The 87 Lamest Moments In Tech, 2000-2009

harrymcc writes "The last ten years have been an amazing era for tech — and full of amazingly dumb moments. I rounded up scads of them. I suspect you'll be able to figure out which company is most frequently represented, but Apple, Google, Twitter, Facebook, Sony, and many others are all present and accounted for, too."

Comments

The very lamest moment?

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't that be the "first post" ?? :)

Re:The very lamest moment?

[Muskstick]

I was trying to think of something witty to write as a first post, congratulations on failing at it completely.

Re:The very lamest moment?

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck you!

Damn I was late!!!

Re:The very lamest moment?

[mcgrew]

I thought the lamest tech thing in the last decade was the article itself.

Re:The very lamest moment?

[Hognoxious]

That'd be the second lamest. When it comes to lamossitude[1], the story is in a league of its own.

[1] Before anyone starts, it is now.

sony rootkit

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/sony_rootkit

never forget, never forgive

Re:sony rootkit

[sopssa]

The /. ponies day. I thought Taco had lost it completely then.

On the other hand, it was also one of the greatest moments of the decade too.

Re:sony rootkit

[Ginger Unicorn]

wtf? it was pathetic and tedious...

Re:sony rootkit

[nstlgc]

You might be confusing "lame" and "horrible".

Re:sony rootkit

[GaryPatterson]

Which version of Snow Leopard does all of that?

I've found it to be pretty good so far, on both my Mac and my wife's.

I've not heard of this other stuff. It sounds a little made-up, or at least cherry-picked.

Re:sony rootkit

[El Lobo]

Hmm... what planet are you living on? Shining planet Abble?

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9139250/Snow_Leopard_bug_deletes_all_user_data

http://www.newsfactor.com/story.xhtml?story_id=031001SMSU6O

http://venturebeat.com/2009/08/27/apples-snow-leopard-may-stop-you-from-doing-your-job/

I can go on forever....

Re:sony rootkit

[Stormwatch]

It's true, see here.

Re:sony rootkit

[cp.tar]

I'd been rather pleased with Snow Leopard right until I got hit by the Hoefler Text glitch, which crashes text processors and fucks up a number of fonts. Still waiting for the fix.

Re:sony rootkit

[Swift2001]

In the very first edition, if you had a guest user, and you used it, you would return to the administrator account and find all the data gone. Bad. Fixed in 10.6.1. We're now in 10.6.2. But some people just can't move on.

Re:sony rootkit

[Sophira]

Hey, don't knock it. I found out about Cute Overload from that, which is pretty awesome IMO.

Re:sony rootkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Things happen, sure... things get fixed. Evidently, you are will to let X pass under the bridge more quickly, which could be linked to fanboi status.

And "can't" in "can't move on" is really emphatic. According to the wiki, 9/10/09 was the update that fixed this. ~3 months. If you think 3 months == "can't", well, I think you get the idea. Hell, I'm still not past Real Media and it has been YEARS. They didn't even delete my data.

Re:sony rootkit

[bytethese]

I live on the planet where I actually USE an Apple product daily. My wife's Macbook Pro is running fine, my new one is about 95%. Sure I get the spinning beach ball, but I know it's because I put a third party hard disk in it and I'll deal with my own decision because everything else is PHENOMENAL! :)

Re:sony rootkit

[jo_ham]

I'm sorry, what?

I have rolled out Snow Leopard on multiple machines of assorted vintage and consider myself well-versed in Apple tech support issues and I've not even heard a whisper of the issues you have mentioned.

Although "uncountable bugs and slowness" is a little bit catch all - care to list some of the "uncountable bugs" - you only need to rattle off, say 5. If there really are that many. It should be easy.

I have not heard of the user account deletion on guest login - are you sure you didn't mess with UIDs?

Snow Leopard has been excellent. I had some minor issues with it and Safari until Flashblock came out, and I have to update some of my migrated apps that were installed under 10.5 and weren't touched during the move to 10.6 (I can't remember if it was an A+I or an upgrade) - this was usually little things like my ToDo list sync app and some menu bar widgets and so on, but reinstalling fixed those right away.

I think your sig gives away your bias - it seems you think a list that doesn't agree with you is "prejudiced" because it doesn't savage Apple for made up tech problems with Snow Leopard.

There's plenty of *actual* Apple content you could go after them for without having to make shit up.

Re:sony rootkit

[BlackSnake112]

Sine when does Apple make hard disks? The hard disks in Apple laptops and Apple desktops that I have seen are made by the same people that Dell, HP, and everyone else uses (I have seen Toshiba, WD, Seagate). The only difference is the hard drive has a little apple printed on the label. The hard drive specs are the same as the non Apple labeled ones. Apple has to have some way to see where the bottle neck is that is causing the beach ball. Saying it is the hard disk is jumping the gun a bit. Unless you put in a 5400 RPM (or slower) disk or a disk with no cache on it, I'd look else where.

I am saying this since I have changed 20+ hard drives in Apple laptops and desktops. There was no difference in performance with a non Apple drive vs an Apple branded drive. Usually the non Apple drive was bigger, had a bigger cache, and sometimes a faster RPM. Which usually made the machine more responsive.

Re:sony rootkit

[Bender0x7D1]

I have not heard of the user account deletion on guest login - are you sure you didn't mess with UIDs?

It was discussed on Slashdot: Major Snow Leopard Bug Said To Delete User Data

I have rolled out Snow Leopard on multiple machines of assorted vintage and consider myself well-versed in Apple tech support issues and I've not even heard a whisper of the issues you have mentioned.

Not trying to troll, but this is a pretty big thing to miss if you consider yourself well-versed in Apple tech support. I mean, it made the front page on Slashdot.

Re:sony rootkit

[Nadaka]

Don't forget that the ponies inspired a ground breaking innovative RPG by the makers of D&D.

http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/dd/20060401a

Re:sony rootkit

[bytethese]

They don't. They don't make LCD's, CPU's, RAM, etc either. But they DO have parts made to their specifications or buy parts that meet their specifications. My 13" MBP did not come with a 7200rpm option, so I popped in my own purchased drive. The drive from the new MBP is working fine in my old MBP (my wife's "new" machine) however. :)

Re:sony rootkit

[StuartHankins]

Mod parent troll.
Biased much?

Re:sony rootkit

[jo_ham]

Hmm, that is a new one on me. Although looking at the date, I can see why I missed it; I was in labs.

Re:sony rootkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Id's od a blanet a long way from you, abbarendly. We're nod from the blanet either of Elmer Fudds or where ederyone hads a pugged-up nodse and has to spell it "Abble" no maddah wut...

Re:sony rootkit

[aztracker1]

I haven't bought a sony product since.

Re:sony rootkit

[aztracker1]

Assorted vintage? Snow Leopard only works on Intel based macs, which are all relatively new.

Re:sony rootkit

[jo_ham]

Assorted vintage being the earliest intel Macs right up to the current generation.

It's a descriptor for age difference, not necessarily that the machines themselves need to be old.

Re:sony rootkit

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the one time I wish we could mod +100 Informative.

obligatory

[farlukar]

decade = 2001-2010

But at least they didn't make it a 87-page article.

Re:obligatory

[Kjella]

Well doh, they say so on page 1. But I still think it's a little wierd since say "the 60s" for me naturally go from 60-69, so we are at the end of the 00s, which somehow sounds incredibly lame.

Re:obligatory

[MrMista_B]

Yeah, how /do/ people pronounce this decade?

The 00's - the 'ohs', 'double zeros', 'aughts', 'zeroes'....

I'll just do my best not to refer to it.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Uhh... no, decade goes from x0-x9. Or do you think the year 2000 was in the 90s?

Re:obligatory

[Mononoke]

Yeah, how /do/ people pronounce this decade?

The naughties.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I've heard it called the noughties (for the two noughts)

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

technically a decade is any ten year period, doesn't matter when it starts

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

decade = 2001-2010

Well, I choose to define 'decade' as 1997-2006, so the decade's been over for a while. As was already pointed out, a decade is any arbitrary span of ten years. As was also pointed out, when people refer to certain decades of years (the 50s, the 70s, the 90s, etc), they're commonly referring to the first year of that decade (1950, 1970, 1990) to the last year of that decade (1959, 1979, 1999). Or do you consider 1960 to be part of the 50s?

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

do you consider 1960 to be part of the 50s?

Who doesn't? :)

Re:obligatory

[Ren Hoak]

decade = 2001-2010

You aren't a coder, are you? If so, I envision many off-by-one errors in your work.

Re:obligatory

[Saint Stephen]

The lack of a trite name for this decade has been the coolest, because people haven't been able to call something the "blank of the blank", mimndlessly.

The next decade is even better!

Re:obligatory

[suso]

Or do you think the year 2000 was in the 90s?

It sure did feel like it. (reference to pre-911 life)

Re:obligatory

[dkh2]

Actually, he has it right. Our modern, western notion of a calendar is marred by the fact that the Romans had no concept of zero until the conquest of Spain and the ensuing interaction with the moorish people who lived there. Thus, we start counting dates with 1, not zero. Therefore, the '60's is the decade beginning immediately after the end of year xx60 but a person "in their 60's" has completed 59 years of life and not 10 more.

In our Christian era calendars you do not find a year zero. To our modern, mathematically educated minds that would have been the year before Jesus of Nazareth was 12 months old.

Of course, our calendars, while allegedly based on the birth date of this man Jesus, are flawed by many other issues. Among these are:

1) We don't actually have agreement about the precise year of Jesus' birth.
2) The 25-December customary date is a fabrication. Jesus was most likely born in the spring based on accounts of what was happening at the time.
3) Our calendar system has been changed a few times over the past two millennia.

Re:obligatory

[rolfwind]

Uhh... no, decade goes from x0-x9. Or do you think the year 2000 was in the 90s?

The controversy stems from the fact that there was no year 0. The julian/gregorian calendar retroactively goes back to year 1 AD, and before that is 1 BC.

Human lifes on the other hand start at year 0.

So people who say the decade was from Jan 1 2001- Dec 31 2010 are technically correct although you can just say a decade is a 10 year period and arbitrarily start it whenever.

But since /. is full of programmers that have experience with arrays, especially in C type languages - none of this should be news or that hard to grasp.

Re:obligatory

[Whatshisface]

So for you January - August 2001 was also part of the 90s ? And FWIW, we started at year zero, and so the first decade ended at year 9. Ergo the current decade is 2000-2009. The defense rests.

Re:obligatory

[GrahamCox]

Yeah, how /do/ people pronounce this decade?

The noughties (or naughties). What I want to know is, what the hell are we going to call the next one?

Re:obligatory

[oodaloop]

So I guess the first decade ran from -1 to 0, and the second decade was from 1 to 10?

Re:obligatory

[Gadget_Guy]

You aren't a coder, are you? If so, I envision many off-by-one errors in your work.

Surely a coder would have to be more mindful of the correct definitions of things like a decade. Otherwise if they moved between languages that had either 0 or 1 based arrays then they would constantly make errors.

Re:obligatory

[Grench]

The teenies (yes, even though that won't start until 2013)

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

This is a beautiful example of why the /. moderation system needs a "-1, Misinformed". The Gregorian calendar goes from B.C. 1 to 1 A.D. with no year zero. Of course, this doesn't mean that you can't call any 10-year period a decade.

Re:obligatory

[ShounenSuki]

Of course not, but that is why we don't work with ordinal numbers when talking about decades.

Re:obligatory

[maxume]

The second dark age.

(I kid, I kid)

Re:obligatory

[maxume]

I really don't see what impact the actual birth date of Jesus has on counting days.

Even the birth year isn't that big a deal (it just makes the early part of the calendar less useful, the rest of it can refer to hundreds of years of days with reasonable precision).

Re:obligatory

[GaryPatterson]

2) The 25-December customary date is a fabrication. Jesus was most likely born in the spring based on accounts of what was happening at the time.

Even the Bible supports this.

Shepherds out and about in deep Winter? Hmm... even in Israel you get snowfall in Winter. Not the time to have sheep and lambs around.

Re:obligatory

[R2.0]

Something I've noticed is that "Decades" are often defined by what happened in the last few years of that decade. The Sixties is remembered for Woodstock (68). The 70's for disco (late 70's/early 80's), Iranian hostages (79-80), etc.

How much do you want to bet that this decade will be remembered as the Social Networking decade (when was Myspace started?)

Re:obligatory

[vain gloria]

Brit here. Parallel with "Cool Britannia" (remember that?) I saw a lot of use in the press of the "Naughty Nineties" (modelled on the "Swinging Sixties"). So if the astonishingly imaginative trend continues, I imagine the next decade will be christened the Naughteens.

