blue screen of death

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Odin
10/22/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
As a programmer I can relate to a fair chunk of that. There's so many things that can go wrong with an application its sometimes impossible to predict all of them. Especially when the entire thing can come crashing down from a single spelling mistake.

Granted the compiler catches a lot of errors but it's the bugs that'll only happen at runtime that are the killer. All you can do is test and test, code defensively and hope you've done the best you can. Testing is the big important part, it shows up a lot of the silly low level bugs that you can fix before release.

Some stuff will be just so obscure though that they won't become apparent until after release. There's so many different factors when it comes to computing that until you put it into the hands of a lot of people you're unlikely to get the full picture of the impact of your code.

I have to say though the last bit of the article isn't anything to worry about. It doesn't matter how many threads you add the basics of thread safe programming are still there. #bsod
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Pope John Peeps II
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
Yay! My suggestion, come to life! #bsod
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Kakkoii
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
If your Firefox is crashing daily, your doing something horribly wrong. #bsod
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Con Seannery
10/21/09

@Kakkoii: I might hit a crash monthly. MAYBE twice a month. Daily? No. #bsod
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fleebailey33
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
Sorry, just gotta point out that linux wasn't mentioned once in the article even though it was tagged.
I guess it because linux never crashes, also seeing only mac and Pc screenshots #bsod
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ripfire
10/21/09

@fleebailey33: Never heard of kernel panic on a linux? #bsod
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Canoehead
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
"A few alpha particles fly through a machine "

Seriously? I thought that paper or human skin could stop an alpha? Now gammas... #bsod
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Con Seannery
10/21/09

@Canoehead: Betas could probably get in. Alphas don't take much to block out. #bsod
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icelight
10/21/09

@Con Seannery: Depends on how much power you put behind them. Radioisotope alpha emitters are fairly low energy, so yes, they can be stopped by a sheet of paper. On the other hand, a GeV-packing cosmic ray (which very well could be a helium nuclei), or its debris field, is going to laugh at your piece of paper, and the case of your computer, and unless you work in a mine shaft, probably the rest of the building above you. #bsod
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Con Seannery
10/22/09

@buttnugget: Ah, well done! I didn't think about internal sources of them...

And to you, icelight, another good point. #bsod
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Hiphopopotamus
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
Did I just catch a Men In Black 2 reference in there? #bsod
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OldSchoolGadgetLover
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
I love the first app crash error message... Your Internet Browser has just crashed. Would you like to search for a solution to this problem on the Internet? #bsod
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Rask
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
The think that bugs me about troubleshooting a Mac is that there really isn't a unified area where application errors are logged and error messages are usually pretty vague. Troubleshooting errors that do happen tends to be that much harder. I had to call Apple once about a printer issue and after basic troubleshooting their answer was to re-install teh OS.

I use the Event Viewer on a daily basis in various versions of Windows as part of my job and 80-90% of the time, the error and the cause is right there. #bsod
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RandomGuyWithaMazda
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
Awesome article, now all I have to do is dumb it down for my users and maybe some good will come of it. Yay gizmodo at work~ #bsod
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badhatharry
10/21/09

@RandomGuyWithaMazda: Remember, the reason why all the ladies' computers crash is because they won't sleep with you. #bsod
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RandomGuyWithaMazda
10/21/09

@badhatharry: well yea, but you don't tell them that. shhh~ #bsod
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badhatharry
10/21/09

@RandomGuyWithaMazda: Then how else are they going to know how to get it working? #bsod
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EventHorizon
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
Some of the writing sounds like someone was reading Calvin and Hobbes' favorite bedtime story, "Hamster Huey and the Gooey Kablooey." Love that comic. #bsod
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nutbastard
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
the great thing about computers is that they do exactly what you tell them to do.

the bad thing about computers is that they do exactly what you tell them to do. #bsod
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ryno365
10/21/09

@nutbastard: close. They do exactly what the programmer tells them to. The user usually has little say in the matter. #bsod
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nutbastard
10/21/09

@ryno365:

when i say 'you' and 'tell them', i am indeed referring to the programmer, and the act of programming #bsod
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ryno365
10/21/09

