BSOD Makes Appearance at Olympic Opening Ceremonies

Whiteox writes "A BSOD was projected onto the roof of the National Stadium during the grand finale to the four-hour spectacular at the Olympics. Lenovo chairman Yang Yuanqing chose to go with XP instead of Vista because of the complexity of the IT functions at the Games. His comment on Vista? 'If it's not stable, it could have some problems,' he said. Evidently Bill Gates attended the opening ceremony, so he must have witnessed it."

well

[thermian (1267986)]

They paid 40 billion for that ceremony. I can't see this improving their opinion of Microsoft much.

Re:well

[baldass_newbie (136609)]

They paid 40 billion for that ceremony.

But was it a pirated copy of Windows?

Re:well

[mweather (1089505)]

It's the Chinese Olympics. What do you think?

Re:well

[Joe the Lesser (533425)]

Perhaps it was shanghaid.

Re:well

[value_added (719364)]

It's the Chinese Olympics. What do you think?

Actually, the reality is just as funny:

Microsoft is designated as an official supplier to the 2008 Olympic Games.

When you can't or don't need to "embrace, extend, and extinguish", sponsor!

My own opinion is that not anticipating a blue screen is like attending a Budweiser-sponsored sporting event and expecting to get real beer.

obvious justification: brand identity

[Narcocide (102829)]

...after all, if it had just done its job flawlessly there'd be no way for the crowd to know it was a microsoft product.

Re:well

[mccalli (323026)]

I can't see this improving their opinion of Microsoft much.

In fairness to Microsoft, blue screens are normally due to bad hardware drivers. Whatever that thing actually was, it certainly wasn't a normal monitor and I'll bet the drivers are rather specific. And the less people use them, the fewer bugs are found.

Cheers,
Ian

Re:well

[The End Of Days (1243248)]

That's no excuse. No installation of Linux has ever crashed in the history of the universe. Microsoft should be held to no less a standard.

Re:well

[Joe the Lesser (533425)]

A Linux installation crashes if and only if it doesn't respect it's user.

Re:well

[kesuki (321456)]

next thing you'll be telling me BSD never gets hacked unless it's playing a prank on it's admin.

Re:well

[dotancohen (1015143)]

next thing you'll be telling me BSD never gets hacked unless it's playing a prank on it's admin.

BSD never gets hacked unless it's playing a prank on it's admin.

Re:well

[mattwarden (699984)]

Macs only crash when you use the grammatically incorrect version of i

Re:well

[ArsonSmith (13997)]

exactly I hate this crap from Microsoft. It should be able to do like Linux and when there's a hardware problem it just reroutes power through the main deflector to fix it.

Re:well

[TechnoBunny (991156)]

'In fairness to Microsoft'

What are you, some kind of shill?

Re:In fairness to software engineering

[jimicus (737525)]

Jeez. MS apologists always trot out that one. Making bad engineering acceptable will probably be Bill Gates [amazon.com]' largest "contribution" to society.

In fairness to software engineering, if the "bad" hardware driver can crash the system, then the system is not ready for production and has more than a few show-stopping (no pun intended) bugs. Take a look at basic kernel or micro-kernel design principles and stop spreading the view that catastrophically bad design is acceptable.

Linux puts most drivers in the kernel and a bad driver there can cause a panic, bringing the system down.

Most of the BSDs, AFAIK, have some drivers in the kernel and others in userland processes.

I'm not sure how it's architected in Mac OS X, but I've certainly seen kernel panics on my Mac Mini.

There may be an embedded OS which is less susceptible to being killed by a poor driver, but for something like this you probably wouldn't bother with an embedded OS because there's so much more in the way of off-the-shelf software available to do the job for Windows and Linux.

Re:In fairness to software engineering

[jeremyp (130771)]

As somebody who has written a bad device driver for Mac OSX I can confirm that a bad driver can and frequently has crashed my OS X kernel.

OS X is based on a microkernel, but in practice it is as monolithic as Linux or BSD.

Re:In fairness to software engineering

[bigstrat2003 (1058574)]

You were doing something wrong with your Windows box then. I have almost never (either with my own machines or at work) seen a BSOD that wasn't caused by faulty hardware. It happens, but it's something that happens maybe once every couple of years per computer.

Re:In fairness to software engineering

[hcmtnbiker (925661)]

In fairness to software engineering, if the "bad" hardware driver can crash the system, then the system is not ready for production and has more than a few show-stopping (no pun intended) bugs. Take a look at basic kernel or micro-kernel design principles and stop spreading the view that catastrophically bad design is acceptable.

