We ran Flash in firefox, in wine, on Linux.

It was too slow to play video.

Flash doesn't have permission to execute stuff,
so we used AJAX to a local httpd.

That ran a CGI perl script, which slept to the millisecond — to launch mplayer in a floating window over the top.

I demoed it, and then I deleted it.
Right there infront of them.

We replaced entire system with mplayer running pre-rendered video, full screen, uploaded nightly.

One day the ceiling collapsed. It swung down and hit some poor guy in the face.

We hit the christmas deadline.
We got a bunch of screens installed, and they displayed christmas adverts.

The company folded because they were unable to sell the space. Imagine being unable to sell space to advertisers!

Two months later, in Feburary, the christmas adverts were still running.