@nutbastard: oh ok. When you said that I was thinking back to a poster that had that phrase in high school computer lab. Which obviously wasn't meant for programmers. #bsod
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nutbastard
10/21/09

@nutbastard:

and, by extension, the user is telling the computer to do something described by the programmer - they're telling the computer to do what the programmer told the computer to do, so in either case, anyone interacting with a computer in any way is essentially doing the telling. Just as an illiterate (the user) can perhaps form a basic sentence 'make an airplane', an engineer (the programmer) can take that telling and translate it into specific instructions, but it's still the illiterate (the user) who did the telling, who invoked the action - his choices are limited by his vocabulary and comprehension - in the case of a program, by the 'vocabulary' of the program, ie the list of possible commands to issue. if your engineer (programmer) is sloppy the plane might crash, which is not the illiterates fault - he had no hand in the specific instructions, other than setting the predefined action into motion. #bsod
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badhatharry
10/21/09

@nutbastard: Dude, quit being smarter than everybody in the room. #bsod
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nutbastard
10/21/09

@badhatharry:

well isn't that a given, now that YOU are here?

wait, ha ha, no it isn't.

:P #bsod
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ripfire
10/21/09

@nutbastard: I would get a nobel prize if I build a computer that does exactly what I didn't tell it to do. #bsod
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badhatharry
10/21/09

@nutbastard: Durrrr. #bsod
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trekie86
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
I gotta say, this article really "dumbs down" some completed issues for people to understand. I'm not saying this is a bad thing. If none tech-savvy people read this, it can really give them an understanding of why their computer breaks. And whey they need to stop loading every piece of crap they find on the internet on their computer. "Oh it's so cool, it lets me open programs by typing nick names for my programs." Great so when your nick-name program hoses up all your memory and your computer crashes, don't come tell me it "just broke, I didn't do anything". #bsod
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nutbastard
10/21/09

@trekie86: i once dared my friend, my luddite, always-screwed-computationally friend, to go on the internet and find some repair info about a certain car, claiming that i didn't think he had the skills to find it.

90 seconds later he was *this* close to downloading an obviously malicious exe from a flagged site.

i dont know what makes him so retarded in this regard, but god damn, he is. i keep telling him that always logging in as admin (with a blank/null admin password, BTW) and downloading random shit from random websites isn't a good idea, but he insists that "it's ok".

so he has a laptop that is almost unusable because it's been zombified. and motherfucker does his BANKING on that computer. if he wasn't broke, he soon would be.

so he's been looking at buying MY laptop off of me lately, but i have that feeling... that feeling like you would get if you had a vintage shelby mustang for sale that you garaged for 40 years and took care of and maintained... and a 16 year old kid wanted to buy it. you know that selling it to him is like getting paid to have someone destroy your baby, that the thing you respect and care about is going to be abused with no appreciation whatsoever.
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Edited by nutbastard at 10/21/09 3:44 PM nutbastard was starred nutbastard was unstarred

ottermann killed Kenny
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
Almost every day we get the question from a customer:
"Why did my system crash?"
"What causes the blue screen?"
"Why did my hard drive fail?"

Sometimes we can answer the question, sometimes we have to be honest with the customer and explain there are a million ways a computer can fail. We might not know exactly why it happened, but we can fix it.

And, I sometimes mess with people.

customer: "why did my hard drive crash?"

me: "it detected pirated music and sent a tracker to the RIAA, and they hit the remote kill-switch. they do this so they don't spend a lot of money suing people anymore."

customer: "dang. I didn't know they could do that." #bsod
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senatormayer
10/21/09

@ottermann killed Kenny: You're not a nice person. I like you. #bsod
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GodfreyOriole
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
The thing i like about the windows bsod is that if you know what yo uare doing themn the bsod will actually tell you what caused the crash.

Microsoft even has a tool that you feed the memory dump into it and it will even tell you what file caused it.

Microsoft should really publish that info more.
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Sqube
10/21/09

In reply to Giz Explains: Why Stuff Crashes (And Why It Happens Less Often Now)
Awesome article, guys. #bsod
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