Error

[Eckels]

I took this picture at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas. I wish it was just a bit clearer, but you get the gist... Yes, that's the "Arrivals" board.

http://eckels.afterblur.com/vacation/funny1.jpg
http://eckels.afterblur.com/vacation/funny2.jpg

[MrCow]

gotta love windows..

[Axel]

Ah, another fun Windows story....

[ShadowTiger]

I am somehow tempted to press my finger onto the screen in some vain effort of giving these countless innocent passengers hope. And yet, ... I know they are doomed to succumb forever to the vile curse of an improperly taken care of Windows Operating System. ... Poor fools. :shakeno:

[VEL]

I've seen alot of windows error messages various places. Like at Wal-Mart they had these screens that had them on it all the time, I think they were suppossed to show movie previews or something. There is also a local channel on TV that has them all the time.

[Toolie]

God.. terrible windows. I don't know why anyone would use it. I mean, I can't picture what the world would be like if most of the people used windows. How could they? Everything would be crashing all the time and nothing would ever work. I mean, how could it? Do you see these pictures and here these stories? With such a high chance of shitty Windows crashing, it must be impossible for a business, country, or even planet to rely on it, right?

I mean, it's not like the chances of error are low but seem greater because there are millions of individual systems using the software. That would be stretching the truth, and we're all unbiased, right?

[MANDRAG GANON]

Yeah I see these all over too now. Last time I went to Alberta I saw one of those on the Arrivals board XD

[AtmaWeapon]

Notice this is an application error. The application name is too blurry to read, but it is most likely one of the components of the airline's software. I'm not saying NT 4.0 never crashes, but I am saying you can't protect it from the lowest-bidder codemonkeys they hire to write their software. I have run Windows XP on two boxes for close to 3 years now, and the only blue screen I've seen occurs when I quickly unplug and replug my USB hard drive, which seems to me is more a hardware issue than an OS issue. At work, our Win 2k servers outlast the stupid Compaq arrays they run on. We bring servers down for upgrades and power outages, and that's it. (Well, there was the one time my supervisor told one of the plant IS managers there was no way he could remotely reboot the Notes server because the security was airtight. Surprised him lots :))

My favorite so far made Neowin the other day. According to the article, airline traffic was brought to a halt and several planes had to circle the runway for hours because "Windows 2000 contains a counter that automatically restarts the OS every 49.7 days". Of course, there were some 200+ comments with the general idea "HAHAHAHA MICROSUCK I USE LINUX AND I CAN RUN MY BOX ALL DAY LONG HAHAHAHAHA MY PENIS IS LARGE YOU CAN ASK MY 50 GIRLFRIENDS WHO ALSO LOVE LINUX!!!!1111"

Great, but uneducated. You see, when you look in the Windows API documentation for the GetTickCount (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/sysinfo/base/gettickcount.asp) function, you find the following advisory:


The elapsed time is stored as a DWORD value. Therefore, the time will wrap around to zero if the system is run continuously for 49.7 days.Could it be a coincidence that the airline's code crashed at the same time as the rollover? Surely they read the API docs and knew that this rollover would occur, and they wrote a simple check to capture the rollover, right? Even in Linux, the counter rolls over sometimes, and all the silly uptime scripts handle this just fine, so surely the carfully chosen contractor who did this program made the check, so it's totally Microsoft's fault and not the airline's! I think not. They're going to be screwed when they switch to .NET, Environment.TickCount (http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/library/en-us/cpref/html/frlrfSystemEnvironmentClassTickCountTopic.asp) only has a resolution of 29.7 days.

tl;dr: HAHAHAHA I USE LINUX AND I HAVE TO USE A DRUM LINER AS A CONDOM HAHAHAHAHA I NEVER SEE THE BLUE SCREEN

[gdorf]

The funny thing is, I knew the moment I read Eckels original post that at some point Atma would come along with his crap. If anyone expresses any annoyance with windows, Atma will surely be there to educate all the stupid linux fanboys about the inferiority of their operating system. You'll notice that until Atma posted, not a single person had mentioned any operating system other than windows. He has an uncanny ability to slip in cheap shots towards all of us "Uneducated", "Gullable" Linux users.

Honestly, I don't care. I don't even have linux installed on my computer. In fact, I run windows xp and I love it! But it gets annoying when Atma defends windows like its his infant child, and always seem to bash linux in the process.

In effect, you have ruined a funny vacation picture that everyone was enjoying because you have a stick up your ass and a grudge against linux users.

It was a funny pic, too And one we can all relate to. :shrug:

[Gerudo]

awesome shot, ecks :P

gdorf and atma:
enough of the OS crap... ever OS has at least 1 flaw, windows being a little unstable, and *nix being a little hard to 'just pick up and go'... jeebus, now just shut the fuck up... kthx.

[AtmaWeapon]

OK gdorf you raise some points that are very good, and I actually just realized something about my posts. I'm going to make a separate thread about it because I think we can get some meaningful discussion out of it.

My major point is this: stop blaming Microsoft for the atrocities that lowest-bid contractors commit against Windows. I am a programmer, and every program I write is like a little baby I spawned. Where there once was nothing, now there is a three-tier database app with concurrency resolution. Once someone said "I wish I had an application that made monitoring my servers' Event Logs easier" and verily I gave it unto them. I haunt a couple of programming forums, and it hurts me to my soul to see the types of people who are getting the same degree as I am. I have literally seen someone test for the condition "x < 25" by testing "If x = 1 OR x = 2 OR x = 3 OR x =5..." and it made me want to cry. Yet however stupid these coders may be, for some reason Microsoft gets blamed for their holocaust of code. This makes me feel sorry for Microsoft.

*edit* the thread is turning into a giant book so I'm going to have to post it tomorrow evening. Rest assured I just got tired of typing an explanation of the post that was turning into the post itself and I'm going to bed right now.

[mikeron]

http://www.mcpmag.com/columns/article.asp?EditorialsID=807

See #s 3, 2, and 1.

[ZTC]

Ahhh........Windows; can't live with it, can't live without it :shrug: