Rearranging the Deckchairs?
Feast your eyes, friends, on Microsoft's new Red Screen of DEATH. Slashdot links to a blog post by Joi Ito that the newest version of Windows (codename "Longhorn") will sport this error screen for really bad errors, in addition to the traditional BSOD for merely bad errors.
Does this strike anybody else as unbelievably stupid? It would appear that the best Microsoft can do any more is change the background color of an error screen to inform us end-users, helpfully, that our system is well and truly fucked. It doesn't speak well of the final product when this passes for a 'helpful' upgrade. Why not fix the problems that lead to such catastrophic crashes in the first place?
The worst part of this is that this is not even a particularly good error screen. The old Amiga computers' Workbench OS used to lock up every now and then with the bizarre guru meditation error, for instance. And of course, Old World Macs had the classic (and infamous) bomb, complete with cryptic references to error codes in the appropriate manual. But the Longhorn RSOD is neither cute nor particularly informative.
