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2016 Bug Hits Text Messages, Payment Processing
An anonymous reader writes "It seems some systems are suffering from a Y2K16 bug. When 2009 ticked over to 2010, some Australian EFTPOS machines skipped to the year 2016. Coincidentally, some Windows Mobile users are also having issues with their new year SMSes coming from 2016. What function could cause this kind of error?"
BCD/binary mismatch?
0x09 = 9 decimal when interpreted as either binary or BCD.
0x10 = 10 decimal when interpreted as BCD, as 16 when interpreted as binary.
"National Security is the chief cause of national insecurity." - Celine's First Law
Yes, but that's just the point isn't it ?
There are 10 types of people ...
1. Those who will make a solution that will work for perhaps 30 or 35 years, because it is "good enough" for the foreseeable future, ala Y2K, 2032 for linux etc ...
2. Those who will want to do unit tests to see if the date function still works in the year 9500, and won't pass it through QA until it does.
Now, consider the PHB, when you tell him that solution 1 will be up and running in 5 minutes, whereas solution 2 will be up and running in about 5 years, once the specification has been formalized and ratified by the UN security council.
Which solution will the PHB choose I wonder ? Programming has always been a compromise, no one *really* expects that something they code today will still be around in 35 or 40 years, it's only occasionally that something *does* survive that long (COBOL legacy systems etc), and come and bite us in the ass when the new millenia arrives.
Having said that, I wonder how many of the "buzzword" languages we see today will still be around in the next 40 years ? The concept of longevity might have been relevant in the 60's, these days it's more a case of a complete rewrite every year or so.