Re:obligatory

[FixitFelix]

Tenties?

Re:obligatory

[Alarindris]

auts

Re:obligatory

[Dogtanian]

Yeah, how /do/ people pronounce this decade?

The naughties.

Leaving aside the jokes, has anyone else noticed that "the noughties" as the supposed name for this decade only seems to have cropped up- or at least been "standardised" on- in the past year or so.

For most of it, there didn't seem to be any strong name, though IIRC "2000s" was possibly the most common. Of course, while that name may have been fine when we were within the first ten years of the millennium (*), it's possibly less precise once it has two potential meanings. Though it didn't stop the "1900s" being the most common term for the first decade (*) of the 20th century.

Anyway, the "noughties" is still a ******* stupid name, and I personally hate it.

(*) Pedants, you know what I mean. Shut up in advance, thanks! :-)

Re:obligatory

[mforbes]

The first decade of the 20th century was referred to as the "Naughty Oughts", actually...

Re:obligatory

[Chris Mattern]

And I envision possible off-by-one errors if your work has to track dates over a large range, since you apparently do not realize that there is no year zero. 1 BC is followed by 1 AD.

Re:obligatory

[mcd7756]

The Moors invaded Spain in 711 AD. The Roman Empire ended in 476 AD. I suspect the concept of zero entered Europe in some other fashion. Perhaps until the Moors came into Spain, zero was nothing to write home about.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The double ohs.

This year was double oh nine.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Not to mention the fact the "21st century" began on 1/1/2001, not with the "new millennium" party most /. readers didn't get invited to the previous year.

Re:obligatory

[asylumx]

Seems like this problem would have been solved a hundred years ago...

Re:obligatory

[Chris Mattern]

A decade is any ten years. It depends on how you define them. Surely it is nonsensical to say that the '90s were anything but 1990 to 1999 (or 1890 to 1899, or whatever). However, the 200th decade would be 1991 to 2000. We don't often speak of decades in those terms, but we do say the 21st century, which, by the same logic, began in 2001.

Re:obligatory

[hansamurai]

Except no where in the summary or title does it mention decade, just 2000-2009.

Re:obligatory

[tverbeek]

You didn't get 911 service in your area until 2001?
 
Sorry for the pedantry, but referring to the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 with a phone number is sloppy (could you at least try to put a slash or a dash in there?), and trivializes the event.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

the Teenies?

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

So I guess the first decade ran from -1 to 0, and the second decade was from 1 to 10?

These decades go to 11.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

I think it was... they called it "the turn of the century"

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Do sheep not eat in the winter?

Re:obligatory

[bytethese]

68? Woodstock was in 1969. I only know because I went to the 30th anniversary in Rome, NY in 1999. :)

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Nah, the first decade was from about -4 billion to about -4 billion.

Re:obligatory

[clarkcox3]

Um, no, there was no year zero. The year before 1 AD was 1 BC. The first decade ran from 1 AD to 10 AD, the first century ran from 1 AD to 100 AD. The 20th century ran from 1901 to 2000. The "90's" and the last decade of the 20th century are two different things. "The 90's" is 1990–1999, the last decade of the 20th century is 1991–2000

Re:obligatory

[parkrrrr]

I sure haven't noticed that, as I first heard it floated as a potentially usable term back in 1999 or so.

Re:obligatory

[corbettw]

the Romans had no concept of zero until the conquest of Spain and the ensuing interaction with the moorish people who lived there.

The Moors didn't live in Spain until the 7th Century. The people in Spain when Rome conquered it were Celts and Iberians. Furthermore, it was the Indians in the 9th Century who developed the concept of zero as a number and not merely a lack of value, which is how the Greeks (and everyone else) viewed it.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

One decade is a factor of 10 difference between two numbers.
So, taking 2001 as starting point, a decade goes from 2001 to 20010, assuming 0 is the zero point.

Re:obligatory

[Scrameustache]

The lack of a trite name for this decade has been the coolest, because people haven't been able to call something the "blank of the blank", mimndlessly.

The next decade is even better!

I call 'em the y2ks, just to bug you :)

Re:obligatory

[yoghurt]

You could just retcon the BC dates. Set 0 AD = 1 BC, and -N AD = 1-N BC for N > 0. That way you can start from 0 AD and leave today's date the same.

Re:obligatory

[StuartHankins]

Mod parent up
...if for no other reason than because of the sig

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Except no where in the summary or title does it mention decade, just 2000-2009.

The editors changed the headline to appease the masses. It originally was (IIRC) "The 87 Lamest Moments in Tech this Decade" when it was first posted (and for many hours after that).

Re:obligatory

[ari_j]

Seems like this problem would have been solved a hundred years ago...

It was, but unfortunately it was removed from Wikipedia for being original research.

Re:obligatory

[larry bagina]

The 60s ended in 1974.

Re:obligatory

[ari_j]

Don't get too hung up on all that. Most of the people I know get confused when they celebrate their Xth birthday and I tell them that I hope their newly-begun X+1th year is as successful as the last. I literally went back and forth with one person for over an hour on her birthday this year, with her repeatedly insisting she had just turned X and not understanding why that makes the year she's in now X+1.

I've all but conceded defeat on the millennium issue. I'll never, of course, admit to having been wrong, because I wasn't; I am just tired from fighting the good fight for an entire decade and feel my efforts would be better spent correcting all the misuses of 'loose' that occur each day.

Re:obligatory

[pwfffff]

OK since you're the year expert here, what do we call 2011? I've heard oh-ten for 2010, and I guess that works, but oh-eleven is a pain to say. Oh-twelve is OK, but then we're back to annoying with oh-thirteen.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

>Romans had no concept of zero until the conquest of Spain and the ensuing interaction with the moorish people

That must have been around the time that the sabertooth tiger was taking down the last of the brontosauruses.

Re:obligatory

[pwfffff]

"and trivializes the event."

Yeah, I had no idea what event he was talking about until you cleared it up. Thanks for that. I'll go back to that rock I was living under now I guess.

Re:obligatory

[CrimsonAvenger]

The Sixties is remembered for Woodstock (68)

Woodstock was shortly after Apollo 11. Which would make it '69, not '68.

Re:obligatory

[dcarmi]

When I pointed out the lack of year zero 10 years ago, I got called a pedant and worse. You get marked up as informative. How times have changed!

Re:obligatory

[pwfffff]

'The fifties' refers to all the years that start with 'fifty-'. 50, 51, 52, etc. It does not refer to the 196th decade, and really doesn't refer to decades at all. There just happen to be 10 numbers that start with 'fifty-'.

If you're referring to a 'new decade', people assume you're talking about a standard decade. If those decades started when yours did, then the first 'decade' would have had 9 years (1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9). Not very 'deca', is it? So if you want your definition of a decade (10 years) to remain consistent with when you partition these decades, you have to start when the years start: year 1.

Your question at the end does nothing to prove your point. No, I do not consider 1960 to be in the 50s. But, 'the 50s' is not a decade. The 196th decade, which starts in 1951, does indeed include 1960.

Re:obligatory

[Mr Z]

Here's my rule, and it seems entirely consistent with (most) common use:

Each shorthand date range includes its eponymous year.

"Eponymous" means "giving one's name to." So, if you say "the 1900s", to me, that means 1900 - 1999, since 1900 is the eponymous year. If you say "20th century", then that should include the year 2000, since 2000 is the eponymous year. That ends up with 20th century meaning "1901 - 2000." The 3rd millennium would then include the year 3000, and so would be "2001 - 3000". The 2000s though would be 2000 - 2999.

Going back to your example, "The 60s" would imply 60 - 69. That's how we talk about temperatures, so why wouldn't it apply to dates? It'd be weird for "60s" to not include 70, but not include 60.

Now, if you want to talk about the 201st decade (who talks like that?), then yes, that'd go from 2001 to 2010. But, if you want to talk about the noughties, that'd be 2000 - 2009.

Re:obligatory

[Mr Z]

It'd be weird for "60s" to not include 70, but not include 60.

Editing fail. I meant to say "to include 70 but not include 60."

Re:obligatory

[Hognoxious]

Therefore, the '60's is the decade beginning immediately after the end of year xx60 but a person "in their 60's" has completed 59 years of life and not 10 more.

Not where I live. A person is in his sixties on or after his 60th birthday, which by coincidence happens to be the day that he's been alive for 60 years.

Are newborns considered to be one year old? No, they're 0 (or a fraction, or so many months) until their first birthday.

Re:obligatory

[Hognoxious]

the Romans had no concept of zero until the conquest of Spain and the ensuing interaction with the moorish people who lived there.

Roman conquest of Iberia began during the Punic wars in the 2nd century BC. The Moorish conquest happened around 700 AD.

So only out by 900 years.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

This is as tedious as it is wrongheaded. People used a variety of calendars back in what we call 1 AD. The common era Christian calendar did not arrive until several centuries later, and discrepancies remained among various regions and nations until the 20th Century. These naming conventions are not based on anything real and are arbitrary, just like all names. The fixed calendar does not properly account for the solar year anyway. You're holding on to an illusion of order where none exists.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

It wasn't arbitrary, though, it coincided with mainly Saturnalia, because most parts of the Roman empire were going to celebrate it whether the new state religion allowed it or not.

Re:obligatory

[R2.0]

Whoops, I stand corrected. I think it was the "Summer of Love" that was 1968.

Re:obligatory

[Machtyn]

Sheep eat in the winter... just not "in fields as they flock".

btw, April 14 happens to be a popular date

Re:obligatory

[MyLongNickName]

You lead a very full life there, Ari!

Re:obligatory

[dkh2]

The point is that the shepherds would not be "watching their flocks by night" in winter. That particular line indicates spring - when lambs are being born.

Re:obligatory

[jbengt]

1 AD == 0 BC
0 AD == 1 BC
-1 AD == 2 BC
etc.

Re:obligatory

[dkh2]

Except in the Roman legal system in which he was tried before Pilate. I've seen facsimile copies of the documentation. While the Romans are frequently cast as the bad guys in this story they were obsessive records keepers.

Whether you buy into the Christian system or not, the man around whom the story is built did exist.

The records of his appearance before Pilate exist. Records of his appearance before Chiafas are a bit sketchier (if they exist at all) as a result of later events.

Re:obligatory

[FrameRotBlues]

No, that would be 1967. I only know this because the folks from the generation that went through it enjoyed my then-new 1967 Ford LTD.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Summer_of_love

Re:obligatory

[dangitman]

How about "twenty-ten" or "twenty-eleven"? I don't see the problem. Having been doing a lot of budgets at work recently, that's how everybody says it. Just as everybody says "naughties" when speaking about the 2000s.

I'm not sure why you would even think of saying "oh-ten" because that nomenclature is used for sub-decade years. You'd say "oh-nine," but "oh-ten" wouldn't make any sense.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Au contraire, a cold winter's night is the perfect time to have sheep around.

Re:obligatory

[Rolgar]

Considering the fact that year 0 wasn't set until centuries after the fact (in the 6th century, almost 500 hundred years after the death of the man he was trying to associate the beginning to) it doesn't really matter if there was or wasn't a year zero. It's not like the Romans were walking around talking about year 0 or 1 as the start of the calendar. It's not like we classify things as being in the thirties or forties in reference to things that happened in the first century.

The fact of the matter is, using the term decade in the way we do, and and short hand terms like eighties and nineties is just a short hand form that is easily recognizable way to classify time the way you can classify vehicles as cars, trucks, vans, SUVs, etc. Some are going to prefer more precision, others just want to use the language to convey their message without having to explain in great detail. For instance, you can say the president for the 80s was Regan. While technically not entirely true, he wasn't president for the first 55(ish) weeks of the decade, or the last 49(ish), does it really matter? Carter was a practically a lame duck for his entire failed reelection campaign, and Bush's presidency pre-Kuwait was largely overshadowed by Regan. How many things perfectly line up with the beginning or end of any decade?

Additionally, using a method where the first three digits of the year is intuitive, and is more easily communicated. After all, you can't really refer to the decade from 1981-1990 as the eighties if the last year of the decade doesn't fit. Fashion, entertainment, and politics are largely the things that the news covers, and since it's journalists that write the news, let them set the rules in a way that it's easily for them to frame those topics, and don't worry about it too much, because like lots of things that are classified, the edges are kind of fuzzy, and in the end, since I can't imagine one measurable difference it will make in the world to classify decades by one year earlier or later depending on which camp you're in, so just let it slide. In the grand scheme of all things, does it really matter? We could try to set a calendar based on some other great achievement of man (first written word, first spoken word, invention fire or the wheel), guess the age of the earth, or from the beginning of fusion in the sun, or the big bang itself, and base everything around that, but it's all arbitrary, unless we could calculate the precise age of the universe.

