[HN Gopher] Prank Windows XP simulator
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Prank Windows XP simulator
Author : vncajules
Score : 171 points
Date : 2021-04-20 15:47 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (geekprank.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (geekprank.com)
| antisol wrote:
| Not quite as good as Windows RG ;)
| ptr wrote:
| My immersion was lost when the BSOD didn't hang the music
| moron4hire wrote:
| It's showing all the resizing chrome for the task bar, but the
| task bar is not resizable.
| throwaway123x2 wrote:
| Oh God, even though I knew what it was, my heart still skipped
| beats at the BSOD and the reformat
| Syonyk wrote:
| Seriously.
|
| I was running it windowed, on a Linux box.
|
| And it _still_ triggered the "... oh F---!" response.
|
| Very, very well done.
|
| I've not seen it in decades, but there was a great little site
| in a similar vein years ago that would detect your OS (Windows
| or Linux) and be an "animated GIF" of a remote exploit of some
| sort or another, the usual "run exploit, grab root, run id to
| prove you're root" thing (the Windows version was similar).
| Except, it was dynamic based on your public IP. So most people
| didn't get it. And sysadmin types, who usually _did_ know their
| public IP, had to restart their heart.
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| From earlier than 2018 maybe
|
| See also:
|
| https://geekprank.com/jurassic-park/
|
| https://geekprank.com/pipes/
|
| https://geekprank.com/hacker/
|
| https://geekprank.com/fbi-warning/
| anthk wrote:
| Well, with the JS PC emulator from Bellard (or the Risc-V one),
| you could run Windows XP in the web the same way you can with
| Windows 2000. https://bellard.org/jslinux/
| janlukacs wrote:
| I panicked even at the fake BSOD... so many memories. Winamp
| still looks good.
| StavrosK wrote:
| I remember in the era of Windows XP, I had downloaded a BSOD
| screensaver. Unfortunately, it never worked, as the few times I
| tried to preview it, it kept crashing the system.
|
| ...I realized why at around the fourth try.
| Ombudsman wrote:
| A Windows XP simulator without 3D Pinball?
| piinbinary wrote:
| This reminds me of "Window 93" [0]
|
| [0] https://www.windows93.net/
| MayeulC wrote:
| This just made me realize how great Tetris could be to build up
| muscle memory for vim keys: I recently arranged my directional
| key like that on a separate layer (just got an ergodox).
| xwx wrote:
| Not quite the same, but you could check out
| https://vimsnake.com/
| pkaye wrote:
| I was watching Kitboga on YouTube prank scammers with some
| Windows simulators. Its pretty hilarious to watch.
| bwat49 wrote:
| that channel is endless entertainment, I love it
| Yhippa wrote:
| Winamp really brings back some memories!
| antoineMoPa wrote:
| You have to try the command prompt.
| satya71 wrote:
| Love the WinAmp
| fny wrote:
| Wow the site is responsive!
| second--shift wrote:
| this is cute but modern web sites won't work in the embedded
| Internet Explorer - I kept getting an error "Firefox won't
| display this page in an embedded page - click here to open in new
| tab"
| kaltuer wrote:
| I love how responsive it is when you drag the windows across the
| screen. Also, I missed encountering the blue screen of death;
| it's been so long since I experienced one myself.
| [deleted]
| wesleyoldaker wrote:
| The prank won't work at all if there are advertisements embedded
| in it. :/
| dmitrygr wrote:
| Cute, but it it failed on click #2. "Show Desktop" indeed
| miminizes all windows. But clicking it again should restore them
| to where they were when "Show Desktop" was last clicked. It
| instead does nothing.
| megraf wrote:
| Nice little surprise in CMD. Well done!
| rscoots wrote:
| Great stuff! But where are the Windows Vista references?
| 002445 wrote:
| Anyone else got stuck playing tetris forgetting how you got
| there?
| jrwoodruff wrote:
| Definitely played tetris way too long lol
| cadr wrote:
| I kind of wished the tetris game messed with you. Like have
| some crazy shape or have the score go all over the place.
