The return of the cashpoint bork as the medium dries up
No beer tokens for you today (photo: Dr David Mills)
Bork! Bork! Bork! ATM customers have been treated to this most special site, a refusal to distribute money unless Windows 7 gets the update it needs.
Normally, when this hack visits an ATM, the cheerful screen offers all kinds of interesting options and the amounts to withdraw. Alas, the selection of one of the most impressive numbers results in a severe “Oh no, you don’t, and I think you know why, right?”
“I work in journalism and not in public relations?”
In that case, Twitter user Dr David Mills didn’t even go that far and found an all-too-familiar message on the screen. Windows 7, as Microsoft has repeatedly said to everyone who listens, is no longer supported. It’s been unsupported for more than a month, and you really have to upgrade it or pay the Windows giant for a few years of additional security updates.
Unfortunately, the bill did not reach the British retail giant Barclays, whose Mills terminal said so. Mills told us that this particular unit is located on Mile End Road in London, at Queen Mary University in London.
Mills wisely did not risk sticking a card in the machine, after having experienced another surprise restart after entering the PIN code a few months earlier. The screen itself did not respond to requests, the bleating of Windows 7 remaining displayed.
The register contacted Barclays, but has yet to receive a response as to why this poor machine seems to be so neglected. Even Windows Embedded POSReady 7 will persist until 2021.
Unless, of course, all of this is a guerrilla marketing campaign by Microsoft to remind retirees that there will be no more security updates for the venerable operating system. After all, the Barclays group made a profit before tax of £ 6.9 billion for the 2019 financial year (PDF), so we are sure that one or two strange licenses should not exceed them, right? ®
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