I'm with Eric on this one. Right now, we only have it as hearsay that Linus has done anything with regard to these folks - and the hearsay is from them. Heck, I could shut off a couple pages on one of my websites and say that I'd done it because Linus, Microsoft, or the Pope (or their lawyers) had asked me to.
I do wish Linus would post here and put all this uncertainty to rest.:)
The site I work on uses JavaScript to display the date based on the user's system clock. It had been displaying the year based on:
"19" + today.getYear());
Which, if one set one's clock ahead. came out to a year of "19100" (gosh, JavaScript, thanks SO much for thinking of 1900 as year zero...) Needless to say, it's now doing:
(1900+(today.getYear()*1)));
Or something similarly better.
Re:Y2K Blamed for Wasted Money, food hoarding
on
When Does Y2K Begin?
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· Score: 1
Money hoarding, indeed. I took a little money out of the bank since it's a long weekend and the bank will be closed (not a huge amount, just standard operating procedure here:) but my wife didn't know that I'd done so, so she came along and took out 3.5 times that much again... oh well. If the apocalypse comes, at least we'll have lots of little green pieces of paper. Yee-ha.
By now, I was sure someone would have mentioned the URL above. But I didn't see it, so I figured I might as well.
It's a site run by a fellow who, in addition to being an anti-spam sort, is a P.R. flack (or something like that) - interesting combination. He collects information on what places have laws impacting spam, and cases that have been brought under those laws.
(This doesn't include the plain ol' theft, forgery etc. laws which have always applied.;)
That's the gist of the latest quote I heard from the guy who's heading up Y2K stuff for whatever branch of the UN is dealing with it. (This is someone in the US, who's got decent credibility and a clue). The basic idea is that nothing catastrophic happens, but lots of teeny tiny little things go wrong, resulting in about the same amount of grief and annoyance as if one really big one had happened - and requiring a lot more things to be fixed.
I'm inclined to believe that. I'm not inclined to believe people who say that nothing will happen - things have been breaking due to Y2K problems for literally years (remember when credit card companies first started issuing cards with expiration dates of 2000?) and I see no reason that things would abruptly *stop* breaking on 01/01/00.:) But I'm not inclined to believe that it'll be the end of the universe either. The truth almost always falls between the two extremes.
So, what to do about it? Yeah, I'll probably try to stock up a little bit on food and toilet paper and stuff like that. Having successfully met our goal of moving to a tropical island *before* Y2K, my wife and I aren't worried about the heat going off (there isn't any, nor is there air conditioning; we don't need it) or things like that. Utilities? Hmmm. That spiffy new RADSL hookup we're getting might have a bad day, but that's all new technology and should work if there's power. Transportation? Dunno. The buses might have some trouble, sure, but our bicycles shouldn't undergo any sort of SMEF.*
So I'm about as concerned as I'd be if a hurricane were coming. But not a whole lot more. And I don't have to work that day - our servers are colocated on the mainland, and if anything breaks, there's nothing anybody here on the island can do about it, so there's no point in coming in.:)
*Sudden Massive Existence Failure. From Douglas Adams' "Starship Titanic."
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I'm with Eric on this one. Right now, we only have it as hearsay that Linus has done anything with regard to these folks - and the hearsay is from them. Heck, I could shut off a couple pages on one of my websites and say that I'd done it because Linus, Microsoft, or the Pope (or their lawyers) had asked me to.
:)
I do wish Linus would post here and put all this uncertainty to rest.
"19" + today.getYear());
Which, if one set one's clock ahead. came out to a year of "19100" (gosh, JavaScript, thanks SO much for thinking of 1900 as year zero...) Needless to say, it's now doing:
(1900+(today.getYear()*1)));
Or something similarly better.
Money hoarding, indeed. I took a little money out of the bank since it's a long weekend and the bank will be closed (not a huge amount, just standard operating procedure here :) but my wife didn't know that I'd done so, so she came along and took out 3.5 times that much again... oh well. If the apocalypse comes, at least we'll have lots of little green pieces of paper. Yee-ha.
By now, I was sure someone would have mentioned the URL above. But I didn't see it, so I figured I might as well.
;)
It's a site run by a fellow who, in addition to being an anti-spam sort, is a P.R. flack (or something like that) - interesting combination. He collects information on what places have laws impacting spam, and cases that have been brought under those laws.
(This doesn't include the plain ol' theft, forgery etc. laws which have always applied.
I'm inclined to believe that. I'm not inclined to believe people who say that nothing will happen - things have been breaking due to Y2K problems for literally years (remember when credit card companies first started issuing cards with expiration dates of 2000?) and I see no reason that things would abruptly *stop* breaking on 01/01/00. :) But I'm not inclined to believe that it'll be the end of the universe either. The truth almost always falls between the two extremes.
So, what to do about it? Yeah, I'll probably try to stock up a little bit on food and toilet paper and stuff like that. Having successfully met our goal of moving to a tropical island *before* Y2K, my wife and I aren't worried about the heat going off (there isn't any, nor is there air conditioning; we don't need it) or things like that. Utilities? Hmmm. That spiffy new RADSL hookup we're getting might have a bad day, but that's all new technology and should work if there's power. Transportation? Dunno. The buses might have some trouble, sure, but our bicycles shouldn't undergo any sort of SMEF.*
So I'm about as concerned as I'd be if a hurricane were coming. But not a whole lot more. And I don't have to work that day - our servers are colocated on the mainland, and if anything breaks, there's nothing anybody here on the island can do about it, so there's no point in coming in. :)
*Sudden Massive Existence Failure. From Douglas Adams' "Starship Titanic."