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Public BSOD Sightings?
Posted by
Cliff
on Wed Nov 19, 2003 05:44 PM
from the inescapable-blue-screen-of-death dept.
from the inescapable-blue-screen-of-death dept.
Sanksa Wott asks: "My travels over the weekend brought me to a very popular fast food restaurant, where, in the drive-through I was greeted with, what else... a blue screen! Since BSOD's can show up almost anywhere, I thought I would ask: 'What has your funniest/most interesting/noteworthy/etc. encounter with public displays of the BSOD been like?' Note: This isn't meant to be a troll, so lets be nice ;)"
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PATH BSOD (Score:3, Interesting)
Lisbon subway system (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PATH BSOD (Score:3, Interesting)
My personal favorite (Score:5, Funny)
Priceless
are you talking about this video? (Score:5, Informative)
The famous Bill Gates crash video (1.63 MB) [scorpioncity.com]
-metric
Parent
You mean (Score:5, Informative)
Re:You mean (Score:3, Interesting)
Development costs would be higher, but in the long run these systems would be much cheaper to mass-deploy. Have people forgotten how to write graphics code without using the Windows GDI?
I'm not talking about assemb
Not really cheaper (Score:3, Interesting)
Many of these things could probably benefit from more carefully designed systems that don't suffer from Desktop OS issues, but unless everyone starts doing it all at once,
TV Station (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:TV Station (Score:4, Interesting)
It's since had a face life but I think it's still running on an Amiga! This is strange in that I didn't think there were many Amiga systems still in production usage. I am sure there are Amiga systems still in use all over the place but I was surprised to see it being used for the TV Guide.
Parent
Re:TV Station (Score:5, Funny)
One time, at 3 AM, I was surfing, and when I got to the TV Guide channel, what did I see? A MacOS 9 desktop, with some pebbles as the desktop wallpaper. I must have watched that sit there doing nothing for 2 hours before the mouse started to move and then I got to watch some guy launch the TVGuide program
Parent
Public displays of BSOD (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Public displays of BSOD (Score:2)
Not a BSOD, but (Score:4, Interesting)
Warner Village (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Warner Village (Score:2, Funny)
You: Well, I just though I'd make my reservations online....
Good One!!
Re:Warner Village (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Airport travel monitors (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Airport travel monitors (Score:2)
Oh, and the POS terminals at my local cafeteria ran a windows variant (the operator had to power cycle it when it stopped working). POS seems appropriate for windows.
Airports are a special kind of hell. (Score:5, Interesting)
The ones at Minneapolis International run Windows 95! Windows 95!!!! They're constantly crashing. I wonder which H-1B suggested that one.
Actually, many of them do, for a variety of reasons.
I used to work installing and managing a FIDS (Flight Information Display System) at Toronto's Pearson International Airport. Several pictures of the FIDS systems I used to manage are in those BSoD picture pages that a couple of other posters have mentioned.
The company that wrote the FIDS had precisely one programmer. He was excellent, but the company was crap, constantly over-extending him and making ridiculous promises to airports and their stuff.
Working with FIDS systems requires a lot of reverse-engineering. Airports don't like to change their technology; they're even more conservative than banks. (Consider the potential real-world implications: two planes colliding in mid-air over a city.)
Consequently, things are old, and usually the people who wrote them didn't document very well, or the documentation can't be found, or the systems are completely proprietary. Then there's the almost weekly cycle of airport amalgamations, airline mergers, fuelling contractor changes, etc. The IT department has to run around patching existing stuff together to try to keep up.
There was one VAX system in the GTAA (Toronto airport administration) headquarters building which, according to legend, hadn't been touched in 6 years because no one knew if it would come back up on its own after a reboot.
You can imagine in this environment that people are loathe to give you a space on a hub to sniff records off an airside server. Cut off one pin and serial is a one-way street; it's pretty hard for an outside contractor's computer systems to screw things up.
