9.9.99 causes "indefinite closure of China's only automated stock exchange"

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) : One Thread

A COMPUTER failure, likely caused by the "all nines" date glitch,has forced the indefinite closure of China's only automated stock exchange, the authorities said.

"Because problems have appeared on the Net System, we must shut down equipment for repair," said the Central Treasury Bond Registration and Settlement Co. which runs the system.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), September 11, 1999

Answers

Also London, Singapore, Eurex

http://www.greenspun.com/bboard/q-and-a-fetch-msg.tcl?msg_id=001O4E

See what I mean about Bank interconnectedness???

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), September 11, 1999.


It would be truly bizarre if after all the agreement that the 9's didn't pose any significant problem, it turned out that it did. Stranger things have happened in this whole IT world than I would ever have imagined two years ago. We built an Alice In Wonderland world, and the mad hatter [tinfoil?:-)]is now in charge, with the crazy queen stirring up trouble in the background. I have wondered for a while now if the DoD didn't put their bases on "alert" starting Sept 1 because they were concerned about the 9's exposure in their own pandora's box of coding.

-- Gordon (gpconnolly@aol.com), September 11, 1999.

With the exception of the GPS rollover, virtually all of the pre-Y2K "spike dates" such as 9/9/99 have been directly tied to financial applications. And, often will take some time to show up.

Of course, Jan 1 will be the biggie, when embedded chips, computer operating systems, etc., are put to the big test....

-- King of Spain (madrid@aol.com), September 11, 1999.

Remember last January "they" initally said that the EURO was NO PROBLEM??

About 3 months later, we learned otherwise.



-- K. Stevens (kstevens@ It's ALL going away in January.com), September 11, 1999.


More details...

9999' Glitch Suspected In Chinese Corporate Exchange Failure http://invest.insidec hina.com/markets.php3?id=91455 9-11-99

SHANGHAI (Agence France Presse) - A computer failure likely caused by the "all nines" date glitch has forced the indefinite closure of China's only automated exchange for corporate shares, authorities said Friday. The announcement came as initial reports from around the world indicated that fears the bug caused by Thursday's 9/9/99 date -- a relative of the Y2K or millennium bug -- would cause havoc were largely unfounded. "Because problems have appeared on the Net system, we must shut down equipment for repair," said the Central Treasury Bond Registration and Settlement Co. (CTBRS) which runs the system, in an announcement published in the official China Securities daily. The firm said repair work had already begun but it could not yet say when trading would resume. An company engineer confirmed that the problem emerged with the main computer on Thursday, when experts warned the all nines date could cause some older computers to shut down. CTBRS earlier this week ordered Net system trading suspended on Thursday because of suspicions that such a problem might emerge. "We still cannot definitively confirm the cause but it could be 99 related," the engineer said. The computer that failed was an IBM model AS400 dating from 1992 or 1993, he said. Other company officials blamed the breakdown squarely on the nines glitch. "The main computer went down yesterday because of the 9999 problem," one said. Chinese government experts earlier said only decades-old systems used to automate factory production were expected to be vulnerable to the bug. Warnings were issued after it was suspected some programs could mistake the "9999" date for an end-of-file command sequence used in some software to bring certain processes to an end. The Y2K glitch is also date-related but stems from some systems' inability to distinguish between the years 2000 and 1900.

-- Andy (2000EOD@prodigy.net), September 11, 1999.



Andy--Does this mean I can't purchase any new Nike tennis shoes? If so, what a bummer!

-- bardou (bardou@baloney.com), September 11, 1999.

Moderation questions? read the FAQ