Today, while buying sundries at my local Shaw’s supermarket using the self-checkout machine, I learned that the system is based on Windows XP Embedded when the machine crashed and rebooted mid-transaction. I wasn’t fast enough to get the initial computer boot screen, but got a few shots before the application reloaded itself. We had a hard time figuring out if our payment went through or not. It crashed as we finalized the credit card transaction. After consulting the staff, who asked how we managed to crash it, we all decided that we’d best assume it charged us and be on our way. It’s not as exciting as the picture I saw once of a laser-surgery machine controlled by Windows software that had brought up a general protection fault, but it’s all I’ve got…
