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Having Fun with Y2K
CDS writes "Fade to Black comedy magazine has a hilarious story on the Y2K problem. Michael Page, the main man @ F2B, e-mails several companies asking if their products (such as Haagen-Dazs, Oil of Olay, and Elmer's Glue) are Y2K compliant. Funny Stuff. " I laughed. I cried. It was better then "Cats". Warning: Some of the material is offensive. To someone. I think.
www.fadetoblack.com/y2k/
Fede
I remember reading the Lazlo Letters by Don Novello (aka Father Guido Sarducci) in the late 1970's, and later during when _Spy_ magazine was still in print.
It's a funny idea, writing mock letters of gratitude or complaint to various companies ("I got a crushed M&M") and political figures ("I'm pulling for ya!") and seeing who get's it or who falls for his line.
This is much the same thing...
That said, I enjoyed reading these letters as well.
And yes, some of these will be offensive to some people.
--
"May I have ten thousand marbles, please?"
A paper up near Green Bay has a Y2k Reporter. A friends brother got the job, his responsibility is making up a new story to scare the public every 3 or 4 days. Spread the panic, I always say... Last week he wrote about an appliance repairman charging 100$ per house to make their household appliances Y2K compliant. Sweet Job.
-
Check out the new case I built at the address above. Made out of a book, pretty cool.
-S
Scott Ruttencutter
We Apprentice Developers and Designers
Dear Nike,
I'm growing more worried by the day about the catastrophy looming in our immediate future. I'm referring, of course, to Y2K.
I'm a functionally illiterate jock, as witnessed by my dictation (huh-huh, I said dictation), of this letter to my coach. So I'm quite concerned about whether or not I will still be able to play football in a few weeks.
You see, if I were not able to hang out with other naked guys and flex for the girls that I was planning to slip a mickey to I don't know what I would do all weekend.
Please make this problem go away.
Please.
This Y2K hysteria is such a perfect example of the blind leading the blind! I've seen that the people who are most frightend by this hype are the one's who know the least about it... I, personally , sleep easy at night, being well aware of the copious hours of work being put in by software engineers to ensure a smooth transition. But you ask joe shmo on the street, and he'll tell you how he's hording supplies and turning his assets into gold bullion! I've had people ask me If I thought their cars were Y2K complient! Now come on! Since when does an automobile even CARE what day it is?! My own mother has even asked me if the Microwave oven was ready fo the new millenium.
;-)
This madness has got to stop! I blame the media for making foolish, un-informed speculations to a largely uneducated (as far as technology goes) crowd.
The only real thing we have to fear for Y2K are those spooky predictions by that Nostradamous character, now that's something to prepare for
--Alop
--alop
performed in portugese by an all-nude all-brazilian cast.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
That's rather unfair. It's quite possible to generate that error under linux/apache, IIRC. I've done it myself a few times. Just mistype a server-side include and awaaaay you go.
Why is everything MS bashing on slashdot nowadays? It used to be linux advocacy, which I didn't mind, and geek news, which I love. Now it's linux news, which I don't mind, linux zealotry, which I do mind deeply, MS bashing, and very little pure geek news. Sigh. I know, I know, taco doesn't want us to bash slashdot as a whole, so let it be known that I'm grumbling about the slashdot community, and the articles selected. Today's have been good, in general, though. Just don't read the comments.
So, really, why must everything be a war? Post relevant stuff, or don't post. Post insightful or informative stuff, or interesting stuff, or don't post. Funny is ok in funny stories, but why the heck does it show up everywhere nowadays? Ugh. I could browse at +4, but I'm an optimist. Sigh.
Rant rant rant, rant rant rant.
Sorry you had to be on the receiving end.
regards,
-efisher
---
this
No, acually is it RH Linux. (Apache 1.3.3):
Connected to www.fadetoblack.com.
Escape character is '^]'.
GET / HTTP/1.0
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Date: Tue, 30 Nov 1999 03:40:04 GMT
Server: Apache/1.3.3 (Unix) (Red Hat/Linux)
Connection: close
Content-Type: text/html
xoxo,
Andy
...are Y2K compliant. They even say YKK on them. I think they even said that 10 years ago. Finally, an industry with foresight!
Tcl my Pico! There are 10 kinds of people in the world: Those who understand binary, and those who don't.
The site is being mirrored here. It may take a few minutes to complete it.
This guy was a witness of the 1992 Michelangelo Virus scare (so was i, btw). Everybody was running for cover and screaming for help. Then the day came, almost nothing happened, and everything got back to normal, nobody mentioning the embarrasment.
I think itll be the same here, to some extent. The doomsayers will be back in their caves, and everybody will keep their mouth shut about being wrong in the subject. What do you think?
