Up to Windows 7 at least, Microsoft had to introduce an exception for a clip by singer Janet Jackson responsible for the crash of certain computers.
If you listened to RNB in the mid-2000s, you may have really enjoyed Rhythm Nation by Janet Jackson. But the title, which today combines more than 35 million views, was also responsible for many computers at that time.
It is a Microsoft employee, Raymond Chen, who tells it on his blog, very concretely explaining that a frequency of the clip could cause a sufficiently large vibration at the level of the hard drive to inevitably plant, or dysfunction.
An exception claimed by a partner
The case was taken very seriously by Microsoft, which proposed a specific filter, which remained within the business operating system “at least up to Windows 7”.
-The filter was created by a “large manufacturer of computers” after discovering that certain frequencies present in the clip could “disturb the proper functioning of the hard drive”. This vulnerability was added to the Database of the American Institute of Standards and Technologies (the NIST), which specifies that this could concern the hard drives turning at 5,400 rpm and sold “after 2005”.
The NIST explains that beyond Janet Jackson’s clip, it allowed clever little ones to create a bug similar to “denial of service” with a user visiting a page containing the faulty frequencies.
According to Raymond Chen, everything started from an added feature with Windows 7, which made it possible to deactivate the audio treatments imposed by certain manufacturers. One of them nevertheless asked for an exception, implicating the too high level of the bass that it could create: “People won the box and took advantage of richer bass for a certain time, then at a given moment, the computer planted mysteriously.”
That we reassure ourselves, you should now be able to listen Rhythm Nation without risk. The clip was indeed remastered on YouTube. Above all, hard drives have evolved and the SSDs (flash memory) are not affected by these breakdowns.
