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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!"
Remember, right after January 1? The world didn't explode (it didn't even implode!), so a handful of people in the media started saying the whole thing was a hoax to drive cash into the technology sector.
They have the nerve to say that even thoigh I have a fax machine that says it's 8/2/19102.
Almost all of these were uttered in that Google thread from 1985 about Y2K :-)
Strangely, though, few seem to care that there are many file formats where the "automatic" kernel 64-bit date expansion they expect will be a problem. If the application expects that the date will always fit in that 32-bit field, and there's no obvious way to extend that field, then you have a lot of files which may no longer be useful...
Man, I love reading these old threads. It's always a cool bit of memory lane, seeing the old email addresses (UUCP, ARPA), and the old but still familiar sigs. And the coolest thing is the lack of flames. When the one person in the thread who was an astronomer made a mistake on leap years, no one jumped at his throat. One person even says "So, he made a mistake. Who doesn't?" That would never happen that nicely today.
Just some ramblings...
This link is from Google's list of historically significant usenet posts; the complete list is atc e_20.html
http://www.google.com/googlegroups/archive_announ
There's some really great ones in there, including Linus announcing Linux, Microsoft soliciting for new 'wizards', a thread about the chernobyl accident, and so on.
Those phone numbers are 17 years old. You could prank them if you want, but a white pages would be just as good.
Them: Hello?
You: Someone who worked in that office in 1985 posted to usenet about the Y2K bug!
Them: So?
You: Ummmm...Is your refrigerator running?
Them: *click*
-B
But where is all the off-topic spam? Where are the trolls? Where is the porn? The flamers?
This is clearly some sort of clever mock-up of Usenet and not the real thing. Frankly, given the omissions I've stated above, it's not even a very well-done imitation; I'm shocked the /. boys would be fooled by it.
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
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).
Speaking as a member of the 'slime' that profited (I produced DOSCHK.EXE used to test PC BIOS rollovers) ... I beg to differ with the description of "miniscule problem".
While it's a fairly trivial task to make the actual corrections to the programs, it most certainly was not a trivial task to:-
1) Make sure that EVERY y2k bug was identified
2) Recompile/retest/re-rollout many thousands of affected programs.
3) Persuade all suppliers/customers/trading partners to fix the systems.
In the end, the world didn't end *because* we had pulled out the stops and fixed the bugs. It's worth noting though that examples of every type of predicted failure did actually occur.
The originating article here dates from 1985 - the problem had been identified with 15 years to go. Why were non-compliant PCs still being built in 1997? Why were software houses *still* producing non-compliant code in 1995?
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!
How prescient some people were back then :-)
7 November 2006: The day Americans realized corruption and incompetence weren't addressing 11 September 2001
I kept looking for the "Reply" button so I could tell them how it turned out.
I guess it wouldn't work in that direction, though.
Of course not. Their news reader app cannot handle the four digit year....
- - - - - - - - - - -
I am a programmer. I am paid to produce syntax not grammar. Deal with it.
Anonymity. Most people at that time used their real identities, and the community was smaller and simpler, so it would be harder to hide.
It's the same reason why bumping into someone while walking will lead to "excuse me" and "s'okay", but cutting someone off in traffic will lead to an angry honk and possibly tail-gating for the next several minutes.
mark
If you want to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -- Carl Sagan
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.
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