Cash machine and train reboots
March 13th, 2004 by Jiri
On my way home this morning I stopped by a cash machine near my flat to get some money. I was bit surprised that instead of a standard “get more from our services” screen I was welcomed by a screen presenting add/remove software Control Panel window with text popping underneath announcing that “Windows NT cannot find file 2773838″.
Obviously ATM technology has advanced considerably throughout the years. The last time I saw crashed cash machine software, it was an MS DOS crash.
One can have doubts about security of using a general purpose operating system for a single purpose system, but why the system operator hasn’t bothered removing the multimedia player and screensavers!
That actually reminds me of the story a friend of mine told me last week about travelling on a new fancy fast train. While the train stopped in a station half-way through the journey, cabin attendand announced that the train has some technical problems which need to be fixed and that lights would switch off and the doors would close for about a minute after which everything would be OK. Obviously someone had to reboot the train! Not very reassuring, is it?