Bill Gates' PC crashes during show

bbloke

bbloke

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http://www.canada.com/news/story.html?id=7d5a65b1-8260-44c6-8354-ff4a1ef5d39b

LAS VEGAS (AP) - Despite suffering through an embarrassing computer crash that prompted jokes and guffaws, Bill Gates promised that Microsoft Corp. would help consumers stay plugged into technology, during a keynote speech Wednesday.

In his seventh annual keynote speech at the International Consumer Electronics Show, Microsoft's chairman explained that the proliferation of high-speed Internet access and the falling price of data storage are compelling people to put music, photos, movies and other aspects of their life into a digital format.

"We predicted at the beginning of this decade that this would be a decade where the digital approach would be taken for granted," Gates told hundreds of technology enthusiasts, who gathered for his kickoff to the world's largest electronics show. "It's going even faster than we expected."

But while promoting what he calls the "digital lifestyle," Gates showed how vulnerable all consumers - even the world's richest man - are to hardware and software bugs.

During a demonstration of digital photography with a soon-to-be-released Nikon camera, a Windows Media Center PC froze and wouldn't respond to Gates' pushing of the remote control.

Later in the 90-minute presentation, a product manager demonstrated the ostensible user-friendliness of a video game expected to hit retail stores in April, Forza Motor Sport. But instead of configuring a custom-designed race car, the computer monitor displayed the dreaded "blue screen of death" and warned, "out of system memory."

The errors - which came during what's usually an ode to Microsoft's dominance of the software industry and its increasing control of consumer electronics - prompted the celebrity host, NBC comedian Conan O'Brien, to quip, "Who's in charge of Microsoft, anyway?"

Gates, who was sitting next to O'Brien on a set staged to look like NBC's Late Night set, smiled dryly and continued with his discussion.
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::ha::
 
this reminds me of some a small conference i was at recently. the group i was with were to present a project we had developed and we were watching some of the others as they went before us. one by one, they all attempted to do fancy demos with "live" products. one by one, they all encountered some sort of bug which made their product look quite half-done.

all along we had planned not to do a live demo during the presentation but have it available afterward for interersted parties. our presentation went flawlessly (if i might be so modest) and afterward we received a barrage of compliments on how well it went and for demo requests. this goes a step further when you consider the fact that all the projects dealt with essentially the same problem in one way or another. even better when you consider we got the funding. boom!

moral of the story, live demos - avoid 'em at all costs
 
Ceroc Addict said:
That's not the first time Gates has had a PC crash on him in front of an audience

http://members.ozemail.com.au/~lbrash/msjokes/joke23.html

(and if there's any justice in the world, he'll have to endure many many more of these in the future).

I actually saw video footage of the first time. Anyone got video of this time?

Kap
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The older footage you are after, where Windows 98 crashed on him, can be found at:

http://alt.venus.co.uk/weed/humour/gates30.htm

...along with the famous "dancemonkeyboy" clip too. ;)
 
Ceroc Addict said:
No, I meant footage of the most recent time.

Thanks for the link though. :)

Kap
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Ooops, sorry! :)

I haven't come across any videos claiming to specifically be of the most recent PC crash, but I believe there were streams or videos of part or all of Bill Gates' talk. The closest I have come so far is:

http://www.microsoft.com/athome/ces2005/default.mspx

...video "highlights" from Microsoft which will be unlikely to show the crash, me thinks.
 
I bet the crash was the reason for highlights.
Think about it, would Microsoft show the whole video, with the crash section missing? It'd be obvious they're embaressed, too much, to show the crash.
 
Convert said:
I bet the crash was the reason for highlights.
Think about it, would Microsoft show the whole video, with the crash section missing? It'd be obvious they're embaressed, too much, to show the crash.
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Really shows the difference between MS and Apple.

In my memory, there's only one time I've seen a (tiny) glitch in a Steve Jobs keynote - when he was showing off Preview in a pre-release version of Panther, scolling through a large PDF file.

Kap
 
chornbe said:
uhm.... Two applications crashed during Jobs' keynote this year.

