Bork!Bork!Bork! Today we visit the south of England, where Windows has fallen over, briefly granting unrestricted rail travel to one and all.
If there’s one thing the British like to complain about (other than the weather and potholes), it’s the rail system. Despite multiple innovations over the years, and the closure of an awful lot of it in the 1960s, much of the network dates back a century or more.
While there is little that can be done about the tracks without hefty investment, some stations have undergone occasional facelifts and been equipped with modern technology to ease passenger journeys and ensure that tickets are checked without requiring a human to examine every piece of paper or card.
Take these gates at Polegate station. They are equipped with a barcode reader, a place to tap a card, and even a slot for inserting a ticket. However, it all appears to have come to naught, and the gates opened wide. Windows is slumped in the corner like someone on the last train home after a night out that involved drinking too much booze.
Windows recovery screen at Polegate station
Or it might be an overflow error in the operating system after the latest ticket price rises were fed into it.
One thing is certain, Windows is in Recovery at Polegate. It’s not clear exactly what has happened to the operating system, but when our eagle-eyed reader snapped the baleful blue screen, the ticket barriers were open, ticket inspection was not a thing, and passengers were heading through.
The open barriers is very unlikely to be directly connected to the borked operating system. A lack of station staff can be a factor, as can the volume of passengers – for all their techno-wizardry, automatic barriers can hinder the flow of customers at busy times.
However, given the ongoing challenges passengers face on Britain’s railways, it’s good to see Microsoft Windows showing off its localization chops… by collapsing into a heap, in a fashion all too familiar to anyone expecting a punctual and reliable rail service. ®