Y2K hype...

[Boerseun]

So - a few years ago the world almost came to a standstill because computers didn't think there was anything following the year 1999.

I remember a heck of a lot of hype about the whole thing, and I was involved in a few 'y2k-readiness' projects back in the day. But it came and went.

 

What I want to know, however, is if it actually made a dent anywhere in the world? I mean, surely, some companies must have decided it's a bunch of hogwash or simply ignored it, and never paid for overpaid contractors to sort their 'y2k-issues' out. Did anything happen to them?

 

Was there any case at all of the y2k-bug bringing a company to its knees?

Or are everybody feeling slightly silly after the fact, and don't want to acknowledge that they paid a lot of money for a lot of horse manure?

[Jay-qu]

The whole Y2K thing never made sense to me.. I didnt see why a computer couldnt just keep counting, and if it couldnt why the remedy wasnt a quick and simple fix..

[pgrmdave]

The whole Y2K thing never made sense to me.. I didnt see why a computer couldnt just keep counting, and if it couldnt why the remedy wasnt a quick and simple fix..

 

Because of how the memory worked - they wrote programs in the 60's and 70's to be incredibly efficient in terms of memory usage, so they only allowed for just enough bits to be used to represent two digits. These programs weren't written in C++, or Java - they were written in assembly language, which is much more difficult to read and reprogram. It wasn't a simple fix because it was written in such a low level language.

[TheBigDog]

Most major corporations upgraded from the outdated legacy mainframe systems as part of their Y2K plan. Any data that passed through those older systems was at risk. It is true that there was some desktop risk as well, but mostly because of Microsoft's OS dominance throughout the whole world that issue was delt with most efficiently.

 

The failures that I have seen documented were all prior to Y2K when systems suddenly needed to deal with dates that were out of range. In 97 the first lawsuit for Y2K compliance started when a cash register in a butcher shop in Michigan would not accept credit cards with expiration dates in the year 2000 or beyond. In the seventies a mortgage company in Philidelphia had trouble issueing 30 mortgages because their computer was thinking the end date was 1900. Those were the typical failures. But it was a great motivator to update VERY outdated business systems that were running countless functions all over the world.

 

The wheels of industry did not stop turning. But a great deal of effort went into insuring that was the case.

 

Bill

[alexander]

The whole Y2K thing never made sense to me.. I didnt see why a computer couldnt just keep counting, and if it couldnt why the remedy wasnt a quick and simple fix..

<caugh>microsoft</caugh>

[softdragonz]

The whole Y2K thing never made sense to me.. I didnt see why a computer couldnt just keep counting, and if it couldnt why the remedy wasnt a quick and simple fix..

 

It wasnt just a game of counting. First of all, many of these Y2K affected systems were networked. Also, they maintained huge databases. The fields in the databases that offered only two digits were increased to four digits (or perhaps even more .... or we will end up with Y10K problem :( )

 

Also, if the bug was in an assembly language, they had to convert 8 bit registers (which allowed only 2 digits ) to 16 bit ones. And changing assembly program involves much more work as we must see that all 8 bit operations are transformed to 16 bit operations) :(

[Indroneil Ghosh]

Y2K did create a huge fuss all around me (I should know, I had installed a copy of some crazy program which would 'fix' the problem in my PC)

 

I wanna know why the problem did not cause any trouble when it should have.

[Zythryn]

Y2K did create a huge fuss all around me (I should know, I had installed a copy of some crazy program which would 'fix' the problem in my PC)

 

I wanna know why the problem did not cause any trouble when it should have.

 

 

Becuase the issue was known ahead of time and companies took steps to correct the problem BEFORE it happened.

 

I know this is unusual as normally we either do not have as much advanced warning, or if we do, we play the odds. Thinking that because there is a 1 in 1000 chance it won't happen this year.

 

Mark

[Boerseun]

Becuase the issue was known ahead of time and companies took steps to correct the problem BEFORE it happened.

Surely, not all companies had the foresight, the budget or the will to do it?

Did anything significant happen to them?

[Zythryn]

Surely, not all companies had the foresight, the budget or the will to do it?

Did anything significant happen to them?

 

Not everyone took steps, although I am not aware of any companies that didn't.

 

For end users without Y2K compliant browsers their calander systems would start being goofy. The security certificates would start reporting that SSL certificates were not good. Mostly annoyances.

 

Leading up to Y2K the experts could tell companies they knew there would be some level of disruption, but they weren't sure how bad it would be. The results COULD have been disastrous or they could have been an annoyance.

 

There really were not that many companies that needed to fix the issue. For example, Microsoft was the only company that needed to fix the Y2K issue for all individuals and companies using Windows OS's. All people needed to do was download the patch (some didn't even do this though).

