Computer errors in public places

Over the last few weeks, I've spent much time in airports and hotels to bring you, dear reader, strange and fascinating tales from the world of IT. During my travels, I keep an ever-watchful eye for interesting and bloggable tidbits. Fortunately, I hit pay dirt twice and have photos to prove it.

First, here's a photo of the session announcement board at HP's Software Universe 2009 conference, held at the Sands in Las Vegas. Note, this is a Sands issue and has nothing to do with HP:

...and a cropped, rotated version showing the error:

Looks to me like hardware failure caused the computer not to boot. What do you think?

Second, this photo is from an American Airlines display board at O'Hare airport in Chicago:

... and the detail:

It's hard to read, but the dialog title box says, "Operational Applications" and "Select an item to launch from the list below".

While on the subject of travel, this tweet sums up my experience with American Airlines last week.