Recently an ATM machine on the campus of Carnegie Mellon University crashed and rebooted into the standard Windows XP interface. So, what would a bunch of college students do with that? While "draining the machine of every last bill" might spring to mind, that’s not what happened. Instead, students reprogrammed it to play music and occasionally say "What, am I made of money?". Who says there’s no creativity in higher education?
Incidentally, the ATM at CM was made by Diebold, the same company that makes the electronic voting machines that lost more than 6000 votes in the March 2nd California primary election. Diebold voting machines have had similar problems in several other elections where they’ve been used. And, not to buy into the conspiracy theories, Diebold owners are major contributors to W and the Republican party. Maybe the folks in my office who are nervous about technology understand things better than I do.