The displays around the terminals tended to be ANSI color dumb terminals all driven off serial data. Very reliable, but very hard to upgrade. Data feeds for new FIDS systems typically have to come from several sources, all of different data formats, and be merged.
At Pearson, we had three data streams for three terminals. Two of them came from one source, down a serial line, simultaneously but with completely different data formats. A third was yet another completely different format, provided by an airline which would change the format of the data at a whim.
Our software to read this stuff had to be reading directly off the serial port with direct hardware access (needed to be able to make the weird handshaking requirements on some systems). The programmer who wrote it did so before Windows NT, and certainly before Linux hit it big, and didn't have time to port it.
The other big issue, of course, is the computers themselves. Arrivals, departures and gate monitors frequently receive the same data streams and therefore have to be independenly configured on what to display and what to ignore. Not to mention the internal stuff for fuelling and maintenance companies, baggage throwers, food services, cargo flights, etc. Almost all of these displays are driven by PCs which are usually stuffed into horrible places - ceilings, under desks, janitor closets. Half the runaround of maintaining these things is actually getting four security escorts (even if you have all the security clearances in the world!) to let you into some room somewhere where you THINK there might be a computer where you THINK the power supply fan might be failing because you keep on having vmm.vxd crashes.
You'll note that a vmm.vxd BSoD is usually caused by a hardware failure. In my not inconsequential experience with public display computers, usually caused by overheating because some idiot decided to store his large collection of empty Tim Horton's coffee cups in the little space behind the mysterious computer under his desk. Or because of the massive dustbunnies which accumulate in a suspended ceiling 25 feet above the International Departures concourse.
If you had the opportunity to do the whole thing over from scratch, of course, you'
Parent
On the airport 'arrivals' and 'departures' screen (Score:2)
I saw one at McDonalds this weekend also (Score:5, Funny)
The computer model was human high-school female type, and the human assistant was a manager.
Re:I saw one at McDonalds this weekend also (Score:3, Informative)
You don't understand? One of my favorite minor amusements is to always hand the cash drone small change to make the change work out and watch the fun that results.
The tab comes to $6.62. Hand 'em two fives, two nickels and two pennies. Watch as the clerk counts it up and keys in the $10.12 they have (that will take longer th
Re:I saw one at McDonalds this weekend also (Score:3, Funny)
I can beat this down like a UT noob playing Tacops. Once, and only once, I have had a two dollar bill. Where do I take it? McD's. Only to be told that it is counterfeit because - can you see this coming? - there is no such thing as a two dollar bill.
Sometimes people get upset when I say "if they were a genius they wouldn't work at McDonald's" but look, if you're smart, you can't stand to even be near those people for long.
BSOD on a US Customs kiosk at LAX (Score:3, Funny)
I have seen them and 4 different locations. (Score:4, Interesting)
#2. Buying some groceries at the local food market...scan..scan...scan....bang! MY FOOD IS FREE!!!
#3. While on vacation in Hawaii at a access kiosk. Aloha never ment so much to me, I missed home so much less at that moment.
#4. At a change counter you dump you loose change in and get green backs, ironic that it was at the same places as the above scanner. Free money, free food, I LIKE IT!
Second hand stories (Score:3, Interesting)
One guy saw BSOD's on gate information displays at Heathrow.
Another guy saw the BSOD, and then subsequent rebooting and attempts to fix the system being displayed on a "jumbotron" type display on the Las Vegas Strip which lasted a few minutes until the tech apparently realized he should disconnect the big display...
BSODs (Score:4, Funny)
I've seen a BSOD on the local access cable channel.
