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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."
They paid 40 billion for that ceremony. I can't see this improving their opinion of Microsoft much.
A learning experience is one of those things that say, 'You know that thing you just did? Don't do that.' - D. Adams
If bill was there, so what? He's gone from microsoft.
BSOD's are no longer a problem! They haven't been since Windows XP! BSOD's were only a problem in the Win 9x days! Windows today is wayyyy stable! My Windows box hasn't crashed ever!
*tongue firmly planted in cheek*
My blog
... but for TV audience around the Globe, image was different, they used CG to convert BSOD into neato Compiz Cube animations.
839*929
10 points to the first person to can say what went wrong :U
Knows everything about nothing and nothing about everything.
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.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
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.
We're living in the Matrix! And the Matrix runs Windows!
No wonder my life is a pile of shit. :)
"The fight for freedom has only just begun." - Geert Wilders
Are there any videos or news coverages of the incident?
Nelson (points finger at Bill Gates): haha
Seriously where's the haha tag?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
I wonder if this was faked like the fireworks?
I used to have a better sig but it broke.
Really, how big a deal is this? It's not uncommon to get a BSOD from time to time, and the number and power of the computing resources involved was probably pushing the limit. I'm not surprised and I don't think it's a big deal. The NBC people were practically falling all over themselves to find a flaw in the opening ceremonies, and if this is the biggest thing that surfaces, they went off flawlessly, imho. Who really cares about one little BSOD in such a huge spectacle, really?
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
Isn't that the broken RAM BSOD?
Or you know, you could just download a *free* Linux ISO with no BSoDs and the same fundamental architecture as OS X but minus the expense.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
It was probably hardware failure, and given the shear number of lights/projectors/lighted up people/people flying through air going on, something was bound to fail at some point during that ceremony. This seems pretty minor.
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
Jeez. MS apologists always trot out that one. Making bad engineering acceptable will probably be Bill Gates' 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.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
What's worse is the copy of Windows was pirated!
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,...
The copy of Windows probably wasn't licensed anyway. You can't expect unlicensed, unsupported Microsoft software not to crash :-)
...It's not uncommon to get a BSOD from time to time.
And unless you do something about it, like vote with your wallet, you are simply helping Bill and his minions make bad engineering acceptable.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
They were Axon mediaservers running WinXP Embedded: http://www.windowsfordevices.com/news/NS4787005167.html
Some of the video projectors (70 of about 160 if I recall correctly) connected to those mediaservers were equipped with HES Orbital Head ( http://www.highend.com/products/digital_lighting/orbitalhead.asp ), which can explain the odd positioning of BSOD.
Not sure whether that's true anymore about the blue screen errors being due to hardware issues. A lot of blue screen issues I've dealt with on peoples systems lately seem to be side effects of viruses, root kits, etc. rather than hardware issue. When re-installing windows eliminates the blue screen, it seems fairly clear the problem wasn't the hardware.
ROTFLMAO....
All content in this message is copyright (c) 2008. All rights reserved. RIAA is prohibited here.
Olympic Ceremony - $40 Million
Tickets to Olympics - $??????
Windows Computer - $1000
Windows XP OS - $400
Being able to tap the president on the shoulder, then point up at the BSOD screen and say "I did that" - Fucking Priceless
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
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.
BSOD FAIL!
Worldwide Audience and XP fails it. Nice.
Cover me in peppers and lick me, baby.
Um... Mac still has them, they're just grey screens of death with an apple logo and an even-less-informative error message (in half a dozen languages).
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
What's the motivation to write better hardware drivers if any time the system blue screens, people will just blame the OS anyway?
Looks like the BSOD happened with one of the systems running the projection system. I know that the systems running the projection are running XPe, not a normal version of windows. According to the manufactures comments, they had 120 media servers running all the projection. With an event of that scale, you're bound to have something crash eventually.
// TODO: Witty Signature
Of course, it won't run most games or use most hardware unless you bend over backwards, sacrifice a virgin (which, if you're using *nix, one is handy) and pray to the gods, old and new.
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.
Windows98. Running an ATM. Not even an embedded version, or an NT-heritage version like NT4, 2K or XP. Real bad. 98 was never meant to be used in applications like an ATM, which demand superior security and resilience. Time was that a lot of these machines used OS/2, or even ran custom code on "bare metal."
