Public BSOD Sightings? 307
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 ;)"
PATH BSOD (Score:3, Interesting)
Lisbon subway system (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:PATH BSOD (Score:2)
All hail the MBTA.
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
Re:Your .sig (Score:2)
to Beeblebrox's deceased great grandfather
as he helps the guys from the trailing Vogons.
That is exactly what he says when he is
disapointed with what Beeblebrox has accomplished
with his life.
(This is after Beeblebrox crash lands on the
primitive earth).
something like "We have a saying up here ya know,
Life is wasted on the living"
Who used it first? I don't know. It was in
the original radio BBC radio broadcast of HGTTG.
It is indeed fitting. That's why I use it.
-
Re:My personal favorite (Score:2)
Seems like there's always some guy in the back that yells "IT'S NOT A BUG, IT'S A FEATURE", too.
Re:My personal favorite (Score:2)
And you beat the shit out of him right? Because, seriously, that joke gets old.
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,
Re:Not really cheaper (Score:2)
Re:Not really cheaper (Score:2)
Why the hell would I want to "write my own gfx routines" and use something low level like Linux and svgalib? That is definately not quick, cheap and dirty. No, you wouldn't have to pay for the OS, but writing all of your own gfx routines would cost the difference in a Windows O
Re:You mean (Score:2, Funny)
bsod shirt [designers.co.yu] No it's not a goats.ex link.
well
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.
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
Re:TV Station (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:TV Station (Score:2)
Re:TV Station (Score:2)
I've seen the local community access channel with error messages a few times. Here's one example [dyndns.org]; it's the only one I managed to dig up. It's hard to read, but it's RealPlayer that crashed. It doesn't surprise me that RealPlayer crashed since it runs in the background for no reason, but I wonder WTF it was doing on that box.
Another time some program (like antivirus, or whatever they used to show ads and stuff) would crash, then the computer would reboot, then the cycle would repeat. It ran Windows
Public displays of BSOD (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Public displays of BSOD (Score:2)
Re:Public displays of BSOD (Score:2)
Not a BSOD, but (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:I had to rip out NAV... (Score:2)
Re:I had to rip out NAV... (Score:2)
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)
Re:Warner Village (Score:2)
Target (Score:2)
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.
Re:Airport travel monitors (Score:2)
Picture 1 [robmaeder.com] Picture 2 [robmaeder.com]
To be honest, this [designers.co.yu] has always been my favourite place to see the bsod.
Re:Airport travel monitors (Score:2)
The flight information screens at Heathrow [baa.co.uk] (Terminal 3, at least) run Windows 95 too. While waiting for a recent flight one kept crashing, whereupon it would POST, start Windows 95, run scandisk, load a bunch of drivers, run the app for a few minutes and crash again.
Yep. Got pictures. :-)
...laura
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'
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...
Re:Second hand stories (Score:2)
Heh.
This isn't a BSOD story, but what the hell -- one of my jobs in college was working the customer service desk at a discount department store. Among other things, this meant being the guy that would announce things like "Mr Grimley, you have a call
Large LED signs (Score:2)
Not quite the scale of a Jumbotron, but there's an outfit in Dallas' (wannabe) "Little Asia" area that has a large LED display, visible from I-35E [mapquest.com], that frequently seems a bit messed up. Finally, one day, I found out why. The top right corner of a Windows 95-style error message was displayed... just the top of the exclamation point triangle, plus enou
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)
Re:BSODs (Score:2)
Re:BSODs and story (Score:2)
Our Local Access Channel had a Win95 BSoD left up over the weekend, as if no one would/could come in and just reboot the damn thing.
Story: my Uncle was an TV/Radio Electrical Technician in Upstate NY during the 50's and 60's, highly skilled and sought after for troubleshooting. According to my mom, he was watching a station where he worked, and he noticed something miniscule in the reception. He called up the on-site technician, asked about Obscure Part
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:2)
Re:Ad campaign (Score:2, Insightful)
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 (
Re:Ad campaign (Score:2)
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
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
My most recent BSOD's.... (Score:2)
Re: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.
Re:Texaco gas pumps. (Score:2)
Any speculation on how much Apple paid for that "ad"?
Heh.
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.