Re:obligatory

[Grapes4Buddha]

Call it twenty-eleven, fer cryinoutloud. Or just '11 if you want.

Re:obligatory

[Grapes4Buddha]

Just for fun, I was dating hand written checks like "3/21/19100" for a while, just to see if anyone commented. Nobody ever said anything.

Maybe they were embarrassed for me.

Re:obligatory

[Grapes4Buddha]

1967. Try again.

Re:obligatory

[clarkcox3]

I'm talking about the calendar that we use *now*, not the calendar that people used then. The Gregorian calendar has no year zero. Period. I'm not making any claims about the calendar's relationship to actual time, I'm just stating a fact.

Re:obligatory

[R2.0]

I'll pass - I was only 1 year old at the time, so my memory's a little fuzzy.

Re:obligatory

[Belial6]

Yes, a decade does = 2001-2010. It also runs from 2000-2009 and 2005 to 2015. A decade is 10 years. If you are trying to make the tired old 'There was no year 0.' argument, you are failing. There was also no year 1 or year 2 or year 3. It wasn't until much later that as a culture we picked an arbitrary time to declare as year 1. Since all years are basically an arbitrary number that we all just happen to agree on, if the vast majority of the population decide that a century starts at the logical value of XX00 and a decade starts at the logical value of XXX0, then that is by definition when it does. Pointing to a counting error for 2000 years ago, and claiming that we must continue to make the same counting error for the rest of our civilizations existence isn't 'intellectual' it is exactly the opposite.

That doesn't even take into account the other times over the last 2000 years that the calender was just changed by those in power. This decade as you are arguing it no more started in 2001 than this year started February. After all, it is clear that Sept = 7, Oct = 8 and Dec = 10.

Or were you being sarcastic? If, so, congratulations, you successfully trolled me.

Re:obligatory

[skeeto]

I don't know anyone who would say "July 10th, 1990" is in the 80's. (Picked that date at random.)

Re:obligatory

[ari_j]

Hey, I have to do something with all the time I am refusing to think of the children!

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Just for fun, I was dating hand written checks like "3/21/19100" for a while

hehehe you cheeky scamp, I see what you did there. Everyone knows there's no 21st month!

Re:obligatory

[toddestan]

Something I've noticed is that "Decades" are often defined by what happened in the last few years of that decade. The Sixties is remembered for Woodstock (68). The 70's for disco (late 70's/early 80's), Iranian hostages (79-80), etc.

How much do you want to bet that this decade will be remembered as the Social Networking decade (when was Myspace started?)

Well, that's not always true. The 1940's is known for WWII. The 1930's is best known for the Great Depression, even though WWII started in 1939. The 1910's is known for WWI. The 1860's for the American Civil War. With that said, the 2000's could be known for the terrorist attacks in 2001, but also could be remembered for the economic meltdown of 2008 if things get really bad and doesn't recover for the next few years.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

How fucking stupid do you have to be to not know the difference between "trivialize" and "confuse"?

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

Hippie

Re:obligatory

[Carewolf]

So I guess the first decade ran from -1 to 0, and the second decade was from 1 to 10?

No decade counting starts over at each century, have you ever heard of the 200th decade? No, it because decades are not counted from year 1 like centuries and millineas.

Re:obligatory

[Anonymous Coward]

The double ohs.

Of the D'Ohs for brevity

The XBox's need more coverage.

[pecosdave]

The 360 for its inexcusable failure rate, then in the wake of Microsofts competitors constantly revising their models and offering updates Microsoft declares they will not create a version two or revise their hardware.

Then - while XBox 360's were new and failing in droves, Microsoft not only decides the old model will no longer be supported with new products they recall as much existing stock of the old model as they can and do their best to make it got away. Sort of like they wanted to do with XP when Vista came out.

Something all the game consoles need:
Older laptop style optical drives that can be changed by release a lever. Can anyone say failure rate?

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[sopssa]

I dont think Xbox 360 was really lame. It was actually pretty good. Granted, I only bought mine in 2007 but it has worked great and so have my friends ones too.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[pecosdave]

I'm not calling a working XBOX 360 lame. I'm calling a 54.2% failure rate and no plans to revamp the hardware lame.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[timmarhy]

the xbox had a failure rate of between 3% and 5% in line with industry norms (MS claim). while it's not a stellar performace it's nothing special. typically when you dig into the claims of 50% failure rates, they are either online polls or of limited sample size (in other words fucking worthless).

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[DaemonKnightVS]

Great fun as a console, but there is no denying that it had a huge problems. Scratching discs (which could be fixed by placing padding into the optical drive, pretty lame for ms not to include said padding in the first place!), failing optical drives and of course rrod! Those can be described as pretty lame!

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Macthorpe]

Such a survey is inherently inaccurate because of selection bias.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[timmarhy]

let's examine the data behind this shall we. they surveyed 5000 people which is just 0.0178% of the total units sold, so statisticly it's a worthless sample size. They also don't give any clue on how they selected these 5000 people, for all we know they picked people with rabid MS hate.

i'd say the only thing lame here is your claim of 54% failure rate, it just doesn't sense check.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Anonymous Coward]

"they surveyed 5000 people which is just 0.0178% of the total units sold, so statisticly it's a worthless sample size."

This shows a fundamental misunderstanding of statistics. That is actually an extremely large sample size. Remember we generally poll the entire US on samples of about 1000 people. The issue you should worry about here is ascertainment bias.

Here's a handy calculator to help you with your understanding of polling:
http://www.surveysystem.com/sscalc.htm

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[delinear]

Of course, as with all statistics, it's worth taking those 3-5% figures with a grain of salt - I wonder if it includes repeat failures of single units or if multiple failures of one unit only count as +1 to the failure rate. If some of the complainers are to be believed the same unit might have failed three or four times (and I've seen much higher claims) which would skew the official figures somewhat. Mind, there's no telling if these people are being entirely honest either! I agree anywhere near 50% failure is highly dubious though in any case.

Mine only failed once (and at another time destroyed one disk before I learned very quickly to always keep it positioned horizontally), outside of the original warranty but was repaired under the extended warranty offered for RRoD, which was a nice win for consumers for a change regardless that I would have preferred it didn't break.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[sopssa]

But it needs to be from a truly random sample, not taken from some troubleshooting forum for 360, where people without problems never go.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Anonymous Coward]

My understanding is that this is the failure rate of the previous hardware revisions; the latest revision (Jasper) supposedly alleviates most if not all of the failure issues. Still, that is a pretty abysmal failure rate.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[RogueyWon]

Video gaming in general could have used more prominence in TFA. After all, it's undoubtedly a part of the tech sector. Thinking of 10 examples off the top of my head, in no particular order...

- The Red Ring of Death: as you say, should absolutely have been in there. Cost-cutting decisions lead to major customer frustrations. The issue is then compounded by lies, obfuscation and, once the problem is acknowledged, a massively slow response.

- The Gamecube: everything about it. A nasty, tacky piece of junk with no games worth looking at that was put out with the intention of being a serious contender and rightly consigned to third place.

- Hot Coffee: the video game industry unintentionally playing right into the hands of the "think of the children" brigade. While there's an absolutely legitimate battle to be fought against censorship of video-games, this was a huge tactical mis-step.

- The Sixaxis controller: rather than going for the obvious solution of competing with the Wii by having more and better games (which would hardly be difficult), Sony decided to rush some desperately inadequate motion sensing tech into the PS3's controller. When it was announced, everybody assumed it would be a nasty hack. When the PS3 was launched, everybody could see it really was a nasty hack. Fortunately, most PS3 developers now ignore it.

- The original Xbox360 controller: just... what? I'd love to know who decided this was a good idea. Microsoft actually issued a better, second-generation controller pretty quickly. But not before they'd become a laughing stock.

- Spore: the hype, the underwhelming game, the hideously broken DRM, the Amazon review campaign. Never has a game promised so much and delivered so little.

- Nintendo's online strategy: yeah, still waiting on this one... maybe they have one... somewhere...

- The PSP Go: Sony put out a revision of their middlingly-successful handheld whose only claim to fame is that it has less functionality than the original version. And then they wonder why it doesn't take off...

- The DSi: Nintendo demonstrate that they have the ethics of a rabid pitbull by putting out the first handheld for many years to incorporate region locking.

- The Phantom: ok, I know that some of the events surrounding Infinium Labs are touched upon briefly in TFA, but I think the Phantom should have taken pride of place in the line-up of tech-fiascos over the last decade.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[TapeCutter]

"they surveyed 5000 people which is just 0.0178% of the total units sold, so statisticly it's a worthless sample size"

The statistical power of a survey does not depend on population size, a sample of 5000 is more than sufficient to get a very good estimate of the real failure rate, (assuming the real failure rate is not extremely small).

However a failure rate is meaningless without considering length of time and under what conditions. And as you imply the sample must be random, self selecting readers of a particular mag is not at all random, so even though they have a good sample size the quoted numbers are complete bullshit.

In otherwords the only thing the survey demonstrates is that an unhappy customer is far more likely to take the survey than a satisfied customer.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Fred_A]

Such a survey is inherently inaccurate because of selection bias.

What selection biais ? Are you trying to deny that 100% of burned out Xbox machines no longer work ? That's not selection biais.
It's twisting the facts. Not at all the same thing.

*runsaway*

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[tverbeek]

Video gaming in general could have used more prominence in TFA. After all, it's undoubtedly a part of the tech sector.

But not as widely relevant as computers, phones, or the internet. I'd guess those are all used by 99% of TFA's readers, and use of media such as TV and music are probably over 95%. Sure, games are popular, but not quite so universal. For example, the last console I owned was an Atari, and unless you count the couple apps I installed on my iPhone out of curiosity, the last video game I played was Riven.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Anonymous Coward]

i'd say the only thing lame here is your claim of 54% failure rate, it just doesn't sense check.

I'd say you in statistics ignorant truly are. The whole point of statistics is knowing how much one can err from the truth, analyzing a small sample. Using big samples is not statistics; it's counting.

Let p be the probability 0.54 and n the people surveyed (5000), then the standard error is sqrt(p*(1-p)/n), or 0.7%. So, the failure rate can be between 53.3% and 54.7%

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[pecosdave]

My guess based on most surveys I've participated in, each person gets one vote, so the same machine breaking a dozen times or a dozen machines breaking once but all owned by the same person would count as 1 vote. The answer is 1 vote for broken. I didn't see the actual survey in question, I'm just answering based on what I've seen.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Anonymous Coward]

The sample size is fine. Even with a sample size of about 1000 you've got a 95% confidence interval of a few percent over a population in the millions.

Selection is the real problem.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[pecosdave]

I agree with you on most things, but I'm going to cut the Gamecube some slack. I love my Gamecube, but mostly because I actually like platformers and I think the control was absolutely perfect for RPGs. The ported from Dreamcast Skies of Arcadia Legends completely rocked, I actually enjoyed Luigi's Mansion, in my opinion Mario Kart Double Dash is the best version of Mario Kart, and I say that even with the incredibly awesome SNES version in mind. When you have kids you learn to look at Mario Party through a whole different set of eyes. Granted - the Gamecube was not for hardcore gamers who want FPS type games or the absolute best graphics, it was the predecessor to the Wii - more for casual gaming and the younger crowd, or in my case the platformer still likes Mario and Zelda crowd. Personally, I'm not too excited about the Wii, oh, I'll probably get one eventually, but the Gamecube is to me exactly what the Wii is to others, a great casual gaming machine, only the Gamecube isn't based around a gimmick controller. As a matter of fact it introduced the Wavebird Wireless, the first wireless game control on any console that didn't suck.

On the XBox360 controller, I think you meant the original XBox.

PSP actually does have region locking but they don't use it on anything but movies and it's easily defeated - at least on 1000's and 2000's.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Again]

- The Gamecube: everything about it. A nasty, tacky piece of junk with no games worth looking at that was put out with the intention of being a serious contender and rightly consigned to third place.

The Gamecube sold 22 million units and the original XBox only sold 24 million. Nintendo made money off of every single unit sold. I wouldn't call it a failure.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Anonymous Coward]

dont mind me, just removing an accidental mod.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[HaZardman27]

- The Gamecube: everything about it. A nasty, tacky piece of junk with no games worth looking at that was put out with the intention of being a serious contender and rightly consigned to third place.