I would have liked to see a picture of the crash.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
I pay Apple alot of money to ensure no BSODs.
No, you pay them a lot of money for "ooh shiney".
"16MB (fuck off, MiB fascists)" - The Mighty Buzzard
The ceremony, which featured 14,000 performers depicting 5000 years of Chinese history, also involved the use of advanced technology to control the sound, lights and projectors.
Advanced technology? No, it was Windows XP! Perhaps they should have taken some of those boys inside the boxes and had them run manual slide projectors -- would have been more reliable.
n/t
you perform your very best.
lets face it, BSOD is the face of Windows.
you cannot have Windows at a major event without it participating, by doing what it does best. just like the athletes.
9 months since i got this new windows xp computer, 9 months of using it all day every working day, typically running AutoCad 09, Ease, Outlook, and I.E. at any given time, driving 3 24" monitors, grand total of: ONE bsod, which was caused by a security fault in a bootskin mod that a windows update hit.
4 months since i bought an iMac at home, at least once a week i get a greyscreen.
As for all of the incessant linux fanboys. the FACT is, linux is not familiar to the typical user, not user friendly to the typical user, and expanding it is nowhere near intuitive enough for the typical user, and in the event that a user DOES have a problem on linux, the typical user is entirely screwed.
We would have seen a huge "Cancel or Allow" banner on the stadium roof.
Have gnu, will travel.
... the BSOD wouldn't still be being projected onto the roof!
Linux ISO with no BSoDs
HaaaaaaaHahahahahahahhaaaaaaaaa!
Can we call a Linux panic Black Stack Trace of Death?
BSToD!
same fundamental architecture as OS X
HAHAaaaHAaaaaaaHAHAHAHAaaaaaaaaaa,1!11!!! ZOMFG, ROFLMAO!
Ohhh.. seriously, you made my day today.
I'm going to use this to troll on LHB.
...And a lot of games won't run on Mac either. Not to mention that most Mac video cards are low-quality and won't run most games when they are running Windows either
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
subject: "DL3 media server failure"
.. It looks like someone wasn't paying attention"
If so, how did the DL3 provoke a BSOD in WindowsXP? Please provide the exact error msg from the screen.
"I believe most of the projections were handled by HighEnd Systems DL2s and DL3s
Do you have any hard facts to support this disengeniously modded up specious speculation, regardless, it still doesn't negate the fact that there was a BSOD in the middle of the opening ceremony.
davecb5620@gmail.com
"I wouldn't be surprised if China had an axe to grind against m$ and faking an embarrassing incident such as this would serve as a slap to m$"
.. ;)
.. funking DOH !!!
No, it's a plot by the US to sabatge the Chinese economy, but selling them Windows
and yea, they would fuck up their own Olympics just to embarrass Microsoft
davecb5620@gmail.com
.
The geek wants it both ways. He wants to run the untested - uncertified - third party driver of his choice -- wile keeping the option to blame Microsoft if anything goes wrong.
Microsoft's Crash Analysis in Windows often returns a plain English explanation of what went wrong and how to fix it. That can be useful enough to make the rare BSOD palatable.
It happened in the middle of the Olympics opening ceremony. It happened on the worlds self professed most advanced Operating System, in the know universe. To achieve five nines kind of reliability, I would recommend only using embedded hardware in such a configuration. Most certanly not XP, never mind the rest ..
davecb5620@gmail.com
I pay Apple alot of money to ensure no BSODs.
No, you pay them a lot of money for "ooh shiney".
At least the "ooh shiney" just works.
This is the 2nd time Bill Gates was in close proximity to Windows BSOD'ing in public... I'm shocked nobody mentioned that when Bill Gates was presenting Windows 98 at Comdex-Chicago in 1998, a big BSOD appeared in front of all the attendees when a USB device was plugged-in--with laughter & cheers. But that was a beta version of Win98--this was running on SP2 or SP3 of XP--a product that has been around for ~7 years!
