Five-storey Blue Screen Of Death spotted in Thailand Windows crashing and producing the Blue Screen of Death (BSOD) is seldom pleasant, or convenient. It's also seldom as conspicuously displayed as in the image below, which The Register found on Facebook late last week. By your correspondent's reckoning, that there is a five-storey BSOD. If you can't see the pic below, click …
One of these days I might weaken and try that - for the moment though I get 'Server Not Found' due to telling my home-network DNS it is a master for that domain and its associated CDNs, thus ensuring that I never have to see such things unless someone thought it worth copying.
I would do the same for Instagram but that just fails to work anyway, I have suspicions as to why (works without the www, with the www just fails) but due to the complete lack of any emotional trauma caused by such a tragically gaping void in my life this has somehow remained a non-priority.
Speaking of gaping voids, the recommendation for a very very long time has been to never depend on third-party content remaining unchanged, because there are things which cannot be unseen.
Not a public fail but Windows 10 (Mrs is not keen on learning to use any *nix) ran an update last night and immediately went BSOD. Think it managed to corrupt it's own boot manager. Strange thing was is that if I went into the BIOS, didn't make any changes and continued to boot it was fine. Kept fiddling with the settings till it seemed to boot every time okay. Guess I'll find out if I get a slightly panicked call later in the day...
I went to my bank, stepped into line for the external ATM, & just as the guy ahead of me made it to the front of the queue, the ATM screen showed a BSOD.
Everyone in line turns to join other lines & gets to watch ALL the ATM's suddenly flashing up BSOD's.
I go inside, try to approach the ATM in their lobby, & AS I'm walking to it the damned thing BSOD's. I turn in mid-stride to the cashier's & don't even make it five steps before I can hear the disgruntled grumblings of the other customer's as all the cashier terminals start BSOD'ing as well.
I ended up having to go across town to a different bank's ATM's because ALL the branches of my bank were "experiencing technical difficulties".
I later found out (to my horror) that damn-near EVERY financial institution's ATM's run either Windows XP... or in some cases... Windows 95 Embedded.
It's enough to make you want to keep all your cash in a coffee can burried in your garden. =-/
Depends in which country you live in. Anyway, if your money in a bank are in local currency, it won't save you from hyperinflation or sudden devaluation. They will lose value exactly like money in a can.
ATMs too are more at risk because of skimmers and inside jobs than OS vulns.
Use Tupperware!
Easier to achieve a waterproof seal, invisible to metal detectors and doesn't rust.
Altogether better peace of mind than any M$ infested "to big to fail" loanshark.
Tupperware doesn't "accidentally - honest" splaff all your dough to some random stranger in Macao on a random whim either. Whoopsie, looks like you've been identity thefted. Should have been more careful mate.
I read a financial advice book recently that said you should keep a small percentage of your funds, a "crisis fund" as gold. Gold has survived as a form of currency a lot longer than any paper currency and is historically less prone to destabilization.
Burying treasure in the garden sounds like fun!
"Depends in which country you live in. Anyway, if your money in a bank are in local currency, it won't save you from hyperinflation or sudden devaluation. They will lose value exactly like money in a can."
Not if it's invested in a bank with a different currency.
In the "good old times" of hyperinflation here, in Brazil, we got "only" 60% each month.
Yes, I wrote it right. Sixty (six times ten) percent each month. It went this way for about... 18 months, I think. Then it got better: about 20% (two times ten) percent each month. For about... dunno. Ten years?
I'm from 1973. Until now, I have seen:
Cruzeiro (may 1970)
Cruzado (february 1986). One cruzado = one thousand cruzeiros.
Cruzado novo (january 1989). One cruzado novo = one thousand cruzados.
Cruzeiro (march 1990). One cruzeiro = one cruzado novo (no change in value)
Cruzeiro real (august 1993). One cruzeiro real = one thousand cruzeiros.
Real (july 1994). One real = 2750 cruzeiros reais.
Funny, huh?
"Christ Marcelo! Sounds like your government is even worse than mine!
Perhaps somewhat perversely, your post actually made me feel slightly less pessimistic. So thanks for that."
Tell me about. Things are "less worse" now. Only 10% this entire year - and only because of crazy spendings of Dilma Roussef's government. Yeah, this year we will close with "just" about 200 billion Reais in the red. With each US dollar equal to about 3,23 Reais... about 62 billion dollar in the red.
And she wonders why we are getting her out...
I remember that the amount of money that bought a full sandwich, fries, coke, and a bar of candy in the beginning of the month, wouldn't even buy the bubblegum provided as change by the end of the same month.
Oh yeah, an ancient Brazilian tradition, giving candy instead of pennies or dimes as change. In fact, the candy would accrue value over time, if you could pass it forward!
We even devised a small tupperware-like container for our "currency" for a while.
"Only to find out your country's undergoing hyperinflation and all the cash you buried isn't worth the paper on which it was printed."