I'm sorry, do you know of an operating system where talking to hardware cannot cause a panic? Even microkernels such as Mach are prone to these problems. ANY time you touch hardware there can be a problem if it's coded wrong. Even microkernels have to allow DMA for certain hardware, and bad DMA can bring down a whole system without even trying. There's a basic design flaw in how normal computers operate that requires this sort of behavior from kernels, which leads to bad drivers affecting them. If you can name one system ready for general purpose for which this isn't true I would love to hear about it.

Re:In fairness to software engineering

[kwabbles (259554)]

There's a basic design flaw in how normal computers operate that requires this sort of behavior from kernels, which leads to bad drivers affecting them. If you can name one system ready for general purpose for which this isn't true I would love to hear about it.

GNU Hurd

Re:In fairness to software engineering

[tehcyder (746570)]

No, people who are reasonable and levelheaded always trot out that one.

So, unlikely to have been seen on slashdot before then?

Re:In fairness to software engineering

[Mr 44 (180750)]

and now, with Vista, display drivers are back to being in user-mode [microsoft.com]:
At a technical level, WDDM display drivers have two components, a kernel mode driver (KMD) that is very streamlined, and a user-mode driver that does most of the intense computations. With this model, most of the code is moved out of kernel mode. That is, the kernel mode piece is now solely responsible for lower-level functionality and the user mode piece takes on heavier functionality such as facilitating the translation from higher-level API constructs to direct GPU commands while maintaining application compatibility. This greatly reduces the chance of a fatal blue screen and most graphics driver-related problems result in at worst one application being affected.

Re:well

[timster (32400)]

Just a heads-up... the ROC initials usually refer to the Republic of China, which is the government in control of Taiwan. The Chinese mainland is controlled by the People's Republic of China, initials PRC. This is a really, really big distiction.

Re:well

[Barsteward (969998)]

Are you sure its not "People's Republic in China" i.e. PRiC :o)

Re:well

[omeomi (675045)]

there is an option to turn off rebooting on blue screen. It comes in handy if you actually want to see the error ...

And you feel that this is one of those instances?

Re:What's their motivation....

[mhall119 (1035984)]

Good point, Windows should identify the offending driver, read it's manufacturer info, then shame the creator on the BSoD.

"A fatal exception has occurred because CheapHardware's Crappy802.11g device driver was written by mildly retarded gibbons."

Re:What's their motivation....

[ShadowRangerRIT (1301549)]

This has actually been proposed a number of times (without the personal attacks), but rejected for two reasons:

1. Potential lawsuits from the driver developers
2. Inability to be sure of the actual cause of the crash in kernel mode

The latter problem is more important. Problem is, kernel mode code can do *anything*, including write to other modules' memory space. So if a driver "baddisplay.sys" accidentally wrote to an uninitialized pointer that just happened to point to the memory space of "goodprinter.sys", but didn't fail as a result (remember, no real memory protection in kernel mode), and "goodprinter.sys" later reads the screwed up memory and fails, it will look like a problem in "goodprinter.sys", even though "goodprinter.sys" behaved correctly (dying when faced with an irrecoverable error).

This is why the "Problem Reports and Solutions" only provides information after conferring with MS. When it gives you an answer, it's because someone at MS took a look at your crash dump (or someone else's dump which exhibited the same problem), figured out the actual cause of the crash, and linked the crash and solution together. If it blamed the module automatically, you'd spend time harassing a perfectly innocent printer manufacturer, and MS would need to hire even more lawyers.

(Disclaimer: Former MS employee, this is only what I was told)

Re:well

[schnikies79 (788746)]

Be realistic for a second please, you think on show as grand as the opening ceremonies only had one glitch? Seriously?

There is no such thing as a show this big without multiple (read a lot) of glitches. They are covered up well, quickly fixed, or not noticed, but they are there. This one was just in the open for everyone to see.

Re:well

[fishbowl (7759)]

>They are covered up well, quickly fixed, or not noticed, but they are there

I learned this when I saw a circus fire and noticed that the clowns put the fire out while making it look like part of the act. It was both comforting and frightening at the same time.

 

That was on Stadium...

[should_be_linear (779431)]

... but for TV audience around the Globe, image was different, they used CG to convert BSOD into neato Compiz Cube animations.

Here's a game

[PJCRP (1314653)]

10 points to the first person to can say what went wrong [livefilestore.com] :U

Re:Here's a game

[MsGeek (162936)]

Better pic here [livefilestore.com]. Perhaps Lenovo should have used Red Flag Linux [wikipedia.org] for this mission-critical application?

