Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.

Author Topic: Humour - Worth every cent...  (Read 4913 times)

Description:

0 Members and 1 Guest are viewing this topic.

Offline Floid

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2003
  • Posts: 918
    • Show all replies
Re: Humour - Worth every cent...
« on: August 21, 2003, 11:06:53 AM »
Quote
Oh, come on. That looks like a database error, and has nothing to do with Windows.
Is interesting that it coincided with MSBlast, though.  Perhaps the machine on the *other end* was taken out?

Guess y'never know.  Unless/until someone spills the beans on RISKS, anyway.

Quote
Now, I remember the time I saw a BSOD at the train station. That was funny. :)

PS - Don't most ATM's still use OS/2?
As far as I can tell, there was a mass exodus off OS/2 for ATMs around the Y2k time.  Probably not for any planned reason, but between IBM's EOLing, Y2k concerns, and the relative ease of reimaging what are, after all, just embedded PCs, a lot of things started turning up Windows during that time.  It was a bit eerie to watch it disappear from recently-erected POS systems (the sort with the giant truecolor LCDs that you might see at any recently-renovated supermarket, that  leave the titlebar and widgets visible for easy identifcation by peons like me)...  I can only imagine whoever wrote the cash-register software probably EOLed the OS/2 version when IBM declared it dead, licensed, and supported for only another decade.  Though as far as I can remember, those were usually seen with Warp 3 widgets, not 4 or later, so it wasn't like they were keeping current anyway.

Now, what the good ol' monochrome/textmode ATMs run is anyone's guess.  (Or rather, there seems to be enough variation in those that I've never heard a conclusive 'answer.')  Sure haven't seen *those* crash much, though I did fear for my card a few weeks back when one was slow to respond...
 

Offline Floid

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2003
  • Posts: 918
    • Show all replies
Re: Humour - Worth every cent...
« Reply #1 on: August 21, 2003, 11:14:35 AM »
Quote
Poster: The_Editor Date: 2003/8/21 4:06:54

Yeah ..

Well lets hope that nuclear power stations arn't running this crap !!
http://www.securityfocus.com/news/6767
http://www.securityfocus.com/archive/1/333505

I'm sorry, were you saying something?

Quote
Makes you wonder what systems are controlling the launching of icbm's don't it !!
G4 Macs and Playstation 2s!
 

Offline Floid

  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Join Date: Feb 2003
  • Posts: 918
    • Show all replies
Re: Humour - Worth every cent...
« Reply #2 on: August 21, 2003, 01:19:08 PM »
Quote
Poster: iamaboringperson Date: 2003/8/21 7:44:43

I'm pretty sure most banks use or used OS/2
I remember the bank I'm with used OS/2 years ago, that was before they merged with another one, and then started using MS-Windows machines running as terminal emulators!
Yeah, it used to be incredibly popular in the financial sector, and *someone* is keeping the eComStation guys afloat.  Still, it's been at least 3 years since the hearse left the building (for those mad scientists' lab), and IBM's own marketroids are pushing NT/XP derivatives on the one hand and Linux on the other, so it's done a good disappearing act in the places it'd be visible, at least for me.  (After all, the only reason it was *there* in front of the teller was because someone had a contract with IBM, and it came with a VT3270 emulator! ;-))  

I used it, I loved it in spite of its warts, it's sad to see it go... but for backend servers, *NIX is better suited anyway, and nobody gives a crap about the desktop XPerience these days.  A Linux distro standardized around one GUI toolkit (or RedHat's bizarre unification effort) really isn't much different from a user's perspective.  (Remember how much fun it was to add and remove protocols?  Or to try and use the frontend(s) for configuration of network services?  Or to finally get it speaking SMB only to realize IBM and MS disagreed on 'machine name' vs. 'ID' fields?)