"Now you can see that evil will triumph, because good is dumb!"
My dad once wrote a letter to General Mills about cheerios. He was reading the box, and he got to the part that said "if you are not satisfied with the performance of this general mills product, or if you have any comments or suggenstions, feel free to write us a letter ...bla bla bla"
So he wrote them a letter citing the text on the box, and stating that he bought a box of cheerios, but he wasn't satisfied by their performance. Infact he poured them out on the table, and they didn't do a damn thing.
The company wrote back saying that it brightened their day to get that letter, and they send him a coupon for a dicount on cheerios =:-)
---
Play Six Pack Man. I
I work for Helical Products Company, Inc., Manufacturer of flexible couplings, u-joints, and machined springs. what does this mean? We make little bendy things out of metal. That's it.
According to our receptionist and head of technology, we've feilded hundreds of questions as to whether our products are y2k compliant.
Some people just don't get it.
more URL's to save the main page,
click below
Bic Shavers
Crest Toothpaste
Elmers Glue
Haagen Dazs Ice Cream
Ivory soap
Kiwi Shoe Polish
Mr. Clean
Oil of Olay
Quaket State Motor Oil
Skippy peanut butter
Tropican OJ
Click away, they're humerous to say the least.
Dan. -- So what if it's spelt wrong, nobody's perfect
I hate Y2K. I had to certify a bunch of computers this past year. I hate Y2K.
On a more serious note, how do you handle time_t? I stopped using this and changed all my time variables to doubles. Hopefully, I will be retired before the next crisis.:-)
There's a whole book of this type of letter from a chap by the name of Ted Nancy. The book is titled, appropriately enough, "Letters From a Nut" (ISBN 0-380-97354-5). As far as I know, it's only available on dead trees. The funniest thing about the book is that most of the companies take the letters absolutely seriously....
I've wrestled with reality for 35 years and I'm happy to say, I finally won out - Elwood P. Dowd
I know alot of you were worried that Hotnutz wouldn't make the big switch to Y2K, well this seems as good an opportunity as any to let you know we're looking good:
Y2K Press Release
Hotnutz.com
Damn, I was wondering when somebody would take the Jerky Boys approach to email. I loved the results, especially the one concerning Ivory Soap. I'd be rather disappointed, however, if this was the first case of this happening.
Anybody know of any other features along these lines out there? These guys can't be the only people with time on their hands...
-W-
Is it all journey, or is there landfall?
--Ellison & van Vogt, 'The Human Operators'
Newsgroup for RedHat Linux installation: http://www.deja.com/group/linux.redhat.install/
Beginners guide for installing Linux: http://www.linux.ie/beginners-linux-guide/
Remember, not everyone will be helpful if you post in a wrong area, like you did here :-) Try to find a relevant site and be sure you first read what's already there since no one likes duplicate postings or being asked a question that's already been answered. I'm jealous of your machine... what a piece of hardware! Did you build it yourself? If so this will help you since you will need a lot of information on your machine once you actually get into setting up Linux. If you didn't build the machine, write down everything you can about what's inside it before you start installing. You don't have any fancy setup to do this for you like Windows does. For an idea of what you need to know, see section 2.1.5 of Linux Installation and Getting Started. When I first installed Linux, I put it on a machine I had built myself and had a second machine next to it constantly logged onto the web for finding information. My "fun" started when the setup couldn't find my SCSI CD/ROM, so I bypassed the situation by plugging an old CD/ROM into a free IDE port and got started. The only other major hang-up after that involved the wrong video card being identified during setup, and my monitor got very hot and made an unwelcome whining noise that sounded like oncoming death (which made me glad it was an older monitor whose loss would be bearable)... fixing this required changing settings on the X-server.
Regarding the posts here on the "6.1" thing, here's a little sidenote. Linux distributors (such as RedHat) have their own numbering system that is best thought of as unrelated to the underlying Linux kernel. You may have RedHat 6.1, TurboLinux 3.6, and Slackware Linux 4.0 all out at the same time using the same Linux kernel, which is version 2.2. The second number indicates whether you have a "stable" or "development" version: if that number is even, it is stable. Thus Linux 2.2 is a stable version, while 2.3 is the current development (unstable) version. While you can download and install 2.3 and think you are getting a "newer" version, don't! Wait until you are way beyond the newbie stage to wander there.
Not that I want to push anyone's products here, but if you are planning to stick with it and get into Linux, you might consider getting a copy of Running Linux. I didn't buy it until I had Linux up and running - reading the first few chapters before I attempted an install would have been helpful, and it is great to have around afterwards to learn from. In the mean time, have fun and hang in there during the installation!
