I just saw on CNBC that someone in Europe has a patented Y2K fix which adds a comma before the 00's. I'm not sure if I understood everything on the clip. Do any of you any info on the European Y2K problem in relation to this patent? This is the first positive news I've heard on Y2K.

Alan

-- Alan Mostert (alanmos@yahoo.com), August 10, 1998

Answers

Sigh, yet another "silver bullet".

I don't know the details of this comma fix - first I've heard of it in fact - but there is no way that it can begin to address all of the many flavors of Y2k problems that exist. It doesn't even seem likely that it can help much in any situations. If you are going to add a comma in front of the "00", why don't you just make it a "1"?

There is an excellent paper by Peter de Jager which discusses why no single tool or technique can fix everything.

It's title is: "Biting the Silver Bullet".

It can be found at: http://www.year2000.com/y2karchive.html.

-- Ed Perrault (EdPerrault@Compuserve.com), August 10, 1998.