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1985 Usenet About Y2k

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the back-in-the-day dept.

Anonymouse Cow writes "Here's a trip down memory lane (for some of you "oldsters"). Google's newsgroups has the first usenet mention of the Y2K bug... in 1985! Quote: "I have a friend that raised an interesting question that I immediately tried to prove wrong. He is a programmer and has this notion that when we reach the year 2000, computers will not accept the new date." Check out the replies!"

1 of 401 comments (clear)

  1. My favorite post by Monkeyman334 · · Score: 3, Flamebait

    Check this one out (my emphasis added):

    Some software blows up on dates at other times. I'm aware of some old
    DEC software (don't worry... you're NOT using it... it's single user!)
    that keeps the date year as a 5 bit offset from 1972. Let's see...
    1972+31=2003, so it blows up in 2004. Probably, tho, the display-a-year
    routine isn't written to handle beyond 31-dec-99, since no one expects
    that RT11 (oops, now I said it) will still be used then. I hope.
    ---------
    Join the (Hopefully) Great Usenet Blackout 4/11/1985


    Alright, so maybe that wasn't in there. But wouldn't it just suck if someone 15 years from now posts a story about a 15 year old slashdot post to a huge newsite and all the people laugh at what huge dorks we were?