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> the agency uses a two-digit code for the birth year I find that surprising, I would expect even newcomer professionals to at least have heard about the Y2K b

> the agency uses a two-digit code for the birth year I find that surprising, I would expect even newcomer professionals to at least have heard about the Y2K bug.

x1798DE 12y ago
Not sure why anyone is memory conservative these days anyway, but it's possible they thought about it but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around, and even if they get a letter reminding them to register for the draft, they'd just ignore it.
- Igglyboo 12y ago
  Or it's a legacy system they never bothered properly fixing and just used some quick hack when 2000 rolled around.
  - revelation 12y ago
    It is 2014, males born in the 2000s are not yet at an age where they would be harassed by the selective service. My estimate is we will see this blow up again in 2018.
    - x1798DE 12y ago
      I don't think so. It's always 118-126 years, no matter what year it is right now, so we'll only see this blow up if there's an explosion in that population.
  - theandrewbailey 12y ago
    Sorta knowing the sad state of government IT, it's possible that it was never "fixed" at all!
- donutello 12y ago
  > but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around The letter shown in the example was sent to someone who died in 1992 so there's at least some evidence to suggest that floating around is not a necessary condition to receive the letter.
  - ajuc 12y ago
    Well, obviously if he died in 92 and have been born in 93 he counts as alive :)
michaelt 12y ago
I just started LibreOffice Calc (the version distributed with the latest version of Ubuntu), chose a cell and entered "1-December-2014" The program tidied it to 01/12/14 (I'm in the UK, presumably the field order is locale-dependent) then exported a CSV with the default settings. Voilia, I have a file with the date expressed as 01/12/14 My guess is this process only gets run once a year, so it's not been a high priority for automation, and someone's spreadsheet program is configured to work out two-digit years automatically.

> the agency uses a two-digit code for the birth year I find that surprising, I would expect even newcomer professionals to at least have heard about the Y2K bug.

x1798DE 12y ago

Not sure why anyone is memory conservative these days anyway, but it's possible they thought about it but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around, and even if they get a letter reminding them to register for the draft, they'd just ignore it.

Igglyboo 12y ago
Or it's a legacy system they never bothered properly fixing and just used some quick hack when 2000 rolled around.
- revelation 12y ago
  It is 2014, males born in the 2000s are not yet at an age where they would be harassed by the selective service. My estimate is we will see this blow up again in 2018.
  - x1798DE 12y ago
    I don't think so. It's always 118-126 years, no matter what year it is right now, so we'll only see this blow up if there's an explosion in that population.
- theandrewbailey 12y ago
  Sorta knowing the sad state of government IT, it's possible that it was never "fixed" at all!
donutello 12y ago
> but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around The letter shown in the example was sent to someone who died in 1992 so there's at least some evidence to suggest that floating around is not a necessary condition to receive the letter.
- ajuc 12y ago
  Well, obviously if he died in 92 and have been born in 93 he counts as alive :)

michaelt 12y ago

I just started LibreOffice Calc (the version distributed with the latest version of Ubuntu), chose a cell and entered "1-December-2014" The program tidied it to 01/12/14 (I'm in the UK, presumably the field order is locale-dependent) then exported a CSV with the default settings. Voilia, I have a file with the date expressed as 01/12/14 My guess is this process only gets run once a year, so it's not been a high priority for automation, and someone's spreadsheet program is configured to work out two-digit years automatically.