Sure to annoy IT people but those just need a line of text while the rest of the screen is free real estate for Micro$oft! Public BSODs tend to go viral too.
lol, you might. others might.
i haven’t used windows in decades.
Nobody said the “we” means me and you. It might be me and… uh… my family, I guess?
Anyway, don’t tell me you haven’t seen a BSOD or similar on someone else’s computer, or online.
I really haven’t
I rather wouldn’t but some are quite involuntary (pic by me)
You probably know what a BSOD is
Don’t give the motherfuckers ideas.
They are already kinda doing this. The QR code resolves to http://www.windows.com/stopcode, which has a Microsoft 365 ad (who would have guessed?)
Edit: the pic I scanned was old, they have since changed it to “https” to close a trivial MITM attack vector for tech support scam websites.
You can go back to the dark place you came from. I’m sure ads on the BSOD are in the works
Bummer! You have backups, right? Try OneDrive today!
CrowdStrike incident happened too soon. Could have made serious money…
Sounds like the perfect place to run ads for Starbucks (or painkillers in countries where you can legally advertise for drugs online).
“Your system is fucked. Scan this code for 15% off! Might as well, it’s gonna be a loooong day. Toodeloo!”
This is so cynical and absurd I kind of expect it to happen. Late stage capitalism, yay.
Imagine the incentives tho. It’s free real estate, but how would they sell it to advertisers? “Here’s some ad space, but we work really hard to make sure users see it as rarely as possible.”
But if they do manage to sell it, the dev team then has this wacky incentive to trigger BSODs often enough to hit revenue targets, but rarely enough that they don’t drive away their user base. As another commenter put it, cynical and absurd, but… I mean, there’s a universe where it could happen… hopefully it’s not this one.
They can barely show useful information on that screen, how they can show ads?
For example, the qr code is completely useless - you would expect to send the user to a page that explains the problem or even just search the error string on Bing, but no, it sends to a placeholder page that doesn’t say anything useful
There is no profit motive in making bluescreens more useful.
Steve Jobs would have bought that ad space
Alternative universe: In order to pay back Microsoft for saving them from bankruptcy, Apple buys up ad space on Windows BSODs.
I remember back in the day before browsers had much in the way of protection, and ads could do basically whatever they wanted on your computer. I distinctly remember seeing ads back in the 2000s that would go fullscreen and emulate a BSOD, with a number to call a fake Microsoft Support.
They still do this
They can’t show things outside of your browser window, anymore, which is what those ads did
If there’s a click it is able to fullscreen. But yes its slightly more manageable.
Don’t give them ideas 🙏