Y2K: Hoax, Or Averted Disaster?

Allnighterking writes "Y2K -- remember the fear it generated? Cartoons were written about it. The dried food industry saw a boom. Doomsayers abounded. But in the end, no planes fell, no one died and the electric grid stayed up for three more years. Was it all a hoax? Or was it the result of careful and complete planning and upgrading. American RadioWorks has a series of articles talking about the disaster that never happened called Y2K You can either Listen in or read the Transcripts of each of the 3 broadcasts and decide for yourself. The over 100 Billion pumped into the US economy alone may well have fueled the boom and predicated the bust. Could the success at Y2K prevention have made the coming problem in 2038 something people will ignore?"

Comments

Oh no

[SpooForBrains]

"the coming problem in 2038"

Phil Collins is going to release another album?

Don't be silly

[Anonymous Coward]

2038 is years away - we'll all have new systems by then! No need to worry!

Re:Don't be silly

[silicon not in the v]

Going beyond the financial institutions topic that everyone has been bringing up, I worked on a team that did the Y2K evaluation and fixing for a steel mill here in the U.S. As you mention "big machines running custom software", that was definitely the case there. They had lots of dangerous equipment there--furnaces that went up to thousands of degrees and such that were largely controlled by computer programs mostly written in FORTRAN. That was the kind of stuff that never gets changed or upgraded. The motto is, "If it has worked fine for the past 30 years, we don't want to mess with it until we have to."

Speaking of this, here is a humor story about Y2K.

There was an aging COBOL programmer, who for years had been looked down upon by his colleagues who were skilled in client/server, C++, HTML, Java, etc. He eventually got his own back, because Y2K came along, and he found his skills were in great demand as a Y2K analyst. He had to work long hours, but his daily rates were very high, so he made loads of money.

After a couple of years, he was burnt out. He got to the stage where he'd see lines of COBOL float past whenever he shut his eyes, and he had regular nightmares about the year 2000. One day, he saw an advert for a cryogenics company. He contacted them, and they assured him they could put him in cryogenic suspension until after the year 2000. The process was very expensive, but he reasoned he could afford it, so he agreed to it. He really looked forward to waking up in the year 2001 so that he could put the year 2000 behind him and get on with the rest of his life.

He was anaesthetized, and the next thing he knew, he was waking up in the cryogenic chamber. The room seemed much more high-tech than he remembered, and it was full of very excited looking people saying things like "he's still alive", "we've done it" and "it's a miracle". One of the technicians explained that the cryogenic equipment hadn't been Y2K compliant, and they'd only just been able to override the equipment to wake him up. In fact, he'd been asleep for several thousand years. The technician said there was someone very important who wished to speak to him.

A large screen that filled most of one wall lit up, and a man appeared on the screen. He explained he was the President of the Earth. He said that the world was at peace, that famine and disease were a thing of the past, mankind had colonized the planets and that it was a great time to be alive. He said they were very excited that they'd been able to revive him.

The programmer said he could understand their excitement, seeing as he'd been asleep for so long. The president said, "Oh no, it's not that at all. It's going to be the year 10,000 in a couple of years time, and you're the last COBOL programmer left alive".

2038 ?

[Macka]

Lets see, I'll be 73 about then.

Providing it doesn't cause my VTOL (Vertical Take Off and Landing) 200 mph Zimmer Frame to crash, I don't really think I'm going to care all that much.

Re:2038 ?

[pklong]

Don't worry, the health and safety people will have made zZimmer frames, going out of your front door and breathing illegal by then.

Re:2038 ?

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm really annoyed by all those elderly people that still think that they are capable of flying VTOLs. I really think that they are a danger in the sky.

what about Y10K?

[saladami]

Shouldn't they start working on the year 10,000 problem NOW?

Re:what about Y10K?

[raikje]

Don't worry, a solution to the Y10K problem has already been proposed - RFC 2550 covers it very extensively.

Re:Combination

[Wordsmith]

It's like the whuzahuh?

In what way are those two alike?

still waiting...

[Wolfger]

Y2K hasn't come yet. As any coder ought to know, 2K == 2048, not 2000.

proof of hoax!

[Fr05t]

It was a hoax! I didn't upgrade my tinfoil and it still works just fine or maybe thats just what they want me to think. *PANIC*

We were lucky

[Xian97]

Look at what happened after Y1K - a few hundred years of Dark Ages.

Re:not a hoax

[eeg3]

I work for an international bank and we fixed 2-300 Y2K bugs.

You fixed somewhere from 2 to 300 bugs? That's kind of a broad range, isn't it?

darwin 7.7.0...

[caveat]

./2038test
Tue Jan 19 03:14:01 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:02 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:03 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:04 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:05 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:06 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038
Tue Jan 19 03:14:07 2038

w00t!
LAMENESS FILTER SUCKS...
# Please try to keep posts on topic.
# Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
# Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
# Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.

Re:Collective fear

[Hasai]

ACK. We had this old Wang mini that the PHBs were too cheap to replace or upgrade, brushing aside our warnings with "Oh, it'll run."

Yeah, right.

Imagine their surprise when, one second after midnight on 01.01.2000, the system's OS went down HARD.

Over-hyped? Maybe. Real? You betcha.

Re:The current disaster shows the possible scale

[Jedi Alec]

one word: simtower

elevator madness

Re:Perl Script

[Cro Magnon]

Oh no! Debian Sarge isn't 2038 compliant! And I don't think they can release a new version in time!

Re:Collective fear

[TangLiSha]

I remember going into a store and seeing strang things marked as Y2K compliant.

Examples include:

• Chordless Phones
• Batteries
• Pencils (Hopefully this was a joke)

And people were actually buying this stuff because it was Y2K compliant.

Re:damn right! was: [Re:Collective fear]

[Anonymous Coward]

in 2038 there will be no may 19th

What?!?! There had bloody well better be - May 19 is my 59th birthday!

God - what if I don't turn 59?!?! Then I'll never turn 60, and won't ever get my retirement fund!

Egads - DO SOMETHING! WE NEED THIS FIXED!

****AAAAUUUUGHHH!**** :o)

Always breaking anyways, why 1/1/01 different?

[potus98]

My logic in 1999 was this: Everything is always breaking anyways and we still seem to get by, why should 1/1/01 be any different? Servers die, applications crash, battery backups fail, power outages happen, cars crash, trains derail, planes wreck, secretaries with "temporary" admin permissions delete entire file servers. From my point of view, I'm amazed that we even make it from one day to the next!

"Yea, but on 1/1/01, it's ALL gonna break at the same time!!!!" Dude, it's already all breaking at the same time. We'll be fine.

And now I get to say: "See, I told you so."

Re:damn right! was: [Re:Collective fear]

[kiore]

Oh yes, I remember this one.

I was on a Y2K team & when we talked to suppliers about Y2K a lot of them refused to accept that 2000 was a leap year.

I ended up getting machine readable copies of Pope Gregory's bull Inter Gravissimus (in Latin) and the 1751 English act of Parliment An Act for Regulating the Commencement of the Year; and for Correcting the Calendar now in Use which adopted it for England. The New Zealand Parliment never having repealed it, it is still law. I'd email these to suppliers, pointing out that they both explicitly said the year 'MM' is a leap year.

Usually they folded at this point. The one really worrying reaction I got back was the supplier of the automated access control system we used on some unattended sites "Well ... it didn't recognise 1996 as a leap year, so I doubt it will recognise 2000"

Yikes!