helen keller mode

Helen Keller mode

   1. State of a hardware or software system that is deaf, dumb,
   and blind, i.e. accepting no input and generating no output,
   usually due to an infinite loop or some other excursion into
   {deep space}.  (Unfair to the real Helen Keller, whose success
   at learning speech was triumphant.)  See also {go flatline},
   {catatonic}.

   2. On {IBM PCs} under {MS-DOS}, refers to a specific failure
   mode in which a screen saver has kicked in over an
   {ill-behaved} application which bypasses the very interrupts
   the screen saver watches for activity.  Your choices are to
   try to get from the program's current state through a
   successful save-and-exit without being able to see what you're
   doing, or to {re-boot} the machine.  This isn't (strictly
   speaking) a crash.

   [{Jargon File}]