Crashes happen.
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Two big differences:




  1. The most recent Microsoft crashes happened during various software demos unrelated to the OS (I think) i.e. They were running a "stable" version of Windows. The crashes during Jobs' keynote happened with a preview of Tiger - perfectly understandable that it's going to have some bugs.
  2. When the crashes happened during Jobs' keynote, he made a joke or reached over and flicked a switch and continued the presentation without breaking his stride - not many presenters could have pulled that off so effortlessly.
Kap
 
My point was that software is dependent on many, many factors outside of itself.

Nowadays I program end-user apps and server-side automation frameworks and such.

But, once upon a time I did a lot of system level development, drivers and such. Did some contracting for companies that were writing some pretty low-level stuff for Windows boxes. Old school SCSI controllers for tape drives and such. (ah, those were the days - talk about tedious!!)

The *main* problem with Windows isn't that it's not good... in fact much of the code is the very textbook example of solid coding... but it's that there's SOOOO much hardware, software and system architecture variations that it *needs* to be everything to everyone. Therein lies its greatest strength and most painful weakness.

Then, of course, you have 3rd party vendors who code to bugs (you think OS/X is bug free??) then bitch and complain so much when M$ fixes a bug that M$ has to reintroduce the bug and 19 different work arounds so 3rd party software continues to run... anyone remember the early versions of WinSOCK? What a mess.

Apple's OS, however, runs on *one* platform with an incredibly limited subset of the available hardware peripherals, in comparison to other platforms.

Things like USB and other hub-like, universal technologies help a lot, but can't fully level the playing field.

Again, this isn't a pro-microsoft nor anti-apple post (I love my iBook and am preparing to buy more Apples), it's a realistic view of fact and opinion. Hell, I'm a huge believer in the idea that proprietary or closed systems are, by design and definition, more stable. It's a simple matter of a square peg actualling being made to fit a single square hole, rather than needing an entire wood shop and engineering team to come up a multi-faceted peg to fit many different holes.

For all the people that hate M$, I defy you to do better with what the marketplace demands. I know I sure as hell couldn't. Look at all the clamoring for a G5 notebook. We all know the heat and power requirements simply forbid such a device at this time... and yet, people keep hollaring. Now then, if Apple gave in to public bitching and made a faulty, crappy unit that crashed because of heat and ran poorly, imagine the backlash!

Microsoft's major weakness is the fact that they have positioned themselves to run on "any" x86 compatible hardware. That was a huge mistake. *HUGE* They have an expansive list of known and blessed and compatibility-checked hardware and software. If you stick to it, your system will run like a top for a good long time. But, alas... that pesky marketplace rears its ugly head.

And that's one of the major reasons I got out of network and sysadmin roles... I got tired of fighting the fight with end users thinking every $9 piece of crap 3rd party software or every $19 CompUSA peripheral was always going to work perfectly.
 
when i get home i can check for the video footage of conan mocking him because i am pretty sure i have it.
 
It's strange to me, personsally, how far behind Gates seems to be in the digital world. He acted in this keynote as if he didn't know that Apple even existed, making notions like Microsoft launching the digital music world, and making an online music browser(it was even outfitted with the title "Imagine" ha!) Did anyone notice the iriver? Notice how similar it was to the iPod? Anyone notice the music browser? Notice how it was trying to be iTunes?

I'm not a rebel; These are just some of the things I've noticed about Microsoft, and how much they seem to believe they can just change the market at will, even if it means bringing the tech back a couple months :)
 
he notes that microsoft are not ahead in music. he doesn't mention apple, but does say that 'other companies' have lead the way. this is a perfectly reasonable statement. you just wouldn't mention your biggest rival in such an arena. it doesn't need to be said. it's common knowledge that apple leads here. it's ok.

and on the note of stability, i was using my parents xp computer, and i realised that it has become a very solid os, especially since 98 (i used pc's extensivily from 3.11 thru to xp). if a third party app crashes, the os keeps it's stability now - the red cross (close dialog) will *always* work now, forcing the app to close just like in macos. it's stability is not really much of an issue now - they've sorted it out. it's just the virus/spyware infestation now....
 
*nods* and revamping the security model from a "typically open" to "typically closed" model like Unix/Linux/Novell/etc., is the key there. But since they're so prevalent in the home market, there will be quite a learning curve to get over there for the home users.
 
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