I'm safely in Beijing now but what a close call.  We had a crash on board.  Of the inflight entertainment system, that is.  I was in the middle of watching a movie when the system bluescreened!

Northwest airlines has these new on-demand video systems built into every seat, including economy class, and while I was listening to music it suddenly went dead and up popped a debug window.  I couldn't believe it.

Then I saw the familiar penguin, showing that the whole thing was written in Linux and I said to myself Wait a Minute, I thought Linux systems never crash.  Hmmm... 

Fortunately the airplane itself is not running Linux.   And meanwhile my Vista machine has been humming happily without any crashes whatsoever.