Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Technology Stocks : 2000 Date-Change Problem: Scam, Hype, Hoax, Fraud -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sawtooth who wrote (1049)	12/20/1998 10:15:00 PM
From: Jeff Redman	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1361

They only thing that could be inaccurate is the date itself and we know what kind of dates to expect, and if they still send a 2 digit date we can figure out the century (and we do). Don't make it out to be more than it is, the hype over this has the average person who is not a programmer, overreacting.

To: Sawtooth who wrote (1049)	12/21/1998 1:48:00 AM
From: David Eddy	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 1361

Tim A. - The point is that if your business partners aren't Year 2000 ready and send you incorrect data, which could, of course, happen at any time, it will likely be something your firm will have to deal with. Jeff is making the point that ANY serious, profession organization that's grownup enough to be running IBM mainframes has been in the business of catching crap sent from the outside all the time. When you have a mature system that has been automated to the extent that it now accepts automated input from "outside" (pick you definition of outside) sources, you have had to deal with being sent total crap. So you learn to deal with it. Establish multiple step edit/validation steps. You learn to be VERY suspicious. Carrying a beeper & getting 2am firecalls is cool when you're 25. And it gets old real fast. So you "tune" the systems to deal with crap by rejecting it in upstream steps. Twenty years ago when I was dealing with mutual funds I determined it was easier to write code to have them degrade gracefully than die at 2am...I hate early am phone calls. Jeff's just describing standard operational practices...not rocket science. - David