Having in the bank would be the same. Gold sovereigns hidden in the chamber pot under the bed is the way to go.
I once had a very excited woman ring me up from that bank and tell me I had too much in my currant account and the bank would give me 1.25 percent interest if I put it into a savings account.
I declined and used it all as beer vouchers.
I once had a very excited woman ring me up from that bank and tell me I had too much in my currant account and the bank would give me 1.25 percent interest if I put it into a savings account.
At least she gave you a raisin for using the savings account.
"Only to find out your country's undergoing hyperinflation and all the cash you buried isn't worth the paper on which it was printed."
Alternatively you might find that interest rates have gone negative so your buried money's worth more than it might have been in the bank.
And how are you in any different a situation to keeping your money buried?
At least if you keep it buried, you can withdraw 100% of it (Assuming nobody else found it that is). If the economy is that screwed that there is hyperinflation, chances are you wouldn't be able to get all your money out of the bank quickly enough (Too many queues, banks don't actually have everyone's deposits).
I later found out (to my horror) that damn-near EVERY financial institution's ATM's run either Windows XP... or in some cases... Windows 95 Embedded.
Not saying they're using them, but of course there are versions of XP Embedded that are still in extended support.
>I will raise you rust, rats and the neighbour wot <sic> saw you do it as equal economic threats.
You'll need to get your shovel and go out in the dead of the night so your neighbour won't see you digging a large hole at the bottom of the garden. If rats are an issue - put the metal box inside the tupperware.
> If rats are an issue - put the metal box inside the tupperware.
Or get some less-than-lazy-and-overfed cats.. (out of my 6, only 3 are hunters. One because he gets bored, two because they are ex-farm cats and learnt at an early age to feed themselves. Doesn't stop them expecting noms at home though..)
It's enough to make you want to keep all your cash in a coffee can burried in your garden.
Even that's not safe from techno risks - I hear many coffee cans these days have old Java on them.
Update: D'oh, I see that "TRT" beat me to the punch with a Java joke. What can I say? My brain is slow today.
"the business case for running Windows on petrol pumps involves showing ads to people who have no choice but to stand in front of them for several minutes."
One day, perhaps people wanting to do that will think of a way of doing that in a way that doesn't have Windows as a pre-requisite.
A relatively secure browser on a relatively robust OS might be handy, for example.
Mind you, we're talking about people in and around the ad-flinging business here. It might be a long wait.
"I think the business case for running Windows on petrol pumps involves showing ads to people who have no choice but to stand in front of them for several minutes."
Because petrol stations in the UK usually rig their pumps by removing the small catch that elsewhere in the world means you can lock the pump on and sit back in the car, or wander around. That little flippy catch at the back of the trigger is missing a part. And this was happening way before advertising happened on the pumps!
My old Astra had a petrol cap that was the perfect size for jamming in the trigger. The pump will shut off when the tank is full anyway, so no risk - but it does mean the person queuing is convinced you're just wasting their time.
A friend of mine (who will remain nameless), works for a similarly remaining nameless, but very large Asian electronics company.
They have recently relocated to a new "state of the art" office which is kitted out with their latest office/home automation systems.
Apparently the lift is controlled by a windows based system, and has a reputation for crashing, leaving anyone in the lift stuck... For hours... With no air-con.
I expect a sudden increase in employee fitness levels as staff take to walking up and down a dozen storeys just to avoid the lift!
The Hyatt Regency Atlanta has advertising running on screens in their elevators. There's nothing like seeing a BSoD on the conveyance taking you up in the air 20-ish stories, but that's exactly what I got on the way to my room two years back. Their elevators are Willy Wonka affairs with a vertigo-inducing view of their atrium.
If anyone has played Portal2....
(which is not bad but doesn't have the minimalist charm of the first version, which just blows you away with a sarcastic nightmare scenario, while Portal 2 is technically super-brilliant but overegging it somewhat, a bit like Alien vs. the Alien* followups, but I digress)
OPERATOR ERROR
MOLTEN CORE WARNING
An operator error exception has occurred at FISSREAC0020093:09 FISSREAC0020077:14 FISSREAC0020023:17 FISSREAC0020088:22 neutron multiplication rate at spikevalue 99999999
- Press any key to vent radiological emissions into atmosphere.
- Consult reactor core manual for instructions on proper reactor core maintenance and repair.
Press any key to continue
...across all screens!!
The one that slightly surprised me was on a two-sided advertising screen. One side had a BSOD, which in itself wasn't too surprising. However the other side of the same display was running fine. I can just about understand using a PC to run something which is just a display screen (easier to update content than with a simple TV), but 2 in one box? Surely it would be more sensible to run both screens from the same PC?
I've had it happen multiple times to me on 2 display systems that a glitch causes a BSOD on the primary display, while the graphics card keeps displaying what was in the buffer? of the secondary display, making that seem just fine. Once the BSOD clears the graphics card also resets and the display disappears.
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