Re: John Titor Update: Exclusive Report!
Yeah, well your observation, Keroscene, that the WMD quote could be interpreted either way may not amount to a debunking but it certainly shows 'Titor' did NOT say unambiguously there would be no WMDs found in Iraq. Well pointed out.
Here are some other general problems for the 'fence-sitters'
pantsblazing:
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Debunking Alleged Time-Traveller John Titor
December 16, 2004
In November of 2000 a guy calling himself John Titor turned up online claiming to be a time-traveller from 2036. Here are a few thoughts on why it's bullshit.
There's a complete archive of his postings and info at
johntitor.com
This was a post on a BBS and is therefore a bit less coherent than it would normally be.
My first though was that he is a normal, present-day guy has a stockpile of the IBM 5100s he's looking for and he's going to get rid of them on eBay.
There are several technology-related conflicts in his story:
1) They can build a ****ing *time machine* and not replicate either the hardware or functionality of that IBM machine? I think not.
2) Even if that could somehow be the case, he negates it by saying that the "Web" (improperly labeled as people in the future who depend on the Internet for all communications, which is more important as travel is much less feasable would be much more aware that the "Web" is a protocol that runs on a network that has many other uses?it's as stupid as referring to the Internet as "The Email") is much faster and handles all communications. This means that they still have the ability to manufacture and refine processors of all kinds (at least CPUs, DSPs, and comm) and work on advanced software. Given that, they do not need IBM portables from the 1970s.
3) Everyone and their brother knew the basic problem of Y2K. If they need 5100s so much that they're willing to take the risk of and develop the technology to send people back in time to help fix it, 2038 is obviously a huge problem for them and it's only two years away (as he claims tobe from 2036). As a society much more dependant on computers than we are, the chance of someone not understanding the problem (which takes about 20 seconds to grasp), especially someone in the position of being sent away from him family and friends to go to
a different ****ing time, and at a time when it seems that basic technical literacy would be higher, is nil.
He says: "I'm not exactly sure what the technical issue is but I believe some sort of UNIX system registry stops in 2038." Bull. Shit. ("'unix system registry"??!?)
There's also the basic solution: 64 (or more) bit integers. Just re-define time_t with more bits and recompile. Failing that, it's 2003 and there are 64 bit processors out there and unices using them. As it's considered the next thing and companies are spending billions to develop them, there is good reason to believe that they will be more unbiquitous by 2005 when the war supposedly starts (as unrest, it doesn't become full-blown for several more years). Ergo, no problem.
Even if that's not true, they clearly have processor design and fabrication abilities and working designs would be long-established, so they could fix it themselves. Ergo, no problem.
Or they could have done a software hack (which I've just thought of and there may be problems with, so bear with me), something like modifying the time system calls to use strings behind the scenes, or internally using two time numbers, one for 1970-2038 and one for 2038-whenever the next 32 bit int runs out. Or a binary search and replace that looks through executable code and fixes date types. Something. In any case, going back to an 8 or 16 bit system seems an unlikely solution. Ergo, no problem.
Also, if they knew exactly what would help them about the 5100, they could have replicated it. We're talking about a program that runs on a portable computer from the 1970s, not re-writing a million-plus lines of spaghetti code to replicate XP.
All in all, I think the whole thing is interesting. I think the guy is either a social sciences person just seeing what happens, and generally doing it well, or just some loon.
Comments
at March 26, 2005 08:19 PM