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1985 Usenet About Y2k
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!"
actually you should be worried about 2038 before you start worrying about 3000
"Save me jebus!" - Homer Simpson (btw, I'm probably talkin out of me arse)
Err...no, 2400 IS a leap year!
To review:
2000: leap year
2100: not a leap year
2200: not a leap year
2300: not a leap year
2400: leap year
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
We all still waited to the LAST minute to fix the bugs :) I know that the accounting software company that I work for was up very late many nights in December 1999, upgrading UNIX servers and program files so that the "world" would not come to an end in the Oil Marketers pocketbooks.
J
Step 1. Write code. Step 2. ??? Step 3. Profit!
The xtime struct contains:
int_fast64_t sec;
int_fast32_t nsec;
In the 64-bit world, it's no problem--time_t is defined as a long long (64 bits).
The first mention of the y2k bug was banks in 1975 calculating 25 year mortgages that ran into problems then with it.
One of the replies:
:)
"If you are really worried about timewrap breaking programs in subtle ways,
then set your clock ahead now, and find the bugs. That will give you several
years to fix them. If you are binary only, you might NEED several years
to get you vendor to fix them!"
See! Even in 1985, they understood that opensource bugs get fixed faster than properietary software!
I have had the pleasure of working with software which took into account 5 digit yers and failed to pass Y2K testing.
The software was for an archialogical database and stored the year photos were taken as 2 digits, while other data was stored in a 5 digit year field representing BC, AD or BP. BP related to carbon dating and is the number of years before 1950. 1950 is 0 BP.
It really was an odd piece of software.
Interesting essay on the Y2038 problem, and probably human nature, at Roger Wilcox's Y2038 page, http://pw1.netcom.com/~rogermw/Y2038.html
This post is on Google's list of memorable posts. It's the first mention of Star Wars, Episode 6. I think the probability that this is THE Randal L. Schwartz is very high.
;)
How cool is that? He even scores for quintuple Nerdhood by:
1. Being on Usenet in 1982
2. Having his Usenet post on Google's memorable postings list
3. Being a Star Wars geek
4. Being a Star Wars geek ON Usenet, IN 1982!
5. Writing his own scripting language
And who knows, maybe that page at Google was generated by HIS scripting language
Henry Spencer is one of the great fixtures of Usenet. He worked at the University of Toronto I think, and was a sys admin/programmer/demigod sort of person. He's had his hands in all sorts of great and wonderful things that we take for granted nowadays.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
People seem to think that this was some unexpected oversight; it was nothing of the sort. Given the cost of storage at the time, and the millions of records that had to stored with one or more date fields, it was a purely economic decision to save money at the time. I don't have the numbers needed to do the math, but I suspect it was actually the right choice. If you compare the cost of additional required storage to the eventual rework cost, discounting for time, maybe it doesn't look so stupid. Especially since many programs really did cease to be used before the problem arose (although probably far fewer than we would have predicted)
We all joked at the time that, along about 1998 or 1999, we would take jobs in other industries until the changeover was complete.
Subscribers can see articles in the future? So what? Everyone gets to see them in the future.
From Critical dates:
# 3E11 approx. - UNIX 64-bit signed time_t fails (seconds from 1970) - A.D. 292,277,026,596-12-04 Sun 15:30:08 GMT (checked).
Even though I have no idea if it's right or not, the string "(checked)" makes me feel better. No one would lie on tha intarweb, right?
R.W.Bemer, "What's the Date?", Editorial, Honeywell Computer J. 5, No. 4, 205-208, 1971
Here is a funny quote from him: He has a rather impressive list of accomplishment to go along with those tidbits, including prior art for the British Telecom patent fiasco.
A pretty neat dude.
char timebuff[4];
*((int*)timebuff) = time(NULL);
Instead we do stuff like this:
time_t timebuff;
timebuff = time(NULL);
When the system type for time_t is change to something with more than 32 bits, the code just needs a recompile and voilla - it handles dates past 2038. The work is going to be in making sure every program gets recompiled, and in converting saved files that have the date already stored in 32 bits. The ugly part will be if your system depends on third-party stuff in binary form only that you can't upgrade for whatever reason.
Note, I didn't say the problem will be nonexistant, just that it will be easier to fix than y2k.
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
To exchange information to other hosts, before protocols like DNS became mainstream there was a public Systems repository. The addresses indicated showed the path that a mail or post would take before it would be delivered. A single post make take 5 modem calls between hosts at varying times of the day (depending on long distance costs) before it would show up. It definitely wasn't as fast as it is now over a live TCP/IP network.
I still believe that some newspaper wire companies and stuff still use UUCP to dial up and move news articles. UUCP was cool for its time. As much as people clamored for lots of bandwidth and a nice static IP, it was cool enough just to BE a UUCP node. UUCP was much like later protocols like FidoNet - but UUCP used Arpa compatible mail headers so it could be used for sites that had live Arpa network connectivity.
Anyways, hope that helps. You old-timers that know more then me feel free to correct me. I'll go back to listening to the Dodgers Game.
-Pat
Also, did anyone see a post with a signature that said "linus" on it? I think I did, and was wondering what that referred to in 1985
that's just his bang path. Evidently "linus" was a large-ish machine in 1984 (probably a system named after the owner/IT guy who had the name of linus)