Windows 3.1x calc: 3.11 - 3.10 = 0.00
"the number and power of the computing resources involved was probably pushing the limit"
You mean just to project a video onto the roof. I've got an old 500MB, PC that can play DVDs without problem. It runs on Yoper, you should try it, runs encrypted DVDs straight out of the box, no config issues.
davecb5620@gmail.com
Check out the angle of the shadow cast by the truss... This must have been projected from somewhere in the crowd. Somebody snuck in a prototype of their miniaturized laser projector.
They could've used Red Flag Linux for free. Was it not up to the task, period?
-- "I never gave these stories much credence." - HAL 9000
Is there proof that it was a windows machine? Maybe it was a Red Flag Linux install with the BSOD screen saver.
In between all the Microsoft bashing and Linux praising I still have not seen an answer to the fundamental question.....
Why were they using Windows in the first place?
If you are wearing a tin foil hat please don't bother replying
______________
Q: Why is Vista not being adopted?
A: XP
I'll try anything once. Twice if it tastes good
"They were Axon mediaservers running WinXP Embedded"
.. ? Or did they just stick parts if it on a ROM and run the rest from a RAMDRIVE .. tell me it ain't soo .. :o
How do you manage to make an embedded OS go BSOD. I though that one of the advantages of an embedded system was more reliability, what gives
davecb5620@gmail.com
It overheated (blame the stingy slant-eyed chinks) It was Chinise sabatage It was a CGI BSOD ..
It was a bad hardware drivers
It was not properly cooled ..
It was probably hardware failure ..
It was the fault of the DL2 media units ..
It was too much computing resources to handle
davecb5620@gmail.com
If your video driver crashes, then the lack of a blue screen wouldn't particularly be a significant improvement in this scenario either.
I.e. linux is mostly userspace for most video driver stuff, but when X crashes, the fact it can be sshed into would be of little comfort here either.
XML is like violence. If it doesn't solve the problem, use more.
I'd like to set this as my desktop pic.
Anyone got a higher-res photo of this?
Often an error or misconfiguration of the drive containing the page file. Something like bad sectors or corrupted data in the page file, or the slave drive with no master mentioned in the other comment.
Maybe now they will move to Linux to avoid further embarrassment...
"Yo soy emberassado" does not mean "I am embarrassed" and using Windows software does not mean you are a professional organization...
--E--
More accurately, you pay Apple a great deal of money so you have exactly one person to blame if you get a crash. BSODs in Windows are (99% of the time anyway) a matter of bad third party drivers. Apple has an easier time of it because they only support a small range of hardware in predictable configurations; MS has to test enormous numbers of drivers for every conceivable x86/amd64/ia64 configuration. Linux splits the difference; in theory they support the greatest number of configurations, but in practice support for new hardware comes slowly, and with no guarantees.
$_ = "wftedskaebjgdpjgidbsmnjgcdwatb"; tr/a-z/oh, turtleneck Phrase Jar!/; print
CGI folks,
they couldn't have a BSOD so close to Mr. Bill G, it wouldn't be safe
Success is not the result of spontaneous combustion, you must set yourself on fire.
...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.
The opposite of prostitution is constitution, so what is new?
A horse can't be sick, you know, even if he wants to.
Anybody has an idea of what the real problem may be? It may be related to overloaded network or a faulty network card. See http://support.microsoft.com/kb/954311.
I've (un?)fortunately never got to see one of these in the real world. You wouldn't know an easy way to force one would you?
Actually, I do wonder sometimes what the difference between my Macs and other peoples are... current uptime on the box I'm typing on is 105 days (yes, I ignore most updates that require a reboot unless/until I decide I need them) and I use this box pretty heavily for web browsing, watching movies, playing Nethack and coding (although admittedly, about 75% of my coding is done under Windows in VMWare Fusion, since it's work related stuff - and THAT crashes from time to time)
I'm well aware my Mac CAN crash, and I've probably been very lucky so far, but after two years of owning it, I haven't seen that "grey multilingual screen of death" and I'd kind of like to.
My book about LSD and Self-Discovery
Also on facebook as: DroppingAcidDaleBewan
Stop peddling the idea that it is acceptable for systems to fail catastrophically. Sure MS is synonymous for unreliable, but no need to turn it into a case of sour grapes and pretend that everything else is as poorly designed or manufactured.
