Why cann't the federal govenment pass a law theat requires all public computer based industries to roll back their clocks 11 years and solve the problem temporily, or at least give more tim to fix it???

-- Marshall H. Waren (mhw@netquick.net), September 05, 1998

Answers

They could. They have the power, of course. However, massive logistical problems remain. EVERY business and government agency GLOBALLY would need to do this. What about all of the companies who've poured millions into fixing their systems? What about embedded systems that can't be fixed or located? There is NO simple answers to these and many other questions. It is, however, IMHO, the only way to minimize the global domino effect. Will it happen? Don't count on it.

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), September 05, 1998.

Realize also that recoding to reflect the 11 year difference would need to be done. For example 1991A vs. actual 1991 in bookeeping apps.

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), September 05, 1998.

Or bookkeeping, as the case may be.

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), September 05, 1998.

Hey deedah, here's some meaningless blathering trivia: Bookkeeper is the only English word with three sets of consecutive double letters. I can dish it out, too!

-- Steve Hartsman (hartsman@ticon.net), September 05, 1998.

So if you put it as a single word into a file in pkzip, and then read it from the compressed binary directly, would it become bokeping with the doubles removed?

Another symptom why this type solution won't work: Our 3D CAD program needs to register "objects" (gadgets, pipes, steel, assemblies or whatever) between users to let different people create them, check them in, check them out, and manage their changes over time. Okay, so I made sure we used GMT and a 4 digit year in an NT environment so there is no problem across national boundaries (Europe, East Coast, LA, CA, OR, and Japan and Korea.)

Tested the process after setting internal clocks to Feb 22, 2001. (Would this be month 26 in this problem, or month 14A? Probably 26) Anyway, the outpur was written with an extra "1" suddenly appearing in the date report"12001", when a blank was there for year 1999 and 2000.

-- Robert A. Cook, P.E. (cook.r@csaatl.com), September 05, 1998.

Gotta love a guy with a sense of humor, welcome aboard skippy.

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), September 05, 1998.

Marshall,

There are huge databases full of current dates which would then appear to have occurred 11 years later than actual. For someone born in 1991, there are countless databases with his birthdate already recorded. If in 2000 (translated to 1989 in your scheme of setting the system clock back 11 years), this child would appear to be minus 2 years old.

So you would probably answer, so change all the databases by subtracting 11 years from every date. Which would require programs to be written to do it, testing of the results, a special implementation transition at the stroke of midnight of 12/31/99, etc. Net result? It would take as much work as correcting the problem to give correct dates, and you would end up with these vast new databases of wrong data, which wouldn't match to the computers that are Y2k compliant and refuse to use your proposal. <<<<<<<<<<>>>>>>>>>>..........

-- Dan Hunt (dhunt@hostscorp.com), September 06, 1998.

;-) Aw Dan, you've gone and found a flaw in an otherwise perfectly good plan.

What's really amazing is the number of people that tell me they are not worried about Y2K because they heard somewhere that a silver bullet has been found. They've heard a 30 second sound clip somewhere and are convinced that they now know more than myself who has spent hundreds of hours studying the issue. I'm starting to suffer from eye strain from constantly rolling my eyes in the back of my head.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), September 08, 1998.