Ok, before the flame war begins, I will say that I do indeed realize that the title of this post is totally assinine. Also, I would like to include a disclaimer that the BSOD I refer to is in reference to a "Black Screen of Death".
The Real Story
Over the weekend, I was flying out of Philadelphia International Airport to attend the wedding of a dear old college friend. I did the online flight check-in on my macbook, and hopped a cab out to the airport. Once through security, I went to the arrival/departures board to be sure that everything was on time with my flight, and encountered the screens pictured above. A few were empty screens that would have otherwise contained the flight data, while others were totally blacked out displaying and apple logo and what I am guessing was some sort of unique identifier for the server or screen. There was also and airport worker standing with a clipboard and a line of other passengers, but I simply checked my gate number on my boarding pass and settled into listening to some tunes and drinking coffee at the gate. At some point, I pulled my head out of iPodland and noticed that my flight did not seem to be boarding. I asked the lady at the counter, who informed me that my gate changed...but since the system was down I did not know! Anyway, I had to run to another terminal and just made my flight by about 5 minutes.
Now, before you get all huffy with me
Let me just say that I am an apple OSX fan, but being a software engineer I also rock a ThinkPad running windows for development purposes (in addition to my macbook). I'm not a total stranger to Linux either. Personally, I have little or no allegiance or dogmatic belief system associated with any specific technology, as I am happy to drop one thing for another on a case by case basis. I have always enjoyed seeing gigantic Windows BSOD shots projected on the sides of buildings and other highly public places, and found this to be a pretty amusing alternative.