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The giant blue screen of death comes for us all

This photo of the infamous Windows error screen on a five-story Thai shopping mall is like something out of a sci-fi movie.

Gael Cooper
CNET editor Gael Fashingbauer Cooper, a journalist and pop-culture junkie, is co-author of "Whatever Happened to Pudding Pops? The Lost Toys, Tastes and Trends of the '70s and '80s," as well as "The Totally Sweet '90s." She's been a journalist since 1989, working at Mpls.St.Paul Magazine, Twin Cities Sidewalk, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, and NBC News Digital. She's Gen X in birthdate, word and deed. If Marathon candy bars ever come back, she'll be first in line.
Expertise Breaking news, entertainment, lifestyle, travel, food, shopping and deals, product reviews, money and finance, video games, pets, history, books, technology history, generational studies. Credentials
  • Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year"​ award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
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Gael Cooper

Ask not for whom the giant blue screen of death tolls, it tolls for thee.

This all-too-nightmare-inducing photo was taken in Pattaya, Thailand, at the CentralFestival Pattaya Beach shopping mall, and shared on Facebook by Blake Sibbitt. Apparently, a problem has been detected, and the mall will be shut down. Or, you know, at least the outdoor signage.

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But forget reality, it's more fun to picture this five-story version of the infamous Windows system-crash screen as something out of a future "Terminator" movie, when Skynet has taken us over and is about to take the planet down for good. Or maybe out of a "Black Mirror" episode, where a skyscraper's crash is preceded by a skyscraper system crash.

Or maybe just out of one of my nightmares from that time I was almost done with a work project and all of a sudden, poof, it's gone. HA-HA. I swear Bill Gates was laughing at me with the voice of Nelson from "The Simpsons." Thanks a lot, blue screen of death. May all your illegal operations be shut down.

(Via Geek.com)