It's 09-09-99 and my computer seems to be working correctly.
- Thread starter Lucas
- Start date
Rich Lucibella
Staff
JJR-
Too funny!
Rich
Too funny!
Rich
George Hill
Staff Alumnus
We had a tiny Glitch over here for about an hour... External websites were unreachable but internals were... turned out to be a Firewall issue that was fixed as soon as it was discovered.
But it was highly doubtful that it was Y2K as it was a Cisco firewall... Unless it wasn't upgraded with the latest IOS and had the right boot-rom and the service contact was still valid... blah blah blah...
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"Supreme authority derives from a mandate from the masses. Not from some farsicle aquatic ceremony."
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
The Critic formerly known as Kodiac
But it was highly doubtful that it was Y2K as it was a Cisco firewall... Unless it wasn't upgraded with the latest IOS and had the right boot-rom and the service contact was still valid... blah blah blah...
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"Supreme authority derives from a mandate from the masses. Not from some farsicle aquatic ceremony."
RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE
The Critic formerly known as Kodiac
Rich Lucibella
Staff
Rich
I have put a lot of thought into this Y2K thing.... and I have noticed a couple of opportunities.. 1. Towards the end of the year there should be a big sell of of stocks... ie.. people worried about their investments and will want cash to carry around... Thing to do is store up your cash now and buy stocks in Dec.... About Feb. all these people will be getting back into the market so then would be the time to sell... Take the money you get from the sale of stocks and buy guns... People are buying guns now in prep of Y2K driving the prices up.... After the first of the year and they see that nothing is going to happen they will be selling these guns off driving the prices down. Should then be a good time to pick up some deals. Hey, there is always a silver lining somewhere....
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Richard
The debate is not about guns,
but rather who has the ultimate power to rule,
the People or Government.
RKBA!
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Richard
The debate is not about guns,
but rather who has the ultimate power to rule,
the People or Government.
RKBA!
This 09-09-99 issue is badly overblown. Notice that the date, when stored, usually includes a couple zeros (if not, it's stored in another way that looks even less like a series of nines). The real problem would be 99-99-99, which of course won't happen. Today's panic is a perfect example of how much of the Y2K issue is ignorant hysteria.
Paul Revere
New member
The 9/9/99 business is more of a warm and fuzzy reassurance tool for the masses. One forgets that the computer language recognizes this string as "09.09.99" not 9999. Quite a bit different than rolling over to "00" or 01.01.00, whereby computers either recognize this string as 1900 or "Fail".
We cannot judge the impact of the "REAL" computer bug of the string 01.01.00 with this September coincidence of 09.09.99. Not apples and apples.
Get comfy if you want, its supposed to have that effect on you.
We cannot judge the impact of the "REAL" computer bug of the string 01.01.00 with this September coincidence of 09.09.99. Not apples and apples.
Get comfy if you want, its supposed to have that effect on you.
I mentioned this elsewhere, but I'll mention it here. Can you imagine the corny sense of humor a programmer has to have to code a shutdown date of 9-9-99 into their program? I think that would be funny as heck myself.
But semi-seriously, if someone is going to go through that much trouble to code a shutdown date (aside from more of a practical joke), the more likely one is to put in 12-31-99. But then, one has to wonder why anyone would go through the hassle of coding in a shutdown date, when they could just increase the number of the year to 4 digits? Unless it's a short oversight, to which then the hypothetical programmer in question would not have thought of coding in a shutdown date in the first place.
As far as the end user is concerned, even if somebody has so illogically coded in a shutdown date of 12-31-99, well, by then it wouldn't matter would it?
Makes no sense.
But semi-seriously, if someone is going to go through that much trouble to code a shutdown date (aside from more of a practical joke), the more likely one is to put in 12-31-99. But then, one has to wonder why anyone would go through the hassle of coding in a shutdown date, when they could just increase the number of the year to 4 digits? Unless it's a short oversight, to which then the hypothetical programmer in question would not have thought of coding in a shutdown date in the first place.
As far as the end user is concerned, even if somebody has so illogically coded in a shutdown date of 12-31-99, well, by then it wouldn't matter would it?
Makes no sense.
Actually the problem with 9999 could be real if, and only if, a particular program compared a file string with the current date. Some old programs/programmers use 9999 or -9999 as a delimiter in ascii files. This was and still is a widely used practice at some locations, Bell Labs is one I am familiar with and there is nothing wrong with this. However, when reading a file you usually know the date field and expect it to be a date and treat it as such. The comparison is usually made on an index field. So the comparison of a date field with 9999 would be extremely poor programming practice. And the date Sept 9, 1999 would never be stored as 9999 as Paul Revere and others pointed out. At a minimum it would be stored in 6 digits or 5 if it is stored in hex.
There is no proof, but I think those that say this is a public comfort building effort just may be right. "See, we got through the 9999 problem with no serious problems. Why should you worry about the Y2K problem and take your money out of the bank?" Can you say contrived? I knew you could. It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood.
There is no proof, but I think those that say this is a public comfort building effort just may be right. "See, we got through the 9999 problem with no serious problems. Why should you worry about the Y2K problem and take your money out of the bank?" Can you say contrived? I knew you could. It's a wonderful day in the neighborhood.