There was no point in reading anything after this statement, as you have already colored your comment as biased and unfounded. The Gamecube gave me hundreds of hours of entertainment, from games like Super Smash Bros, Mario Kart, Skies of Arcadia, Tales of Symphonia, Resident Evil 4, Zelda, and many more.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[onefriedrice]

I don't know why he called it tacky either. If anything was tacky, it was the original Xbox controller (or more generally, the entire original Xbox). IMO.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[RogueyWon]

Everything about the Gamecube felt cheap and nasty (ok, yes, I'll grant it was slightly cheaper than the opposition). The worst bit was the controller, with its ugly, unintuitive, oddly-shaped face buttons, lack of a proper second analogue stick and, if you had the wired version, a cable that was far too short to reach the average sofa. The ridiculous little flippy lid for the optical drive was also horrid (and I saw more than one snapped off by an over-enthusiastic kiddy).

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh, Sopssa, are you upset because Microsoft is being exposed for crappy products yet again? Are you going to cry now?

Fucking troll.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[Orii]

While it's not statistically valid evidence, all 4 people in my office who owned an Xbox had to have theirs replaced. One of them had to do it twice. That's hard to reconcile with a 5% error rate.

Presumably the last Xbox people get actually works correctly. By that measure, my office had 5 occurences of the problem and ended up with 4 working consoles out of the 9 total. That's starting to sound like the 50% failure rate.

You could argue the failure rate of the console isn't the best measure for the situation; maybe a better measure would be how many times customers ran into the issue. My office averages 1.25 failures per Xbox owner, and 100% of the owners had the problem at least once. That's not good.

Re:The XBox's need more coverage.

[zygotic mitosis]

You need to be logged in for unmodding to work.

Playstation 3 backwards compatibility and price

[assemblerex]

"If anything it's too cheap" That didn't go over too well did it now.

Re:Playstation 3 backwards compatibility and price

[Geoff-with-a-G]

I'm a little surprised that didn't make the list. It still irritates me, every time I look down at the PS2 I still have hooked up next to my PS3. Looking at the eBay listings for a $400 used 60 Gig console next to a $300 shiny new 80 Gig console just reinforces it.

MS?

[Arancaytar]

I guess that's only because you're limiting yourself to actual tech decisions, not including tech companies litigating.

(Oh wait. Let's make that "litigation companies litigating." I don't even know why I brought it up.)

Re:MS?

[Stormwatch]

They did mention SCO.

Talking of dumb...

[jez9999]

... wtf is a scad?

Re:Talking of dumb...

[cdrudge]

Dictionary - learn how to use one

Re:Talking of dumb...

[aaaurgh]

Perhaps what the poster was trying to say was...

How does "any of several carangid fishes (especially of the genus Decapterus)" act in the role of a numerator in the context.

Perhaps the OP should also learn to use a dictionary too, I also thought WTF when I saw "scads" used as it was.

Re:Talking of dumb...

[Yamata no Orochi]

Perhaps what the poster was trying to say was...

How does "any of several carangid fishes (especially of the genus Decapterus)" act in the role of a numerator in the context.

Perhaps the OP should also learn to use a dictionary too, I also thought WTF when I saw "scads" used as it was.

Scads is a colloquial term for "lots."

It's fairly commonly used.

Re:Talking of dumb...

[mcgrew]

According to Google it's the Savanna College of Art and Design. However, to most people "scads" means "shitloads".

Re:Talking of dumb...

[aaaurgh]

Perhaps it is common where you live, but not in the UK or Australia; nor ironically does it mean that in the merriam-webster dictionary that the poster referred to.

Re:Talking of dumb...

[An ominous Cow art]

I live in the US, and my vague impression was that 'scads' was a UK term. I guess not. It's not something I use, or hear/read very often, though.

Re:Talking of dumb...

[Yamata no Orochi]

I used the term "colloquially" to give the person I was responding to (oh, you, actually.) the benefit of the doubt. But yes, it IS listed as that in the merriam-webster dictionary that the poster referred to. Allow me to copy and paste for you.

: a large number or quantity —usually used in plural

Re:Talking of dumb...

[aaaurgh]

Interesting, when I originally clicked the second definition link on the m-w page in question nothing happened, I couldn't get to the second one whatever I did so I presumed it to be an erroneous entry (naturally it works now though). I bow to your knowledge and apologise. However, I do still think the term to be uncommon, I've never heard it myself in Oz or the UK and continue to think it unwise for people to use colloquialisms when there are far more suitable words available that would not cause confusion - your own suggestion of "lots" for example.

Nice find.

[upuv]

Ah that was good for a Laugh.

Steve Ballmer on stage at any time is always funny. :) Developers Developers Developers..... bahahahahahahaha

Sony root kit. I'm still finding PC's infected with this beast.

Zune. Do they still make this thing. I actually saw one in the wild once. Man that thing is UGLY.

The Kindle the most pointless electronic gizmo ever. It's not a laptop, phone, or book. You don't own the content. and it's UGLY. You want how much??????

All in all a good read. Thanks.

First Paragraph

[datajack]

When clocks struck midnight on January 1st and the dreaded Y2K bug turned out to be nothing but a mild irritant, it proved once again that the experts often don’t know what the heck they’re talking about.

No. The Experts were the ones working many, many hours in the preceding years fixing and updating things so that when the clock did turn, the problems were - for the main - no longer present. A job damned well done and the people fixing it should be praised, not ridiculed.

The people who don't know what the heck they were talking about are the media types like this guy who are quick to jump on catastrophic failures but rarely (if ever) give due praise when things are planned and done right. "Everything's fine" doesn't make good headlines for these people.

Re:First Paragraph

[silentcoder]

Mod parent up, I was just on my way to come post the same thing.

Re:First Paragraph

[Hognoxious]

Mod parent up. Anyone who says the whole Y2K thing was hype is either an idiot, a n00b or both. The author of TFA is quite possibly both.

Re:First Paragraph

[iamapizza]

Mod parent up to 6.
#88: Also note that Google's multiple outages this year (and last?) don't get a mention.
#89: No mention of Windows Mobile 6.5 and how MS threw away its last chance of ever competing with the droid/iphone.
#90: TFA

Re:First Paragraph

[crivens]

I believe you just posted the singularily most intelligent and correct response on Slashdot. Congratulations!

Re:First Paragraph

[Viol8]

You complete dick.

I was working in a bank at that time. If we hadn't fixed our systems then come 1/1/2000 every customer in our business area would have found all their transactions failed as the system would have thought they'd expired 100 years ago!

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

No. TFA is clearly riduling the doomsayers, not the people who prevented disaster. Later he explicitly says: "It turns out that the world has addressed the Y2K problem remarkably well."

You (and the me-too's) need to find a different example to vent against.

Re:First Paragraph

[Gadget_Guy]

Could you please point out a single example where a catastrophe was avoided due to fixing the code handing year changes?

How would we know? It is not as if people are going to publicise the bugs that they fix. "Hey everyone, we almost nuked Poland!"

Anyway, the worst of the hype that went around did not come from the experts. Nobody who knew what they were talking about would have said that there would be starvation in the streets. That said, there were definitely some people who tried to cash in on the paranoia. We had some consultant come in and try to sell us software to fix our systems because they were not Y2K ready. Sure enough, when the year changed the computers wrapped back to 1981. However, resetting them to the correct year worked fine.

But just because some unscrupulous people jumped on the bandwagon doesn't mean to say that there were not real bugs to fix. The main software that we wrote had a Y2K bug in it, but we fixed it back in 1997 without fanfare. Just because you never heard of it being fixed doesn't mean to say that it was a made up bug.

Re:First Paragraph

[drunkenoafoffofb3ta]

I'm not saying you're wrong, but a journalist, Nick Davies, has built an entire book on media distortion and starts with the Y2K brouhaha and argues the opposite of what you're saying about media types.

He argues that billions that governments spent avoiding the mostly fairly minor consequences of the vast majority of non-mission critical computers thinking it's the wrong date were whipped up by lazy journalists wanting easy copy: http://www.flatearthnews.net/chapter-one-bug-ate-world

He ends with "This is Flat Earth news. A story appears to be true. It is widely accepted as true. It becomes a heresy to suggest that it is not true - even if it is riddled with falsehood, distortion and propaganda".

Re:First Paragraph

[oodaloop]

"You should use my dandruff shampoo."

"But you don't have dandruff."

"Exactly."

Re:First Paragraph

[iamapizza]

I should've explained better - the "improvements" in Windows Mobile 6.5 were hardly improvements at all. Someone put it well when they said that it was "as useful as a poke in the eye"

Yes, Android feels like a beta, but then so do all Google products.

Even though WinMo is for power users (I agree), the problem with the popularity of the iphone is that the power users already want it in their enterprise environment and ferverently believe that it *IS* an enterprise phone.

Re:First Paragraph

[smpoole7]

To this (and the other replies here): he's not referring to people like you. Don't think that for a minute. I was a Y2K Fear debunker myself, and I assure you, I NEVER attacked people like you who WERE working around the clock to ensure that the transition was smooth.

What I attacked -- and what he's clearly referring to -- were the outright fearmongers. "We CAN'T fix it all in time, buy beans, bullets and head for the hills!" ... and ... "embedded systems are the great unknown, we're all going to die, so buy beans and bullets and head for the ... etc., etc." Have you forgotten the "Y2K Crisis Center" (or whatever they called it) with Sam Donaldson, on watch over the transition? All of the newspaper articles in early 1999 about how the End Was Coming?

THAT'S what he's referring to. Of course there were bugs to be fixed -- some of them true showstoppers. Yes, a lot of people like you poured a lot of nervous sweat into fixing them.

But personally, speaking for myself, I'll never respect Ed Yourdon again. He was the ringleader of the "too many lines of code, it CAN'T be fixed crowd," and continued to ringlead even after it became obvious that it WAS being fixed.

Not you, poster. You did a GREAT job just so that "debunkers" like me COULD say, "it'll be a non-event." :)

Re:First Paragraph

[gsslay]

I suggest that all slashdotters join me in ignoring this article, since the first paragraph makes if clear it was written by a fool who knows nothing of what he speaks.

Anyone who actually worked in a Y2K project knows that if the problem had been ignored then the consequences would have been disastrous.

Re:First Paragraph

[dunkelfalke]

To be honest, I also prefer WM6.1 to WM6.5 (except for the Bluetooth stack which is somewhat better). But still, even WM6.5 is a perfectly usable multitasking operating system for portable computers (and I use my Windows Mobile devices as portable PCs since 2003).

Also, iPhone is not that popular in Europe, so you often see following messages in the smartphone boards:
"I am fed up with Windows Mobile, I have bought an iPhone now"
and a couple of months later: "I am fed up with iPhone, I am going back to Windows Mobile".
Pretty funny, IMHO.

Re:First Paragraph

[dunkelfalke]

Apple fanbois with mod points are very predictable.

Re:First Paragraph

[datajack]

mostly fairly minor consequences of the vast majority of non-mission critical computers thinking it's the wrong date

Taken individually and in isolation, it is true that the problem with many such systems is trivial. Howevr many of these trivial systems feed into or from other trivial systems and this makes the system viewed as a whole rather complex. It is extremely difficult to predict the outcome of even a simple looking system (see Conway's game of life for example) so there was no telling what would or could happen with all of these non-critical systems suddenly hitting faulty data. As close to feasibly possible to 'all of it' had to be fixed because otherwise there would be too many unknowns that could come back to bite us later.

Re:First Paragraph

[cerberusss]

#88: Also note that Google's multiple outages this year (and last?) don't get a mention.

In 2008, Google Apps did not reach its SLA. But for 2009, I think they did.

Re:First Paragraph

[WinterSolstice]

Exactly - I spent a year running a Y2K lab, constantly running through key dates so that programmers could test code. Stuff broke - stuff broke UGLY. It took months to get most of it working properly, and if the systems I was testing had broken?
People would have noticed. People would have sued.

Re:First Paragraph

[eggoeater]

Same here. I worked for First Union at the time. Did a lot of Y2K work that would have been very VERY disruptive to the call centers.

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't believe anyone is claiming that the problem labelled as Y2K bug was made up. That bug was very real and it also lingers in the form of the unix 2038 limit problem. On the other hand, what has been stated is that the whole Y2K problem was nothing beyond a big, old "the sky is falling" scare. The media campaign around it even led some people to stock on supplies and wait for a breakdown of the entire social order. Even you, who should know better, blindly insinuated that detonation of nuclear bombs would be a plausible result of the Y2K bug. And that's the entire y2k problem. It isn't a technical problem. It was a great pretext to scare the public and let idiocy run rampant.

