Strange Bug in Apple's iSync

symphonix

Scratch & Sniff Committee
Apple today announced that they are aware of the "pre-emptive synching" bug that can affect iSync on many of the faster G4 based Apple computers.

"It was simply a case of the software running on machines faster than it was designed for," Apple spokesperson Duane Hervian said today, "the iSync software was syncing with address book entries that haven't even been entered yet."

In most cases the synchronisation of events and contacts from times in the future failed, but in some rare cases users had observed address book or calendar entries appearing from nowhere.

"I opened my address book one morning to find it suddenly full of contact numbers for job agencies." One user told this macosx.com reporter, "The next day, I lost my job. Coincedence? I think not."

Another user reports finding a barbeque party scheduled with friends he had not yet met.

Another single man was shocked to find that he had his own wedding scheduled in just over a year, to a girl he hadn't met yet.

"I'm not sure if I want to go through with it," he said, "backing down now might disrupt the chain of causality and destroy the fabric of the entire universe. But compared to getting married, that's not really all that scary."
He added that he planned to "try and act surprised." when he did meet his future wife.

Some users see this bug in the iSync software as a potential security threat of epic proportions. Others say it may be just an early indicator that Apple are in the process of developing time travel technology.

Microsoft are planning on releasing their own pre-emptive address book syncing software soon, which will enable windows users to recieve ads for products that haven't been released yet, and be arrested for pirating software that hasn't even been written yet.

Meanwhile, Apple say that a recently released security update "should prevent any further temporally displaced contacts and events from appearing." However, they urge users to "be careful not to read anything they might already have, as there is a high risk that doing so might corrupt their system, and, in fact, all of the universe."
 
Reminds me of a section of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy that said rather than deal with all of the lawsuits pending against the book's publishers for copyright infringement, they simply sent the Guide back through time. And then the publishers of the past sued the original creators for copyright infringement... and they won! :)

Speaking of which...

http://www.siriuscc.com/
 
Ever since I read The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy I havn't been able to read any other book. I try to start one, but I just can't do it! :D

Anyway: I loaded my friends Address Book up on his new G5 and found out I'm married with 3 kids who are also married and he's the future president of an Apple owned business. How fun.
 
Yes, I am a bit of a HHGG fan and have collected all of Douglas Adams' books. Maybe thats where I got my inspiration from.

Trip: You might also like the Discworld novels by Terry Pratchett. He can write in that same thinking-outside-the-square style. I'd suggest starting with "The Last Hero" illustrated one, as it gives a neat introduction to a few of the more enduring characters.

Oh, and Trip, I tried syncing my contacts book with an XServe 24-processor cluster and got the 28-digit phone number for a great little restaurant at Mars Base Five.
 
What exactly is "The HitchHikers Guide To The Galaxy"? I've heard it mentioned a few times, is it Originally from America or something?! I've not heard of it anywhere in the UK!

Cheers! :D
 
Douglas Adams was british if im not misstaken...
He was a HUGE apple-fan. Several of his characters got macintosh. He once stated in an interview that when compaq wanted to give him a computer, he said "sure i can take it but i wont use it, i got an apple macintosh". according to him the woman trying to give him the compaq answered that she and the other people she worked with at compaq also used macintosh-computers at home. :)
 
Originally posted by Decado
Douglas Adams was british if im not misstaken...

You're not, and he was, and his death remains a great loss. I was given The Salmon of Doubt for Christmas, which was bits and pieces in progress, taken off his beloved Mac - he was a great Mac evangelist. It's got the beginning chapters of a new Dirk Gently adventure which shows that he was coming back to the form that was missing in Mostly Harmless.

Share and enjoy ...
 
There was actually a Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy game for the older Macs with System 6... :)
 
Sure, Lyra, but it also says he wasn't sure if it was going to turn out to be a Dirk Gentley adventure or another Hitchhiker's Guide when he was done with it...or even both.

I went out and bought Salmon of Doubt when it came out.

Doh! And I'll have to buy it again now...just realized that. I had my car towed back in March - driving with no insurence is a big deal here in Delaware, if you want to know why - and I couldn't pay to get it out. Freakin guys threw all my books that were in the trunk away. :mad:

I had probably $3,000 worth of books in the trunk....
 
Originally posted by Darkshadow
Sure, Lyra, but it also says he wasn't sure if it was going to turn out to be a Dirk Gentley adventure or another Hitchhiker's Guide when he was done with it...

I think you'll find that was the title, not the chapters.
 
Originally posted by Darkshadow
Gah, Microsoft in control of a time machine. There's nothing scarier than that!
If Micro$oft owned a time machine it would probably cause a huge paradox. They would travel to the future and take future technology back to the past and implement it in their products. This would cause the technology in the future to be more advanced than when MS had originally visited, so they would have brought back more advanced technology and implemented that. And this would loop for all time and create a paradox.
I see time travel paradoxes all the time in stories and movies and I've come to the conclusion that time travel of any kind has an extremely high risk of paradox.
 
Anybody hear about the Hitchhickers Movie? The script and stuff is done last I heard. It's suppost to come out in like two years or something!

And thanks symphonix! I'll go check out some of those books as soon as I get the time. ;)
 
There is an update on the Hitchhikers' movie on h2g2.com - the script and storyboards are being assembled on a houseboat in Islington and Douglas Adams' family are in favour of seeing the project get off the ground. It is currently in pre-pre-production and is being handled by Spyglass films.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A1094663

And Neyo, you would definitely get a blast out of the Hitchhiker books. Douglas Adams was a wizard, a Mac fan, and a truly great writer. His books sparkled with humour and were written with loving care. A person could live by the HHGG's philosophy.

Trip: To quote Death from the Discworld...
TRICKERY WITH WORDS IS WHERE HUMANS LIVE.
 
Audible.com's doing maintenance right now, so I'll have to come back with the links once it's back up, but you can get all four books of the HHGG trilogy read by Adams himself. Great way to spend a few hours is listening to the books, though I must say I thought So Thanks was his best and Mostly Harmless the weakest, though still Mostly enjoyable.
 
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