This isn't the first time I see this type of thing. But it is surely the first time I see it on TV.

You know when you are looking at some screen meant to show a slide show, or some sort of advertisement or general information, and you see a pop-up in the middle of the screen, or worst yet a blue screen?

I observed the blue screen example at the time I was working at Motorola; NO it was not at Motorola. The walk from the metro to the underground exit would lead me to pass through this set of screens and projectors set in a circular manner, on which an interesting show of nature is displayed. You'd see things like animals, plants and all, and the sounds were beautiful, the bird singing made you want to stay underground instead of going outside into the often crowded and loud intersection.

Now it happened more than once that I would pass by these screens and see a Blue Screen of Death. Now that's quite a shame, but at least we got to know they are running windows and seemed to have a problem with there graphics driver.

The blue screen might be a bit harder to avoid, but how hard would it be to avoid having a random error message pop-up, or Norton opening up and scanning your computer in the view of hundreds of people? This happened at school on its internal TV network, which is understandable since it is run by a group of students, which you'd figure are taking classes and all, and hence might be too busy to have noticed a Norton pop-up. But what excuse does a TV channel have?

This isn't just a TV channel; it's a CABLE TV channel! OK, granted it's not a big channel, but you must imagine my surprise when I turn to Channel 09 (VOX) and see a Norton window, and a mouse cursor. I can tell its Norton 2004/2005. I simply find it quite funny. Maybe I should call them up and let them know that none of the information they are intending to show is actually showing ;)

Now, from a user interface point of view, should Norton really pop-up and tell you that it found no viruses? Why not simply display a green icon in the system tray? I understand that giving comprehensive feedback to the user is a good thing, but when is it too much feedback? When is it feedback for the sole purpose of saying: "Hey NORTON worked hard and found nothing, rest assured your money has not gone to waste"?

BUT, alas, there is good out of all of this. The PUBLIC is reassured that channel 09 is virus FREE. So, here we go.

Lets hope this doesn't happen with any of the big networks, because I would be very mad if an anti virus scan interrupted my favorite TV show -- who am I kidding, I download those anyway, I don't have time to watch those on TV.