Microsoft gets a 'Blue Screen of Death' medal in Beijing

(Credit: Rivercool)

You win some, you lose some. Microsoft is getting its brand on the Beijing Olympics in more ways than one, in one case to very poor effect.

Reports from China suggest that Microsoft's Silverlight is delivering exceptional streaming video for NBC's Olympic coverage.

Unfortunately, Microsoft also had the shame of the Blue Screen of Death afflict the opening ceremonies, with the BSoD up on the big screen for more than two hours during the ceremony. Li Ning, who lit the main Olympic torch, actually walked in front of the BSoD, immortalizing the image of Microsoft XP failing on the Beijing Olympics.

Yes, XP. The Olympics decided to use XP instead of Vista because it's more stable. Yes, really. :-)

The most ironic thing in this is that I'm sure Microsoft lobbied hard to give the Beijing Olympic Committee free use of Windows, just as it did with SharePoint for the World Economic Forum. (Bill Gates can be very persuasive.) Some "deals" really are too good to be true.

Click here for more stories on tech and the Beijing Olympics.

[JCPayne]

HA.... You pay hundreds of dollars and the stuff still doesn't work... You might as well use free software.

[Someone-else]

i just don't move to Linux because few things are made for it.
but as soon as one Linux can run everything Windows can, i'm moving

i've already changed IE for Firefox and MS Office for OpenOffice.org, so Windows to Linux might be my next upgrade, as long as i can do everything i did on XP(i'm also not using Vista)

[Chapmaniac]

I tried Linux - many times - and I keep coming back to Windows. Sure, it's more a pain in the butt to get it up and running - and you need to be vigilant against viruses - but, nothing else allows me to access every bit of my hardware as Windows. Nothing else allows me access to the latest MS Office suite. And if you're going to tell me that OpenOffice can supplant MS Office, save your breath, OO is a pacifier when what your baby really wants is milk! And that pretty much sums up how it felt to run Ubuntu on my laptop for a few months.

Even some consumer sites (like Casio's G-Shock site), which runs a full-flash interface, loses menu functionality if you're not running Windows. You watch TV and your kids see a commercial for a fun site from their favorite breakfast cereal - I'm going to betchya that site is gonna expect you to be running Windows (and IE7) and nothing else will do.

And Ubuntu has its share of hang-ups and slow-downs too - Linux is not perfect! I remember more than once having to power down the laptop to get past a total system lockup under Ubuntu. For me, Windows appears more polished and professional and gets me access to the software and the web sites I need.

[vini156]

Linux has to evolve more for desktop dominance though on the server side it is strong and on the office automation side once you learn to work using office 2007 ribbon interface open office is no where near. I just don't understand why people like this guy matt assay tries to stick his open source labels everywhere.

[brian_tech]

Murphy's law at work. Pretty funny actually. The glorious torch behind the solemn blue screen of death. Breathtaking...

[Tomofumi]

it may not be the fault of OS itself, but the unstable hardware or 3rd party driver that cause this level of BSOD...

[cjay554]

even tho its bad drivers, its still windows' fault for either not supporting it, or having a precaution against this fault. I've used linux with the worst hardware compatible devices, some don't even work, but are recognized in as different devices, yet my whole computer doesn't crash because of it. Generic drivers do the trick to fix any compatibility errors either way. That which microsofts generic drivers usually cause the problem.