FIRST Robotics (Score:2)
Not quite a BSOD (Score:3, Funny)
I saw this around 2 pm, and the warning was from 9 am. The day before
Hoboken (NJ) ATM Machine(s) (Score:2)
I Got r00t on a photo machine (Score:2, Interesting)
Ditech bill board (Score:2)
On the freeway near my house one of those Ditech bill boards that have a giant computer display was showing the BSOD. I was tempted to break into the bill board and install linux or reboot it and run quake on it..
MSP Intl Airport (Score:2)
Dave
Big Screen on the Vagas Strip (Score:2, Funny)
Another story, though not a true BSOD. Our cable tv guide station here at Michigan Tech desplayed and error and asked to be rebooted for about a week before anything was done about it. So no one knew what was on and had to look at windows errors for a week.
Re:Big Screen on the Vagas Strip (Score:2, Funny)
Cable Guide Channel (Score:2)
since then they've been bought by cablevision (years back now) and I've switched to satellite
Windows doesn't crash that much actually... (Score:3, Funny)
GENERAL PROTECTION FAULT
Tic-Tac-Toe Playing Chicken (Score:2)
When I played, the game blew up on a runtime error. The chicken's assistant had to restart the game from Windows. It wasn't a BSOD, but it made me feel better after losing to a chicken.
Linux (Score:2)
[Someone who's frustrated with Linux boxes hanging all the time.]
Re:Linux (Score:2)
You sure it isn't just XFree86 hanging?
Re:Linux (Score:2)
If you can't ssh in (or sometimes even ping the machine) then it's hard to blame XFree86. No keyboard response either, of course.
Of course, it's hard to rule out hardware problems, though I've seen it on enough different machines (all with high-quality hardware) that I highly doubt hardware is the culprit.
Most hangs seem to occur when doing memory-intensive operations (and therefore swapping). I've also managed to cause hangs by runn
Re:Linux (Score:2)
I managed to hang a stable Linux as a result of playing with the MBONE a couple of years ago -- not that common of a usage situation. Other than that, the only hanging problems I've ever had were from hardware (it took me a while to realize that Windows hard-froze with the same used video card that Linux did).
Re:Linux (Score:2)
And yes, I know that hardware *can* cause problems. I even found bad ram on one of the boxes. I'm just saying it's silly to claim that Linux is totally stable. It's just not true.
Current plans are to try using the Magic SysRq keys to get more information next time a hang occurs, but thankfully it's been a while. (The last hang, which happened
Las Vegas (Score:2, Funny)
One of them is one of those "Virtual rollercoasters" where they put everyone in a hydraulic-powered set of theatre-seats, in front of a huge IMAX-like screen.
The coaster was neat, but it was running WINDOWS 3.1. It crashed. Biggest BSOD I've ever seen. Filled nearly my whole field of vision. Had to wait for it to reboot. Started over.
Basically we went on the ride twice because of that.
Toronto Pearson Int'l Airport (Score:2)
While not quite a BSOD, it was up there for over 30 minutes while I watched, annoyed, that I couldn't see whether their flight arrived or not (saw the flight number, but couldn't see its status).
Sadly I didn't bring a camera.
Heathrow and the Oslo Underground (Score:2)
Then about 2 weeks ago, I and all my fellow travellers were treated with a little tidbit of information, namely that the address of the screens above the platform at one of Oslo's underground stations was 34H on one side and 36H on the other, and that both monitors appeared to have been properly aligned, if the test-pattern and circular target-like patterns were to be believed.
Which is all nice and well, but I was really hopi
Local access channel (Score:2)
The Star Trek Experience (Score:2)
It's a BSOD.
Looks like the future is doomed.
Solomon K. Chang
"I am Drunk of Borg. Resistance is Floor Tile."
Not just Windows (Score:2)
Then one day, while I was traveling, I tried to get some cash from an ATM, and it crashed, swallowing my ATM card. So there I was, far from home, with no cash and no ATM card, and the OS/2 crash screen added insult to injury.
Then I realized that banks probably used OS/2 in their ATMs because that's what they were offered to connect the
Why go out? (Score:2)
Airport (Score:4, Funny)
Re:For three years! (Score:2)
Re:For three years! (Score:2)
Yup, that's common (Score:2)
It really sucks when you're trying to catch a train, too. Stupid Windows NT boxes.
All the money they spent, and they got stuck with Windows NT. heh.
When taking BART, also note the "elevator status" screens in the agent's booth. Quite often you'll see an ODBC:Ping Timeout error scroll across instead of the correct information.
Re:times square (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The Excalibur displays in Las Vegas... (Score:2)