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From: rhesmith@wlcrjs.UUCP (Richard H. E. Smith II)
Newsgroups: net.bugs,net.flame,net.puzzle
Subject: Re: Computer bugs in the year 2000
Message-ID: <502@wlcrjs.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 24-Jan-85 05:54:01 EST
Article-I.D.: wlcrjs.502
Posted: Thu Jan 24 05:54:01 1985
Date-Received: Fri, 25-Jan-85 07:10:09 EST
References: <820@reed.UUCP> <20381@arizona.UUCP> <6876@watdaisy.UUCP>
Reply-To: rhesmith@wlcrjs.UUCP (Richard H. E. Smith II)
Organization: chi-net, Public Access UN*X, Chicago IL
Lines: 24
Xref: watmath net.bugs:509 net.flame:8006 net.puzzle:511
Summary: 

In article <6876@watdaisy.UUCP> ndiamond@watdaisy.UUCP (Norman Diamond) writes:
>>>       I have a friend that raised an interesting question that I immediately
>>> tried to prove wrong.  He is a programmer and has this notion that when we
>>> reach the year 2000, computers will not accept the new date.  Will the
>>> computers assume that it is 1900, or will it even cause a problem?
>> The problem won't be the computers, but the software.  Some software is
>> bound to be wrong, only considering the last two digits of the year.
>> but the problem won't come up until 2100.
>Leap years are not the only problem, and some software already is wrong.
>There was some 105-year-old lady who hadn't registered for school, and
>the truant officers came after her.... -- Norman Diamond

Some software blows up on dates at other times.  I'm aware of some old
DEC software (don't worry... you're NOT using it... it's single user!)
that keeps the date year as a 5 bit offset from 1972.  Let's see...
1972+31=2003, so it blows up in 2004.  Probably, tho, the display-a-year
routine isn't written to handle beyond 31-dec-99, since no one expects
that RT11 (oops, now I said it) will still be used then.  I hope.


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Dick Smith						..ihnp4!wlcrjs!rhesmith