It IS a stupid question, but that doesn't mean it shouldn't be asked!
Sometimes the silly ones are the ones with the most interesting answers!
:)
I don't actually know the answer, but perhaps it might be fun to take
some guesses (some serious, some not so serious!)...
1) Blue is psychologically a color that evokes feelings of calmness. If
I had to guess I would think this was the real reason (or am I giving
the Redmonites too much credit?!?)
2) It looks like a Commodore 64 screen which is about how much an NT box
that has experienced a BSOD is worth at that point (actually, I'm a huge
fan of the good 'ole C64 so I say this tongue in cheek since I'd pick a
C64 over an NT box anyway!)
3) The color combination is very easy to read, so this way you can very
clearly read a bunch of crap that no human being understands anyway!
4) Couldn't be green because Green Screen Of Death doesn't flow off the
tongue as easy (the Green-Screen part I think).
5) Red, for obvious reasons, was quickly dismissed as a possibility.
Red reminds people of Hell which is where you wish you were when your
eCommerce server BSOD's on you at 7pm on a Saturday night!
6) Bill Gates wanted it to be Bill's Screen Of Death originally but
Balmer talked him out of it. Less to explain at a trial years later he
figured.
7) Green wouldn't have worked because then every time your servers
crashed you'd be remininded how much green your wasting by not just
running Linux instead!
8) Couldn't have been green because GSOD could mean God is full of shit,
which is exactly what he is when NT crashes (God in this case being Bill
Gates. That's what He says anyway!)
9) White-on-black was the first choice since it's the hardware default
and would require less coding, plus it's easy to read. But then the
marketing boys got a hold of it and they said "Yeah, right, we put
dominating white letters on a subordinate black background and we'll
start a race war". (Please, no letter over that one, it's mearly a
joke!)
10) The RGB hex code for blue is #0000FF. This means: a) exactly 00
reasons to choose NT over Linux, b) NT's mean time between failure
record (00 seconds), and c) two loud FUCK's! every time you see a BSOD.
Ok, now that I've insulted half the list, hope someone gets a laugh at
at least some of these!
Any others??
Derek Peschel wrote:
>
> > > I was making fun of OS/400's abbreviated command style more than anything
> > > else. (You know "Work with print queues" becomes "WRKPRTQ", etc.)
> >
> > I know only our 'new' (some 6 years ago) BS2000 command interface
> > (SDF) is more OT for an OS command line - they canged simple commands
> > like CAT[aloge] (to modify catalog entries - like renaming or change
> > attributes) into Modify-Cataloge-Attributes - together with changing
> > from simple position and keyword parameters into some kind of parenthes
> > driven madness - a simple 'CAT a,b,STATE=U' to change a filename (a to b)
> > became 'MODIFY-FILE-ATTRIBUTES FILE-NAME=a,NEW-NAME=b' simple, isn't it ?
> >
> > Some simple comands now need several lines to type ...
>
> When I used OS/400 it was on a 327x terminal (wiht lousy editing keys and
> not much real-time interaction). Does OS/400 still use or support those? I
> would hate to type your enormous commands on a 3278.
>
> What's BS2000? Some international standard?
>
> -- Derek
--
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Frank W. Zammetti
Programmer/Analyst
First Data Investor Services Group
King Of Prussia, PA
http://www.fdisgkop.com
Work Phone: (610)/312-5534
Fax: (610)/312-5910
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My Home Page: http://www.voicenet.com/~fzammett
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Received on Mon Apr 12 1999 - 14:12:53 BST