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John Simmons / outlaw programmer wrote: putting too much time into being politically correct is a huge waste of time
This is IMHO always true. Politically correct is BS.
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See Here[^]
Well Done Sir Clive.
But one has to ask what the 33 yearold former Lap Dancer and Ex-Miss England sees in the 69 year old millionaire?
It is easy to see what he is getting!
------------------------------------
I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave
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Ok. For the ToDo list:
1. Become a millionaire before I'm 69.
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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You see, when I go to strip clubs, I'm really just after true love.
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Dalek Dave wrote: Sir Clive
Now man, that's Nostalgia again (my ZX!).
BTW Congratulations Sir Clive. Anyway I hardly believe she will buy chocolate milk for you before going out for shopping. 
If the Lord God Almighty had consulted me before embarking upon the Creation, I would have recommended something simpler.
-- Alfonso the Wise, 13th Century King of Castile.
This is going on my arrogant assumptions. You may have a superb reason why I'm completely wrong.
-- Iain Clarke
[My articles]
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She's getting deep intellectual stimulation.
"WPF has many lovers. It's a veritable porn star!" - Josh Smith As Braveheart once said, "You can take our freedom but you'll never take our Hobnobs!" - Martin Hughes.
My blog | My articles | MoXAML PowerToys | Onyx
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Just goes to show money certainly can bring errrm happiness.
Two heads are better than one.
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Talking about the year 2038[^] bug brings back an anecdote that happened to me in the nineties.
I was working for EDS at the time, and my boss had tasked me to present an estimate for an overhaul of all the programs at a large bank. The total bill was going to amount to millions of dollars, so understandably, the chairman of the bank was sitting in on this meeting.
At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 2:32 AM
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Yes, but it's wise to plan ahead!! 
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Ah, happy memories!
I was working for a hardware store at the time, being temporarily (12 years) unemployable in my profession, and was tasked with ensuring that our "systems" would not be destroyed by the Y2K bug. I did my due diligence over a period of months and was happy to report that our systems were safe. The nuts and bolts didn't care what year it was, nor did the rain gutters. The lumber would be the same wet crap it has always been, the paint would still dry on time, and fail to give the "one coat" coverage we advertised. The computers were so old that they no longer cared what day it was, having long before despaired of ever having a retirement plan, and the elevators had been sulking in the basement for so long that everyone just took the stairs anyway.
By the time Y2K38 rolls around, I expect to be beyond caring what they do. Sorry I'll be to miss the party, but I expect to have other dolphins to fry by then.
"A Journey of a Thousand Rest Stops Begins with a Single Movement"
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Roger Wright wrote: The computers were so old that they no longer cared what day it was
That's worth a five of anyone's money!
I wanna be a eunuchs developer! Pass me a bread knife!
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Not exactly relevant to the topic but...
In '99 a lot of people made a lot of money off the Y2K paranoia. And a lot more people made money from the humor aspect of it (anything can have a humorous side). I bought a "Y2K disposable cigarette lighter" in 1999, complete with a garish and silly logo on its side. It was intended to be a keepsake - joining other useless items in a lower dresser drawer. Over time, here and there I'd run out of butane and visit the dresser to light up a smoke (my only vice). So, it was getting used, if only sparingly.
And the damn thing STILL works in 2010. I wish I knew how many times I've used it. Probably hundreds by now. If only everything else was so reliable. I've had marriages that didn't work this long!
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Michel Godfroid wrote: at a large bank
Michel Godfroid wrote: unlikely to be around in the year 9999
Forget being there till 9999....did it survive this recession?
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It did, but it's a much leaner bank now...
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It was 2007 when I last saw the words "Y2K Solutions" on a business card.
I enquired thereof and was told "4 years Pentonville for fraud", and haven't had the chance to run out of stock of the old cards.
How I laughed, then realised he was serious!
------------------------------------
I will never again mention that I was the poster of the One Millionth Lounge Post, nor that it was complete drivel. Dalek Dave
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Michel Godfroid wrote: At one point in the meeting he interrupted me, and said "young man," (they don't call me that any more) "are you telling me that moving from 2 to 4 digits is going to cost me half a year profits? In that case I'd better be safe than sorry, could you rework your estimate to move to 5 digits?". The CIO grew red in the face as he was trying to prevent ejecting his coffee through his nostrils, and I was frantically searching for words as I tried to explain to him that it was unlikely that his programs (or his bank for that matter) were unlikely to be around in the year 9999.
The fact is that the whole mess happened because the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99.
Cheers,
Vikram. (Got my troika of CCCs!)
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Vikram A Punathambekar wrote: the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99.
Perhaps they were just being optimistic.
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Vikram A Punathambekar wrote: The fact is that the whole mess happened because the COBOL guys
Actually, the whole mess stemmed from the use of punched cards in the 60-ties and 70-ties. Most data input was done through the good old IBM 029[^]
Records were 80 bytes in length, and they got stored that way on the disks (which were only used for temporary storage, like providing a sorting buffer), or tapes. Space was at a premium on these cards, so if you could omit some digits, and avoid making linked records, you were a hero. Nobody used binary arithmetic, because you could'nt type an int on a punched card (much less figure out what it should be), so decimal arithmetic was rife (remember PIC 99/99/99 ?).
The COBOL guys naturally used this 80-character format, because it was the way the records were coming in.
In the 70's the 8 inch floppy disk[^] became popular as a data input device, and these beasts had a record length of 128 bytes. However, by that time hard disks were becoming more and more affordable (with HUGE capacities, such as 5MB), and overhauling the record format was just not done, because of the investment in legacy software. (Yes even then... the millenium was still safely away by 30 years, and life expectancy was lower than today, so that you did not have a lot of people born in the previous century). Date problems where handled on a case-by-case basis (providing a wrap around for people born in for example 1896). You would have been hard-pressed to find someone who was a hundred years old, and businesses didn't care, as these people were not really their target market.
I remember stories of local councils sending birth presents to old biddies on their 100 birthday, and credit card companies refusing cards to 80-year olds because they were too young.
modified on Tuesday, April 27, 2010 4:53 AM
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Thanks Michel, I stand corrected on the Cobol guys, but that is peripheral to my argument. Whoever started using YY instead of YYYY - Cobol programmers or punched card programmers - clearly didn't believe their software would still be used beyond 1999.
Cheers,
Vikram. (Got my troika of CCCs!)
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We thought we'd all be dead by 1999  Amazed to find myself in the 21st century 
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Vikram A Punathambekar wrote: happened because the COBOL guys who wrote the rubbish didn't realise their code would be used beyond (19)99
The COBOL guys just followed the specs.
Chris Meech
I am Canadian. [heard in a local bar]
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice. In practice there is. [Yogi Berra]
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"Well, there's good news sir; any additional digits can be done for the same price."
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Actually they couldn't: we had developed a shitload of parsers and semantic analysers, which largely automated the process of moving from 2 to 4 digits. These tools were leveraged across poor customers, so moving to 5 digits would require us to 'fess up'
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I've met people that think the Y2K bug was a hoax [even once in Parade Magazine]. They saw that nothing happened, not knowing the work that went on behind the scenes.
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Exactly. The reason "nothing" happened (altough that isn't entirely true) is because of all of the remediation efforts.
Where I am employed, our effort to handle Y2K was huge. If we didn't do anything, it would have been disastrous. In fact, we missed at least one change - in late January 2000, a process purged thousands of records from a file, believing the records where "old" because the date was "00".
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