Re:First Paragraph

[iamapizza]

I actually saw that one coming :D

Re:First Paragraph

[BodhiCat]

I work as the tech guru in a office which is all Macs. Despite me telling them long before that Macs weren't vulnerable to the Y2K they still freaked out as the date approached, and lo and behold, nothing happened. woo hoo

Re:First Paragraph

[betterunixthanunix]

What this chapter completely misses is that the emergency spending on Y2K fixes was just the tail end of a long effort of companies updating their software. Journalists were not talking about the Y2K bug in 1991, but plenty of programmers were already aware of it and already working on solutions to the problem. By the time the story got interesting -- as the year 2000 approached -- the problem had been mostly solved without any prodding from the media or pushing from the president. This whole situation was compounded by the fact that most people, including the journalists covering the story, had no understanding of how computers stored dates, and the fact that companies whose products had nothing to do with the Y2K bug were advertising their software as "Y2K compliant," and everyone wound up thinking that there was impending doom.

For the record, the Y2K bug did actually threaten critical computer systems, many of which were mainframes installed decades earlier, but those systems were fixed long before the story ever ran on the news.

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

How would we know? It is not as if people are going to publicise the bugs that they fix. "Hey everyone, we almost nuked Poland!"

Of course. Who would ever bother to read that. Nobody cares about Poland.

Re:First Paragraph

[KeithJM]

Yes and no. The Media also hyped the y2k issue beyond a reasonable scope. There were people convinced that planes would fall out of the sky and elevators would just stop wherever they were, that grocery stores would be looted because trucks would stop running and delivering food. The (real) problem of y2k was well handled, but it was never going to change the laws of physics so planes wouldn't work any more. THAT is why people felt let down -- if the problem was really as big as it had been hyped to be, there is no chance that we would have come out of it that cleanly.

Re:First Paragraph

[Fred_A]

He argues that billions that governments spent avoiding the mostly fairly minor consequences of the vast majority of non-mission critical computers thinking it's the wrong date were whipped up by lazy journalists wanting easy copy: http://www.flatearthnews.net/chapter-one-bug-ate-world.

Not to mention that a number of (so called) journalists called it the "millennium bug" at the time instead of using the more proper "Y2K" or "date rollover" or "insert your favourite proper name here". Maybe "early millennium bug" ?

Of course, we're all familiar with the way the general press distorts anything that's marginally technical. But then it has happened several times that I was at the front line of several economic (Euro) headline worthy stories (I wasn't one of the actors, I just had access to all the data). And there too, the reporting was invariably terribly distorted at best, completely wrong in most cases.

Nowadays, I regrettably have to consider the press (broadly speaking, rolling all media under one name) as a "source of information" of sorts because I know it's what most people will use. But I never consider it as actual information. Merely as heavily distorted data that may, or may not, have anything to do with whatever actually happened. But numerous people will base their decisions on this which makes it somewhat important.

Re:First Paragraph

[mrsquid0]

No. No. No. Let's put this urban myth to bed for good. The Y2k bug was very real, but it was greatly overstated by some in the media, and by people who stood to make a lot of money by pandering to y2k fear. For example, there were people who were loudly saying that almost every device or process that had a silicon chip in it would fail at the stroke of midnight on Dec 31, 1999. The vast majority of these were not patched, they were left alone, and in the vast majority of cases nothing happened. This is not because of hard-working programmers, but because there was never a problem with them in the first place.

          The y2k bug was real, and in some cases it was necessary to fix potential problems before they occurred. However, it was a far smaller problem that was made out at the time. It was not a case of heroic programmers saving the world.

Re:First Paragraph

[betterunixthanunix]

I had an uncle working for MetLife in the early 90s; had he and his team not put in many months of work back then, the Y2K bug would have left millions of insurance claims unpayable, from business insurance to health plans. On any given day, thousands upon thousands of insurance transactions are processed automatically by a computer, which would have rejected everything as invalid because the claim dates would have appeared to be before the policies were opened.

People who think Y2K was not a big deal were either children when the problem was solved or never really understood the problem to begin with. Y2K38 is the next big date/time bug to deal with; many people here on /. will probably wind up working on fixing the problem long before it causes catastrophes, and we will be pretty old on January 1, 2038. I am also pretty sure that people like you will be saying, "There was never really a problem" for many years afterward, and someone like me will probably have to reply with a story about a relative who solved the problem before the press started running stories about the end of the world.

Re:First Paragraph

[kaychoro]

Ah the memories... A friend of mine shut off the circuit breaker at her parents’ house as the clock struck Midnight. Not a bug, but an excellent chance for a practical joke.

Re:First Paragraph

[Gadget_Guy]

TFA is clearly riduling the doomsayers, not the people who prevented disaster.

Then it doesn't deserve to be on a list of lamest moments in tech. Surely it should be on the greatest moments in tech. Or the lamest moments in journalism.

On the other hand, it might deserve a place on this list if people started to ask why all the software was expecting the 1900s to go forever. I remember filling in a paper form back in high school in the 80s and thinking how short sighted it was to have 19____ on the form because it would not be reusable in 25 years. Yeah, it was stupid to think that a paper form (made on a typewriter and then photocopied) would still be used after all that time, but it made me be aware of assumptions in code. I have always allowed for dates with 4 digit years in my code.

(I have made some other really stupid assumptions in my programming, so I don't get off scott free on this point)

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

I can tell you what the majority of these "bugs" were. It was an ancient language, sadly still used, called COBOL. It's design is for batch processing, and is why you see payroll, banks, etc using it still to this day.

Where it failed was variables are defined in "PIC" clauses which define the number of bits used to hold a variable. When most of these COBOL programs were written a PIC 2 was used to define the Year field to save memory because of how little was in reserve. So Years were stored from 00-99. What had to happen was the PIC 2 declarations had to be changed to PIC 4, so years could have the century included and 20(00) could be differentiated from 19(00). I guess technically this problem could then arise again in the year 1(0000)

I'm not going to go into great detail about how much I despise COBOL, but changing the PIC clause leads to many more changes through out the code. Hence the time it took to fix the Y2K "bug."

Re:First Paragraph

[Fred_A]

Pro-choice on both abortions and guns.

You know medical science has made lots of progress since women had to resort to firearms to get rid of unwanted children.

Re:First Paragraph

[Gadget_Guy]

Did it really sound like I was being serious about nuking Poland? That was an extreme example of what would not ever happen.

You are trying to have it both ways by acknowledging that there was a real problem, but then go on to say that "it was a great pretext to scare the public and let idiocy run rampant". Yes it was a real problem that needed to be fixed and certainly was NOT a pretext for anything else. The fact that some people blew it out of proportion should not diminish the hard work that people had to do to keep everything working.

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

My team and I worked our ASSES off to make sure everything worked, including an old payroll system that wasn't Y2K ready. Anyone who got paid for the last two weeks of December 1999 and thinks Y2K was "hype" can suck my....

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

I think you are confusing reality with Family Guy. I don't remember any news articles saying all this was going to happen. The planes thing was touched on, but "planes would fall out of the sky"? So, this Y2K bug would actually circumvent physics?

Re:First Paragraph

[jacobsm]

You forget that hardware, eg computer memory was vastly more expensive when these programs were first written. The smallest IBM/360 (Model 20) had 4K of core memory and leased for $2,700/mo in 1965. Programmers had to optimize their program on a byte by byte basis. It's a vastly different world today than it was when COBOL was the only game in town.

Re:First Paragraph

[Sloppy]

Could you please point out a single example where a catastrophe was avoided due to fixing the code handing year changes?

A catastrophe is when every single customer who ever bought your accounting program and is paying overpriced monthly maintenance contracts that are worth a fraction of what you're charging (so that you are living easy without having to work very hard) all call and say that all their reports print $0.00 because the computer misinterpreted the requested date range and there were no transactions in 1900. Oh, and a catastrophe is when the poor suckers who didn't opt for the overpriced maintenance contract, keep saying no (so that you only collect money from them for the initial sale), and the y2k bug was a great way to totally fuck them over and make them pay a ridiculous amount for a trivial bugfix (relinking) which they couldn't do for themselves because they were stupid enough to buy a proprietary application.

And yes, those catastrophes were avoided (by relinking with new libraries). The suckers paid, though those easy days eventually ended (for me, anyway). But the world is still full of ignorant suckers who are getting raped routinely, due to not having a free market for their software maintenance. I promise you all: idiocy is still out there, because even though some people learn, a lot of them don't and the lost ones are replenished by P.T. Barnum's principle. My fellow programmers, remember to lock people into your proprietary shit in the late 2020s because 2038 will be payday again! Y2K is too good to inflict on customers only once every century. I just hope Free Software doesn't take off, because when you have market efficiencies like that, there's nothing to skim.

(But seriously: Yeah, there a few little things about my former job that I'm not too proud of, and y2k is one of them. The bugs were real, and people really would have been unable to do routine tasks, like print paychecks, if the bugs hadn't been fixed. Is a payroll failure a "catastrophe"? Ok, so not in the same league as nuclear war, but it still would have been pretty bad.)

Re:First Paragraph

[Nesman64]

Yhbt. Yhl. Hand.

Re:First Paragraph

[bkr1_2k]

For the record, the Y2K bug did actually threaten critical computer systems, many of which were mainframes installed decades earlier, but those systems were fixed long before the story ever ran on the news.

Which is exactly why it was all hyped nonsense. The people who needed to do fixes already knew about them and had them underway long before the media frenzy. It was all stupid reactionary/hypersensationalist journalism intended to boost sales and get ratings. It worked.

Re:First Paragraph

[joss]

>The fact that some people blew it out of proportion should not diminish the hard work that people had to do to keep everything working.

Sorry, no, most of that hard work *was* a waste of time. We can tell because some countries [Italy for instance] pretty much completely ignored the y2k problem while others spent billions on it. Nothing particuarly bad happened in places where they ignored it.. a couple of things stopped working properly briefly and had to be patched, but the vast majority of effort that went into preemptively preventing y2k bugs was a waste of time and money.

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

You've obviously never seen Polish women ^_^

Re:First Paragraph

[pwfffff]

Yeah that's why he CHOOSES to.

Re:First Paragraph

[Matt]

Have you forgotten the "Y2K Crisis Center" (or whatever they called it) with Sam Donaldson, on watch over the transition? All of the newspaper articles in early 1999 about how the End Was Coming?

Funny you mention newspapers. The primary Y2K bug I saw was all the web pages which on new years day said "January 1, 19100." Somewhere I still have a screenshot of the New York Times' web page like that.

I think I heard of one embedded system that broke due to Y2K, but I've seen many more over the years that got confused over leap years. The year 2000 was especially good for that because that wasn't a leap year even though the common, oversimplified, every-4-year rule says it should have been.

Re:First Paragraph

[david_thornley]

Memory wasn't that expensive, even back then. The 360/20 mentioned had a heck of a lot of expensive circuitry that wasn't memory.

On the other hand, punch card columns were precious. Punch card decks were the files for some time, and the primary means of data entry for many years afterwards. They were 80 columns wide, and records spanning two cards were error-prone. In some cases, a 4-digit year would have forced a record over the 80-character limit.

And, of course, it didn't really matter, because everything would be rewritten long before then. Typically you'd use a program for maybe five years, possibly even ten, and then the system would be rewritten. After all, it wouldn't run on the new computer, would it?

(Also, COBOL was never the only game in town. You could always write your apps in assembler, and many places did.)

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, harrymcc. Only someone lame enough to make up a top 87 list of thigns would be lame enough to defend that comment.

You're an idiot, and so are the editors for linking to your page.

Re:First Paragraph

[Blakey Rat]

My favorite was a letter to the editor in a local paper from someone worried that the power plants would shut down on Y2K because, and I quote: "they would think it was 1900, and this city didn't have power in 1900."

Yes, because the programmers of the power plant's software made sure to add in an extensive database of historical knowledge. Obviously.

Re:First Paragraph

[Guy Harris]

I think I heard of one embedded system that broke due to Y2K, but I've seen many more over the years that got confused over leap years. The year 2000 was especially good for that because that wasn't a leap year even though the common, oversimplified, every-4-year rule says it should have been.

Actually, it was a leap year, even though the common, not-quite-as-oversimplified-but-still-too-simple every-4-year-except-for-every-100-year rule says it shouldn't have been. The really dumb systems with the every-4-year rule lucked out.

