[Info-vax] 2010 date issues

[Richard B. Gilbert]

Tom Wade wrote:
> 
>> There was a radio program the other day where a experienced computer 
>> engineer was interviewed about these kind of problems. He said that 
>> many software companies did kind of shortsighted workarounds for Y2K 
>> which are blowing up this year or anytime later. Some have blown up 
>> earlier.
> 
> I expect to see more and more of these.
> 
> Another typical 'short-cut' was where systems have a two digit field in 
> a database record for the date.  The Y2K fix involves translating 
> between the 2-digit stored date, and a 4-digit display date.  To do 
> this, some cutoff is assumed, for example if the 2-digit date is < 50 it 
> is assumed 2000 (e.g. 2012) and if it is greater, it is assumed 1900 
> (e.g. 1960).
> 
> The problem is where the cutoff is chosen.  It would correspond to the 
> oldest record in the database, and since some systems store dates back 
> as far as 1920 (e.g. the birth date of someone who was 80 at the 
> millennium), the problem is going to repeat itself by 2020.
> 
> What is very depressing is the speed with which most people have lapsed 
> back into 2 digit years again, thus not learning the very expensive 
> lessons of Y2K, in the mistaken belief the problem won't be seen again 
> in their lifetimes.
> 
> Tom Wade
> 
> (who actually got a support call early on 2000-01-01 about a system that 
> was reporting the date as 1900, due to a patch not having been applied).

Do you recall what sort of system it was?  For many of us Y2K was no 
problem at all.  Others had to really sweat to find and fix all the 
problems in 30-50 year old code and/or data.

The silliest part of the whole thing was that the problem had been 
pointed out as early as 1975 and no one did anything about it until the 
fall of 1999.  Panic time!!!!!

ISTR that Unix time comes to an end in 2037 unless the clock is fixed to 
use more than 32 bits.  I think most Unix systems now use a 64 bit 
clock.  Inevitably there will be a few systems that will not be fixed 
and will still be in service then!