 

As I recall, Apple started with 4 bit dates instead of 2, so I don't think they were affected. The old IBM mainframes were, as I recall, a big concern. I am not sure how the distribution of their fix was done.

 

I read reports of some customers of insurance or utilities that got huge or even negative dollar amount bills because of this issue. But again, more of an annoyance than anything as long as it was fixed :wave:

 

Mark

[Buffy]

<caugh>microsoft</caugh>

<cough>Dept of Defense...COBOL</cough>

 

Grace Hopper is God, :wave:

Buffy

[Buffy]

Serously, the problem was mostly in COBOL programs. We really didn't get formal date datatypes until the problem was recognized and understood (which as noted above actually started in the 70s and 80s): most date data was stored as strings--usually "00/00/00" or 3 byte representations thereof, which by definition had problems with the carry on the year. Even 30-40 years ago though, a lot of COBOL was using Julian Dates which have no problems with Y2k.

 

There were other wierd effects, like the penchant that many programmers had for making 9/9/99 a null or invalid date, which caused a few problems *before* 2000.

 

There were lots of programs developed that went through COBOL source code and "fixed" most of it leaving about 10-30% to be recoded (and at least problems got mostly flagged) so the amount of work wasn't that bad.

 

All the hype got CEOs breathing down the necks of CIOs and IT VPs, so while it was crunch time as Y2k approached, it got going in time. Also as noted above, many companies got bit by the issue of using future dates (e.g. credit card expiration) in a very small number of applications that did not kill them, and got serious about it before the more bottom-line-related systems got hit. And similarly, because the y2k bugs occurred at different lead times, the impact was spread out if it did occur. I don't personally know of any complete meltdowns (and I was doing consulting to big companies on it when it was hot), it dramatically affected IT budgets and was responsible for the very early stages of outsourcing to India...

 

Cheers,

Buffy

[alexander]

thanks for the explanation, i knew it must have been something along the lines, but never had the time to research it...

[InfiniteNow]

So - a few years ago the world almost came to a standstill because computers didn't think there was anything following the year 1999.

I remember a heck of a lot of hype about the whole thing, and I was involved in a few 'y2k-readiness' projects back in the day. But it came and went.

 

What I want to know, however, is if it actually made a dent anywhere in the world? I mean, surely, some companies must have decided it's a bunch of hogwash or simply ignored it, and never paid for overpaid contractors to sort their 'y2k-issues' out. Did anything happen to them?

 

Was there any case at all of the y2k-bug bringing a company to its knees?

Or are everybody feeling slightly silly after the fact, and don't want to acknowledge that they paid a lot of money for a lot of horse manure?

 

 

Anybody want to place any bets on what will happen... if Hypography will crash, when I reach a rep of 1K?

 

It's the H1K problem!

 

The banks will fail, global economics will come to a screeching halt, goverments will topple, children will starve, and, worst of all... gays will get married!! :eek: :cup:

 

 

Anyone care to help me accelerate the completion of the test? ;)

[TheBigDog]

Anybody want to place any bets on what will happen... if Hypography will crash, when I reach a rep of 1K?

 

It's the H1K problem!

 

The banks will fail, global economics will come to a screeching halt, goverments will topple, children will starve, and, worst of all... gays will get married!! :eek: :cup:

 

 

Anyone care to help me accelerate the completion of the test? :wink:

I bet it will behave like the old Asteroids video game. It will turn over and begin counting from zero. :hihi:

 

Bill

[TheFaithfulStone]

I'd be much more concerned about the 2038 problem - which is extant in POSIX systems.

 

That one's a bit hairier, since you can't just go through and change the data type on on time to 64-bit.

 

Still - not really THAT worried about it.

 

TFS

[Buffy]

Anybody want to place any bets on what will happen... if Hypography will crash, when I reach a rep of 1K?

 

It's the H1K problem!

Now, Now, Now, we can certainly tell that you are not a computer scientist...

 

If the data type for Rep Power was a "tiny int"--one byte--many of us would have lit the Tilt light back at 256.

 

If the data type were a "Short"--two bytes--then you're gonna have to get to 65,537 for there to be a problem (or if Alexander or Craig or Q are watching, 32,769 if its not an unsigned int).

 

Most likely its an int--4 bytes--so the Universe is likely to disintegrate before it is a problem...so:

... and, worst of all... gays will get married!! :hihi: :cup:

will surely happen before then...heck Dallas is getting a gay mayor!

Anyone care to help me accelerate the completion of the test? :wink:

Uh oh, you don't want to jinx yourself do you?

 

Now don't everyone pile on at once,

Buffy