BSOD ate my flight details

There’s a lesson to be had in here about entrusting important, always-on, unmonitored systems to Windows:

gatwick_airport_bsod

Yes, my flight details (this was Gatwick airport) should have been on that second monitor – it’s so nice to be reminded of the frailty of technology when you’re about to entrust your life to a tin box full of electronics and software.

Still, it was amusing to listen to a confused couple trying to read & decipher the BSOD text, clearly thinking it was an official announcement of some sort. :lol:

Posted on May 11, 2009 by . This entry was posted in Comedy, Tech, Windows and tagged , , . Bookmark the permalink.
  • http://akenchoslife.blogspot.com Kencho

    “it’s so nice to be reminded of the frailty of technology when you’re about to entrust your life to a tin box full of electronics and software”
    That’s the (freaking) reason why so many F16A prototypes crashed in their early days.

    Nice contribution to the BSOD hunting tradition. It’s funnier than hunting Leprechauns :lol:

    PS: The captcha reads “freaks holdings”. This is weirder everyday XD

  • http://paulecoyote.wordpress.com Paul Evans

    Isn’t that kind of blue screen involving IRQ something to do with hardware? Last time I got a screen like that it was because some memory was on it’s way out.
    I have a feeling that system of big screens is something to do with Alan Sugar as well, I think on that BBC special they did on him they showed him taking an… interest in that stuff.

  • http://www.stevestreeting.com Steve

    No, here’s the official word on that error: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc957609.aspx

    In other words, it could be just about anything that uses a wild pointer in kernel mode – a driver, the OS itself, a system service even. It’s equivalent to a kernel panic in the Unixes, except that so fewer things run in kernel mode in Unix that it’s less common. So this sums up the core design flaw in Windows in the past 15 years…

  • http://www.spannerworx.com/ Paul

    LOL @ poor oldies trying to decipher the message!! That both saddened me and amused me.

    And just seen Star Trek – they have made Trekkie cool again cos it kicks ass. Go see it Steve and give us yer verdict.

  • syedhs

    There was time when I maintained a Windows 2000 Server that must be rebooted the latest every 2 days. Otherwise strange things will happen like client can’t connect to MySQL etc.

  • Dark Sylinc

    YEEEEESSSSSS.
    (love those)

    “So this sums up the core design flaw in Windows in the past 15 years…”
    True. But I want to point out that most BSODs I’ve ever seen are due to crappy drivers (not the OS itself), but more often, failing hardware.
    Still I love when Windows fails :D

    Poor couple… specially because I’m thinking of those who don’t speak english and may get confused.

  • blankthemuffin

    Ahaha that’s amazing. I wonder how long it took for somebody to restart it.

  • http://www.stevestreeting.com Steve

    @Paul: planning to see ST this week sometime…

    @Dark Sylinc: yeah, but just what kind of drivers does a panel like this actually need? A simple video and network driver I would expect, that’s it. I can understand why Mac’s rarely fail since the hardware & drivers are kept very closely controlled, but I’ve had lots of Linux server machines of this equivalent level of complexity (just simple video, disk & network) and I can’t remember having any kernel panics, yet I’ve seen plenty of BSODs on Windows servers. Maybe it’s just because the provided non-proporietary drivers on Linux for all the basic stuff gets more scrutiny so more bugs are found. I’ve had lots more hassle with desktop Linux of course where you have to start getting more custom drivers, although again, no kernel panics I can remember – just annoying edge cases.

    @blankthemuffin: I had a long connection gap and it was like that all afternoon. I considered trying to find the reset button but since this was pre-security I figured they might suspect I was planting some kind of device (I have a beard and dark hair after all), so I left it alone.

  • http://paulecoyote.wordpress.com Paul Evans

    From that link: “You should also run hardware diagnostics supplied by the system manufacturer, especially the memory scanner.”

    That was my own experience that lead me to replace my memory because the memory diagnostic failed… which fixed my own problem in my desktop *shrugs*.

    I’m sure you have a point, but you also have no way to prove it to be software or hardware without access to the hardware.

    *shrugs* Be as anti-Windows as you like, your blog after all! You could slashdot it :-)

  • http://www.stevestreeting.com Steve

    I actually quite like Windows on the desktop, although I consider Vista to be a waste of good resources and am quite happy with XP. I prefer my Mac for ‘general’ stuff (web browsing, media etc), but I prefer Windows for development, really only because of Visual Studio. XCode is getting close, but VS still wins for C++. I like Linux on the desktop in theory but the practice has always been hugely underwhelming to me so I stick it on servers only right now.

    But there’s no denying XP’s reliability record is somewhat suspect, making it an odd choice for something like this. I have no idea why they’re using Windows anyway, it’s nuts – this is crying out for a cheap, efficient embedded system like Arduino or BeagleBoard, quite why they think it needs a Windows OS per screen I have no idea (this failure affected just that one panel in the whole airport, so they must all be running their own OS rather than being a remote view). I honestly don’t know why some people think one size fits all when it comes to technology!

  • Gunny

    HOLY jesus, i was there same time same place and i saw this exact same monitor WOW !!!! i got a picture but its crappy… i laughed :D