| Somehow I think that would get more people that the xp theme
| itself.
| ooboe wrote:
| I got lost with minesweeper.
| danjaco wrote:
| I love the nostalgia, it is truly immersive, especially when you
| encounter blue screen in the most unexpected manner.
| mzkply wrote:
| site's already dead
| varispeed wrote:
| This is so realistic!
| Narishma wrote:
| Except for the fonts. These web recreations of older GUIs
| always get the fonts wrong.
| ovi256 wrote:
| These are pretty imaginative. I like the macOS update screen that
| fails to a kernel panic if you click it. That would get me pretty
| good.
| agys wrote:
| Shut down is pretty good.
| Freaken wrote:
| Great touch triggering a BSOD when opening Internet Explorer!
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| This is great! Even though I skipped the whole Windows XP era by
| being primarily a Linux user all that time, and know it's all
| fake, the slight panic at what happens when you try to launch a
| program is real.
| dm319 wrote:
| Darn I wish I'd come across Linux before. I was starting
| university and my Amiga A1200 was just too incompatible with
| everything. I spent ages weighing up a powerbook with the shiny
| new OSX or a Thinkpad T40 with XP. In the end I was most
| impressed with the reliability of the ThinkPad, but those years
| spent fighting XP when I could have been using Linux - I
| regret! When I discovered Ubuntu 9.04, I felt like my love of
| computing had returned.
| mixmastamyk wrote:
| Linux and OSX weren't that great in the early years.
|
| And XP was one of the best Windows, minus a few glaring
| holes. Some of which could be patched over with third-party
| apps and some completely missing, like a modern terminal.
|
| Bottom line, XP was about the best there was just after the
| turn of the century, assuming you were safe behind a NAT and
| smart enough to use the new Firefox rather than IE in the
| coming years.
| dm319 wrote:
| Yes, and that was my assessment at the time. XP wasn't bad,
| but it got so bloated with, I think, SP2. I got frustrated
| that things would go wrong with it, and I could never find
| a definitive explanation online to fix it. There were
| usually webpages with 10 random things you could try in an
| attempt to resolve it, and weirdly I discovered that same
| community was still present for Win10. For years using XP I
| felt I never personally advanced in my ability to use a
| computer, whereas I feel my time on Linux has been a
| journey. But you're right, things may not have panned out
| of I'd either gone for OSX early on or Linux might have
| been not quite ready for me at that time.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| A complex Linux setup - I run a 3-seat multiuser setup on
| a massive old gaming box that uses too much power
| constantly to be worth running otherwise - can certainly
| deliver bang-your-head-against-the-wall frustration. Such
| as when the binary Brother scanner driver installs
| without any missing dependencies, and only much googling
| finds that you need to install some 32 bit libraries that
| it doesn't mention not being able to open. Or when the
| multiseat setup that I use is casually broken by update
| to the gdm greeter, with no plans to fix it again
| (luckily lightdm works). Or if you try to use a Bluetooth
| headset...
|
| However, I have not encountered the following, which has
| so far twice happened in Windows 10: Some hexadecimal
| error number that IT doesn't know about, Microsoft denies
| would ever happen, and the anecdotal discussions on the
| internet offer 10 different kinds of voodoo that will fix
| it for sure, except that none of them do (you can tell
| just from the number of different things they tell you to
| try). At least with Linux the rabbit hole goes all the
| way down; if all else fails you can dig in the source
| code.
| MarkusWandel wrote:
| In those days, the basis of comparison for Linux was
| established Unixes, first and foremost Solaris. As a free
| hobby version it was already very desirable, and it was in
| the process of acquiring the performance and reliability
| that ultimately made it displace all the existing Unixes.
| So in that respect it was definitely great.
