Public BSOD Sightings?

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 ;)"

Ad campaign

[gumbright]

One of the most mind boggling was a recent M$ ad campaign where they provided a "cut out" BSOD that you could tape on your monitor "in case you missed them". I could not believe the gall that would be required for M$ to taunt is own users for being so stupid as to have used a previous version of their OS.

Re:Ad campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think you can say "they did it" when third party apps can crash the operating system, particularly drivers. That is still bad OS design.

Well, if you haven't seen it crash, then it must be fixed. You apparently don't do any serious Windows administration. Anyone who has done it through any patch release on more than a dozen computers quickly learned that there is a big reason that you are supposed to first try out the patch on a test machine and fully test it before allowing it into the system (and you are really hosed when a security patch causes crashes because now you have to figure out what to do with the unpatched machine).

You think your XP machine is crash free? Compile and run this:

#include <stdio.h>

int main (void) {
while (1)
printf ("\t\t\b\b\b\b\b\b");

return 0;
}

"Linux zealots?" You MS apologists sure carry such large chips on your shoulders. Some day...some day...some day it will be crash-free and secure. Just keep telling yourself that.

It has been ten years, they still haven't done it, and they've made their fortune on the backs of dolts like you who keep shelling out too much money for the privilege of being beta testers under the promise that the next OS really will be the one.

Re:Ad campaign

[Anonymous Coward]

third party apps can crash the operating system, particularly drivers. That is still bad OS design.

No. Drivers are not apps, and whether or not they can crash the kernel is a robustness/efficiency tradeoff. That is, it's an engineering decision and has nothing to do with bad OS design. One reason NT has become more stable over time is that the drivers have had time to mature.

Re:I saw one at McDonalds this weekend also

[shepd]

Smiles might be on the menu for free, but you don't have to order them if you say "please", "thank you", and "sorry".

Amazing how those simple words, even at the drive thru, get you the correct change and a good meal each time, with the condiments in the bag.

Which reminds me of how amazed the local video store was when I said "Yeah, I returned a couple of videos late last time. Could you tell me how much extra that will be, please?" The clerk literally thought I was from another planet.