FabSwingers.com forum: The Millennium Bug

By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago

What was all the fuss about?

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Flogging you a new pc !

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By *icketysplitsWoman
over a year ago

Way over Yonder, that's where I'm bound

01000101110001001000100010001111110000010

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By *HaRiFMan
over a year ago

Beyond the shadows.

I think the fuss has died down by this stage

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By *lem-H-FandangoMan
over a year ago

salisbury

"What was all the fuss about? "

Making a quick buck from scaring people. Happens all the time, ask Greta.

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By *outhbucksCouple
over a year ago

Great Missenden

Having been invovled in IT at the time, it was a non-event because of a massive amount of work that went on

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By *orny PTMan
over a year ago

Peterborough

I had to cross out 19__ on the date line, every time I had to write out a cheque.

First world problems!

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

No idea

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"What was all the fuss about?

Making a quick buck from scaring people. Happens all the time, ask Greta. "

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By *ed-monkeyCouple
over a year ago

Hailsham

[Removed by poster at 30/12/19 22:50:04]

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By *ed-monkeyCouple
over a year ago

Hailsham

"Having been invovled in IT at the time, it was a non-event because of a massive amount of work that went on"

Exactly, there was so much done to prevent an issue ... having also been involved at the time

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By *uke OzadeMan
over a year ago

Ho Chi Minge City

"What was all the fuss about? "

I didn’t worry about it because we were all going to die from the SARS virus anyway

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By *opinovMan
over a year ago

Point Nemo, Cumbria

"01000101110001001000100010001111110000010

01001110 01101111 01110100 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110010 01100101 00100000 01110100 01101000 01100001 01110100 00100000 01100101 01110110 01100101 01101110 00100000 01101101 01100101 01100001 01101110 01110011 00100000 01100001 01101110 01111001 01110100 01101000 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110

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By *lem-H-FandangoMan
over a year ago

salisbury

"Having been invovled in IT at the time, it was a non-event because of a massive amount of work that went on

Exactly, there was so much done to prevent an issue ... having also been involved at the time"

Nobody reprogrammed my toaster, or in fact any other appliance with a microchip that we were warned about.

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By *ed-monkeyCouple
over a year ago

Hailsham

"01000101110001001000100010001111110000010

8bit coding ... how retro

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By *lem-H-FandangoMan
over a year ago

salisbury

"What was all the fuss about?

I didn’t worry about it because we were all going to die from the SARS virus anyway

Was it mad cow disease then as well, or was that slightly before? I get my mass hysteria muddled up these days. Probably my aluminium saucepans...

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By *orny PTMan
over a year ago

Peterborough

"01000101110001001000100010001111110000010

I see what you did there..."Not sure that even means anything".

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"What was all the fuss about?

I didn’t worry about it because we were all going to die from the SARS virus anyway

Was it mad cow disease then as well, or was that slightly before? I get my mass hysteria muddled up these days. Probably my aluminium saucepans..."

Think bird flu could have been in there too. Was so much to panic about back then!

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By *uke OzadeMan
over a year ago

Ho Chi Minge City

"What was all the fuss about?

I didn’t worry about it because we were all going to die from the SARS virus anyway

Was it mad cow disease then as well, or was that slightly before? I get my mass hysteria muddled up these days. Probably my aluminium saucepans..."

Oh that was like a decade earlier. I don’t get wound up by mass hysteria since Scientology protects me and the colander on my head keeps me normal for the most part

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By *icketysplitsWoman
over a year ago

Way over Yonder, that's where I'm bound

"What was all the fuss about?

I didn’t worry about it because we were all going to die from the SARS virus anyway

Was it mad cow disease then as well, or was that slightly before? I get my mass hysteria muddled up these days. Probably my aluminium saucepans..."

It was the peak of CJD.

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By *opinovMan
over a year ago

Point Nemo, Cumbria

"01000101110001001000100010001111110000010

8bit coding ... how retro

Yeah, thought I'd keep it contemporary.

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By *orny PTMan
over a year ago

Peterborough

Blokes don't get bird flu.

BSE was late nineties.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Only bug I was worried about was the one that left me sick over Christmas b

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By *orksRockerMan
over a year ago

Bradford

1001001 SOS

. Ha

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"Having been invovled in IT at the time, it was a non-event because of a massive amount of work that went on

Exactly, there was so much done to prevent an issue ... having also been involved at the time

Nobody reprogrammed my toaster, or in fact any other appliance with a microchip that we were warned about.

Your toaster probably doesn't process very many major financial transactions, though.

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By *uke OzadeMan
over a year ago

Ho Chi Minge City

Weirdly I have a mental link between the millennium bug and Sunscreen by Baz Luhrmann as that was out around then. Wtf was that all about anyway??

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By *icketysplitsWoman
over a year ago

Way over Yonder, that's where I'm bound

"Having been invovled in IT at the time, it was a non-event because of a massive amount of work that went on

Exactly, there was so much done to prevent an issue ... having also been involved at the time

Nobody reprogrammed my toaster, or in fact any other appliance with a microchip that we were warned about.

