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The Very Worst Uses of Windows
bigplrbear writes "I found an interesting article revealing the many places that Microsoft products reside, and what they're used for, ranging from elevators to ticket scanners."
From the article: "Thanks to VMWare Windows is spreading throughout the datacenter. And, of course, there is only one operating system to use if you are dependent on Microsoft apps like Outlook, Word, and Excel. While I have joined the chorus of security folks who rail against the Microsoft Monoculture I still cannot believe some of the uses for Windows. Some of them are just downright silly, some you may claim are criminally negligent." Note: I'm making no claim of criminal negligence!
What, you mean other than as a desktop OS?
Not for use in nuclear submarines!
Mac OS X?
-=[You cannot consistently judge this statement to be true.]=-
Now we know why Apollo called Houston to tell them they had a problem. Windows crashed on them!
System crash.
Launch Air Bag? Abort/Retry/Cancel
Yeah, but that's because photosynthesis software only runs on Windows
Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
Paper Clip: Do you mean Airbag?
Face your daemons!
Which is worse? I'd be just as worried about hand-coded x86 assembly in an embedded environment, or even Linux. Good old WinTel.
Windows for Warships
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
Let's see. I use Windows, and when did I last have a BSOD?
Most recently (about a year ago): Installed the wrong driver for my sound card. I highly doubt this will be a problem in a medical context.
Less recently: Played Half-Life 2 on my laptop. With Intel's integrated graphics chip. It actually ran pretty well (for a laptop with an Intel integrated graphics chip), but it BSOD'd on exiting.
In conclusion, based on anecdotal evidence (the only type of evidence allowed in Slashdot comments), BSODs only occur:
1. When one tries to run an application on a computer which does not have the capacity to run said application; and
2. When one messes up driver installations.
After all these years I am willing to admit that Microsoft has won the desktop and server wars.
i beg to differ...
It is all just a clever ruse to lul Microsoft into confidence. All these systems are in fact UNIX sleeper agents, that will awaken all across the world at a given time. At the same time, Redmond will have put it's recently received 30 feet tall ceremonial gift windows logo in an unmonitored storage room when suddenly hundreds of ninjas emerge from it, swiftly overcoming any resistance.
GAAH! MY PRINTER IS ON FIRE!!! PUT IT OUT! PUT IT OUT!
Every 2nd Wednesday of the month, instead of playing a TV program, I can hear it, but see a windows XP desktop, with a minimized window of the video playing, and a notice that updates are ready to install. That usually sticks around until late afternoon, or early evening, when someone finally either installs the patches and reboots, or just restores the minimized screen..
What are we going to do tonight Brain?
Well duh, a roller coaster is supposed to scare the living hell out of you. A geek might not be overly impressed by experiencing the effects of gravity and inertia (and might even carry a chess board with glued-on pieces), but knowing that thing runs on Windows 3.11! The horror!
The grass is always greener on the other side of the light cone.
Similarly, I believe an MRI machine at my local hospital runs Windows.
While getting an MRI of my knee after an injury, the tech gave me a pair of headphones to listen to music from a CD I brought in, which was piped in from the control room along with audio from the technician ("almost done, dolly, just one more scan")
About halfway through the second track, the music abruptly switchd to the "BUHBUHBUHBUHBUHBUHBUHBUHBUHNNNNNN" sound of Windows freaking out, followed by silence, and then by the Windows startup sound. The MRI seemed to keep running, but at least the communications were using Windows.
I decided to stop stealing cynical quotes to use as a signature line.
Started breathing.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Makes sense since Windows Server 2003 was perhaps the best Microsoft has put out. If they were running Linux on the desktop I would have probably left and not visited that doctor since Linux on the desktop would have reeked of incompetence.
I know.
It's bad enough when I try to order a pizza online.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Did you see your cellphone in "My Bluetooth Places"?
Was Minesweeper or Solitaire on there? They would be perfect for annoying the queue behind me.
Wasn't the daughter - it was something he installed in his wife.
lol: You see no door there!
(n/t)
Sometimes it causes very annoying situations. At Lee's sandwiches (a chain of sandwich stores in California), they have a WAN setup to pipe music to all the stores and take care of some light accounting. One day, the machine crashed early in the morning, and restarted, but the winamp playlist was deleted. So for 3 days while the system admin was on vacation, it kept playing the "Winamp, it really whips the Llama's ass" over.. and over.. and over...
Human wishes to start breathing. Cancel/Allow?
...at least you think it all worked fine, but as yet you haven't had any kids and you have a propensity to throw cars around when you get angry.
Once I was a four stone apology. Now I am two separate gorillas.
Believe it or not: Several years ago, an entire US aircraft carrier went out of control because of a computer crash. Operating system: Windows NT http://seclists.org/politech/2000/Aug/0027.html http://www.infosecnews.org/hypermail/0008/2584.html Shouldn't this have made the top ten? Can you beat this?
This child process has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
Or even better... Start playing Minesweeper, lose (on purpose if needed) and then publically get angry at the machine/yourself because now you won't get the cash you asked for.
This child process has performed an illegal operation and will be shut down.
Come on, if you go that way do it right:
This child process has performed an illegal operation. Retry, ignore, or abort?