I’ll bet you’ve heard this, but did you know…

By now I’m betting most of my readers have heard of the “black screen of death”, but did you know that there really is/was no such thing?  And yet, now, it’s likely indelibly etched in your mind thanks to some specious activity by a small and somewhat obscure security company compounded by the sensationalist, and in my opinion irresponsible (meaning no facts), journalistic tendencies of so many of our blogosphere participants, including, sadly, many who should know and do better.  So here we have an extraordinary case of more negative perception, not only undue, but in this case founded on error and untruth.  I think Ed sums it up nicely: “It’s a near-perfect case study in how Internet-driven tech journalism rewards sloppy reporting and how the echo chamber devalues getting the story right.”

So why did I say there was no such thing when you’re probably saying, of course there is, I’ve been hearing about it for over a week now; well stay with me, I’ll explain why I say that in the next paragraph.   As most of you should know, I’ve been doing counterpoint posts for some time now on articles and press (including blogs) that continually paint Microsoft in an unfair (IMHO) light, especially around security, and many times with no facts to provide even the most basic support for the quotes and assertions that are reported, and unfortunately, taken by many as factual purely because they show up under a presumably credible tagline or authorship.  Well, this current one, the supposed black screen of death really takes the cake and so I couldn’t let it go unchallenged.  Probably, the most definitive response that I’ve seen comes from Ed Bott, who you should also know I think is one of the best and most objective bloggers out there – I’ve referenced him many times in the past, and I suspect many of you probably have already seen his post on this.  If not, PLEASE, see his post, What the "Black screen of death" story says about tech journalism, for an excellent, and factual, account of how this story came about.  But my post isn’t just about piggy-backing (or piling) on Ed’s comments, I wanted to point out something that I want you consider beyond just the unfactual(?) coverage of this issue that Ed highlighted so well. 

Again, I’ll assume you’ve read Ed’s blog post, so I won’t be going into the same details he did.  But I did want to point out something that is central to the aspect of this that I find so unfortunate, if not downright dangerous from the perspective of readers who tend to put some level of trust in what they read in print.  Notice, as Ed points out, that the original headline was “Black Screen woes could affect millions…”, now notice that when the IDG news service  picks up on it and publishes their headline it becomes “Latest Microsoft patches cause black screen of death”.  Did you notice that the original headline only characterized the issue as a “black screen”, and in fact, that’s precisely what it turned out to be, just a black screen.  But now the IDG  person decides that it can characterize the black screen issue with the additional verbiage “… of death” which we all know connotes a system crash (hard stop).  And, of course, from there most everyone just went with this and the rest, as they say, is history.  Of course, it was not a registry corruption, as was originally proposed, and it turned out not be a system crash in any form, so there you have my tale of why I maintain there never was a true “black screen of death”, yet I’ll wager that you’ve never heard of this issue referred to as anything but the “KSoD” (k standing for black to differentiate from B for blue in BSoD).  And that, my friends is how perception can work – as Ed points out:  within a couple of days “More than 500 separate posts on mainstream tech sites and in blogs have amplified the original story, most of them simply repeating the accusations from the Prevx blog post with no original reporting or fact-checking. The story has now taken on a life of its own.”

I guess the good news is that this one got exposed big-time, and may well have reflected more poorly on its progenitors than on Microsoft but still I hope this can be used as example to why your customers should be wary of the stuff they might see online. 

…

WOW, as usual I wait a day (after I write a post) before I actually post anything that’s not time-sensitive, and in this case, it turned out to be fortuitous, or perhaps uncanny.  I just saw this follow-up from Ed Bott around the topic above, The 'black screen of death': fact, fiction, or FUD?  As you might expect, I highly recommend this post as an additional read.  Here’s his very first line: “Here’s what you need to know about the so-called Black Screen of Death: There’s no such thing.”  His thrust is more on the technical side of what constitutes a “BSoD”, whereas my point was more around the issue of how negative perception, but I was still pretty floored when I saw his opening.  One interesting tidbit that came out of his post is that “black screen of death” was likely coined almost 20 years ago and that the “The black screen of death has been present in all versions of OS/2” (from Wikipedia), and even Apple appears to have “black screen” issues as Ed points out.  But I’ll bet if you ask anyone today, they’ll most likely say it’s a uniquely Microsoft issue, and that’s my point about the unfortunate, and undeserved, perceptions that you and I deal with as we try to help folks understand the quality and value of Microsoft’s post-SDL technology.