Bristol's bus stops can run Chrome and Internet Explorer, but no, Windows and public transport do not mix well

A welcome return for an old favourite in today's serving of Bork. No matter how oddly shaped the screen, Windows will always find a way to throw up an error. The latest in our series shows Windows, possibly version 7, running in Classic guise and putting in an appearance on a bus stop in Bristol, southwest England. Spotted by …

[Anonymous Coward]

There's a bus stop shelter near Bristol's Bearpit roundabout which collects water rainwater on its roof. In March two teenage lads delighted in pushing the shelter and causing a couple of gallons of water to fall onto the pavement and splashing the suede boots of a woman sat on the bench. Repeatedly.

I don't know if that's a buffer overflow issue, or a cascade error.

[Anonymous Coward]

It seems like the woman would need to get rebooted.

[WolfFan]

It seems like the twits on the roof need to be rebooted. Hard. Repeatedly.

[Blackjack]

I think this is an error that can be fixed with percussive maintenance

[chivo243]

XP to the Rescue?

That tool bar looks very dated... on closer examination it's 7 in classic mode. That was one way to speed up win7 and XP, loved the classic mode.

[dogcatcher]

Re: XP to the Rescue?

"it's 7 in classic mode"

So Bristol's bus shelters are no longer supported?

[jsa]

Re: XP to the Rescue?

Sounds like it, unless they're spending large amounts of money on extended support updates for some unknowable reason.

There's a chance that the signs are running an embedded variant, but as far as I'm aware, all except POSReady 7 are now out of support, too, and it's unlikely POSReady 7 is licensed for this use case anyway.

[J. Cook]

Re: XP to the Rescue?

Technically, end of support for "Windows Embedded Standard 7 Service Pack 1" was October 23rd of this year; however, It's in the Extended Security Update program, which does allow for what it says on the tin- critical security updates.

POSReady 7 goes out October 21 of 2021, and Windows embedded 8.1 is 2023.

TBH, the best course of action is to deny these things internet access, and use a secured network; however, that may or may not be possible based on any number of variables.

[Anonymous Coward]

Support ticket

> It looks like multiple processes are trying to fiddle with the same file

Support ticket: Go and show Fred how to save *and close* the timetable file, *again*, please. Ta.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Support ticket

They'll just ask the (MS)clippie to punch the ticket and call it a day (return)

[jake]

Re: Support ticket

::rimshot::

[Anonymous Coward]

display controllers

Just this morning I was asking the powers that be (again!) when I can decommission the library notices server running RHEL 6.7. They are supposed to be deploying something based on android tablets but it is taking for ever. Perhaps I'll be featuring on these pages soon!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: display controllers

To be honest, yes you should be on something a bit later than RHEL 6.7, but RHEL 6 is good for another year before Extended Support kicks in for a further 3 years. If it’s not internet facing or mission critical, patch it to 6.10 and forget about it for a year.

[jake]

Please, NO!

"Sadly, Bork remains a visual-only delight for the time being so we can't share the bloops, bleeps or flatulating emitted by Windows as things go wrong."

Please do NOT implement this, El Reg. Most of us have already heard a lifetime's worth of the myriad "Windows is caving in again" cacophony. Some of us have managed to extricate ourselves from the audio assault. Why inflict it upon us unnecessarily?

[J. Cook]

Re: Please, NO!

Admittedly, the sound I've heard the least of is the mac's "failed to boot/POST" sound. That might be just the pre OSX macs, though...

[frankyunderwood123]

You have to love this, an almost entire operating system complete with task bar and applications, to display a bus timetable.

*everything* is wrong about this, *everything* - FFS, a tiny embedded Linux OS running on virtually no power, could do *exactly* the same job, probably using about 1mb of onboard storage. FFS, an Arduino could do it.

This is classic Sledgehammer to crack a peanut solution.

[jake]

"FFS, an Arduino could do it."

A bare-bones AtMega 328 would suffice to get the point across to the punters. It'd be far cheaper, less fiddly to maintain, more secure, and far less likely to crash, too.

"This is classic Sledgehammer to crack a peanut solution."

I prefer "Using a 12 gauge to swat a mosquito". Total overkill.

[I am the liquor]

But if you just used a simple microcontroller and a text-mode display to show actual information, how would the colouring-in department be able to express their brand values by changing the fonts and colours every 6 months?

[Chris G]

"You have to love this, an almost entire operating system complete with task bar and applications, to display a bus timetable."

You must remember that a collection of operations like this will be enough to support an entire BOFH and his sidekick.

[jake]

Wrong way of looking at it.

If anyone who knew what they were doing was running them they wouldn't crash with such great regularity. Rather, the cost of keeping clusterfucks like this in operation requires a large hierarchy of otherwise useless middle-management to create PowerPoint presentations explaining why they fail so regularly.