Now we can all wait for the end of civilization in February 2100 as every single embedded system crashes....

Re:First Paragraph

[dangitman]

I think part of the problem is also geek-speak intruding into mainstream life. "Y2K" sounds weird and foreign. If it had been called "The Year 2000 Bug" or perhaps "The Millennial Bug" I don't think there would have been as much distress and alarm.

Re:First Paragraph

[Hurricane78]

I hope I never run into you.
And if I do, I hope it’s with a knife.

Them being idiots does not mean it’s OK for you, to rip them off and insult them. Especially since I have the feeling, that to you, everyone but you, including me and everybody else here, is an idiot...

Re:First Paragraph

[lowrydr310]

I remember the best example of a Y2K bug that I've seen was the arrival/departure screen at my local airport. JANUARY 1, 19100

Re:First Paragraph

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's an inconsequential, but real-world example of the Y2K bug in action. In 1999 a friend of mine told me an ATM had rejected her request for funds. I asked her when her card expired: sometime in 2000. I explained to her that the software in the machine wasn't Y2K-compliant and "thought" her card had expired in 1900 and correctly (under those faulty circumstances) denied her request. As I said, inconsequential, but as other have said, catastrophic if all those coders hadn't fixed the problem in God knows how many applications.

Also, I had really hoped to never hear all the arguing over when the millennium really started again in my lifetime. There was no year zero, fine; there wasn't really a year 1 either. Somebody above went a good way to explaining some of the vast number of problems that contributed to the argument in the first place. A decade is 0-9. Let it go kids.

And, yes, get off my lawn!

Re:First Paragraph

[Sloppy]

I understand your anger, but FWIW, I don't do that anymore and I always counsel anyone who asks, to avoid getting locked in like that.

Re:First Paragraph

[smpoole7]

"Then it doesn't deserve to be on a list of lamest moments in tech. Surely it should be on the greatest moments in tech. Or the lamest moments in journalism."

I guess this is a matter of perspective, then. You can say that his list contains some odd entries (what list doesn't?). But to be fair to the article's author, he clarifies precisely what he was referring to in the first actual item: "It turns out that the world has addressed the Y2K problem remarkably well."

It's funny how two people can read the same article and come up with two different conclusions. I never thought the author was ridiculing those programmers who quietly, and with dedication, worked to fix Y2K bugs (which DID exist).

And to continue quoting the author, "Those who predicted widespread starvation, utility failures, medical emergencies, and financial catastrophy probably feel a tad sheepish."

Just being fair to the author.

Besides, "best of" and "worst of" lists are almost always a farce, anyway. Getting worked up over them is a waste of time and energy.

Re:First Paragraph

[Hognoxious]

We can tell because some countries [Italy for instance] pretty much completely ignored the y2k problem

I'd like to see a citation for that. But if you've ever been to Italy or had any business dealings with Italians you'd be aware that if everything did fall to pieces, you wouldn't notice any difference.

Re:First Paragraph

[Hognoxious]

That bug was very real and it also lingers in the form of the unix 2038 limit problem.

They aren't really the same kind of thing. The unix problem is due to an internal counter rolling over. Y2K was more to do with how applications store and process dates.

The media campaign around it even led some people to stock on supplies

You don't seem to realise how tightly coupled and automated supply chains are these days. Supermarket's central depot refuses to ship some thing out because the computer says it's past its shelf life - by nearly a century. Bakery puts a block on a retailer's orders because they've apparently exceeded their payment terms - by 99 years and 350 days. Business systems are full of these kind of calculations. I know because, like many others who've commented in this thread, I have been involved in patching them.

Did I hear someone say manual workaround? With who? One of the reasons for automating it all was to do away with armies of clerks. Yes, there'll always be errors and exceptions, and the workforce can cope with small numbers of them under normal circumstances - not when it's every transaction that needs to be frigged or overridden.

and wait for a breakdown of the entire social order.

Picture the scenario where one supermarket runs out of one type of bread. Within five repetitions of the story they'll have all run out of food totally. There's a saying that any society is two meals away from anarchy.

Re:First Paragraph

[Gadget_Guy]

I stand by my statement that it should not be on the list. There is a wide spread perception that Y2K was a big con, and that we wasted a lot of money fixing up a problem that didn't exist. By including it in the first paragraph as the signature example of a tech mistake and also having it as the first item on the list, it perpetuates this myth.

I don't think the problem here is that two people are reading the same list and coming up with two different conclusions. It is that the list itself states two conflicting things. Sure it has the part that you quoted. But the first paragraph says "When clocks struck midnight on January 1st and the dreaded Y2K bug turned out to be nothing but a mild irritant, it proved once again that the experts often don't know what the heck they're talking about."

The experts were right. It was the people who didn't know what they were talking about (or went along with the paranoia for financial gain) who were predicting doom and gloom.

Re:First Paragraph

[smpoole7]

Well, as proof that I'm trying to be fair, if I hadn't posted in this thread, I'd mod you up for this one comment: "The experts were right. It was the people who didn't know what they were talking about (or went along with the paranoia for financial gain) who were predicting doom and gloom."

I agree that the article could have done a better job on the wording, too. Nuff said. :)

Yay, another weirdly huge list.

[jault]

You know, if that number was smaller, I might actually click through & read the article. But 87? Really? A number that large makes me think that you just wrote down every single lame thing you could think of & didn't edit at all.

Personally, I'd prefer a much shorter list which someone made some effort to pare down to the moments that were genuinely the lamest.

Re:Yay, another weirdly huge list.

[pecosdave]

The Slashdotters will prove to you that we can come up with WAY more than 87 - you just watch. So many of them neck and neck it's hard to narrow it down.

Re:Yay, another weirdly huge list.

[jault]

No doubt. I just have a pet peeve with huge lists like this. A lot of the value in coming up with a list is how & why you decide to either include a particular entry or leave it off. The longer the list gets, the more it appears that the author didn't put any hard thought into it, and the less value it has (for me anyway).

Re:Yay, another weirdly huge list.

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers, developers.

That was 14 right there.

Re:Yay, another weirdly huge list.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Yes, but my list would be different than your list. And thus...

Re:Yay, another weirdly huge list.

[corbettw]

But 87? Really?

I got the feeling the list started as "top 100 failures", but the list author couldn't come up with the last 13. He could've gotten one closer if he had included his own list, of course.

Re:Yay, another weirdly huge list.

[Anonymous Coward]

A number that large makes me think that you just wrote down every single lame thing you could think of & didn't edit at all.

Wow, that sounds like a lame moment!

Re:Yay, another weirdly huge list.

[steelfood]

Yeah, the list itself is lame. That makes it 88 things.

The 88th entry

[Anonymous Coward]

Wasting time reading this lame list

Y2K

[ernst_mulder]

From TFA: "When clocks struck midnight on January 1st and the dreaded Y2K bug turned out to be nothing but a mild irritant, it proved once again that the experts often don't know what the heck they're talking about."

Well, that kinda hurts.

I was responsible for a newspaper ordering system that definitely would have stopped processing orders in 2000. Cost quite a number of man hours. The majority of the Y2K my team had to solve weren't for the year 2000 but for passing into the year 1999 because many ordering systems had stupid (year+1) counters internally. It was a very stressful period and I very happy it went the way it did without major disasters.

The experts that didn't (and don't) know what they are talking about are the ones thinking you can upper-limit a year counter at 1999 (or 2039).

Re:Y2K

[EvilTwinSkippy]

Heck, I worked at a museum that ended up spending 6 figures to wholesale replace their IBM System 36 accounting system with an AS/400. (Including having developers completely rewrite the RPG code...)

In 2001 we had several companies that wanted to donate System 36's to be museum displays. We ended up telling them that we already had 2 of our own!

Re:Y2K

[happy_place]

Newspaper? What is that? Wait a sec, I think I remember those. Newspapers were those paper things that had funnies in them. Yeah. Good thing you saved that newspaper thing so that it could go bankrupt a year or two later... that's practically the same thing as all the hysteria that centered on Y2K. :eyes rolling:

Re:Y2K

[FlyingBishop]

Well, when you're using bare hardware types, ending at 2038, you're really using a second counter, which has a lot of uses aside from m/d/y. So there's a lot of implementation time saved having a single, simple, versatile time data structure.

Furthermore, it's a fairly safe assumption that by 2030, all computers still functioning will use 64 bit ints, and your code will have been recompiled and debugged for 64 bit, which will incidentally remove the 2038 issue.

If your software needs to represent dates more than 10 years in the future, it might be a little sketchy, but it's still reasonable 32 bit might be out of your hair by 2020. Of course if you need to represent dates 30 years out, you need a better data structure.

Re:Y2K

[vadim_t]

Furthermore, it's a fairly safe assumption that by 2030, all computers still functioning will use 64 bit ints, and your code will have been recompiled and debugged for 64 bit, which will incidentally remove the 2038 issue.

It's not so simple. What about various file formats that include timestamps in them? For instance, ext3 has the year 2038 problem.

Just because your CPU can handle a 64 bit number doesn't mean every file format will automatically use one, as that would break compatibility.

Re:Y2K

[ConceptJunkie]

Furthermore, it's a fairly safe assumption that by 2030, all computers still functioning will use 64 bit ints, and your code will have been recompiled and debugged for 64 bit, which will incidentally remove the 2038 issue.

Funny, all the people in the 60s and 70s who were using two-digit years thought exactly the same thing about the year 2000, and a lot of those systems were still around and still in production and had to be fixed.

Re:Y2K

[Fred_A]

I was responsible for a newspaper ordering system that definitely would have stopped processing orders in 2000. Cost quite a number of man hours.

Well I had to fix a popular "Make a stupid things lists" applications, and frankly, in retrospect, I wonder why I even bothered. I should have gotten out, gotten drunk and have been sick all over the shoes of some nice girl. But no, I had to fix this stupid piece of code. I wish I hadn't.

Then this typical "end of year" fluff would have been posted way back in 99 and the author would have been hacked to death by Visigoths and Romans.

Re:Y2K

[FlyingBishop]

There's a fundamental difference here. You can copy the code, but it won't work unless you fix the issue. Now, if you've intentionally implemented 32-bit time in 64-bit code, that's a bit of a different situation.

Re:Y2K

[ConceptJunkie]

Your point is valid, but what I'm pointing out is that it's likely some existing hardware, and not just the code, will still be in use. There are still mainframes that have been grinding along since the 1970s, sometimes running binaries for which there is no longer source code, and they just keep those machines chugging along until the whole system can be replaced... and those kinds of projects are often given low priorities.

So yes, everything that is ported to a 64-bit architecture should be cool, but I have no doubts at least a few extant 32-bit systems will still be creaking along in 2038.

I see a lot of Apple hate...

[carlhaagen]

...among the /. comments. Despite Apple's blunders in this list being few and not really noteworthy, it naturally does not discourage the "grannies of /." to leap out from under their stones with their tag-sticks.

Re:I see a lot of Apple hate...

[comm2k]

Too bad they did not mention the MacBook Air...
I don't have any problems with the MBA but saying you don't need a DVD drive to watch DVDs because you can just rent them from iTunes - wow that was good. Especially with those exorbitant prices.

Re:I see a lot of Apple hate...

[Gadget_Guy]

If you see a lot of Apple hate among these comments then why didn't you post your message as a reply to one of them? Oh, maybe because there isn't a lot of Apple hate here. This just goes to prove what we have all been saying about you: you're paranoid!

Re:I see a lot of Apple hate...

[Swift2001]

Except the MacBook Air was a big financial success. Execs love them, and like giving them to their daughters. That surprised me, because of its price. But then again, the iPod mini and nano surprised me, too.

And DVDs are going the way of the Dodo.

Re:I see a lot of Apple hate...

[tverbeek]

You don't need a DVD drive to watch DVDs on a machine that you don't intend to watch DVDs on. A product design isn't "wrong" just because it doesn't meet your requirements. My only disappointment with the MacBook Air was that mine was too easy to steal.

Re:I see a lot of Apple hate...

[Anonymous Coward]

If I was going to take my laptop on a trip and watch movies, I'd be using DVD ripping software so I don't have to carry DVDs. Of course, Apple aren't going to say that. And it's not like they didn't sell a separate optical drive for the MBA, or tried to pass it off as some kind of multimedia laptop. So I hardly think that comment should be considered lame -- of course Apple are going to plug their own products rather than point out the obvious.