Speaking of Y2K, this thing has been in the news for what? Three years now? The City I work for has just today started asking questions about our emergency generators, how much power they produce and fuel capacity. Four months to go and NOW they get curious? Sheesh, government in action.
BTW: I'm the guy who takes care of those generators and we got it covered. But, just for fun, I think I'll let 'em sweat for a few days.
BTW: I'm the guy who takes care of those generators and we got it covered. But, just for fun, I think I'll let 'em sweat for a few days.
hksigwalther
New member
m¥ Çöµ¶Ü¿Ér ßæ ôk. °_°²
- Å
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- Å
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And another urban legend bites the dust. But I have it on good authority that an asteroid is gonna hit the Earth at 12 minutes after 12 on the twelfth of December...in the year 12,121,212. God thinks duodecimally. slabsides
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An armed man is a citizen; an unarmed man is a subject; a disarmed man is a slave.
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An armed man is a citizen; an unarmed man is a subject; a disarmed man is a slave.
In one system I spent a lot of time with, the year was stored in binary in a 32 bit word. When we wanted a date, we did a binary-to-ASCII conversion. The rollover date is December 31, 4294967295.
I told our customer this and their rep got a worried look and asked if we could have the problem fixed in time.
Go figure. (And meantime, don't joke with people's pre-conceived ideas.)
Jim
I told our customer this and their rep got a worried look and asked if we could have the problem fixed in time.
Go figure. (And meantime, don't joke with people's pre-conceived ideas.)
Jim
I just spoke with my youngest daughter. She works for a company that does the actual billing for hospitals.
On 9-9-99 servers crashed, inputs came in incorrectly, many of her co-workers were sent home because there was no work to be done until the computer mess was straightened out.
Interestingly enough, the problem was all from the hospitals' end. My daughter's company had no problems. They proved that because SOME hospitals had 100% okay input. Other hospitals, 100% bad.
My daughter asked for two weeks off starting December 30th. The harried boss grinned and said, "Get to work - if there's any you can do!"
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Let's see. Here in the pantry. Got bottled water, bread, Shiner Bock, propane for the stoves, flashlights and batteries, Shiner Bock, peanut butter, jelly, Shiner Bock, medications, toilet paper, Shiner Bock, Kleenex, soups,... hmmm.
May have to get some Shiner Bock....
On 9-9-99 servers crashed, inputs came in incorrectly, many of her co-workers were sent home because there was no work to be done until the computer mess was straightened out.
Interestingly enough, the problem was all from the hospitals' end. My daughter's company had no problems. They proved that because SOME hospitals had 100% okay input. Other hospitals, 100% bad.
My daughter asked for two weeks off starting December 30th. The harried boss grinned and said, "Get to work - if there's any you can do!"
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Let's see. Here in the pantry. Got bottled water, bread, Shiner Bock, propane for the stoves, flashlights and batteries, Shiner Bock, peanut butter, jelly, Shiner Bock, medications, toilet paper, Shiner Bock, Kleenex, soups,... hmmm.
May have to get some Shiner Bock....
There were not any computers around for 03-03-33, and maybe a couple on 04-04-44, and there were no problems. On 05-05-55 there were a few more and no problems. On 06-06-66 there were a bunch, but I wasn't working then. On 07-07-77 and 08-08-88 I was working on computers and didn't even think of there being a problem. Now exactly why was 09-09-99 suppose to cause a problem? I know I will now be looking forward to 10-10-10, better watch out, computers gonna crash.
Jeff, 9/9/99 is unique because it can be construed as 9999 which can be a file delimiter. This wouldn't be true for 8888, 7777, etc. See my post above.
Dennis, IMX, an any given day a company's computer system may go down with an enormous crash. Ask your daughter if the server crash actually had anything to do with 9/9/99 or it was just a coincidence. In fact, I'll wager there will be many systems in the U.S. and around the world that will crash on 1/1/2000 and it will have absolutely nothing to do with Y2K. But Y2K will be blamed, no doubt.
Dennis, IMX, an any given day a company's computer system may go down with an enormous crash. Ask your daughter if the server crash actually had anything to do with 9/9/99 or it was just a coincidence. In fact, I'll wager there will be many systems in the U.S. and around the world that will crash on 1/1/2000 and it will have absolutely nothing to do with Y2K. But Y2K will be blamed, no doubt.
A data structure for a date must contain six characters (5 if you use Julian date). Either an alpha 6 or numeric 6. The alpha would be '090999' or '990909', though the second version would be unlikely in alpha. The second version 990909 is very common in numeric 6 file format because it becomes easy to sort by date or determine if one record is dated before another. If a numeric 4 date format is used that would store 09-09-99 as 9999 how would 12-25-99 be stored without data truncation? This works if the numerics were stored in hex also and if compressed you would still need 3 spaces not 2:
123
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009
999
I have been in data processing for 25 years and have never seen a file structure that used a 4 character or numeric date.
123
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009
999
I have been in data processing for 25 years and have never seen a file structure that used a 4 character or numeric date.