I have also encountered that screen telling me to restart (in five languages). To me it happened if I disconnected any USB-things while the iBook was asleep.
But also had it happen on a G4 AGP (350 MHz), without messing with USB.
Why does this happen? What does it mean, more technically?
It's called a Kernal Panic. And it pretty much means that. Normally if an application or lower level program runs amok the hardware detects it, stops the process and informs the operating system. It is usually detected by the program trying to execute code or access data from a part of memory it is not allowed access to. When this happens within the very core of the operating system, ie the Kernal, there is nothing else to do but through up the message you see and prompting to restart.
Now as to why you get a Kernal Panic, that is probably due to shoddy programming. If the programmers assume something cannot happen and then it does, the software isn't able to deal with it.
The Kernal is the piece of code that provides access to all the hardware. Note that this isn't necessarily Apple software that is causing the panic. There are numerous pieces of software called Kernal Extensions (kext) that add support for various pieces of hardware (SCSI and video cards for example).
--
Clark Martin
Redwood City, CA, USA
Macintosh / Internet Consulting
"I'm a designated driver on the Information Super Highway"
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