KDE 4.0 and KDevelop 4

[tjstork]

KDE was flying high with its well regarded 3.x version, and then its developers disappeared with lustery promises of how great KDE 4 would be, and emerged to ship a completely unfinished product. Things are better with KDE 4.later, but, KDE 4.0, wow, you are rough. Meanwhile KDevelop 4 still doesn't work, and has been eclipsed by, well, Eclipse.

Re:KDE 4.0 and KDevelop 4

[EvilTwinSkippy]

KDE 4 is the reason all of my users boot into XCFE by default.

(Shudder)

Re:KDE 4.0 and KDevelop 4

[MrHanky]

Agreed. An while we're at it: OS X 10.0, back in 2001. Just because I feel that whenever people whine about KDE 4.0, they should be reminded that OS X 10.0 was pretty close to unusable, that OS X 10.1 was still shit and that OS X 10.2 was only somewhat promising.

Some guy in a comment above reminded me that there wasn't nearly enough Apple hate here.

Re:KDE 4.0 and KDevelop 4

[Fujisawa Sensei]

KDE was flying high with its well regarded 3.x version, and then its developers disappeared with lustery promises of how great KDE 4 would be, and emerged to ship a completely unfinished product. Things are better with KDE 4.later, but, KDE 4.0, wow, you are rough. Meanwhile KDevelop 4 still doesn't work, and has been eclipsed by, well, Eclipse.

I like to call the KDE 4 interface a Gnomification of KDE.

Re:KDE 4.0 and KDevelop 4

[jo_ham]

That's a bit unfair - 10.2 was pretty damn good.

10.0 was public beta, and free upgrade to 10.1 was available, which was ok but not as mature as OS 9, and still lacking software support from major vendors. It really didn't help that Quark dragged their feet so spectacularly, keeping a large install base on OS 9 long after apple said "it's time to move". As it turned out, that backfired quite painfully for Quark and allowed PM >>>> InDesign to get more of a foothold than it otherwise would have. At least around here you would rarely ever see a file in anything other than Xpress format, now there are InDesign files floating around like so many painful jabs at Quark :)

Remember, Apple threw out *everything* and started again (at least in terms of the OS presented to customers and developers - I know it came from NextStep etc) - the switch from OS 9 to OS X was painful, but remarkably smooth for such a large change.

It's still not perfect at 10.6, but it's pretty damn good.

Re:KDE 4.0 and KDevelop 4

[nyctopterus]

I'd agree about OS 10.0, but, for me at least, OS 9 was worse. It required hard rebooting at least three times a day (on several computers, so it wasn't a hardware issue) would not run more than one application at a time, and was a pain in the arse with it's manual memory management. OS X 10.0 had features missing, and had some pretty annoying bugs, but it was literally orders of magnitude more stable than what had gone before it. I'm not sure this really lets it of the hook... but it wasn't a step backward.

Re:KDE 4.0 and KDevelop 4

[MrHanky]

OS X 10.0 was no more a public beta than KDE 4.0 was (it cost US$129). Kodiak was the public beta, Cheetah was 10.0, with a free upgrade to Puma following swiftly.

10.2 wasn't pretty damn good. It was very slow, had crazy memory demands for the time, and equally poor virtual memory management. Whenever it hit swap, multitasking became a pain. And the poor window manager (it still is, compared to kwin) really screams out for something like Exposé just to avoid turning into a mess whenever there's more than three windows open. It was very pretty for its time, though.

Given the choice between OS X 10.2 and Windows XP today, I'd choose XP every time. It's simply a better OS, in every regard. It does demand a certain talent for avoiding malware, though.

Re:KDE 4.0 and KDevelop 4

[jo_ham]

I still don't use Exposé to this day, even in 10.6 - just because the window manager doesn't suit you doesn't make it "poor".

But yes, I did forget the numbering - users of the public beta got $30 off or something for 10.0

Agreed

[Viol8]

At the company I worked in at the time there were double digit year records used all over the place. If we hadn't fixed the code the whole system would have falled over come the millenium.

All these arsehats who go on about the Y2K being a load of scare mongering paranoia are the ones who don't have a clue about just how much work went on in 1999 trying to sort the issues out!

Re:Agreed

[crimperman]

> All these arsehats who go on about the Y2K being a load of scare mongering paranoia are the ones who don't have a clue about just how much work went on in 1999 trying to sort the issues out!

Hear hear!

I worked at a large manufacturers during 1999 and was tasked with the Y2K stuff. This basically included six months worth of work fixing the stuff that would have an issue followed by six months of sending replies to customers who were told they had to be concerned by the media and the industry that rose up surrounding Y2K.

Yeah there was an awful lot of largely unappreciated work that went on to make sure Y2K didn't happen but there was also an awful lot of unnecessary hype and faff that created the hysteria that in turn created the backlash when the predicted disaster didn't happen.

In the spirit of Apollo 13 I've always thought of Y2K as a sucessful failure. Successful in that we worked hard and avoided it. Failure in that we waited way too late to do anything about it in the first place and that we let the politicians and the media create the level of hysteria they did.

#83 isn't lame, it's accurte.

[pthisis]

From TFA:

83. And Taco Bell was never a taco company.
In an interview with the New York Times conducted in the wake of Yahoo’s decision to outsource its search features to Microsoft, Yahoo boss Carol Bartz says that Yahoo has “never been a search company.”

Carol Bartz is correct--Yahoo started out as a link collection, then a hierarchical directory (basically like http://www.dmoz.org/ then added a lot of portal services (including email, stock quotes, etc).

The thing that they never had, until 2004, was a search engine; Yahoo put other company's searches on their site (including Inktomi for a while, and then Google up until 2004). Doing that with Bing is just returning to what they've done historically.

Re:#83 isn't lame, it's accurte.

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought Taco Bell was a Mexican phone company.

Re:#83 isn't lame, it's accurte.

[Alomex]

This is like saying that Taco Bell is not a taco company because they buy their taco shells from a third party provider.

Really, think about it...

Re:#83 isn't lame, it's accurte.

[Rocketship Underpant]

I actually used to use Yahoo's link directory back when it was actively maintained. Heck, I was using it as early as '94 or '95. Then they stopped maintaining it and encouraged all visitors to use their lousy search engine, which is when I gave up and looked for other options, settling on Google.

Re:#83 isn't lame, it's accurte.

[ari_j]

I don't know much about TFA's author, but I definitely got the impression from reading his damn multi-page blog post (thanks for posting another one of those to the front page, kdawson) that he didn't actually know much about the technologies he was ridiculing. Yahoo was the most obvious example - anyone who started using the web when commercializing it was a novel idea will remember finding web pages not with an indexing search engine but with Yahoo's topical hierarchy of links. It was well-organized and really did a great job as the yellow pages of the internet - in fact, if I am not much mistaken, it seems to me that Yahoo linked to data sources other than HTTP in those early days. You could turn to Webcrawler for an indexed search engine, but normally you would only do that after Yahoo's categories failed you, as relevant links were much quicker to find through a hierarchy than a full-text search. It wasn't until the web exploded in size faster than Yahoo could keep up that a text search engine was really a daily necessity, and by then the geniuses at Google were on the path to doing it right.

There are other examples in TFA of things that were not at all stupid ideas. Failures in hindsight, perhaps, but the cat-herding "even we don't know what we do" Superbowl ads were certainly more stupid at the place and time they were conceived than Steve Jobs inadvertently hitting the wrong button during a product demonstration.

#88

[jolyonr]

Slashdot Idle

Google C&Ding CyanogenMod

[pocopoco]

I'm surprised that Google sending a C&D letter to CyanogenMod didn't make the list. Google had been trying to market its cell phone OS, Android, as an open platform that welcomed innovation and contributions. Then they decided to threaten an immensely popular third party rom that did wonders for Android's performance.

The official distribution at the time had many issues. Performance degraded the longer you went without a reboot. You couldn't install apps on SD cards, only the tiny internal storage space, so quickly ran out of room for apps. CyanogenMod provided a great option for frustrated or highly technical users to get the performance and bleeding edge features they wanted.

Meanwhile Microsoft actually has a good reputation for turning a blind eye to people making roms for Windows Mobile. Google actually managed to make themselves look less open than Windows on this one. They also angered a lot of technical users who could have become Android evangelists.

Re:Google C&Ding CyanogenMod

[phillymjs]

Meanwhile Microsoft actually has a good reputation for turning a blind eye to people making roms for Windows Mobile.

Turning a blind eye to piracy and other stuff you'd expect them to fight against is a standard Microsoft tactic in markets they want to take over. In their mind, as long as you're using a Microsoft product, even if you stole it, that's better than you using a competitor's product.

Once they are the de facto standard in a given market, that's when they begin finishing off their weakened competitors and turning the thumbscrews on their users. That's why you could pass around Windows install keys for years with impunity, and then XP got activation. Once the activation-free corporate XP keys got out, they had to turn the screws some more, and now even corporate copies of Vista and, I presume, 7 require activation of a sort. People might find ways around that, but the point is Microsoft is making it more and more difficult to avoid paying them for Windows now that they've sewn up the OS market.

Of course, I could have made this post a lot shorter by comparing them to drug dealers: "First one's free," then once you're hooked, up goes the price.

~Philly

Re:Google C&Ding CyanogenMod

[Anonymous Coward]

I can distribute Linux all day long, but I can't distribute it with Oracle. Similarly, I can distribute Android, but not proprietary applications with it. I'm sure you already know that, but willful ignorance is where it's at.

Re:Google C&Ding CyanogenMod

[drinkypoo]

I'm surprised that Google sending a C&D letter to CyanogenMod didn't make the list.

Who? Cyanowhat? Where? That's why it didn't make the list.

Meanwhile Microsoft actually has a good reputation for turning a blind eye to people making roms for Windows Mobile.

Actually, if there's a blessing it comes from handset makers. Sometimes they even help the rom rollers (unofficially.) It's a lot cheaper than supporting those people yourself, and they provide free marketing. What does Microsoft care? Very very few people will actually load a version of WinCE they're not licensed for.

Re:Google C&Ding CyanogenMod

[An ominous Cow art]

Turning a blind eye to piracy and other stuff you'd expect them to fight against is a standard Microsoft tactic in markets they want to take over. In their mind, as long as you're using a Microsoft product, even if you stole it, that's better than you using a competitor's product.

Of course, I could have made this post a lot shorter by comparing them to drug dealers: "First one's free," then once you're hooked, up goes the price.

And once you're good and addicted, the BSA steps in...

I say, God damn! God damn the pusher man. (Steppenwolf)

AOL Search Logs?

[a0schweitzer]

No mention of the publicly available AOL search logs? I thought that was fantasticly funny. Stupid, but funny.

Re:AOL Search Logs?

[HalifaxRage]

Wow. way to not read TFA.

Re:AOL Search Logs?

[Caetel]

47. Hey, they’re only AOL users. AOL releases twenty million search keywords entered by 650,000 search-engine users, supposedly for the benefit of researchers. The searches have been anonymized, but The New York Times and others discover it’s possible to identify who performed some of them. AOL declares the release a “screw-up” and multiple heads roll, including that of its CTO.

Re:AOL Search Logs?

[Anonymous Coward]

RTFA, It's on this list

Re:AOL Search Logs?

[Anonymous Coward]

47. Hey, they’re only AOL users.
AOL releases twenty million search keywords entered by 650,000 search-engine users, supposedly for the benefit of researchers. The searches have been anonymized, but The New York Times and others discover it’s possible to identify who performed some of them. AOL declares the release a “screw-up” and multiple heads roll, including that of its CTO.

So yes, a mention.

Re:AOL Search Logs?

[Anonymous Coward]

They're release of search logs for research was mentioned. So, unless you're referring to something else, it was mentioned. I can't visit the link as its blocked here, so I really can't tell for sure.

Re:AOL Search Logs?

[ALeavitt]

You mean this?
47. Hey, they’re only AOL users. AOL releases twenty million search keywords entered by 650,000 search-engine users, supposedly for the benefit of researchers. The searches have been anonymized, but The New York Times and others discover it’s possible to identify who performed some of them. AOL declares the release a “screw-up” and multiple heads roll, including that of its CTO.

Re:AOL Search Logs?

[a0schweitzer]

Oops

Intel making Microsoft lower specs

[Mr_Silver]

42. They should have stuck with the "Windows Vista Inadequate" ones.
In the face of Vista's delays, Microsoft encourages PC manufacturers to slap "Windows Vista Capable" stickers on XP machines. The stickers turn out only to mean that the computer can run the lower-end versions of Vista, and don't guarantee they're able to use the new OSes' signature Aero interface. Legal hijinks ensue, and internal Microsoft documents suggest the company knew it had a problem on its hands even as it was egging on consumers to buy cheap XP machines with Vista in mind.

