30GB Zunes Failing Everywhere, All At Once

Don't knock it! Much more effective than citing better feature set, better hardware components, lower cost, etc. In addition, there is no alternative to a hardware upgrade.

Oh, lose some users, sure. But most will stay with MS ... they have been trained.

The iPod's no island of freedom. It's tied/chained to iTunes, which ... ah ... don't get me started.

Note that the stock Slackware 12.0 kernel also crashed due to the leap second. But I grant that leap-anythings have always caused MSFT products problems. I'd like to cite the weird leap-year spec in OOXML that has 1900 as a leap year (it was not: cal 2 1900) which apparently descends from an Excel bug. Windows 3.11 and 95 also had tremendous problems with leap years.

Leap second problem? wow. ubuntu handled it fine here:

[6309599.090033] Clock: inserting leap second 23:59:60 UTC

Mandriva 2008.1 had no problems. nor did Mandriva 2007.1

I can't believe that it was because of a leap year issue. Isn't that like one of those really simple things? Wow.

psst ... Scott, it was leap second NOT year. Now a for leap years you have at least three plus good years before it booms, now seconds that's hard. Every second you are at risk, no telling when the next will arrive to boot your system into the woods.

> I can't believe that it was because of a leap year issue...

Apparently so. And apparently built into the hardware. Microsoft just can't win these days, Not that I'm shedding any tears for them, mind you.

It has been reported that this was the problem (note the day>366):

while (days > 365) {     if (IsLeapYear(year))     {         if (days > 366)         {             days -= 366;             year += 1;         }     }     else     {         days -= 365;         year += 1;     } }

[serious]

Quoting:The glitch revolves around the fact that 2008 was a leap year and had an extra day for which software on the Zune was not prepared.

psst .. Txt., Scott had it right. So? How is that different than anything else I drop here?

[/serious (?)]