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Technology Stocks : 2000 Date-Change Problem: Scam, Hype, Hoax, Fraud
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To: Bill Wexler who wrote (429)1/4/1998 3:01:00 PM
From: David Eddy   of 1361
 
Bill -

That's because there is zero evidence that the so-called "Y2K" problem is as widespread or disastrous as the hypesters make it out to be.

Thanks for coming back...

Let me come at this from several angles.

Firstly... have you ever spoken to or heard of someone in a company who carries the title of "Senior Vice President, Software Maintenance"? You'll find plenty of folks carry titles such as "Architect", or "Development", but maintenance is an orphan. Do I need to elaborate on this point?

Secondly... computers are stupid (to call them stupid is actually granting them more intelligence then they possess). What they do is count. They're really good with mathematical numbers. They're spectactular with integers. Mathematics has very simply rules... integers march in increments from negative infinity to positive infinity.

Dates, despite looking like numbers (980104 or 98/01/04 for readibility) really aren't mathematical numbers. They're date numbers. What sort of numbers rotates from 1 to 28, 29, 30 or 31 and then back to 1? What sort or number rotates from 1 thru 12 and back to 1? Where's the zero?

If you take 971231 (a date, stored in yymmdd form) and add 1 (day), suddenly you get 980101. Where did the other 8870 numbers go? If you haven't noticed, this is really screwy math.

Aside from the fact that it is very, very easy to mess up the logic for handling date "math" properly, dates are used in lots & lots of places for sequencing transactions... like you want to make sure the money goes into an account before it comes out

So... when we're marching along in a sequence of 97, 98, 99... guess what there's no number AFTER 99!! When you add 1 to 99, the answer is 00 (remember, we're dealing with two digit numbers by explicit definition!)... which is BEFORE 99.

If the computer "knew" it was dealing with dates that might help... but computers don't know anything. They're just pushing bits around. Humans look at 'numbers' like 971231 or 97365 & instantly know (from the context that these are dates & need to be treated specially... computers bring no such intelligence to the game.

Finally... have you ever viewed Capers Jones site (http://www.spr.com) and downloaded his Y2K document? Bottom line there is that the bigger the projects, the greater the chances are the project will fail.

- David
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