MS certification of drivers has not improved "quality" of the drivers over the years. It is, as predicted, more related to the ability to pay and accept harsh licensing terms. It simply allows MS to further restrict development of Windows devices and applications to parties willing to toe the party line.
A "bad" driver should not be able to bring down the system. Using MS products is simply helping Bill and his minions make bad engineering acceptable. Some anthropologists and psychologists might claim that acceptance for failure becomes generalized beyond that one domain and into society in general. Now that's evil with hair on it.
Beta is broken and the link to classic doesn't work. Stop wasting our time or there won't be anybody left here.
Could be..
Blar.
At least the "ooh shiney" just works.
Yeah, until you want to do something that's slightly out of the ordinary. And of all the goddamn saying, "it just works" is one of the worst. iTunes, for example, doesn't JUST work. It pisses the user off to high hell deciding "Ah, you're looking through your media library. Of course that means you want to listen to exactly what you're looking at instead of the playlist you spent the last ten minutes setting up". And then you plug an iPod into a computer with iTunes and it thinks "Wow, I've never seen this iPod before. I'd best wipe it clean just to make sure!"
Don't even get me started on the goddamn iPhone. I buy my tech for what I WANT TO USE IT FOR, not what apple thinks I should use it for!!
A shiny BSOD? Does your desktop slowly implode and then burn on a kernel crash in full 3D, or what is it?
Esp. coming from the only country where football is not actually played with your feet!!
oh noes, the fireworks (screensaver) are broken.
My old powerbook used to get them all the time before I upgraded to Leopard. Never did figure out a reliable way to force them, but it often happened when I was borking around with wifi drivers, internal and external cards, and kismac.
"The cup is in turn designed for holding hot or cold liquids, and has an open rim and closed base." --US Patent #5425497
And I assume you NEVER mastered reading simple English statements.
After all that is exactly what I said.
Although they evidently used XP for that presentation, the real IT infrastructure that makes the Olympics run is mostly Unix according to this Computer World Hong Kong article.
Mac used to have the little cartoony Mac guy with X's over his eyes AND NO ERROR MESSAGES!
Thanks, Apple, that's real helpful to have to hold a switch on the side of the machine and get dumped into a debugger to find out what's wrong.
Peter predicted that you would "deliberately forget" creation 2000 years ago...
And with all the unpatched DNS and Safari holes, it will also "just work" for just about any cracker as well.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Actually, I've used Linux for 10+ years now and I've seen quite a few kernel panics - but just about everyone of them has been at the point of reboot when I've just installed a new kernel and done something stupid it the kernel configuration. But then I just boot the old working kernel again and retry the compilation.
I've also had a couple of freezes while using X-Windows but, again, if you're good enough to be fiddling about with Linux in the first place then you're good enough to retrace your steps back to the point at which your system was stable.
In either case, neither of the above is a particularly difficult issue to at least work around temporarily, unlike trying to decipher what might be causing a BSOD. (And yes, I bow to any more experienced Windows sysadmins than I out there who would disagree with my statement.)
And in almost 30 years of both working and playing with computers, I have always favoured UNIX & Linux, frequently had a need to work with Windows (and indeed need to keep XP around for some stuff I can't do as easily in Linux) but never ONCE had the slightest compulsion or need to even think about using a Mac.
I have never once owned a single Apple product and as long as they continue to lock users in with proprietary formats and DRM more heavily than Microsoft does, then I never will. At least Microsoft have sometimes "forced" me to use Windows, far more than Apple ever will...
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
The Axom was developed in house by High End(HES) who, quite frankly, can't write software for shit. The Hog 3 desk has been a disaster, especially the later Win XP based models. It's never worked properly and newer versions of the software seem to introduce as many bugs as they solve. They still haven't got the windowing system to work as well as it did on the Hog 2, but they did manage to oversee the loss of the entire development team, and (allegedly) many of their replacements.
We wait and see whether the new owners will be able to stop the rot. The Hog 2 ran the Sydney Olympic Opening Ceremony with no (obvious) issues, the Hog 3 hasn't really been involved in too many big events after it was deemed too unreliable. This latest disaster will only reinforce this view. The new owners Barco may well be regretting their latest purchase...
