Blue screen of death crashes Gates at CES

I was half listening, half watching (don't ask) this last night as it happen, and it was pretty entertaining, mostly for all the wrong reasons. It seemed like every time they (Microsoft) tried to show something off, it didn't work. Conan was great and made this all very entertaining, saying things like, "Man, who's in charge of Micros...oh...never mind."

The good news for those who missed this and want to watch it is that you still can. For a small clip which includes Gates talking about the Xbox, which includes the BSOD with Forza, you can download a clip from this site (~20 MB) . Key points of interest are around the 7:50 mark, right before the game crashes, and around the 10:15 mark, which shows Conan's screen going at very low frame rates while he raced Bill.

If you want the whole thing, use this address:
mms://diny-s4601-wm.fplive.net/dims/msmicrosoft/ces/2005_0105_ms_ces_300agility.wmv

You can either stream it by opening it in Windows Media Player or you can download it (like I'm doing now) using HiDownload, Flashget, or whatever program that will let you download it. Also, be warned that this is ~178 MB, and the show is, IIRC, longer than an hour. Conan helped by making a lot of funny jokes, which really seemed to piss Bill off, and the Microsoft screwups were pretty funny as well, but this may still be pretty boring, unless you are into the future of consumer electronics or something like that. The only part of the demonstration that was interesting, IMO, was the baseball demo that showed numerous baseball games at once along with different viewing angles. The "no delay between channels" thing was ok too.

If these links don't work and if you tell me, I'll see if I can find some more somewhere else (unless someone here knows of some places). This is a pretty big joke in other forums, so I may be able to find an alternate link there.

BTW, for anyone who read my earlier posts about me thinking they were going to announce Xbox2 at CES, this obviously didn't happen (at least not yet). Now it seems as though GDC in March will be most likely place to announce it, unless Microsoft wants to announce it in a special announcement on their own.

 

He was like a host or emcee, or something like that (not sure what his exact title was). He was there to get some laughs and ask Bill questions basically. He was the "average Joe" that would ask him what Microsoft plans for TV, games, digitial media, etc. I'm glad he was there though, since the show was pretty boring without any REAL news.