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Previous: Chair sign | Main | Next: Panasonic microwave
July 18, 2006 12:03 AM
Broken: Global weather simulation model
Brian D. submits a picture taken in Boston, Massachusetts:
I found this global weather simulation with an error message at the Museum of Science in Boston.
The sphere display is cool though (except for the giant error message I mean)
Makes me want to stand above it cackling evilly about the foolish mortals below...
...but then, I do have a bit of a maniacal streak...
...time to smite them all with a ctr-alt-del...bwahahaha!!
I've seen this problem a number of times in different places. What I don't understand is why they don't use a dual display system! The secondary display is the one that displays the desired output, while the main display is the one that displays those infamous Windows error messages. That way, when the system crashes, or whatever, the customer will not see the error message! The error messages will only be displayed on the primary monitor which is hidden away from public view.
From the uppercase "String", I believe it's .NET using a MessageBox to handle an Exception that happened there. Definitely an (unacceptable) error, and Broken by a mile.
More specifically, the guys who made this Earth program simply wrote it to show a MessageBox like that if a download of the current weather timed out (judging from the "operation has timed out" part). It should, instead, be tripping a silent alarm of some sort to the admins.
Can't believe I'm going to have to point this out - what you have there is the famous "blue sky of death"
does this show real time weather from off a network? I'm no expert, but couldn't 'operation has timed out' simply mean that it was unable to get a response from whatever server it connects to, and thus is not necessarily a windoze error, but an error that happened to occur on a computer running windoze.
Not that I'm any sort of fan of M$, but it isn't proper to jump to any sort of conclusion.
It's still broke as hell. if a museum cannot keep their network working, someone must be screwing up.
I'll tell you what's broken, is the blurry photo. Was this picture taken during a high-speed car chase?
Today forecast is partly cloudy skys, with highs in the upper 80s. Latter in the day we may also have a giant error message float by.
2 things,
1- never use windows for public viewing, of maps. times, etc. Always use the extremely stable Linux
2 Yes the error message was network related, probably the weather server crashed- a result of windows.
That might explain the lack of rain, at least by my place. Rain32.dll has got a bug, not because it's summer.
Or question reality, it's an error in the Matrix.
Attention h4x0rs: Please replace buggy rain32.dll with something a little more X-citing, please!
Need ideas/suggestions? Head over to
heh heh couldn't help it. Rain is so last millenium. It's time 4 someting new.
@wiggleworm":
Yes, of course, I forgot, Windoze is the root of all evil and causes all servers to crash. It is *never* a human error or hardware issue. I completely forgot. Also there has never, ever been a bug on a mac or on Linux.
Windoze is far from the best operating system, it is possibly the worst. But that hardly means that it is at fault every time an error message comes on the screen. I lose my network connectivity from time to time. Is it windoze's fault? no. I have a cheap router, that works horribly. Put simply, the museum's network admin or similar has most likely:
1) failed to use a dual display, to at least hide the error message whenever it appears.
2) failed to properly set up the network.
3) failed to insure that the server that the weather data is hosted on is stable.
4) Maybe they just forgot to turn off the globe during some sort of network maintenance.
Still broken. It just doesn't necessarily relate to Windoze.
Sure, it doesn't relate to Windows. But it's still a good idea to run public display systems with something other than Windows. When's the last time you saw a public Linux crash / kernel panic here? (No, the airplane entertainment system booting up doesn't count)
Otherwise, no one would notice, but by having an error message pop up in the middle of the world, it's apparent that that system runs Windows XP/2003/variants.
(If you have a cheap router, go to the computer recycling depot and ask for a 486. Install 3 network cards, and IPcop. There, highly stable router.)
Hopefully Vista will be as buggy as its forefathers, so there will still be laughs to be had at the expense of people who think Windows IS computing.
>>I'll tell you what's broken, is the blurry photo. Was this picture taken during a high-speed car chase?
>>Posted by: MattyMatt at Jul 18, 2006 4:36:00 PM
Simple.
The globe is in a glass enclosure, which would reflect flash from a camera. The photographer turned flash off, so the camera set the exp. time longer. This guy didn't have a tripod, so the camera shook when exposing, resulting in a blurry image.
Also:
The Window has an error message! (I need to open it to see the world.)
P.S. I'm not Sean.P or sean. I'm Sean, with a capital "S".
lol another peril of using windows as a weather map etc. and where else have we seen humorous windows screw ups.
also where can i get one of those sphere shaped screens ;)
the system must use a monitor splitter cable the globe and a regular monitor is hooked into the same output. if it was dual monitor the mouse pointer and error message wouldn't be there. also with the dual monitors all the gory behind the scenes stuff for that PC will be on the standard monitor in wherever the PC box is stored and the map -at worst- will just sit there like a rock or go black while the PC reboots. and wont get covered by unsightly blemishes of windows like that error.
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Didn't you read about that in the news? Microsoft now owns the atmosphere. Todays weather is running Microsoft XP with a 75% chance of illegal operation errors.
Posted by: Fayth at July 18, 2006 09:10 AM