The Sydney Morning Herald has a great piece on a computer malfunction that showed up during the 2008 Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing. The dreaded “Blue Screen of Death” (BSOD), familiar to Windows XP users, was projected on the stadium ceiling when one of the display computers crashed. Here’s one of the images:

It seems that Lenovo (the PC supplier for the games) chose Windows XP instead fo Vista. From the article:

Lenovo chairman, Yang Yuanqing, was quoted as saying that because of the complexity of the IT functions at the Games, it was decided to not use the the more recent operating system. “If it’s not stable, it could have some problems,” he said.

Ironically, former Microsoft CEO Bill Gates was in the crowd (he can run but he can’t hide).

Gizmodo has some more images and links to the incident.

From Newsweek:

In one of history’s more absurd acts of totalitarianism, China has banned Buddhist monks in Tibet from reincarnating without government permission. According to a statement issued by the State Administration for Religious Affairs, the law, which goes into effect next month and strictly stipulates the procedures by which one is to reincarnate, is “an important move to institutionalize management of reincarnation.”

The real goal is to limit the influence of the Dalai Lama, but it’s silly none-the-less.