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Blue Screen of Death for Mac OS X
An anonymous reader writes "Possibly nothing in the OS world has as much of a bad rap as the infamous BSOD (blue screen of death) in Microsoft Windows. On the other hand Apple hides the ugly kernel panics behind a nice looking GUI which only tells you its time to restart your dead system. Interestingly Mac OS X kernel has a secret API which lets you decide what your kernel panics are going to look like! In this Mac OS X Internals article Amit Singh explains how to use this API. Apparently you can upload custom panic images into the kernel and there's even a way to test these images by causing a fake panic. The article also shows the ultimate joke is to upload an actual BSOD image for authentic Windows looking panics right inside of OS X."
Sort of unrelated:
I used to have BSOD as my screen saver for an earlier version of Fedora (IIRC). It was always amusing when people would stop by to chat, a little while later, they'd see my PC suddenly BSOD! The looks I'd see (on other people's faces) makes me laugh just remembering.
Who will guard the guards?
I, for one, welcome our new department-wide goatse.cx kernel panic message.
Any of you guys hiring?
Eloi are stupid, throw morlocks at them!
Once upon a time, I was chairing an out-of-town meeting with a roomful of engineers. We spent most of the morning working a spreadsheet with margin calculations on it trying to come up with a margin budget that everyone could live with; I was running the machine that drove the projector.
The conversation took a turn away from the spreadsheet, and after a bit the BSOD came up onscreen. The panic in the room was palpable -- everyone figured we'd just lost the whole morning, and quite a few had afternoon flights out.
So I hit the shift key and entered my password to unlock the screen.
The classic BSOD screensaver gets the same amusement factor without the hassle of hacking OSX.
Lacking <sarcasm> tags,
Leave it to Apple to give you a choice when it comes to Panic screens. Does Vista do this yet?
I know that Mac users are supposed to be more friendly towards Windows users switching over but changing the kernal panic screen to match the BSOD is going too far. If you want it that badly, install Windows on a separate partition.
I'd personally go for a nice old fashioned Guru Meditation Error. :) *Digs around his garage for his A500*
You must be new here.
Jokes are supposed to be original.
"The article also shows the ultimate joke is to upload an actual BSOD image for authentic Windows looking panics right inside of OS X."
Ya! and then we could like, (snicker, snicker) we could like, bring up pictures of toilet paper on the monitor (snicker, snicker) and they would think (hehe, snicker) they would think they got T.P.'ed! HAHAHAHA!!!!!111!!!
Did anyone else just develop a twitch in their left eye?
No, but with the right command-line tools, you might be able to do it yourself without being infected.
Just be careful this doesn't open a backdoor on your computer. *rimshot*
Kind of like knowing that there were:
- 56 bulbs
- 24 horizontal grill bars
- 72 vertical ridges on 1600 sq ft of 1/4" steel
- 20% full gas tank
- 209,000 miles driven
- 3 tread patterns
- 5 axles
- 18 wheels
You still got hit by a truck.
If the aptly named blue screen of death is indeed the ultimate joke, people should die laughing at it.
God spoke to me.
There were rumors, before XP came out, that they were going to respond to the iMac by making the Blue Screen of Death available in five designer colors.
A good joke would consist of the following steps:
1) set an Intel build of MacOS to display the BSoD
2) instal bootcamp and a copy of XP, but never actually boot into XP
3) find and install a cheep faulty RAM module that allows MacOS to kernel panic with some degree of frequency.
4) bring the Mac in for service at an Apple store
5) claim that MacOS started displaying the BSoD after you installed Windows.
6) wait for someone to pick up the red phone to Cupertino.
If you're dealing with an older Mac vet, add an obscure reference to Rhapsody and "Red Box" for bonus points and added confusion.
"Things are more moderner than before- bigger, and yet smaller- it's computers-- San Dimas High School football RULES!"
THis includes GUIs etc. That's why a simple text-based BSOD or oops handler is a better idea than something that tries to do a whole bunch of cute graphics etc (which relies on a whole lot more hardware & software to be working properly).
You are so not a Mac owner based on these statements.
$30 Off All Plans: Use code TRIPLESAWBUCK
You young punks and blue-screens-of-panic blah, blah blah!
...In my day, we didn't even HAVE screens, just a blinking light and if that light ever stopped blinking, you knew there was trouble, boy...
Height: 38U, Weight: 0 Newtons, Eyes: #0000FF, OS: Gray Matter 1.0 (Alpha)
Redmond, start your photocopiers!
Please correct me if I got my facts wrong.
No, MS didn't invent it. They just perfected it. Remember when there was talk about adding a BSOD hotkey to the MS keyboard, so you wouldn't have to go through the hassle of running software to get it?
I know it's off-topic, but I just had to share the image that came to mind when I first read this:
:-)
Once upon a time, I was chairing an out-of-town meeting with a roomful of engineers...
Picture, if you will, a meeting room filled with terrified engineers, all cowering behind one end of the table and desperately trying to shield their heads from ballistic chairs, being hurled by a Donkey-Kong like Steve Ballmer, who in turn is jumping up and down upon the far end of the table...
I know the Steve Ballmer jokes are old and off-topic (and I don't mean to compare you to him) but the image of "chairing" a meeting full of engineers was just to hilarious not to share.
-Forrest Cameranesi, Geek of all Trades
"I am Sam. Sam I am. I do not like trolls, flames, or spam."
... Macs Crash Different
;)
And don't get me wrong, I'm typing this on a Mac and I would not trade it for anything else out there
What about the other 8? I think you've got a typo there.
But Amiga wasn't first. The Mac "Bomb" preceded it, and was notoriously useless for troubleshooting.
Error: Type 11
"But I keep typing 11 and nothing's happening"
Once we built a system for C*tibank (T+2) in FoxPro 2.6 for Windows and one of the users actually took a screenshot of the same, put it as background, and then complained our application doesn't work.
We spent 2 FULL days debugging the damn application before we realized the issue.
Oh.... &&%%$$&&
"Doing what i can, with what i have." ~ Burt Gummer
Real Programmers don't mix up array indexing and counting the length of an array.
And since the joke envolves the length of the array and not the index of it's last member, I guess the jokes on you.
Yes, displaying an error message in a billion languages instead of just the language the computer is setup to use is definately much more helpful. You know, just in case you forgot how to read your prefered language at the exact same time that the kernel crapped out. You do know a backup language for those times that you forget the primary one, right?