I thought it was Intel that pressured Microsoft to reduce the requirements for Vista so that their most popular graphics chip (I can't remember which) which was currently shipping in millions of computers wouldn't be deemed inadequate for running the new operating system?

If true, then had Microsoft refused then they wouldn't have got themselves into this mess but they didn't and it just went to show that Microsoft is actually Intel's bitch.

Re:Intel making Microsoft lower specs

[UnknowingFool]

The issue was MS told hardware makers for a long time what the minimum spec for Vista. So they designed their PCs around it. The minimum was going to be more costly if they didn't use Intel's GPU. However at the last minute they changed their minds under coaxing from Intel who would have a large inventory that wasn't compatible. This infuriated hardware makers as their plans were suddenly changed. Internally some MS employees knew this a huge mistake but no one with any authority did anything about it.

Lamest Moment #88....

[macraig]

Ummm, can we make this article Moment #88?

Developer Developer Developer Developer

[pacificleo]

nothing beats that IMHO

Re:obligatory - but as usual, meaningless

[Anonymous Coward]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anno_Domini

The AD calendar in fact was started in 525 AD, by Dionysius Exiguus. The relationship between the dates and Christs Birth are almost coincidental as there is evidence for dates between 18BC and 6AD. So discussing whether AD is zero based or one based are pretty irrelevant, as potentially it is -18 based upto +6 based.

The customer is always right and likes numbers ending in zero to start date periods with, get used to it.

7. Audrey heartburn

[Rick Richardson]

7. Audrey heartburn

Bought two for my kids. Sold them on ebay *three years* later. I made $30 on the deal!

ebay rocks!!!!!

Re:American English

[Anonymous Coward]

It is not Naught, it is Aught (OT). As in double-ot (sic) buckshot.

Fast forward to the grandfatherly types saying, " Why, I remember back in Aught 6 ('06) when gas cost $1.50 a gallon."

Free American English, lose the extraneous vowels in words like colour.

Twitter

[jo42]

##. Twitter

Nothing else need be said.

Re:Twitter

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank you. Whenever I see "Twit" in a domain name, I instantly think of Roald Dahl's "The Twits."

What a stupid self-centered service. I swear people become stupider just by reading tweets. (Another stupid term).

? multipage web articles without 1 page option?

[Anonymous Coward]

eom

Thanks to the Y2K heavy lifters!

[LaminatorX]

I for one want to celebrate the anniversary of the Y2K Bug's passing by thanking all the people who's hark work kept it from being far far worse than the few mild annoyances we experienced. The word I saw was some gas pumps that were locked up, and it could have been far worse if a whole lot of coders and analysts hadn't spent a ton of time pouring over reams of old code and fixing problems. Double thanks to all the Grampa Geeks who came out of retirement to show the kids how COBOL was done and why it's still so important even ten years later. A nod goes even to the suits at the top who looked beyond next quarter's numbers and funded the stitch in time would save nine.

Re:Thanks to the Y2K heavy lifters!

[dangitman]

if a whole lot of coders and analysts hadn't spent a ton of time pouring over reams of old code and fixing problems.

What were they pouring over their code, special sauce?

Re:Thanks to the Y2K heavy lifters!

[Doctor Faustus]

Good lord, that was ten years ago, wasn't it? It seems like only two or three years ago that a coworker and I went to the Metallica / Ted Nugent / Kid Rock New Years Eve concert and then back to work at 2am to see if everything seemed to still be basically working.

Meta-answer

[dkleinsc]

#88 - the point when every news organization feels compelled to make really long lists of the top ____ of the last decade. It's like the annual "top ____ of the year" lists, only 10 times as lame.

Re:Meta-answer

[codepigeon]

Actually 8.7 times as lame.

Re:Meta-answer

[dkleinsc]

Umm, no, that's the wrong variable. I went with 10 because 10 years have about 10 times the lameness as the average year in that decade.

re #39,hard to pronounce names

[cinnamon colbert]

from the article: 39. Unpronounceable but catchy. At the Consumer Electronics Show, Intel gets Tom Hanks, Morgan Freeman, and Danny DeVito to help it roll out Viiv, a new platform for media-savvy home PCs. Consumers have trouble figuring out what it is (and how to say it); PC vendors don’t jump on the bandwagon with great abandon. By 2007, the press is referring to it in the past tense. I've long suspected that unpronounceable names (merkur from ford) are really bad for a product.

Mail Googles

[RivenAleem]

Can anyone explain to me what is wrong with this? I don't understand why it's on the list. I think it's great.

Re:Mail Googles

[vishbar]

The author misses hearing from his ex girlfriend.

Google's Malware Blacklist

[Arancaytar]

Marissa Mayer explains that someone accidentally added a slash mark to the list of risky sites, prompting the search engine to mistakenly believe the entire Web is hazardous.

Wait, that was a mistake?

What about KDawson?

[Anonymous Coward]

I consider KDawson a pretty lame point in web history. A total failure.

New Slashdot features?

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean, there is this plus/minus crap, tags, and occasionally goes into some insane look. Oh and there is idle.

Re:New Slashdot features?

[Tablizer]

I second that. CSS-centric sites tend to suck. Table tags almost always provide a better user browser experience. Maybe it's possible to do CSS right, but most don't. (Note that my handle does not refer to HTML tables, but other kinds of tables.)

Re:IMO the lamest moment in tech is

[Larryish]

Steve, are you off your meds again?

Oblig. Dictionary reference

[Anonymous Coward]

If we're picking nits, you're both right.

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/decade

Probably too late to make the list...

[russotto]

...but Verizon's decision to make Bing the only allowable search provider on Blackberrys on its network would have made 88 easy.

"Developers, developers"

[Anonymous Coward]

Ballmer's "developers" wasn't dumb. It was embarrassing, or should have been if he has any shame, but the point was spot on.

87 is the magical number.

[Anonymous Coward]

Obviously, Harry McCracken must be an ARFCOM'er. I wonder what his screen name there is.

Re:87 is the magical number.

[vishbar]

Yeah, I was going to comment on that...Harry McCracken? Is that a joke? Or is the next list going to be written by Phil McGroin?

Taco Bell Toys

[AlpineR]

No, that is like saying that Taco Bell is not a toy company. Yes, Taco Bell has occasionally offered toys in their restaurants. And for some toy collectors that may be their main reason for visiting a Taco Bell. But Taco Bell sees their main business as selling tacos and soda. And Taco Bell has never been the primary destination for finding toys.

I remember the early years of the Web and submitting my own sites to be listed in Yahoo's catalog. Back then, searching by keyword was a futile endeavor. The only ways to find something were browsing through a catalog of sites or surfing from site to site. Google was revolutionary in making search-by-keyword the best way to find anything on the Web.

Yahoo is the start page on my home computer because it gives easy access to news, sports, and movie times. Any search is conducted through my browser search box which is tuned to Google.

Re:Taco Bell Toys

[Alomex]

what brings users to taco bell: tacos or toys? what brings users to Yahoo: search or some type of manual directory (lookup usage figures)?

The Segway doesn't deserve being on this list

[davide marney]

In an urban setting, the Segway was, and still is, an obviously better way to move people than a car. The fact that it couldn't get permission to use the sidewalks is more a chicken-and-egg thing than it is a fault of the basic premise. If there were 1,000 Segway-like vehicles on the streets per day in a downtown area, you can be sure that the local laws would be modified to allow them.

One of the biggest problems with mass transit is it doesn't have a good feeder system. We go straight from an arterial system (mass transit) to a capillary system (foot traffic), with nothing in between. Someday someone will fill this gap. The Segway was at least a plausible candidate to do the job.

Re:The Segway doesn't deserve being on this list

[ig88b]

I don't see why there has to be anything in between. When I lived in Hong Kong, I wasn't thinking, "boy it sure would be nice to have some small device to get me from the MTR/KCR/Bus/Ferry/Light Rail to my destination." I walked the 5 or 10 minutes after the "arteries" ended. We shouldn't be thinking about how to improve after people get off the mass transit, we should be thinking about how to improve the mass transit.

Re:The Segway doesn't deserve being on this list

[MozeeToby]

Bike rentals. Charge a few dollars to rent a bike for the day, a few extra for a bike with one of the new in wheel electric motors installed. Automate the system and run it like a red box; take the customer's credit card information at check-out. Put a small GPS tracker inside the frame of the bike with a privacy statement that it will only activate if not returned to its rack within 24 hours. If the customer reports the bike stolen put a $10 'recovery' charge on their account and use the GPS device to find it. If they just don't bring it back charge them the regular daily rental fee up to the purchase cost of the bike.

That was about 5 minutes of effort and makes a hell of a lot more sense than a segway. The laws are already in place and everyone knows how to ride a bike. If you don't want to get sweaty on your way to work you can rent a motorized one. If you're not comfortable riding on the street most places I've been to allow you to ride on the sidewalk at a jogging pace or slower. Actually, this isn't a half bad idea; I wonder if any-one's tried it yet.

Re:The Segway doesn't deserve being on this list

[Mr. Foogle]

Actually, this isn't a half bad idea; I wonder if any-one's tried it yet.

Ideas are easy - execution is hard.

I suspect your capital costs would be a killer. Bikes are too expensive to just write off the way you can a DVD, but not so expensive that putting a lot of your energy into maintaining / recovering them will be recovered by rental fees. Staffing costs could get you as well.

But I'm just a guy commenting on slashdot: what do I know?

Go for it: slap together a plan and get busy.

Re:The Segway doesn't deserve being on this list

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

As much as I like the Segway, I do think it was way over-hyped. Sure, it has its uses. But not enough to push the bike out of its place. And once you have the infrastructure in place to make Segways more viable, you've pretty much improved the bike's already dominant place, too.

Re:The Segway doesn't deserve being on this list

[Dexter Herbivore]

They do the bike rental thing in Amsterdam... the bikes they use are so damn cheap that they don't really care that much if they get stolen even.

nr. 88

[el_jake]

1. /. bringing No. 88 to the front page
2. ??
3. Profit..

The twenteens, obviously.

[GungaDan]

Except for 2010-2013 - those will be the twentweens.

'Community college student' - point of order

[fiannaFailMan]

From item 4 in TFA:

Press-release service Internet Wire is hoaxed by a former employee/community college student who uses it to distribute a fake release saying electronics firm Emulex is restating its earnings. The company loses $2.5 billion of value and the student pockets $250,000 by shorting its stock before being arrested.

Excuse me, but why the need to refer to him as a community college student? I thought that community colleges were actually a respected type of institution in the US and are seen as a place where people can go to get an affordable education and make better of themselves. Why, then, does TFA need to highlight that this particular criminal happened to be a community college student? Why not also mention the type of car he drives or some other irrelevant detail? Does the author of the article have something he'd like to tell us about his views on community colleges?

It reminds me of a discussion on NPR the other day about the mistresses of Tiger Woods. The media felt the need to refer to them as 'lingerie saleswomen' or 'cocktail waitresses' as if their occupation was all you needed to know about their character.

Bad Car analogy Time

[Anonymous Coward]

What you're saying is that I didn't need to fix the brakes on my '68 mustang because after fixing the brakes I didn't run over little Jacky. So there never was a problem. Well there would have been one had I not fixed the brakes this exactly what happened with Y2K people fixed the problem before there was a really problem and there were people who were affected by it. There were some children who had to show up for Jury duty, They were dismissed but the law required them to show up. Also in England a major chain store would except credit cards with expiration dates past 2001.

article is diffuclt to read

[peter303]

The content is interesting. But you have bore past totally uninformative titles to get to the meat of each section. I would have like to see the reverse- an useful title and the wit in the middle.

Slashdot + ipod = lame

[Anonymous Coward]

"No wireless. Less space than a nomad. Lame." -- Rob Malda reviewing the ipod in 2001

Re:IMO the lamest moment in tech is

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, off the meds, on your mom ! Watch out !

Re:American English

[HBoar]

Uhh, the 'U' in 'colour' is not extraneous -- it's how it is pronounced outside the US.

They forgot an ad for the iPhone

[eulernet]

The ad was banned later:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-13579_3-10108679-37.html

Link for the video (compared with reality):
http://blog.websourcing.fr/wp-content/plugins/embedded-video-with-link/mediaplayer/player.swf?file=http://movies.itpro.co.uk/pcpro/online/appleadlow_DI_New_4x3_001.flv

Re:American English

[Anonymous Coward]

It's pronounced culla.

Number 88:

[RichiH]

The linked list (without reading it, sorry ;)