And if not fixed, it will happen again in 4 years....
~~~~~~~~~~
Here's the root of the problem:
Zune bug explained in detail
19 Commentsby Devin Coldewey on December 31, 2008
Earlier today, the sound of thousands of Zune owners crying out in
terror made ripples across the blogosphere. The response from Microsoft
is to wait until tomorrow and all will be well. You're probably
wondering, what kind of bug fixes itself?
Well, I've got the code here and it's very simple, really; if you've
taken an introductory programming class, you'll see the error right
away.
year = ORIGINYEAR; /* = 1980 */
while (days > 365)
{
if (IsLeapYear(year))
{
if (days > 366)
{
days -= 366;
year += 1;
}
}
else
{
days -= 365;
year += 1;
}
}You can see the details here, but the important bit is that today, the
day count is 366. As you can see, the leap year is accounted for, but
int "days" is too big for the main while loop to end the "if (days >
366)" has no else condition. So the thing just keeps running and
running... until 24 hours have passed and int day receives a new value.
At least, I think that's what happens (it's been a while since CS101).
Itsnotabigtruck, the poster who figured this out for everyone, notes
that this will occur again in four years if they don't do something. I'm
guessing that they will.
~~~~~~~~~~
-----Original Message-----
From: Tim Evans [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 4:43 PM
To: NT System Admin Issues
Subject: RE: [OT] Zune music players lock-up due to 2008 leap year
Yeah, that happened to mine. I was checking out the forums to see what
the scoop was and people were taking them apart and all kinds of stuff.
But, just like MS said, it started working again on 1/1/09.
Do they really want to compete with Apple and let this kind of stuff go
thru?
...Tim
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Ben Scott [mailto:[email protected]]
> Sent: Friday, January 02, 2009 1:38 PM
> To: NT System Admin Issues
> Subject: [OT] Zune music players lock-up due to 2008 leap year
>
> "... suddenly stopped working, displaying only a frozen start-up
> screen..."
>
> "Apparently the Zune was expecting 2008 to have 365 days, not 366."
>
> Microsoft's reported fix? Wait until the internal clock advances into
> 2009, at which point the bug won't be triggered anymore.
>
> 365 days ought to be enough for anybody. Hee hee. ;-)
>
> Source:
> A Year Ticks Over, and Zunes Get Hiccups By JENNA WORTHAM
> Published: December 31, 2008
> http://www.nytimes.com/2009/01/01/technology/personaltech/01zune.html
>
> -- Ben
>
> ~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~
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~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~ ~
<http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
~ Finally, powerful endpoint security that ISN'T a resource hog! ~
~ <http://www.sunbeltsoftware.com/Business/VIPRE-Enterprise/> ~
