Forum Home
PC World Chat
Thread ID: 66150	2006-02-13 02:47:00	Y2K - still the journos don't get it!	Tony (4941)	PC World Chat

Post ID	Timestamp	Content	User
429868	2006-02-13 02:47:00	In the latest "Listener" (Feb 18-24) Joanne Black is ranting on about scaremongering about bird flu (and that's another story . . . ), but she says "it's all going to end up like the story of the boy who cried wolf, and his brother who cried SARS and their next-door neighbour who cried Y2K . . . " This really gets me steamed up . Because the world didn't come to an end over the Y2K date coding issue, the media seem to take the attitude that it was all a big con by the IT community to big-note themselves . Of course if there had been major problems, the IT community would have then got all the blame! Speaking as someone who was intimately involved in fixing up programs to cope with the problem, I know that (a) it was a real issue, and (b) the IT community actually did a great job by making sure nothing happened! It would be really nice to read something in the general (i . e . non-IT) press that actually acknowledged that fact . [/RANT]	Tony (4941)
429869	2006-02-13 02:50:00	You realise they don't care. The same way they trash police, report half stories, etc etc etc.	ninja (1671)
429870	2006-02-13 02:56:00	You realise they don't care. The same way they trash police, report half stories, etc etc etc.So true, and so sad. I somehow thought better of the "Listener".	Tony (4941)
429871	2006-02-13 03:02:00	And a lot of people made a lot of money by exploiting the overblown fears . A lot of PCs were dumped for no reason, except the advice of a "consultant" . The inability of the BIOS to change the century byte at the appropriate time was treated as serious . I wrote a simple programme which ran at boot time to change the byte exactly once, the first time the machine was booted in 2000 . Doubtless company records had to be fixed when the century chnaged from 18 to 18 and from 18 to 19 . Peopole had written the century as 2 digits long before computer databases were produced . Computer software has created more "disasters" than that simple change of date . Major (and minor) disasters happen when people trust the output of computers . A major computer software company released an operating system a couple of years previous to 2000 which "knew" that 2000 was not a leap year .	Graham L (2)
429872	2006-02-13 03:12:00	And a lot of people made a lot of money by exploiting the overblown fears. So you are saying it was a non-issue? I obviously can't speak for an entire industry, but all I know is that the (mainframe) systems I worked on would either have failed or produced incorrect results if the work had not been done.	Tony (4941)
429873	2006-02-13 03:16:00	. . . . . . . and their next-door neighbour who cried Y2K . . . . . . " But it was so true - the most vociferous in the scaremeongering were the very people who ended up profiteering from it . You cant expect lay people who take notice when the "experts" tell them there's a problem (including a government committee drawn from a wide range of the populace) to not react when the predicted end of life as we know it didn't happen . Just get used to it .	dvm (6543)
429874	2006-02-13 03:20:00	So you are saying it was a non-issue? I obviously can't speak for an entire industry, but all I know is that the (mainframe) systems I worked on would either have failed or produced incorrect results if the work had not been done. No, there was a problem. I am saying that it was grossly overhyped. Of course work needed to be done. But the basic problem was a clerical one. Just like the previous century changes. Producing incorrect results would have been be something without precedent? :D	Graham L (2)
429875	2006-02-13 03:25:00	But it was so true - the most vociferous in the scaremeongering were the very people who ended up profiteering from it. You cant expect lay people who take notice when the "experts" tell them there's a problem (including a government committee drawn from a wide range of the populace) to not react when the predicted end of life as we know it didn't happen. Just get used to it.You're missing my point - the reason "end of life as we know it didn't happen" is precisely because many people worked very hard to make it so. If you were to look back, I think you would find that most of the real scaremongering was from journos who reported an expert as saying "the sky is going to fall" and left out the next bit "- but only if we don't do something about it."	Tony (4941)
429876	2006-02-13 03:39:00	No, there was a problem. I am saying that it was grossly overhyped. Of course work needed to be done. But the basic problem was a clerical one. Just like the previous century changes. Producing incorrect results would have been be something without precedent? :DWhy do you say it was overhyped? Because everything ended up OK? I repeat from my previous post, everything was OK only because of a huge amount of behind-the-scenes work. To say it was a clerical problem is a gross oversimplification. If everything was being done with pen-and-paper, then yes, all you would have to do is to tell a clerk it is now 2000 not 1999. But when a computer system has dates stored as dd/mm/yy (e.g. 12/08/99) and so in 2000 it will show up as 12/08/00, and you then want to do calculations on them, it is necessary to go through every program, find every reference to a date (direct and indirect), check whether it is OK and change it if it is not. This is a potentially massive task. Otherwise you get people showing up as 1 year old instead of 101, people being 100 years in debt, etc etc. That is if the program will actually work at all! Where the IT industry should hang its head in shame is not thinking about the problem earlier. My brother was working on a system written in 1996 that still had dates coded as dd/mm/yy! There were a few far-sighted individuals in the late 70's who were taking about the issue, but they were largely ignored.	Tony (4941)
429877	2006-02-13 03:52:00	You're missing my point - the reason "end of life as we know it didn't happen" is precisely because many people worked very hard to make it so. If you were to look back, I think you would find that most of the real scaremongering was from journos who reported an expert as saying "the sky is going to fall" and left out the next bit "- but only if we don't do something about it." No I'm not - I was on the Y2K committee and most of the hype came directly from IT "experts". Yes there was a problem, but one that shopuld have been recognised earlier by the experts and fixed in the normal process of upgrading etc. Not the panic that was transmitted to a public that had little or no knowledge of the problem or the possible consequences.	dvm (6543)
1 2 3