What the Y2K Problem Was All About



It's a bit jarring to think that the turn of the millennium now qualifies as "history," but here we are, explaining the strange Y2K event for those too young to remember it. By 1999, the world was wired to run on computers, but those computers were running on operating systems that weren't designed with the year 2000 in mind, so the dates were assumed to always start the year with 19. Was this a problem? Yes, but not nearly as big a problem as the media made it out to be. Until the "millennium bug" made the news, many people didn't even realize how much of the world's infrastructure depended on computers running smoothly. As the date grew near, programmers worked hard to fix the problem in one system after another, so that when the time came, it turned out to be a big nothingburger. Personally, I don't recall as much panic as this video illustrates, but I was busy with young children. I did take the precaution of turning off my computer before midnight, just in case. I later found out that Macs were never vulnerable to the Y2k problem because they had always rendered the year in four digits.

This video includes a skippable ad from 4:12 to 5:47.


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Yeah COBOL! Hard to forget Y2K if you worked in IT and had your once in a lifetime New Year's Eve millennium ruined. No Drinking. My company did indeed spends millions, maybe tens of millions fixing that. Sure it was important but everyone knew the end of the world stuff was a joke. Still, the [panic] fear, at a lot of levels was real. I was asked to store a couple of 55 gallon drums of diesel fuel for our generator in my garage. The fastest immediate NO to management I ever gave.
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Rather than issuing a typical, semi-trolling negative comment, I would like to start a survey.

How many of you would say that this device accomplished its goal of assisting in the creation of music?

I would say that it did not.
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It may not have assisted in the creation of music, but it may be a piece in the puzzle of creating more functional robots. Imagine robots creating and playing music, rather than an animatron bleating out an old Stevie Nicks tune.
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Device did not aid in the creation of music. Human counterpart simply compensated for the devices playing in an effort to appear as if they were "Jamming".. In essence the device failed to put its own stank on the beat.
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I have seen this robot play live. The did a similar project with (i think its a) marimbas.

@otterly, the robot can 'improvise' utilizing the human's beats and manipulating them, it can sense the density of the user's playing and make a decision about its own density. The player can play anything it wants and Haile will 'improvise' with it, not the other way around.
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This robot was discussed in "Wired for War," as an example of how the robot/human relationship may be similar to the working dog/human relationship rather than robots replacing humans in various roles.

A fascinating book that I highly recommend.

Thanks for posting the video (stanky or not).
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