Paul Sakuma/AP
Well, according to a blog post from Microsoft developer Raymond Chen (via The Verge), the text from that famous blue screen was written by none other than Steve Ballmer, the bombastic ex-CEO of Microsoft.
Chen says Ballmer was head of Microsoft's system division at the time when he paid a visit to the Windows team. And when he saw Control-Alt-Delete and the original text for the Blue Screen of Death, he said," This is nice, but I don't like the text of the message. It doesn't sound right to me."
According to Chen, someone from the Windows team challenged Ballmer to write a better message if he thought he could do a better job - and he did. Chen says Ballmer's text "went into the product pretty much word for word."
Here is that text, courtesy of Chen:
Contoso Deluxe Music Composer
This Windows application has stopped responding to the system.
* Press ESC to cancel and return to Windows. * Press ENTER to close this application that is not responding. You will lose any unsaved information in this application. * Press CTRL+ALT+DEL again to restart your computer. You will lose any unsaved information in all applications. |