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2010 Bug Plagues Germany

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the well-that-was-ten-years-late dept.

krou writes "According the Guardian, some 30 million chip and pin cards in Germany have been affected by a programming failure, which saw the microchips in cards unable to recognize the year change. The bug has left millions of credit and debit card users unable to withdraw money or make purchases, and has stranded many on holiday. French card manufacturer Gemalto accepted responsibility for the fault, 'which it is estimated will cost €300m (£270m) to rectify.' They claim cards in other countries made by Gemalto are unaffected."

5 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. I wonder how that is compared to the loss from Y2K by mapkinase · · Score: 4, Insightful

    from TOA

    A French card manufacturer, Gemalto, admitted today it was to blame for the failure, which it is estimated will cost 300m (£270m) to rectify.

    I wonder how does it compare to the losses from Y2K bug... I know it is hard to compare, because there was an unspecified money loss as part of unnecessary checks, difference in scale, anticipation and efforts to fix before manifestation.

    I guess it hits you when you are least expecting.

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  2. Re:I wonder how that is compared to the loss from by zaydana · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Moreover, it makes you wonder who much of a problem Y2K may have actually been if we hadn't of looked for all the problems and fixed them.

    Chances are things like this would have only been the beginning if Y2K hadn't have been anticipated and planned for, even if we over-reacted. Maybe we should be giving some people more credit than we do...

  3. Greetings from 2038! by fotoguzzi · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Hah, hah, hah!

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    Their they're doing there hair.
  4. Re:I wonder how that is compared to the loss from by Nadaka · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The response for y2k was not planned for, and it was not an over reaction.

    Y2k issues were known in the 80's. Had IT been allowed to respond in a timely manner, it would have cost much less, been checked more thoroughly and finished earlier. Instead they waited until the last possible moment and poured much more money into it, hiring as many developers as possible to put in a rushed hackjob and then firing them when the hack worked instead of retaining them to vet, verify and implement permanent solutions where needed. This issue is a result of the failure to react apropriately to y2k. The rushed temporary get-it-done-yesterday hacks are starting to fail.

  5. Unix epoch does not have to end in 2038 by Chemisor · · Score: 3, Insightful

    2038 is only the limit on 32bit platforms. On a 64bit platform time_t is 64bits, which will last "forever". We are already significantly on the way to switching to 64bit-only CPU operation, and I'm going to bet that by 2038 we'll switch completely, if only to avoid the end of time. Heck, if you could only have a working 64bit flash plugin on Linux, all Linux users would go 64bit already.