I am laughing too hard to comment...

A novel approach to Y2K

-- Reporter (foo@foo.bar), January 29, 1999

Answers

Why not just move it to 12/31/2000. This will give us another year to work on the problem, and we'll only suffer for 1 day! DUH!!!

-- Sysman (our_govt@work.gov), January 29, 1999.

With ideas like this coming from our leaders, does anyone think we have a snowballs chance? our_govt@work says it all I think.

-- worried (hopeless@y2k.net), January 29, 1999.

Maybe that's when the Italians will attack the problem with that "burst of activity" they promised.

-- Puddintame (dit@dot.com), January 29, 1999.

AH HA! Now we have it. The problem all the time has been with expecting compliancy by December 31, 1999, when all the time it's really only going to be possible by January 3, 2000.

Go Congress ---- Now all those companies can relax and release their records showing us that they could only reach Y2K compliancy by January 3, 2000.

It's nice to know we have such competent and foresighted people in charge. It's just a shame that they didn't show their attributes a few years ago in preventing the problem altogether.

-- Bozo the Clown (Bozo@Barnum&Baileys.com), January 29, 1999.

The proposal has a certain charm, no doubt. Look at all the overtime pay this would save. On the other hand ---

Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, had a few things to say about Congress:

"...the smallest minds and the selfishest souls and the cowardliest hearts that God makes." -- Letter fragment, 1891

"Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But I repeat myself." -- - Mark Twain, a Biography

"Fleas can be taught nearly anything that a Congressman can." -- What Is Man?

"All Congresses and Parliaments have a kindly feeling for idiots, and a compassion for them, on account of personal experience and heredity." -- - Mark Twain's Autobiography; Mark Twain in Eruption

(Quotes gratefully cribbed from Directory of Mark Twain's maxims, quotations, and various opinions)

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 29, 1999.

This reminds me of some of the punch lines of the old "blonde jokes"!!!!!!!!!!! One of the favorites around our house, is the one about the house on fire.......punch line: "Duh,......Big Red Truck!"

Sandy

-- Paul & Sandy Stambaugh (patches96@worldnet.att.net), January 29, 1999.

Ol' Sam also wrote "Between believing a thing and thinking you know is only a small step and quickly taken." (in his 3,000 Years Among the Microbes).

In the present context, let's not forget this critical distinction.

-- Tom Carey (tomcarey@mindspring.com), January 29, 1999.

If we're going to change the calendar, why don't we just have 99 months in a year, and 99 days per month! We just pop in a new clock chip in all the PCs and embedded systems, update all the mainframes, and throw out all the fixed code and updated data-bases. No need to expand any data fields! Except for the 99/99/99 problem, all the sequencing and stuff will work just fine! This will give us 9436 more days to work on the problem instead of only 3 more. I think I'll write my congressman.

-- Senator (dick@head.gov), January 29, 1999.

Slightly weird.

I prefer the Asimov calender. 4 months - split as seasons - 91 days to each with an intercalery day. Two intercalery days on leap years. Could be original and call the months spring, summer, fall, winter.

-- Paul Davis (davisp1953@yahoo.com), January 30, 1999.

I like the idea of just counting the days, then adding a letter to the day every fourth quarter. And to hell with all of that Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday crap, just say that today is 41B, then just say "I'll meet you at Oh Eight Hundred hrs on 72D" for the reunion.

Of course then everybody will be all upset when we get to Y. "Oh crap, what do we do after Z?

-- Uncle Deedah (oncebitten@twiceshy.com), January 30, 1999.

Senator dick@head.gov

I like your idea even better. Changing to the 99/99/99 system would give us about another 30 years to fix the problem. Since this started about 30 years ago, maybe we can do it better this time!

If we go for BINARY fields, we could get 65,535 days, months, and years in the MM/DD/YY format. That's 2.814620920054e+014 more days to fix the problem! I wonder if this runs into the Y10K problem? Back to my calculator...

-- Sysman (our_govt@work.gov), January 30, 1999.

Aw, heck. Just let the 'puters roll over to 1900. We'll get 100 years to fix it then. Our esteemed leaders are showing their true lack of understanding this needs to be FIXED. They can't do their usual "cover, duck, and run" on this one...

January 3rd...indeed....

-- Mr. Kennedy (y2kPCfixes@MotivatedSeller.com), January 30, 1999.

What a dumb article. The proposal is to move the official government holiday, not move New Year's Day itself or change the calendar.

Someone ought to tell CNNfn that the federal government started a long time ago to schedule its New Year's holidays on Fridays whenever New Year's Day actually fell on Saturday. The current proposal is simply to move that holiday from Friday, December 31, 1999 to the following Monday this one time.

-- No Spam Please (anon@ymous.com), January 30, 1999.