Your toaster probably doesn't process very many major financial transactions, though."

Not like those new 'smart' fridges. They could be tricking you into buying all sorts chatting away with your phone and sending in your online order.

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By *opinovMan
over a year ago

Point Nemo, Cumbria

"Blokes don't get bird flu.

BSE was late nineties.

Not entirely correct I'm afraid. Humans can get a transgenic strain of bird flu: H5N1

Also, I hate to be the bearer of bad news (and I do mean very bad) but there are indications that we're on the verge of a second outbreak of nvCJD, the human version of BSE. Those who were aflicted before had a genetic disposition to suffer symptoms early, but there's increasing evidence a much larger population (who were infected with the prion at the same time) have a disposition to suffer symptoms much later - think of it as a much longer incubation, which may be imminent and of which manifestations are beginning to appear.

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By *lem-H-FandangoMan
over a year ago

salisbury

"Blokes don't get bird flu.

BSE was late nineties.

Not entirely correct I'm afraid. Humans can get a transgenic strain of bird flu: H5N1

Bloody typical!

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By *opinovMan
over a year ago

Point Nemo, Cumbria

"Blokes don't get bird flu.

BSE was late nineties.

Not entirely correct I'm afraid. Humans can get a transgenic strain of bird flu: H5N1

Bloody typical!

Oh dear, did I just kill this thread?

Oh well...

On the upside, it might be another decade before the bulk of the symptoms start to display, and the current anticipation of 1 in 2000 people infected might be an overestimate... so happy days eh.

Also, I think we can all take heart that the relaxation of regulations by Thatcher which led to all this furthered the noble cause of profit for a number of well connected individuals, and will no doubt do so again as the next wave of sufferers create their own lucrative niche in the future private health care industry. A much better outcome than anything resembling socialism, I'm sure we can all agree.

Yeah, and don't read anything into the complete media black on this subject - that's perfectly normal when the approaching shit is too big for the fan. A bit like climate change, in a way - only other countries are shutting themselves about that too, so we can't pretend it's not a problem like we're doing with nvCJD. With any luck, those of us affected will be too lobotomized to know what's happening... phew.

So don't make a fuss and for god's sake don't point any fingers or say anything troublesome about learning from mistakes because that's socialism and we don't like that. Nah, just be good and content yourself with looking forward to receiving your new shiny blue passports as we get our county back. Anything other than actually thinking about what the future really holds. Yay... let's all raise a glass to corporate capitalism, the silencing of those pesky 'experts' (of whom "we've all had enough", apparently) and the tearing up of unprofitable red tape... yippee!

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By *evil_u_knowMan
over a year ago

city

It will happen again on 03:14:07 on Tuesday, 19 January 2038.

We store time as the number of seconds that has passed since 1/1/1970

In 2038, the number will get too big to fit inside a 32 bit integer. So anything that didnt allow 64bit time will basically crash and never work again if it needs time to work.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Topical..,

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Right, here we go then.

It was something that WOULD have affected legacy mainframe systems running COBOL programs.

The problem arose because, in COBOL, you have to actually define certain parameters, such as the date, within the program in order that memory resources are allocated to them.

So you would define the date fields as DD MM YY

Now this is all well and good, but if you're running a program that does calculations based on the date, for example to determine someones age in a Pensions program or such, then you hit a snag when the current year rolls over from 1999 to 2000, because the program only uses has the last two digits of the date defined.

Now in our brains, we automatically compensate, but these programs could not do this and you'd end up with negative figures where you should have positives.

So all these thousands of programs had to be checked, line by line and any YY fields changed to YYYY, and other amendments to ensure that the 19 was correctly added to relevant dates.

The reason why many people are of the view that it was a lot of fuss about nothing is because those of us working in the IT industry at the time, put the work in and got it sorted, so that on January 1st 2000, everything still worked the way it did the day before.

You're welcome.

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"It will happen again on 03:14:07 on Tuesday, 19 January 2038."

I agree - this is going to be far worse than the Millennium Bug. I’m still seeing new databases built with 32-bit date fields

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"Right, here we go then.

It was something that WOULD have affected legacy mainframe systems running COBOL programs.

The problem arose because, in COBOL, you have to actually define certain parameters, such as the date, within the program in order that memory resources are allocated to them.

So you would define the date fields as DD MM YY

Now in our brains, we automatically compensate, but these programs could not do this and you'd end up with negative figures where you should have positives.

So all these thousands of programs had to be checked, line by line and any YY fields changed to YYYY, and other amendments to ensure that the 19 was correctly added to relevant dates.

You're welcome."

Smart arse

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

Wtf are you all talking about?!

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By *ed-monkeyCouple
over a year ago

Hailsham

"Wtf are you all talking about?!

1s and 0s

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By *ensualtouch15Man
over a year ago

ashby de la zouch

"Having been invovled in IT at the time, it was a non-event because of a massive amount of work that went on"

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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago

"Wtf are you all talking about?!

1s and 0s

I’m so confused right now.

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By *dam_TinaCouple
over a year ago

Hampshire

And I'm hearing rumours that Germany are about to invade Poland

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