German Basketball Team Loses In Close Match With A Microsoft Windows Update
from the boom-shakalakah! dept
Windows: the still-dominant operating system is the 800 lbs. gorilla, so one fully expects to see tons of insult-darts shot at the thing to try and tranquilize it. And, in the age of technology fan-boy-ism, some techie folks are big on drawing lines in the sand and loudly proclaiming the superiority of one piece of software over another. But, still, when your German basketball team faces relegation into a lower class of league because a windows laptop crashed and then ran an update just before game time, you can kind of understand if they're pissed off about it.
The March 13 match between the Chemnitz Niners and the Paderborn Baskets was set to begin normally, when Paderborn (the host) connected its laptop to the scoreboard in the 90 minutes leading up to the game. In an interview with the German newspaper, Die Zeit (Google Translate), Patrick Seidel, the general manager of Paderborn Baskets said that at 6:00pm, an hour and a half before the scheduled start time, the laptop was connected "as usual."Oops. Paderborn ended up winning the game, but Chemnitz filed a protest, arguing that the delay in starting the game constituted a violation and that Paderborn ought be penalized. The league agreed, taking a point in the standings away from Paderborn, which lowered its rankings such that it now faced relegation. Relegation, for you Americans who aren't Premier League Soccer fans, is a shift in which leagues a team plays in based on the year's performance. For Paderborn, this will mean not even being able to play at the championship level next year, instead being forced to play in the lower "ProB" league.
"But as both teams warmed up, the computer crashed," he said. "When we booted it again at 7:20pm, it started automatically downloading updates. But we did not initiate anything."
After all the updates were installed, Paderborn was ready to start the game at 7:55pm.
Seidel is pissed, of course.
"You can’t blame Chemnitz," Siedel added. "But as an athlete and a man, let me of course tell you something else. We beat Chemnitz twice in sportsmanlike, tight games. Therefore, this entire issue has nothing to do with sports."Nope, just a Windows update costing you a potential championship next year. N00bs.
Filed Under: basketball, chemnitz niners, paderborn baskets, updates, windows
