email sent (from 1969) plagues some iPhone 4 users

As if the iPhone 4 didn't have enough troubles, a mysterious software issue has been plaguing some users. There's a flurry of discussion on the Apple forums about blank email messages appearing on the iPhone that can't be deleted. Even more strange is the date that appears on those messages: December 31, 1969.

www.google.co.nz... jmDoykcaz6nI4B&usg=AFQjCNEVsK7fq1bs0lU098NNnlRfapwCIw

WOW, so what a mystery.

Do you suppose they already made time travel possible, and this is a way to test if communication is possible?

So what do you guys think?

for some reason your link isnt working

i think it might be to long you gotta use the link switch to make it appear shorter (the little picture of the globe above the box you type in)

Originally posted by Alaskan Man
for some reason your link isnt working

i think it might be to long you gotta use the link switch to make it appear shorter (the little picture of the globe above the box you type in)

Sorry here is another link:
dvice.com...

I think it could be software problems, but isn't apple have the best name when it comes to credibility in regards to producing new generation gadgets without any bugs?

Apparently, it's a UNIX glitch. On UNIX systems (which is most servers), time is counted starting from Jan 1, 1970 (that's when times begins according to UNIX). IMO, these dates are too close to be mere coincidence (< 1 hour, could be time zone differences or even daylight savings). I'm not sure if OS4 is based on UNIX but I know that the flagship Apple operating system, OS X, definitely is. Regardless, the servers that process the emails are most likely run on UNIX. Again, this is probably due to a glitch with UNIX, seeing how the UNIX clock begins with that date.

As far as Apple being glitch free with their ground-breaking gadgets, I wouldn't go that far, though they are usually very good at getting them fixed, quickly.

--airspoon



[edit on 21-7-2010 by airspoon]

Apple took some pretty big risks with the IPhone 4 and aside from a few glitches they've accomplished a pretty amazing feat of engineering. The antenna problem while annoying was overblown. Apparently less than 5% of calls were dropped when you held it the wrong way. Yes the signal did drop but it didn't mean it was always going to drop your call. They packed a lot of antennas into that strip and that's pretty impressive.

My contract isn't up until December anyways so by then all the glitches should be fixed and maybe something new for Xmas

reply to post by airspoon


What kind of a glitch sends such a message, I'm keen in finding out Apple's explanation, although there explanation might be along same lines as yours.

Thanks for your input.

reply to post by airspoon


Did some searching and bare with me I'm no programmer but basically the application that handles email isn't including a date field so one is added and it's December 31, 1969 because of some UNIX thingy or something? I don't know, it was over my head.

A theory of time travel might be a little too far fetched, but it does seem rather weird, especially since it can't be deleted.
I haven't much to contribute here except my thoughts, but I'll flag the thread for interest.

The iPhone isn't the only one that has the December 31 1969 problem.

ATS does too:

www.belowtopsecret.com...

Mabe it's "just" NSA or some other agency trying to install some spyware.
Why? Read the comments on the second link...

"And when the mailer daemon traced the IP, it turned out the e-mail was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE! "

Typical retrace masking used by fbi and cia. You will end at your home if you trace cia.gov or fbi.gov also.

And while I am tipping this thread will be monitored too. Because I wrote NSA. - Hi Guys

BTW...

Was 31.12.1969 not the first start date of arpanet (internet) ?!

reply to post by airspoon


Sure OS MAC is BSD Unix (raped).
2nd line

Don't have an iPhone, but I got a (blank) text message from the future once...thread here.. That still freaks me out.

Originally posted by cushycrux
BTW...

Was 31.12.1969 not the first start date of arpanet (internet) ?!

Not quite, but the date is VERY close.

After much work, the first two nodes of what would become the ARPANET were interconnected between Kleinrock's Network Measurement Center at the UCLA's School of Engineering and Applied Science and Douglas Engelbart's NLS system at SRI International (SRI) in Menlo Park, California, on October 29, 1969

In an early sign of future growth, there were already fifteen sites connected to the young ARPANET by the end of 1971.

en.wikipedia.org...

Dorian Soran

Originally posted by cushycrux
Mabe it's "just" NSA or some other agency trying to install some spyware.
Why? Read the comments on the second link...

"And when the mailer daemon traced the IP, it turned out the e-mail was coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE! "

Typical retrace masking used by fbi and cia. You will end at your home if you trace cia.gov or fbi.gov also.

And while I am tipping this thread will be monitored too. Because I wrote NSA. - Hi Guys

Are you people kidding me? I mean, I know joining ATS would put me in the company of seriously paranoid individuals, but seriously?

This is a common, if not often seen, error with mail servers. It can also be caused by spam (faking the headers, including the date part of the header).

This is definitely a bug.

NSA? Ya, cause they'd do something blatantly obvious that anyone with a brain could figure out while they're "secretly" trying to monitor you.

I've even seen this bug on a Cyrus Imap cluster setup (murder is what it's called, for some bizarre reason) when mail indexes get corrupted (I run a rather large Cyrus Imap cluster for my day job). There are many ways such a thing can happen. I can assure you it's not intentional.

reply to post by DEEZNUTZ


That's quite correct. In most cases, software uses so-called UNIX timestamps to handle dates; contrary to our readable notation of the date in years, months, days, hours and seconds, the UNIX timestamp consists of one number. Depending on the type of timestamp, this number is either the amount of milliseconds or the amount of seconds passed since midnight January 1st, 1970.

When converting this number back to our readable notation, your timezone is taken into account. The timestamp's timezone is UTC, similar to GMT. For people in timezones to the west of GMT, this means some time will be subtracted from the result of the conversion from a timestamp to a date.

If the timestamp is missing (as Chadwickus pointed out, something that happens here as well), the conversion usually assumes a timestamp of 0 seconds, i.e. January 1st, 1970 - or December 31, 1969 after timezone conversion.

To give it a quick try, type this in your address bar (without the leading underscore '_'):

_javascript: new Date( 0 ) )

(the zero in the line above is the timestamp!)

Is there possiblly something more?

I just updated Ad-Aware on my desktop (Win XP OS), the option for real time scanning showed that the software was last active 31/12/1969.

Seems that more than iPhones are being affected.

reply to post by [davinci]


I suppose the post above yours is too lengthy to be read. In short, computers commonly use a single number to represent time; if for any reason at all this number (called a timestamp) is missing, it will show December 31st, 1969 or January 1st, 1970, depending on your timezone.

The conclusion to make when seeing such a date is that the timestamp is missing. There are many reasons for a timestamp to be missing; the software may simple have a bug, or may try to read files written by an incompatible version, etc.

The date itself has nothing to do with the origin of the email, other than that it has no timestamp.

I'm sorry for the down-to-earth explanation, but I work with timestamps on a regular basis, and this date immediately rings a - well, a gong.

What I personally believe is going on, is even more boring..

Since the email can't be deleted as easily as normal emails, I bet it's not an email at all - just a big bug in the iPhone email app, in which it accidentally creates a record for an email which doesn't exist. Whilst trying to display this non-existent email, it subsequently shows up without any attributes (sender, timestamp, body content). Mistakes like this are quite common, but usually phased out in the development stage ..

If there's any mysterious force at play here, it's the force that makes so many ICT companies release their products before the development stage is properly completed. Call it corporate greed, call it extreme capitalism.. call it lucrative stupidity.

September 2, 1969: First time two computers communicated with each other. The true birth of the internet.

The day I was born too.

I changed the date on my computer to December 21, 1969.

Lets see if it works.

Edit: No, bummer. Going to change it back now.

[edit on 21-7-2010 by thehoneycomb]