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In 86.4 Days, It Explodes (3/1/99)
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Pssssst! Hey, buddy-- wanna hear a secret? Keep it under your hat, but-- we don't really like Windows very much. We know that probably comes as a shock, but give it a second to sink in and you'll probably be able to accept that fact. Some of us poor schmoes at AtAT have to use Windows on a daily basis in the "real" world, while others are blessed only to have to touch it once a month or so, but the opinion is unanimous: it's ugly as sin, clunky as an oversize pair of combat boots, and has an interface only a mother could love-- specifically, the visually-impaired mother of a sociopath with Tourette's Syndrome. But that's just our opinion.
Don't get us wrong, though-- it's not that we don't think Windows has its good points. Probably our favorite feature of Windows is its seemingly endless array of fascinating bugs. Don't forget, it's a Microsoft product-- the bugs go in before the name goes on™. Microsoft bugs are often not particularly dangerous (well, okay, there was that fun little issue with the Mac Office 98 uninstaller potentially deleting your System Folder), but pound for pound, we find them much more entertaining than bugs found in other companies' software. Take, for example, the Windows bug just reported in a CNET article: after exactly 49.7 days of continuous use, computers running Windows 95 or Windows 98 may suddenly crash.
It's true! At least, we assume it's true, since Microsoft has a web page decribing the problem. Apparently it's caused by a bug in the timing algorithm used in the "Vtdapi.vxd" file. (Yeah, we could've guessed that.) While this bug will probably affect only a few users, we still consider it one of the more entertaining bugs we've ever heard described. Perhaps it's the fact that the machines have to be running for exactly 49.7 days before the crash occurs, like 49.7 is some sort of magic number or something. Honestly, sometimes we think the software engineers in Redmond are coming up with these bugs on purpose, since they sound too bizarre to be accidental. Anyway, Microsoft's posted a fix for the problem, so all's right with the world. See? We do sort of like Windows-- provided we don't actually have to use it.
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 | | The above scene was taken from the 3/1/99 episode: March 1, 1999: Emailer was missing and presumed dead, but may make a startling reappearance in the next version of AppleWorks. Meanwhile, Microsoft continues to entertain and amuse with its latest Windows bug, which may cause a crash after 49.7 days of continuous use, and Intel moves to make the web a Pentium III-only experience...
Other scenes from that episode: 1371: Believe in Reincarnation? (3/1/99) Sometimes it's tough being a fan of Apple technology, especially when the company falls on hard times; a shrinking budget for research and development has led to a lot of cancelled projects over the last few years, and some very cool technologies and services went the way of the dodo (assuming the dodo was, in fact, a largish handheld computer capable of handwriting recognition and Internet access)... 1373: The Pentium III-Only Net (3/1/99) My, how the World Wide Web has changed. Remember the whole glorious idea of information deliverable and scalable to anyone on any computer, from a high-end Power Mac to a lowly DOS-based 286? The web drifted away from that ideal over the years, with special browser plug-ins only available for certain platforms, stuff like that...
Or view the entire episode as originally broadcast... | |  |
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