3 ms·

Y2K Bug Was Real and Could Have Killed

7 points by fortran77 3y ago

h2odragon 3y ago
The worst thing that happened Jan 1 19100 was that all the consultants selling "y2K readiness" had to go find real jobs. That was also the best thing. By all means tho, lets remember the hype and hysteria and not the fact that it was all pointless stress over nothing. Wouldn't want to take the edge of future profitable public panics.
- DamonHD 3y ago
  Hmmm, I was actually fixing stuff that had already been going wrong for a while, such as long financial transactions that crossed the date boundary. It's very annoying to have an actual issue that got largely fixed, dismissed as just some other made up conspiracy alongside faked moonlandings etc. Please don't do it. (There were certainly some overpaid charlatans, and I had to work alongside/around them; that doesn't make the problem less real.)
  - h2odragon 3y ago
    You had the stuff fixed well before the date, no? So did everyone else. It wasn't a difficult problem to foresee. Most places in any danger of inconvenience did foresee it, and acted well beforehand to fix the problems. Without hype, without "crash priority budgets", without stress, without ever really facing the possibility of existential disaster.
    - DamonHD 3y ago
      No, there was lots of stuff to fix, most of which was found and fixed in time, but there was BAU to get on with as well. Please stop claiming it wasn't a thing. It was. Would you have preferred no one to have worked on it and allowed more things to go wrong than actually did? The "so did everyone else" claim is clearly false. I agree things would have been nicer without the hype, but some people (possibly including you) are recklessly dismissive and won't do what's needed unless their nose is rubbed in it. Too busy buying more fast cars or remodelling the kitchen or whatever....
      - h2odragon 3y ago
        i watched 2000 roll on IRC. #slashdot. i had been of the opinion, before, that the panic was in no way justified. I retain that opinion still. Why is it so important to you that i acknowledge how dire y2k was?
        DamonHD 3y ago
        You seem to dismiss Y2K as nothing at all. That isn't true. I would like people to use nuance and gradation rather than inaccurare hype and yes/no binaries when they aren't. You seem to claim to dislike hype too, so why add to it yourself including trivally untrue statements?
        h2odragon 3y ago
        I beg your pardon for miscommunication. There were, indeed, real "Y2k" issues. They were easily predicted and mostly fixed long beforehand, without stress, without ever rising to the level of threat commonly associated with "Y2K". Then there was an industry that sold fear and bullshit labelled "Y2K". That was a far noisier and more extensive phenomenon, and did far more damage than real Y2k issues. "year 2038" is gonna be the same thing but louder. There's gonna be people charging millions for "updates" to 64bit time systems.
ksaj 3y ago
During this, I worked at a major bank. I was a virus expert even prior to working at the bank, so my job was specifically dealing with viruses that might affect the systems in unexpected ways because it's a sure bet that no virus routine was written with Y2K in mind. Nothing happened in that regard, but our war games showed things could certainly have gone awry if specific conditions were met, and we were quite ready for them. It wasn't wasted time. Some of the developers played part in our war games, and learned some new things that they subsequently were always on the lookout for, but had never occurred to them prior.
simonblack 3y ago
Anybody that needed to use 'dates in the future', such as banks, weather forecasters, insurance companies, insurance companies, etc, etc, etc. had discovered the Y2KBUG long since and had fixed it up years or even decades beforehand. The year is 1975. And you want our Bank to give you a 25-year mortgage to buy your house? Oh look, your mortgage will be paid off in 19100, or in 1900. The idea of 'planes falling out of the sky' was absolute bullshit as I, and every other pilot, could have told you. If you wanted to listen, that is.

7 points by fortran77 3y ago

The worst thing that happened Jan 1 19100 was that all the consultants selling "y2K readiness" had to go find real jobs. That was also the best thing. By all means tho, lets remember the hype and hysteria and not the fact that it was all pointless stress over nothing. Wouldn't want to take the edge of future profitable public panics.

DamonHD 3y ago
Hmmm, I was actually fixing stuff that had already been going wrong for a while, such as long financial transactions that crossed the date boundary. It's very annoying to have an actual issue that got largely fixed, dismissed as just some other made up conspiracy alongside faked moonlandings etc. Please don't do it. (There were certainly some overpaid charlatans, and I had to work alongside/around them; that doesn't make the problem less real.)
- h2odragon 3y ago
  You had the stuff fixed well before the date, no? So did everyone else. It wasn't a difficult problem to foresee. Most places in any danger of inconvenience did foresee it, and acted well beforehand to fix the problems. Without hype, without "crash priority budgets", without stress, without ever really facing the possibility of existential disaster.
  - DamonHD 3y ago
    No, there was lots of stuff to fix, most of which was found and fixed in time, but there was BAU to get on with as well. Please stop claiming it wasn't a thing. It was. Would you have preferred no one to have worked on it and allowed more things to go wrong than actually did? The "so did everyone else" claim is clearly false. I agree things would have been nicer without the hype, but some people (possibly including you) are recklessly dismissive and won't do what's needed unless their nose is rubbed in it. Too busy buying more fast cars or remodelling the kitchen or whatever....
    - h2odragon 3y ago
      i watched 2000 roll on IRC. #slashdot. i had been of the opinion, before, that the panic was in no way justified. I retain that opinion still. Why is it so important to you that i acknowledge how dire y2k was?
      - DamonHD 3y ago
        You seem to dismiss Y2K as nothing at all. That isn't true. I would like people to use nuance and gradation rather than inaccurare hype and yes/no binaries when they aren't. You seem to claim to dislike hype too, so why add to it yourself including trivally untrue statements?
        h2odragon 3y ago
        I beg your pardon for miscommunication. There were, indeed, real "Y2k" issues. They were easily predicted and mostly fixed long beforehand, without stress, without ever rising to the level of threat commonly associated with "Y2K". Then there was an industry that sold fear and bullshit labelled "Y2K". That was a far noisier and more extensive phenomenon, and did far more damage than real Y2k issues. "year 2038" is gonna be the same thing but louder. There's gonna be people charging millions for "updates" to 64bit time systems.

ksaj 3y ago

During this, I worked at a major bank. I was a virus expert even prior to working at the bank, so my job was specifically dealing with viruses that might affect the systems in unexpected ways because it's a sure bet that no virus routine was written with Y2K in mind. Nothing happened in that regard, but our war games showed things could certainly have gone awry if specific conditions were met, and we were quite ready for them. It wasn't wasted time. Some of the developers played part in our war games, and learned some new things that they subsequently were always on the lookout for, but had never occurred to them prior.

simonblack 3y ago

Anybody that needed to use 'dates in the future', such as banks, weather forecasters, insurance companies, insurance companies, etc, etc, etc. had discovered the Y2KBUG long since and had fixed it up years or even decades beforehand. The year is 1975. And you want our Bank to give you a 25-year mortgage to buy your house? Oh look, your mortgage will be paid off in 19100, or in 1900. The idea of 'planes falling out of the sky' was absolute bullshit as I, and every other pilot, could have told you. If you wanted to listen, that is.