ColdFusion - 5 Most Comical Computer Glitches

Starting point is 00:00:00 You are watching Cold Fustian TV. Hi, welcome to another Cold Fusion video. Degogo here. Computers are only as good as the program that runs them. That being said, programmers sometimes make mistakes and sometimes with the most hilarious consequences. Here are a few of such computing errors. The five glitches shown in this video,

Starting point is 00:00:30 go beyond the traditional glitches of computer games. Let's begin. Number five. The first National Bank of Chicago era. So given that look, loosely speaking, digital currency isn't actually backed by anything, and it's just a bunch of numbers on the screen. What would actually happen if a computer put a few more zeros at the end of your bank statement because of a glitch? Imagine taking your bank account to find out that you now have over $900 million in there.

Starting point is 00:00:56 That's exactly what happened to Sylvester Dorsey, along with 825 other customers of the First National Bank of Chicago in May of 1996. I showed the receipt to a friend and we just started screaming, said Dorsey. The senior vice president at First National said that the situation was caused by a computer programming error. According to the bank, surprisingly, no one actually just took the money and ran away to a secluded tropical island. And that's probably a good thing. You see, the total value of this error cost about $764 billion, and that's, of course, far more than the total assets of the bank. At the time, it was the largest banking error in U.S. history. To solve the problem, the banks froze all the accounts and retracted the money upon realizing

Starting point is 00:01:41 the error. I guess it would have been good to be a multimillionaire while it lasted. Number 4. Windows Phone 8 says to insert a disc. Windows Phone, Microsoft's answer to Android and the iPhone. The first version named Windows Phone 7 was launched in October of 2010 and the next major version, Windows Phone 8, was launched in 2012. Despite being fairly well received, it wasn't all smooth sailing.

Starting point is 00:02:06 Some Windows Phone 8 users ran into a pretty amusing situation. Windows would fail to start and then the screen would show an error message which instructed the user to insert your Windows installation disk and restart your computer. It didn't say where to insert the disc, but somehow I think it would have been a tight squeeze. So this is kind of weird, right? Why would such an error come up on the phone in the first place? Well it's quite interesting when you look into it. The message comes up because Windows Phone 8 is based on the Windows NT kernel, a kernel which first came out in 1993. So for those of you wondering, a kernel is a computer program that manages the input and output requests from software. So basically it's the tie between the software and the hardware.

Starting point is 00:02:46 The Windows NT kernel has been used in the core of all Windows desktop operating systems since Windows 2000, including XP, Vista, 7 and 8. So as a result, Windows Phone 8 sometimes thought it was a desktop operating system. It's pretty interesting that the legacy code still remains more than 20 years after its introduction. But anyhow, I don't think phones with CD players will ever catch on. Number three. The Xbox One Password Back Door. These days, it's not unusual for kids and their parents to share the same console, but understandably, many parents don't want their kids playing certain games.

Starting point is 00:03:22 To address this, Microsoft introduced the ability to set up an account for each adult and child, with some accounts requiring a password to log in. In March of 2014, a 5-year-old discovered that he could get into his dad's Xbox 1. account by giving the wrong password at first prompt, then entering nothing but spaces as the second password, and just like that, he was able to play all his dad's games. What's incredibly ironic about this is that the boy's dad is a security researcher. So naturally, when he saw his son using his account, he asked how he'd gotten the password. Once he found out, he reported the backdoor security risk to Microsoft, and they quickly patched

Starting point is 00:03:57 it. As a gesture of gratitude, Microsoft even listed the five-year-old, Christopher Wilhelm von Hassel, in their official list of March 2014 security researchers. Number two. Prisoners released early. In 2011, California's prisons were getting overcrowded, so a decision was made to release some low-risk prisoners. Unfortunately, as you could guess, our lovely computer errors stepped into play and issued the release of a few high-risk prisoners instead. Approximately 450 inmates, with a high risk for violence, were mistakenly released, along with more than a thousand other additional prisoners presenting a high-risk.

Starting point is 00:04:34 risk of committing drug crimes, property crimes and other offences. As it turns out, the early release program released the prisoners under a non-revocable parole, which means that they did not have to report to a parole officer. Even worse, nobody attempted to bring the prisoners back into custody after they were mistakenly released. Whoops. Number one. Bill Gates' Windows 98 demo fail. Microsoft Windows 95 came out in the August of 1995 and the guidance The Guardian called it the world's first celebrity computer program. It was a huge success selling more than 40 million copies in the first year. The question was, would Windows 98, its successor, be even better?

Starting point is 00:05:17 The world would soon find out with a glimpse into the software at the 1998 Comdex Convention. In those days, Comdex was a huge computer trade show. Think of it like CES on steroids. All the tech reporters came to see the latest hardware and software. In fact, the very first smartphone was unveiled there. You can click the screen now if you want to know more about that, or check out the description below. At Comdex 98, Microsoft demonstrated their new beta version of Windows 98.

Starting point is 00:05:45 The event was broadcast live on CNN, and everybody was primed and ready. The stage was set and the world was watching. The demo started out well, then the time came to demonstrate Windows 98's enhanced support for plug-and-play devices, a pretty big deal at the time. They plugged a scanner into the computer and Windows 98 was supposed to notice the scanner and work with it. But instead, this happened. And it's going to load in the appropriate drivers.

Starting point is 00:06:10 You'll notice that this scanner built... Whoa. That must be why we're not shipping Windows 98. Absolutely. Absolutely. As you could imagine, this was extremely embarrassing for Microsoft. But as history testifies, it didn't hurt sales all too much and Windows 98 came on to be a commercial success.

Starting point is 00:06:45 With the release of Windows 10 being free and online and open beta software becoming the norm, embarrassing live tech demos for OS releases such as this may become a thing of the past as we move forward. So there you have it. That was a light-hearted look at five comical computer glitches. If you have heard of any more or have experienced any first hand, please let me know in the comment section. Anyway, this has been Degogo. Thanks for watching and I'll see you again soon for the next video.

Starting point is 00:07:10 Cheers guys, have a good one.

ColdFusion - 5 Most Comical Computer Glitches

There aren't comments yet for this episode. Click on any sentence in the transcript to leave a comment.