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Leap Year Woes in Japan

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the gotta-hate-when-that-happens dept.

joerg writes, "The Heise-Newsticker says that Japan had several intercalary day-related computer problems like weather stations delivering wrong data. " Finally! A Y2K bug! The hype was justified! (cough, cough) Anyone have a birthday today?

2 of 302 comments (clear)

  1. Re:In German, translation follows... by m2 · · Score: 5

    If you call that a translation...

    The leap-day this Tuesday, brought some surpriseful computer problems to the Hightech country of Japan. As the press agency Reuters informed, 1200 ATMs in Post Offices experimented problems as a result of Y2K related bugs. The Japan Weather Office had trouble gathering temperature and condensation data. As a result, this morning 43 stations distributed all over the country transmitted wrong data. As early as Monday some 24 hour forecasts had mistakes on them: instead of "29" they had "1" as the ending date for the validity of the forecast. In north Japan, in 20 regional offices, the seismic activity display units failed to work. In constrast with the turn of year, there were not reports of breakdowns in Japan's nuclear power plants.

    Disclaimer: I'm not a native English speaker (it shows), and I'm not a native German speaker, but I do think my poor translation is easier to understand than the babelfish one.

  2. forget babblefish, it's at the BBC in English by stx23 · · Score: 5

    Here.
    It's intersting to note they did have problems with Y2K (according to the BBC), so this shouldn't have been *too* much of a surprise...