Remember Y2K?
It's back. Sort of. Microsoft forgot that every fourth year is a leap year, so 2006 model year Zunes became inoperable today at the end of their first leap year, and DRM music on the players became deauthorized.
I remember reading the always entertaining Joel Spolsky's stories about how he got some respect from Bill Gates for knowing that the year 1900 wasn't a leap year. In the "billg" era, the company cared about this type of quality (which is crucial for many customers).
Here's yesterday's LA Times story:
An estimated 1 million owners of the 30-gigabyte Zune woke up this morning to find their devices inoperable. They quickly dubbed it the "Z2K" problem, after the dreaded Y2K computer bug that never materialized to the extent feared.
Hopefully this didn't happen to somebody traveling over the holidays.
[And I guess it was a matter of internal pride and wonder that many people were still using the Zunes they bought more than two years ago!)
It's back. Sort of. Microsoft forgot that every fourth year is a leap year, so 2006 model year Zunes became inoperable today at the end of their first leap year, and DRM music on the players became deauthorized.
I remember reading the always entertaining Joel Spolsky's stories about how he got some respect from Bill Gates for knowing that the year 1900 wasn't a leap year. In the "billg" era, the company cared about this type of quality (which is crucial for many customers).
Here's yesterday's LA Times story:
An estimated 1 million owners of the 30-gigabyte Zune woke up this morning to find their devices inoperable. They quickly dubbed it the "Z2K" problem, after the dreaded Y2K computer bug that never materialized to the extent feared.
Hopefully this didn't happen to somebody traveling over the holidays.
[And I guess it was a matter of internal pride and wonder that many people were still using the Zunes they bought more than two years ago!)