I was flying home to Boston from Atlanta on Delta Airlines. When I got to my gate at the Atlanta airport, I immediately noticed that there was a Windows error alert box in the middle of the large display screen over the gate door. I walked around the terminal and saw that many of the gate display units had the same error alert box being displayed. In many cases, the display units were no longer usable since the alert boxes covered up critical information on the screens.
Here are some photos I took of the problem:
http://www.ComputerBytesMan.com/atlantaThe problem existed for at least 30 minutes, but no one from Delta seemed to be interested in fixing it. I wanted to click the "Okay" button myself, but I couldn't find a mouse. ;-)
I even recognized the software package that was failing at the Delta terminal. It is a customer support package that a number of computer makers ship with their home PC systems. This same software package was pre-installed on my Sony laptop but I removed it after discovering that it contained a number of ActiveX controls with serious security holes. These security holes can potentially be used by a virus writer to take over a Windows PC using simple script code.
The customer support software was failing because it couldn't find a
standard Microsoft ActiveX control which ships with Windows. My impression
is that the Windows operating system in control of a display unit had
somehow been corrupted. Ironically this customer support package is
designed to diagnose and fix these kinds of problems with home PCs. Why
Delta was running consumer-grade PCs for this application is bit hard for me
to fathom.