Slashdot Mirror
Trump Orders Government To Stop Work On Y2K Bug, 17 Years Later (bloomberg.com)
The federal government will finally stop preparing for the Y2K bug, seventeen years after it came and went. Yes, you read that right. Bloomberg reports: The Trump administration announced Thursday that it would eliminate dozens of paperwork requirements for federal agencies, including an obscure rule that requires them to continue providing updates on their preparedness for a bug that afflicted some computers at the turn of the century. As another example, the Pentagon will be freed from a requirement that it file a report every time a small business vendor is paid, a task that consumed some 1,200 man-hours every year. Seven of the more than 50 paperwork requirements the White House eliminated on Thursday dealt with the Y2K bug, according to a memo OMB released. Officials at the agency estimate the changes could save tens of thousands of man-hours across the federal government. The agency didn't provide an estimate of how much time is currently spent on Y2K paperwork, but Linda Springer, an OMB senior adviser, acknowledged that it isn't a lot since those requirements are already often ignored in practice.
Signed and dated: 6/15/17
:-D
As the article points out, no one was really applying these regulations. Ultimately, this is grand standing more than anything else.
In other words, it's the greatest accomplishment of Trump's administration!
I stole this Sig
Simply switching to a 64 bit linux will be enough for linux users to avoid the bug
Technically that's not a fix, it just delays the problem. Admittedly it's a delay of about 292 billion years but still...
If it has systemd you wouldn't be able to read them anyway.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
If you use Windows, you already have much bigger problems than the Y2K38 bug.
Municipal night court judge Munroe Slemp of Snakebit, NV has already responded to a petition from COBOL programmers by blocking Trump's order, citing his lack of IT expertise. The Ninth Circuit is expected to review the decision by sometime in November.
While paper trails are great, I do not think there is a reason for a paper trail for purchasing, for example, a cheap pen.
Also, the summary says that those regulations were already ignored in practice. This, in my opinion, is bad as selective following of rules can lead to a spiteful manager punishing an employee for ignoring the rules everyone else is ignoring. So, either follow the rules or change them.
I worked in IT for a fed contractor for several years. I can tell you 100% no one ignores any regulation - they may not know about it but if they do they by-god work it out to the nth degree. They pull out some of the craziest things you've ever heard of. Why? Because they're some no-talent bureaucrat who probably couldn't tie their own shoes but they can read and they can exercise force over you, and they are in the union and cant be fired so what are you going to do?
There are so many regulations that you cant possibly follow them all. People wonder why the VA and other Government IT/Security environment is so bad. Its because of stuff exactly like this. I was tasked with following regulations that were written in the 60's and made them to apply to networks today. One in particular we had was literally a copy of a type-written document. It was written literally before computers were used to generate documents, but it was supposed to be our guiding regulation building certain types of systems!
The last straw for me was when we had a data-center with no AC. But we couldn't put in the AC, even though it was purchased, because some no-talent jackass decided we needed a lift study to put the 200lb compressor on the roof. Mind you, we could all go stand on the roof, and talk about it, but we couldnt put a compressor up there. But there was some paper pushing bureaucrat with nothing to do. And so I bet its still not got AC.
I wish people understood how the government really works. These are the people who really run things, and they answer to no one and dont care whatever the consequences may be of their actions. So the more we can get rid of, and the more of these people we can fire, the better off we'll all be.