Mar 09 2009
Kaboom
The theme of this post came to me while working on my Linux lab (Redhat, uck). The lab involved a lot of going back and forth between root and my account, which while not difficult, was a little tedious. In a fit of laziness I tried to SUDO it instead… and got this:
So, as it turned out I don’t have the rights to SUDO and was apparently reported to my sysadmin. Who on that system is either me, or maybe my prof. I’m sure he got a kick out of it if he did somehow get a report on my SUDOing. We just had a nice email back and forth about my latest lab where apparently I was not expect to know how to prep my system to install a second OS, and should have installed it into VMware. Good thing it failed? Damn redhat. And me for being too lazy to find my drivers I guess.
On to amusing computer errors!
Displayed in Times Square! Oh it gets worse…
At least the flash crash isn’t nearly as obvious as a huge BSOD (blue screen of death - yes that is the technical term) sitting in times square!
These kinds of crashes in public areas aren’t that uncommon. I’ve seen crashed airline displays, ad displays, and the “what’s on next” thing on TV has crashed. That was funny because we actually got to watch them restart the computer.
Apparently these days even the BSOD can crash?
Ok, not a real error message, but it’s so true =(
The geek in me is chuckling at these pictures :) My university has plasma displays running the satellite feed of CNN and BBC via windows media player… and it crashes quite often ;) No BSOD yet, but it’s only a matter of time!
The BSOD poster wins at failing at failing.
And I’ve gotten so familiar with the kind of bluescreen Times Square got…
I love these things. I don’t even know why. I suppose I just love the fact that 1) Microsoft is sucking in a big, visible, public way, and 2) some moron who should know better probably hasn’t noticed even though about a million other people are noticing.
My favorite story of this kind happened in church: the pastor was using a PowerPoint and suddenly some pop-ups flashed onto the screen. And stayed there. Because whoever runs the PowerPoint has the computer skills of a three-year-old and didn’t notice for ten or fifteen minutes.
It wouldn’t have been so bad except they were pop-ups for…yeah, a porn site. The ads themselves weren’t x-rated, but it was still pretty obvious.