I wouldn't be surprised if Microsoft didn't view this as a great piece of PR. They've been trying to convince everyone that XP is old and busted and Vista is the hot newness. They want people switching to Vista, not sticking with XP. Now an Olympic official has gone on the record as saying that Vista wasn't good enough/stable enough for the opening ceremonies so they were going to use XP instead. They use XP, and they get a BSOD. Now Microsoft can just nod and sagely say "XP was a great OS for it's time, but as everyone knows it still has some bugs in it. If only they'd used the new and improved Vista OS then they could have avoided that unfortunate bit of unpleasantness."
It doesn't matter if using Vista would have cost twice as much, taken three times as long to set up and resulted in four times as many errors during the opening ceremony. What people saw fail was XP, and that's what Microsoft will stress.
This Space Intentionally Left Blank
IRQ_NOT_LESS_THAN_OR_EQUAL
If a machine will only do one thing and it won't be connected to Internet, my choices would be Windows 2000 with WHQL drivers installed old but very stable/non overheating card or Mac OS X 10.2.8 , yes the one from 2003.
XP isn't conservative enough, really.
Of course note: They shouldn't be connected to Internet, even Modem should be disabled via hardware settings or people may see something else than BSOD ;)
And you assumed wrong. Sorry, I meant to hit reply to the post above yours - Slashdots comment system is still fucking broken on FireFox 3.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
I'm pretty sure that under GNU Hurd, hardward drivers resid in the Micro-Kernel, they are not "servers" per se. Please correct me if I am wrong (provide link please).
Over-the-top Response Guy! Giving "Over-the-Top Responses" since 1970.
Funny or Sad? Sigh. Oh Microsoft. Windows dies with blue screen at Olympics [VOTE] - http://www.thriveorfail.com/60a75
and that is caused by faulty hardware. Lenovo machines suck :)
Sir Humphrey Appleby: East Yemen, isn't that a democracy?
Sir Richard Wharton: Its full name is the Peoples Democratic Republic of East Yemen.
Sir Humphrey Appleby: Ah I see, so it's a communist dictatorship.
it's a BSOD screensaver.....ahhaha
But Jobs ego would have blocked the fake fireworks.
qz, posted from a Mac
..and chinese manufacturers have been known to make a multitude of device models, of which not nearly all get Microsoft's WHQL testing and bug-fixing.
It wouldn't be at all surprising if the Olympic games' machines used chinese brand (cheaper) devices.
The problem with kernel modules is that they are not isolated from the rest of the system, because the CPU design does not provide a mechanism for such a type of isolation, forcing O/S designers to revert to schemes like a microkernel, where each module is a separate process. CPU designers are to blame, not software designers.
My girlfriend at the time was one of the techies in the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony.
After connecting up the wires to that "Little Girl who Sings then Flies", she got called to an emergency.
The computer which controlled the flame mechanics crashed. It was a windows box.
They had a big rope attached to the flame. Hidden behind the falling water the tech crew struggled to pull the flame assembly back on to the rails.
During this time the misbehaving window box rebooted.
What no one mention was that the flame initially was a discreet gas supply, which had only a little capacity. All the tech crew thought the mini flame would extinguish before it reached the summit.
What a close call!
[% slash_sig_val.text %]
I'm going to jump in and ask exactly what that mainframe was, and what it was doing when it crashed?
Was it a Production server, or still being installed / tested? Was the event unusual? You comment makes it appear that it is a Prod server and that it was doing something valuable / critical at the time.
In comparison, if you said that you've seen a mainframe crash and burn on IPL or just fail.. or more likely CICS (particularly CWI, greatly enhanced chances when manual editing of system macros is abundant) bounce.. I'd say, yes, been here, watched that.. tick tock tick tock.. and let's see that one again Fred, perhaps with a better Last Known Good.. (or, more liklely 'good god, wtf did you DO?').
For the peanut crowd observing, it's useful to note that the main hallmarks of mainframes are stability and reliability.. although you need to be in the noc to hear the ops mutter 'once it is up... sure.. '
---
And, see that big red button on the wall behind the glass plate that says 'do not press'? Right. No newbie jokes about it please.