Might as well get used to it

[elrous0 (869638)]

Visible computer glitches pop up in the most unexpected places these days. I went to a 25th anniversay screening of Wargames at a local theater recently. I wasn't even aware that I was in a digital theater until about halfway through the movie their server lost connection to the host and the movie theater screen suddenly turned into a giant Windows desktop. It was a little unnerving (I had thought I was looking at an actual film).

I think it's something we will just get used to seeing in this increasingly digital age. I just hope I'm not driving down the street one day and see a "lost connection to server" message flashing on a stoplight.

Re:Might as well get used to it

[Swizec (978239)]

I just hope someday I'm not driving down the street and see a "lost connection to server" message flashing instead of The Reality!

That would totally freak me out.

Eh, so what?

[Reality Master 201 (578873)]

All computers crash - I've made Linux, BSD, OSX, and Solaris machines kernel panic. Hell, I've witnessed a newer zSeries mainframe crash.

The fact that it happened at an inopportune moment is unfortunate, but that's life.

Re:Eh, so what?

[hey! (33014)]

Actually, a zSeries mainframe crashing at an opportune moment would be more remarkable than it crashing at an inopportune one.

Re:Eh, so what?

[Capt James McCarthy (860294)]

"All computers crash - I've made Linux, BSD, OSX, and Solaris machines kernel panic. Hell, I've witnessed a newer zSeries mainframe crash."

And you seem so proud of that. The goal is to make the systems function, not crash.

Re:Eh, so what?

[nedlohs (1335013)]

Not if you are in QA/testing...

Re:Eh, so what?

[db32 (862117)]

But so few fail in such a spectacular fashion. I have never seen a kernel panic delivered in anything other than terminal font on a black and white screen. The BSOD is called the BSOD because MS, in their infinite wisdom, opened themselves up to such a joke by deciding to deliver critical system messages with a "calming" blue background and white text. And then doing so very very frequently in the early days.

Honestly, they should just make it a black screen with some fireworks and a "Congratulations, You Crashed Windows Again!". You know, make it a more positive experience for the user.

Re:Eh, so what?

[dotancohen (1015143)]

All computers crash - I've made Linux, BSD, OSX, and Solaris machines kernel panic. Hell, I've witnessed a newer zSeries mainframe crash.

You are not invited into my house anymore.

omg! Proof!

[urcreepyneighbor (1171755)]

We're living in the Matrix! And the Matrix runs Windows!

No wonder my life is a pile of shit. :)

Re:omg! Proof!

[Joe the Lesser (533425)]

You are about to bend a spoon.

Cancel or Allow?

Re:omg! Proof!

[dubbreak (623656)]

There is no spoon...
Abort,Retry,Fail

Faked

[squoozer (730327)]

I wonder if this was faked like the fireworks?

BSOD? Big deal!

[cashman73 (855518)]

The BSOD is just the icing on the cake of this story. The real interesting bit is the fact that Vista lost out again to the superiority of XP,...

BSOD was CGI!

[Coolhand2120 (1001761)]

After a closer examination of the evidence it has come forth that the BSOD was actually CGI superimposed on the roof to make the U.S. audience viewing at home feel more familiar with Chinese technology. At selected venues around the world the BSOD was replaced with a kernel panic screen and even a Mac classic bomb.

DL3 media server failure

[NimbleSquirrel (587564)]

I'm surprised this was left unnoticed and was not shut down.

I believe most of the projections were handled by HighEnd Systems DL2s and DL3s. Essentially a projector on a moving yoke, with a few extra features. Each DL2 or DL3 has its own built-in media server running Win XP Embedded.

Even if the built-in media server fell over (which is what this looked like), there is still DMX control over the unit. Pan, tilt, focus and more importantly beam blanking and projector power are still controllable. It would have been easy to shut the faulty unit down and still carry on with the show (and yes, I do work with this kind of gear).

On this scale of event, they would have had multiple operators dedicated to watching over particular areas in case of such a fault. It looks like someone wasn't paying attention.

Re:Oh, stop it!

[gEvil (beta) (945888)]

*tongue firmly planted in cheek*

You're talking about BillG's asscheek, right? : p

Re:Oh, stop it!

[TheVelvetFlamebait (986083)]

My Windows box hasn't crashed ever!

Ah! Keeping it in mint condition, I see.

Re:Bill was there?

[JCSoRocks (1142053)]

He probably cackled maniacally and shouted over the top of the fireworks, "I made that screen blue! Bill Gates owns the Olympics! Maybe if you dirty pirates had bought a legitimate copy it would have worked better!"

Re:Doesnt look like a BSOD...

[bigstrat2003 (1058574)]

I pay Apple alot of money to ensure no BSODs.

No, you pay them a lot of money for "ooh shiney".