I've seen a BSOD on the ATM at defcon (sorta. Wasn't really blue, but it was a major crash)
The best, though by far was when I went to Target and they had 3 consoles set up side by side. X-Box on the left, PS2 in the center, and GameCube on the right. The PS2 and GameCube were working just fine, demoing Tony Hawk and StarFox I think. The X-Box on the other hand was sitting there at a Black-Screen-Of-Death that was the same as a BSOD only black. (wow! great upgrade, Microsoft! No more Blue Screen of Death!) That really says a lot about the comparative reliability of those three systems. I'm glad Target was kind enough to provide the public with this demonstration: comparison shopping it its best!
Re:BSODs (Score:3, Funny)
Not BSOD, Java backtrace! (Score:4, Interesting)
Not a BSOD, but... (Score:5, Funny)
Imagine my surprise when, one day, the screen informs me that I can get a
U.N.I.V.E.R.S.I.T.Y D.I.P.L.O.M.A
from home, courtesy of Windows Messenger!
Ad campaign (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Ad campaign (Score:5, Interesting)
The truth about why you get no blue screens is that by default you'll only see recoverable blue screens (although most of those are now in "Application Crashed - Send, Don't Send") the none recoverable blue screens just reset your computer. Since it's doesn't take to long to boot up most of the time you forget about it. To be honest though I've had about as many as those as I use to have blue screens (I didn't get to many).
Just though you might like to know why you don't blue screens in XP
Parent
Not really BSOD... (Score:2)
NT boot screen on hotel video system (Score:5, Interesting)
So of course, I plugged my notebook into that wall jack to see what I could find. I got a DHCP address -- nice! So I looked at my default route and telnetted to it. A prompt. Some sort of IOS knock-off. Hmm, what would the password be? It took me about 3 tries -- it was the name of the company that sold the video system, which was written on the remote control. I didn't know enough about routers back then to know what to look for beyond that. I don't know if I might have been able to somehow connect to the Internet, or download their movies, or get into their reservation system. I really didn't want to get into that much trouble anyway. But just the fact that their router password was that obvious blew my mind.
terrorist! (Score:2, Funny)
OT: Re:NT boot screen on hotel video system (Score:2, Interesting)
The password prompt:
Humpty 2033
enter password:
1st try: humpty -> failed
2nd try: humpty 2033 ->failed
3rd try: 2033 ->success!
A
Re:NT boot screen on hotel video system (Score:4, Interesting)
This time it came up OK, but imagine my amusement when I saw an AMI BIOS screen. You could then turn channels and get your regular TV, but were always able to get back to the BIOS screen by channel cycling through. It was some kind of weird Channel 0 or something. That set-top movie rent box must have been some kind of serious hack-job. I had half a mind to look for a serial port or something and see what I could do, but it was my honeymoon after all; figured I'd get in trouble if I broke out the toolkit
Parent
My most recent BSOD's.... (Score:2)
Texaco gas pumps. (Score:3, Funny)
The funniest part was that the pump itself was not blue screening. The BSOD was actually part of the looped video clip. The loop was displayed on all of Texaco's pumps with display screens, across the entire US for several months.
Don't tell SCO (Score:2)
Or worse... (Score:2)
Even worse, is is now more frequently back on the Windows desktop showing a Windows Messenger spam, where it stays until someone in control happens to check the system or gets a complaint. Stupid viagra spammers are getting free airtime.
I suppose it wouldn't be completely ethical to send it one saying "Firewall your f*cking system!"
Brasil: Itau Bank (Score:2)
not quite BSOD but just as good - (Score:2)
some of the ones I've seen (Score:2, Informative)
In the San Diego airport: your flight is now... cancelled [dyndns.org]
In an interesting correlation, both of these pictures were taken on trips for the ACM World Programming Contest (different years), which made them even more relevant, since it leads me to think about good problem solving techniques.
Not quite a BSOD (Score:3, Funny)
I saw this around 2 pm, and the warning was from 9 am. The day before
Windows doesn't crash that much actually... (Score:3, Funny)
GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT
Airport (Score:4, Funny)
Re:For three years! (Score:2)
Re:For three years! (Score:2)