KY Jelly is not Y2K compliant. A new product will be launched for the millennium - Y2KY Jelly - which allows you four digits in your date instead of two.
Yellow tigers crouched in jungles in her dark eyes.
She's just dressing, goodbye windows, tired starlings.
Dear Y2K Coordinator:
Thank you for your inquiry concerning our 'Year 2000'
readiness and what impact it may have on your business
continuity.
As executive manager of all information technology
at a Fortune 100 firm in charge of 1500 data processing
professionals, I was completely unaware of this potential
software 'bug'. Now that you mention it, there may be a few
mission critical business database programs on our IBM 360
that could very well be century-date sensitive. As the thing
has been running a drum memory based database flawlessly for
the past 35 years, save for routing maintenance, we felt no
need to upgrade to whatever the latest passing data processing
fads were at the time.
Please be assured that I will dispatch a junior programmer
to look into this situation immediately and recommend any
corrective actions that need to be taken to ensure that our
25,000 workstation system will continue to provide the high
quality of service that you have come to expect from ***.
Sincerely
Chuck
From the 14th hole
Greenstate Golf club
try { do() || do_not(); } catch (JediException err) { yoda(err); }
Anyway, in all this, I can be assured in one thing: I know that my coffee mug is Y2K-compliant.
Yeah. But what you have to be worried about is the coffee you put into your pot and the coffee maker itself and carafe. Even if your coffee mug were not Y2K compliant, you could drink directly from the carafe if it is.
If on the other hand your coffee, coffee maker, or carafe is not compliant, you are screwed.
I've contacted my coffee supplier, my coffee pot manufacturer, and the manufacturer of the carafe (and mug too, since it's much more convenient to drink from a mug than it is to drink directly from the carafe) and luckily, all are compliant. I suggest you do the same.
The men who hold high places must be the ones who start to mold a new reality... closer to the heart - RUSH
man, I have to read these later
I got to the crest story and decided that I had better stop or my coworkers might think I'm having an epileptic fit spitting up my coffee.
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
You mean the programmers that haven't died, retired, quit or been downsized or outsourced.
I know of many systems where none of the original engineers and programmers are still around, not to mention source code, compilers and development systems.
Fortunately, most of these systems are being replaced by newer systems.
The scary thing is that there is no manual backup for most of these systems. The people who had that knowledge were eliminated as part of the cost savings of the new, automated systems.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Growing up in the 1940's, my father decided to put on a puppet show. All of the programs at the time had a sponsor, so he wrote to Kellog asking if Rice Crispies would sponsor his puppet show.
/. effect for good rather than evil. If you're frustrated by the failure to fully frost the brown sugar pop-tarts, and normally buy Kellog instead of generic due to the mor thorough frosting, let them know :) [please, no wannabes, and they're not going to GPL poptarts, so don't ask :)]
.Dr. Kellog produced his corn flakes for the same reason that Dr. Grahm introduced his cracker. These folks were of the Malthusian bent, and were opposed to sex *within* marriage. Both of these products were meant to suppress the sexual appetite. While history has kept this information, it does not record Mrs. Grahm's and Mrs. Kellog's feelings on the matter . . .
They not only told him yes, they sent him a case of empty boxes to use (and probably had a good chuckle).
Several months ago, when I actually had a few minutes (/. slow that morning?), i found the Kellog's site, and sent a complaint that the brown sugar pop-tarts were consistently underfrosted. They sent a message back with an 800 number and a reference code, asking me to call, but I still haven't had a chance.
Harness the
Hmm, while I'm on Kellogs . . .
:)
This is a real fun one to bring up when we hit that unit in my econ classes . . .
We have y2k stickers on everything in this university. Hmm, I installed linux *after* they put the sticker on the computer; maybe I should ad a "but not 2038" sticker :)
The *typewriter* has a sticker. And the college has a manual typewriter on standby, in case there's no power for the electrics--but this building would be unusable without poiwer . . .
.. of this call I made to my local bank. They sent me cheques with "19___" in the date area. As a form of protest, and to poke fun at them, I called them up to complain of "non-y2k compliant cheques."
:-)
The funniest bit is when I complain, "but what if I write a check in the year 2000, it will say it's written in 1900!" The lady on staff does not at all contradict me -- she even checks with her boss! It's funny as hell. I'll have to figure out how to get it off of my dictaphone (r), and presented in mp3 format on my webpage some day
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--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
You'll notice a trend in that the letters that got a good response were those that didn't include the rather tasteless genital references. The cleaner ones I thought were rather amusing, but some of those other ones were bordering on stupid/annoying, and I imagine that's why none of those got much of a response.