Re: DC Y2K Weather Report 90 & "Jo Anne Effect"
_____
'From:
kiyoinc@ibm.XOUT.net (cory hamasaki)
3:19
Subject:
Re: DC Y2K Weather Report 90 & "Jo Anne Effect"
On Sat, 22 Aug 1998 21:19:13, Jo Anne Slaven <slaven@rogerswave.ca> wrote:
...snipped a bunch of speculation from others.
> Look-ahead systems, like scheduling, budgeting, ordering and
> reservations are a different issue. They are certainly very important,
> and there will no doubt be problems, especially as Jan 1 2000 comes
> closer. But I'm pretty sure that what Cory calls "The Jo Anne Effect"
> refers explicitly to fiscal years that span 1999 and 2000.
There had been speculation on what's the magic of Fiscal Year 1999,
Fiscal Year 2000. Jo Anne, in a classic c.s.y2k post, explained
that certain financial systems sort (in the sense of 'group' rather than
'collate') transactions into last year, this year, next year piles.
These systems do it by testing the end year... there are several ways
of generating the end year and several ways of coding the test.
I expect failures to occur starting in January 1999, for those systems
that use fiscal year = calender year. For those systems that have a
fiscal year different from calendar year, the problem occurs the first
time the system generates a '00', '1900', or '19100' year internally.
I can imagine a few odd circumstances that would cause systems to fail
earlier.
The significance of the Jo Anne Effect is since Jo Anne explained it, we
have an understanding of a class of failures that will occur before
January 1, 2000. While we've been focused on January 1, 2000, some
problems, not predictive, not amortization, not expiration date (as in
credit cards.) but some very dull but important production systems fail
earlier.
Oddly enough, if we leave these systems alone, they'll probably right
themselves after the singularity... the company will have failed, of
course.
> --
> Jo Anne, who has never in her life seen her name spelled correctly by so
> many people
So the jokes on us, we don't have 493 days...
cory hamasaki ...and no one, not Yourdon, not de Jager, no one spotted
this or explained it until Jo Anne did. |
