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Xdaliclock Fails Y2k (But Everything Else Seems Fine)
Tracy R Reed writes "Like any real geek I was near my computer and used the xntpd-synchronized time to determine when midnight really struck. As soon as it happened, xdaliclock did something strange!" Besides the terrifying xdaliclock crisis, 2600 had a great page up that seemed to fool quite a number of Slashdot readers. Several other joke websites popped up, and several others had real (minor) glitches. So far I've heard rumors of an ATM system that went down for a few minutes, and some radiation monitors that messed up for a bit. But apparently that was about it. The most overhyped event in years. Enjoy the day off if you get one!
Anyone else notice the countdown error during the ball drop in times Square? As they started counting down minutes and seconds, it would display 15:01, 14:00, 14:59. It did this all the way to midnight. And Sam Donaldson said nothing was wrong.
I'm kind of offended at the tons of posts saying:
"NOTHING HAPPENED!!! See, I told you so."
I'm sure all the IT and CompSCI people out there weren't really worried about any Y2K stuff... but we control systems engineers (level 1 production types) were terrified of it.
Anxious as we were, we tried to get management to fund an inspection of all systems... and since management is usually made up of non-geek types, there was no way to squeeze a penny out of them for what they felt was unneeded computer work.
BUT, thank God for all of the Y2K hype!!! If management hadn't seen Dan Rather explaining (in small terms) what the possibilities for Y2K were, we wouldn't have received time and funding to inspect our systems.
So after 7 or 8 of my clients found 85% of their systems to NOT function after a clock change to Y2K, we spent MILLIONS of dollars this year to fix them PRIOR to the actual event. These weren't Intel based processors mind you... these were Programmable Logic Controllers (PLCs) and older Distributed Control Systems (DCSs), some even based on Z80 and 8080 technology. The industrial/manufacturing world is still decades behind in it's control systems... so while you guys are lounging in your linux alphas... we're still doing machine code.
I guess what I'm saying is Y2K was VERY REAL for us... and you can thank the thousands of engineers, technicians and programmers who fixed the problems BEFORE THEY HAPPENED for a very quiet new year's eve.
Happy New Year everyone.