Very Computer

by **Jonadab the Unsightly On** » Thu, 22 Oct 1998 04:00:00

[Nonsense snipped.]

The day anybody can name one piece of software that
will cease to function in the year 2000 I might
consider Y2K a genuine concern.

-- jonadab

by **brian hile** » Fri, 23 Oct 1998 04:00:00

> The day anybody can name one piece of software that
> will cease to function in the year 2000 I might
> consider Y2K a genuine concern.

The issue is largely that not any modern database software is liable to the
Y2K problem, but the the invisible computational infrastructure of America
(and every other industrial country) relies on Cobol software written 30
years ago wherein saving two bytes per record was considered a priori a
desirable design risk.

So make copies of your stock portfolio, insurance, and wage statements before
December 1999. It is common knowledge that one of the government laggards is
the Internal Revenue Service. And everyone keeps on saying: don't take an
airplane journey on New Year's Eve/Day.

Some time ago I remember a poster to this group mentioning that he was laughed
out of a conference of Cobol database design engineers in the '60s (uh, 1960s!)
when he pointedly reminded them that such a decision would be problematic at
the turn of the century. Apparently no one there could conceive of their
software still being used that far into the future!

-Brian

Very Computer

Y2K YEAR 2000 DATE FIX IS HERE NOW

Y2K YEAR 2000 DATE FIX IS HERE NOW

Y2K YEAR 2000 DATE FIX IS HERE NOW