|
| Where Windows won out at the time is that no end of
| essential proprietary software ran only on it (or perhaps
| also on Mac OS) and Linux was locked out. For example, if
| you wanted to use Garmin mapping software to download from
| your GPS, or use most printers, scanners, webcams. And of
| course a lot of web sites only worked on IE6 which looked
| poised to take over the way Chrome has now.
|
| How times have changed. Most gadgets "just work" in Linux
| now too, the desktop environment is great (and here I refer
| to Mate, not the ongoing experiment that is Gnome 3), and
| the whole thing mostly just serves as a device driver for a
| web browser anyway.
|
| In my personal opinion, too, the high point of Windows was
| Windows 7 since it first came with all the common device
| drivers so stuff would "just work" without the driver hunt
| dance. Windows 10 works pretty well - I have it on my work
| machine. But my mom was recently given a Windows 10
| machine, and I set it to be as scrimpy with data as I could
| ("metered connection" and the last aggressive updates).
| Where, with her limited habits, she used to use around
| 500MB of data per month (email and very light browsing) she
| now comes in at 2.5-3GB, forcing a higher tier of mobile
| data (she's on an LTE gateway - lives in the countryside).
| Not great. Here Linux wins again in an old school way - it
| took some serious tweaking under the hood to get it to not
| consume data constantly i.e. not only not auto update, but
| not even download the updates and not even constantly
| download the index of available updates. Opinions vary on
| the wisdom of this, but it is of course behind a NAT
| firewall with all unnecessary services turned off. And
| using zero bytes per month that weren't asked for.
|
| Back to the Windows XP topic. Her Windows XP machine is in
| the process of giving up the ghost after all these years
| and while I had her half converted to Linux/Mate, the
| Windows 10 machine is just more convenient, mostly because
| it is faster than my leftover laptops.
| aruggirello wrote:
| Old Amiga user here - There's something about GNU/Linux that
| felt instantly familiar for me - it instantly clicked. I too
| lost too many years on Windows...
|
| BTW as an Amiga fan, let me take you back to Kickstart 1.3
| and a few demos:
|
| http://www.chiptune.com/
| dm319 wrote:
| When I discovered Linux, I bought a few Linux magazines -
| and realised that Linux Format (a monthly in the UK) seemed
| to carry over much of the same staff from Amiga Format. I
| had a weird sense of losing the party for a while and
| somehow chancing upon it again. That website is great, and
| weirdly the Amiga has come up a couple of times this week.
| One was marcan mentioning an X1000 driver which he's using
| for his asahilinux project, and another was re-discovering
| some Amiga games tunes that the author has commented on 25
| years later on YouTube.
| HenryBemis wrote:
| The "Hacker" mode needs update.. it has BTC9 and writes it's
| approximately $44k ;)
|
| That's old news! :)
| ahmedfromtunis wrote:
| I miss the "screen-destroying" hammer. It was a good way to
| relieve some stress.
| tyingq wrote:
| I get a Dell BIOS after the BSOD, and I'm running a Dell.
| Coincidence, or does it detect the vendor?
| vbsteven wrote:
| Looks like coincidence as I had the same Dell screen on my
| iPhone just now
| pomian wrote:
| also dell bios screen, on android!
| thebouv wrote:
| Yeah, coincidence, saw the same on my Mac.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| Unfortunately, if you bring your cursor to the top of the screen
| there's a message (in Firefox) and an X (in Chrome) that inform
| the user that they are in a full screen webpage.
| xwx wrote:
| This happens if you press F11. If you click the balloon that
| says "Start the prank" instead then you won't get this issue,
| at least in Firefox.
| forgotpwd16 wrote:
| Run, if Chromium (or Chrome) chromium --kiosk
| <url>
|
| or, similarly for Firefox firefox --new-
| window --kiosk <url>
|
| For Chromium the `--new-window` argument doesn't open in kiosk
| mode. In order to work no other instance must run.
| MiddleEndian wrote:
| I am definitely using this on my friend's living room
| computer. "Linux was acting weird so I installed Windows"
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(page generated 2021-04-20 23:02 UTC)