Y2K: Hoax, Or Averted Disaster? 625
Allnighterking writes "Y2K -- remember the fear it generated? Cartoons were written about it. The dried food industry saw a boom. Doomsayers abounded. But in the end, no planes fell, no one died and the electric grid stayed up for three more years. Was it all a hoax? Or was it the result of careful and complete planning and upgrading. American RadioWorks has a series of articles talking about the disaster that never happened called Y2K You can either Listen in or read the Transcripts of each of the 3 broadcasts and decide for yourself. The over 100 Billion pumped into the US economy alone may well have fueled the boom and predicated the bust. Could the success at Y2K prevention have made the coming problem in 2038 something people will ignore?"
Oh no (Score:5, Funny)
Phil Collins is going to release another album?
Don't be silly (Score:5, Funny)
2038 ? (Score:3, Funny)
Lets see, I'll be 73 about then.
Providing it doesn't cause my VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) 200 mph Zimmer Frame to crash, I don't really think I'm going to care all that much.
what about Y10K? (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Combination (Score:3, Funny)
In what way are those two alike?
Re:2038 ? (Score:2, Funny)
Re:2038 ? (Score:1, Funny)
still waiting... (Score:5, Funny)
proof of hoax! (Score:3, Funny)
We were lucky (Score:3, Funny)
Re:what about Y10K? (Score:2, Funny)
Don't worry, a solution to the Y10K problem has already been proposed - RFC 2550 [faqs.org] covers it very extensively.
Re:not a hoax (Score:2, Funny)
You fixed somewhere from 2 to 300 bugs? That's kind of a broad range, isn't it?
darwin 7.7.0... (Score:5, Funny)
Tue Jan 19 03:14:01 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:02 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:03 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:04 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:05 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:06 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
w00t!
LAMENESS FILTER SUCKS...
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Re:Collective fear (Score:2, Funny)
Yeah, right.
Imagine their surprise when, one second after midnight on 01.01.2000, the system's OS went down HARD.
Over-hyped? Maybe. Real? You betcha.
Re:The current disaster shows the possible scale (Score:3, Funny)
elevator madness
Re:Perl Script (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Collective fear (Score:4, Funny)
Examples include:
And people were actually buying this stuff because it was Y2K compliant.
Re:damn right! was: [Re:Collective fear] (Score:1, Funny)
What?!?! There had bloody well better be - May 19 is my 59th birthday!
God - what if I don't turn 59?!?! Then I'll never turn 60, and won't ever get my retirement fund!
Egads - DO SOMETHING! WE NEED THIS FIXED!
****AAAAUUUUGHHH!****
Re:Don't be silly (Score:3, Funny)
Speaking of this, here is a humor story about Y2K.
Always breaking anyways, why 1/1/01 different? (Score:3, Funny)
My logic in 1999 was this: Everything is always breaking anyways and we still seem to get by, why should 1/1/01 be any different? Servers die, applications crash, battery backups fail, power outages happen, cars crash, trains derail, planes wreck, secretaries with "temporary" admin permissions delete entire file servers. From my point of view, I'm amazed that we even make it from one day to the next!
"Yea, but on 1/1/01, it's ALL gonna break at the same time!!!!" Dude, it's already all breaking at the same time. We'll be fine.
And now I get to say: "See, I told you so."
Re:damn right! was: [Re:Collective fear] (Score:2, Funny)
I was on a Y2K team & when we talked to suppliers about Y2K a lot of them refused to accept that 2000 was a leap year.
I ended up getting machine readable copies of Pope Gregory's bull Inter Gravissimus (in Latin) and the 1751 English act of Parliment An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use which adopted it for England. The New Zealand Parliment never having repealed it, it is still law. I'd email these to suppliers, pointing out that they both explicitly said the year 'MM' is a leap year.
Usually they folded at this point. The one really worrying reaction I got back was the supplier of the automated access control system we used on some unattended sites "Well ... it didn't recognise 1996 as a leap year, so I doubt it will recognise 2000"
Yikes!