. He was congratulated for having left them out, to which he is said to have quipped "I congratulate you on being able to look them up!"
This is why large companies should employ a few pedophiles to run things like this by them first. Long term, much savings.
What is an “obscene body part”?
If this body part is obscene, shouldn’t the author do the moral thing and remove his own?
Why should the govt remain nameless?
satanic
> Until we got a complaint from a government (who shall remain nameless for obvious reasons) that was upset with Windows 95 because it depicted naked children.
How dare you violate the government's exclusive right to naked children!
niceee
Users scare me.