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Today In Year-based Computer Errors: Draft Notices Sent To Men Born In the 1800s
sandbagger (654585) writes with word of a Y2K-style bug showing up in Y2K14: "The glitch originated with the Pennsylvania Department of Motor Vehicles during an automated data transfer of nearly 400,000 records. The records of males born between 1993 and 1997 were mixed with those of men born a century earlier. The federal agency didn't know it because the state uses a two-digit code to indicate birth year." I wonder where else two-digit years are causing problems; I still see lots of paper forms that haven't made the leap yet to four digits.
Get with the times! Switch to Y10K compliance already.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Y...
It's clear that Pennsylvania was taking a cue from Heroes of Might and Magic 3 and attempting to build an unstoppable army of 14,000 skeletons. I wonder what the Pennsylvania governor's necromancy score is?
I see the plot of a new Micheal Bay (or maybe J.J. Abrams) movie: The US military, unable to get qualified recruits to fight the new Zombie wars, takes a cue from the Zombie playbook and develops the technology to bring life old soldiers. After a bit of a difficult start, the program exceeds all expectations until the previously dead soldiers revolt at being put back in the grave and bring Washington to it's knees by filing for Social Security benefits.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
It did! It was called the Department of Manure Vehicles (AKA horses) then.
"Engineering is the art of making what you want from things you can get" - Jerry Avins
Seems to me this would be more accurately described as a Century-based computer error.
At first I was amazed that we're still running into these things. But I shouldn't be surprised -- often problems like this aren't fixed until they cause some inconvenience for the people responsible for fixing them.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
All of them.
While the linked to article, a US TV station news site, does call it a "draft notice", I suppose I should explain to the non-US people here that this is not technically correct. There has been no draft in the US since the end of the Vietnam War. For roughly 40 years now, the US has had an all volunteer army. What Selective Service is required to do is to contact US citizen males on their 18th birthday and advise them that for the next 10 years they need to let Selective Service know their new address every time they move because in theory, in a national emergency Congress could pass a law reinstating the military draft and Selective Service is required to maintain accurate records of those who might theoretically be subject to such a draft. Whether such a draft would ever be done again is a great question, given how Congress currently seems incapable of passing anything non-controversial, let alone something as controversial as reinstating the draft. A crackpot Congressman or two has tried to get the draft reinstated and it's never had enough support to even get a vote on the floor of the House of Representatives. Whatever this is, technically speaking it's not a "draft notice".
Not to digress, but for those who don't know, the draft was very controversial during the Vietnam War, with the rich and powerful were able to get their sons exceptions to the draft or get them plum assignments in the National Guard that wouldn't require them to actually go to Vietnam. Listen to Credence Clearwater Revival's "Fortunate Son", which was written about the practice. There was so much animosity about the unfairness of the draft and the compulsion to fight in a war that nobody but a small number of politicians seemed to want that the US switched to a voluntary system, but one of the deals cut to move to this system was that Selective Service had to know where to get young men should the draft ever get reinstated. And yes, female US citizens are not subject to this at all.
The DMV existed in the 1800's?
People don't get driver's licenses when they are born. Thousands of people born in the 1890s were still driving in the 1990s, and a few were still driving in the 2000s.
A quick search on Google showed that California's DMV was established in 1915, at which point they would definitely be working with people born in the 1890's.
Vision and competence are also requirements ...
I live in California, and I can assure you that competence is not a requirement here.
Our programs use 4-digit years. We tell our customers that they must notify us by the year 9,995 if they want year-10,000 updates. And, if we are expected to go to a different galaxy, they must pay for travel.
But with the usual mess in government records, quite a number of dead souls.
The dead are often a pivotal election demographic.
One scenario: some systems have tables that use a separate field for storing the century. Whoever wrote the query, sql statement, or whatever, left out the century, and there you have it. Probably not a Y2K problem, but more like a dumbass programmer problem.
Proverbs 21:19
During George W. Bush's first term, prior to the invasion of Iraq, Charles Rangel introduced a bill to reinstate the draft. While Rangel probably should have retired a few years ago I think this was a good move even if it amounted to nothing...
The New York Democrat told reporters his goal is two-fold: to jolt Americans into realizing the import of a possible unilateral strike against Iraq, which he opposes, and "to make it clear that if there were a war, there would be more equitable representation of people making sacrifices."
"I truly believe that those who make the decision and those who support the United States going into war would feel more readily the pain that's involved, the sacrifice that's involved, if they thought that the fighting force would include the affluent and those who historically have avoided this great responsibility," Rangel said.
"Ulysses you old rat bastard, I'm not fallin' for that trick again. Let 'em secede."
Good point. I suppose in Pennsylvania this could be perceived as a problem, but in New York or Illinois draft eligiblity would just be the dead's civic duty, right alongside voting and jury participation.
Don't disenfranchise our patriotic dead!
Welcome to the Panopticon. Used to be a prison, now it's your home.
Which is why we should write out "2014" as "000000000000002014". That should last us long enough.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
I think any election a century or so ago qualifies now.
We're missing BC/AD, BCE/CE and AC/DC.
Given the rate at which life expectancy is rising, a lot of people are going to be alive a lot longer than they expect.