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Non-Tech : Bill Wexler's Dog Pound -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Bill Wexler who wrote (290)	3/16/1999 1:09:00 PM
From: BelowTheCrowd	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 10293

Bill, This line turned up in a solicitation for a newsletter which showed up in the mail yesterday. I always read those for entertainment value, and to look for any new forms of hype: > "Profits from Y2K?...The truth is no one's making much money. But another computer glitch that's been totally overlooked will strike down computers worldwide in the next 12 months." I've also seen a couple of emails on a similar subject. Seems that a lot of people are hyping the "September 9th, 1999 problem" through email and some newsgroups. In a nutshell: Lots of programmers use a string of 9's to signify an end of file record, or for some other kind of error checking related to dates. The theory goes that on 9/9/99 we will have a date which many computer programs will believe signfies an "end of record" and screw things up completely. Obviously, this ignores the simple fact that months and dates are pretty universally stored as two-byte fields. It'll be '090999' or '990909' even if they're using a two-byte year. The elusive '999999' will never be a problem. Still, it's something I would expect to see Y2K hypesters start latching on to soon. Could move some of those stocks and provide a good opportunity. Worth watching for, IMO. mg