9/9/99: News? Nein!

SEWilco writes "As Slashdot readers know, today's date abbreviated as 9999 may cause problems in some older computers. So far only one report of a Tandy problem. 9s-day no problem in New Zealand and Hong Kong, Guam OK and USA still has electric power on 9/9/99. But seriously, folks, today is a big day for numerologists, pagans, and Nostradamus. So far today the NASA Near-Earth Object Program has not seen a comet coming to hit us. But what is so special about the Era of Alexandria 7491 anyway?"

Comments

Isn't it obvious?

[vr]

Obviously Sony must have used COBOL when coding for the Playstation 2.. see Playstation2 delayed.

An attempt to boost confidence

[Robin Hood]

Seems to me that these stories about "everything's O.K. on 9/9/99" are more than likely part of an attempt to boost people's confidence so there won't be massive panic in December 1999. See, if I were making Y2K contingency plans for, say, a bank (which, thankfully, I'm not) I would be much less worried about disruptions in electrical service, etc. and much more worried about people panicking. See, if people don't trust that their banks are going to be ready, they'll start withdrawing their money, and before you know it you could have a run on the bank. Remember that scene in Mary Poppins? Or the one in It's a Wonderful Life?? That's what worries me more than any disruptions in electrical service.

So confidence-boosting articles are just fine by me! :-)
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Har!

[Pike]

A computer program would not store todays date as 9999, but as 090999, with two digits for month and day. There may be variations on this, but in almost no case would the computer look at today's date and see the value 9,999, and of course flat-ASCII should have no problems at all.

I think this one is a dud; I don't know how it slipped past the "experts".

Sittin' on the back porch, drinking red wine...

[Paul Crowley]

On 6/6/66, I was little, I didn't know shit, and by

7/7/77, eleven years later still don't know any better

on 8/8/88, it's way too late for me to change

and by 9/9/99, I hope I'm sittin' on the back porch drinking red wine, singing

oooooooooh, french fries with pepper!


-- Mark Sandman, 1963 - 1999

I'm celebrating the way he would have wanted it!
--

9/9/99 Not Totally Overrated

[Phil Gregory]

I've seen quite a bit of discussion about this on the MIDRANGE-L mailing list, and so I thought I'd mention a few things. A lot of people seem to think that 9/9/99 as a special date is mostly myth, largely because the computer would store it as 090999, which doesn't look as special. Surely 99/99/99 would be better. Other people pointed out that this sort of thing tended to crop up when the users wanted to add extra information in a field the programmer thought would only be a date. In such a program, 99/99/99 would fail because it was an invalid date, so creative users might be tempted to use a vaild date, but give it special meaning. Two common dates for things like "no expiration" or "not applicable" were 12/31/99 and 9/9/99. The former would be the highest date that could be entered in a two-digit year field, while the latter was easy to remember, yet still a good ways into the future.

9/9/99 problems are likely to be fairly rare, since the necessary circumstances would be somewhat rare, and, hopefully, many such problems have been caught by now. Where today's date does cause problems will likely not be noticed by the population at large. (i.e. no power outages, no broken ATMs.) At a guess, the most likely candidates for problems will be billing software running on older mainframs and midrange computers, and I'm sure the companies will do their utmost to bill you for anything you might owe them.


--Phil (I know the banks with my loans have been quite diligent.)

Y2K is a bug in the human brain

[dirty]

We're much more likely to see problems caused by idiots rather than computers. Think about what's probally already started happening. People are going to be buying more canned goods and other non-perishables. People are going to buy bomb shelters and take their money out of banks. Banks are going to go under, food prices will sky-rocket, as will any other materials used in a bomb shelter. Then guess what happens when jan 1st rolls around and the world hasn't exploded? Well with all of those non-perishables people aren't going to buy food, especially due to the increased prices because of the limited supply the day before. People aren't going to trust the banks with their money, after all, many went under because they weren't Y2K (read: moron) compliant.

Oh and we can't forget the inevitable rioting that's going to occur. Americans will use any excuse to riot. Your favorite team lost the world series, riot. Your favorite team won the world series, riot. Y2K aka armagedon is here, riot.

God bless morons one and all...

Newsflash!!!!

[Croaker]

Computer experts have just determined that, after extensive testing, that the date 5/23/2001 will only occur once. "No computers have ever encountered such a date before," a noted computer expert said. "Who knows if they will work when they encounter it."

Already, several major firms have been created to certify systems an 5-23-01 ready. "People are urged to ensure that their banks, hospitals, and every other business they deal with are ready for this unprecidented event."

9 Ways

[meersan]

9 Ways 9/9/99 Turned Out to Be a Bummer

9) Antichrist crashed party, demanded blood sacrifices to the Satan-spawn of Baal.
8) Panicing day-traders fleeing the inflationary wrath of Alan Greenspan caused a run on the dollar
7) Today's date actually expressed as 090999, thus disappointing a bunch of Y2K nuts hoping for a warm-up
6) Ricky Martin stole the MTV video award from Weird Al Yankovic, thanks to shameless ballot stuffing
5) Stayed at home working on computer to avoid superstitious fanatics, motherboard overheated, magic smoke came out. :(
4) Spilled hemlock all over myself at the coven swap-meet
3) "friends" is a re-run tonight
2) Couldn't play the new Dreamcast due to nuclear melt-down of national electric grid
1) That darn asteroid!