For a decade or so, the great threat to the laptop was not a virus, harmful programs or penetration – it was the song “Rhythm Nation”.
What you may think of seems to be a true and correct urban legend, including some internal employees by Microsoft employee and blogger Raymond Chen, who discovered some new details about one of the most amazing Tech stories.
Let’s start at the beginning. In 2022, heavy stories narrator Chen linked a story told by a colleague who was previously working on the Windows XP team. There was a problem: somehow, playing the “rhythm of the nation” on the loudspeakers on the laptop will collide with the laptop. In fact, it can crash close LEDs as well. Microsoft tried to isolate the problem, eliminate other variables, and left the employees with one conclusion: the sound itself was wrong.
Remember that laptops at the time are not charged with the SSD they are doing today. Instead, use hard drives: 5400 -rpm drivers per minute with a magnetic operator, heads and dishes. This only happened is that the “rhythm nation” was unintentionally struck the resonant frequencies for at least one of the ingredients. Vibration caused errors in the drive. It was not enough to sway the hypnotic hard disk head in the dish – although that would do that! – But it simply causes enough to read the mistakes that the laptop system crashes.
Remember that resonance frequencies (or resonance) are just simple physics. Press a cup, and it will “ring”. Show the same sound again on the glass, and it will vibrate in sympathy – until smashing. The Explropratorium Museum in San Francisco once had a metal or so suspended from a chain, and visitors could try to move the suspended metal using a small and cheap magnet on the chain. If you pull a little in time, the metal will eventually move. It is the same principle that brought the Tacoma Narrows bridge down: small movements unite in the right frequency with each other.
For some reason, this is exactly what happened with the “rhythm of the nation”. Dave Plummer (who worked with Chen) was also digging, and concluded that something in the song has also reached the frequency of ringing for solid driving dishes in Western Digital. But Plummer was not able to reproduce the fine problem, which prompted Chen to conclude that the Plumer used the wrong hard drive-I used an external stable drive 5,400 rpm, and was not designed for laptops.
However, the important result of this is that Microsoft was specifically designed in repair: a specific filter (filter of the fissure, as Pelmer is noticed) to get rid of the small frequency tape or reduce at least. For years, if you have listened to “Rhythm Nation” on your laptop, you will hear the song missing that small audio slide that kills the laptop.
Updating this story was a question of Chen: How long did the slit candidate remained in place?
Basically, it remained from Windows XP (2001) to Windows 7 (2009), because Chen informed that another computer seller was still concerned because of Janet’s ability to break the laptops. Microsoft tried to place a base that makes it possible to disable it with all “APOS), which included the fissure filter.
“The seller applied for an exception to this rule on the basis that their APO disables may lead to physical damage to the computer,” Chen wrote. “If their APO can be disabled, Word is extracted that” you can get a heavier voice if you pass with these steps, “and of course you want more brightness, right?
The waiver means that even if all APOS is disabled, the fissure candidate will remain in place. It was granted.
Of course, all SSD laptops are used today, which do not include mechanical components that can be affected by vibration. This does not mean that SSD materials do not have their own resonance frequencies – she does that, but there is no indication that hitting them will be possible with an audible tone, or may cause errors.
This is a shame. Imagine the difference in the world if the “small shark” causes laptops failure. “Sorry, Kiddo – I think we will have to listen to Daddy music instead.”