Tracking the bugs that got away....

greenspun.com : LUSENET : TimeBomb 2000 (Y2000) Rollover/Back-Up Forum : One Thread

This isn't very reassuring...

http://ap.tbo.com/ap/breaking/MGIEQIBET2C.html

"We always find problems," said Doug Black of Data Integrity Inc., one such vendor in Waltham, Mass. The company convinces its customers by asking to scan the cleanest software they've already certified for 2000, then pointing out problems they missed.

"The truth is, most organizations find they have more bugs than they thought," Black said. Customers include the Air Force, Barnes and Noble Inc. and United Healthcare; all found Y2K bugs that had been missed during earlier reviews, Black said.

Another vendor, CCD Online Systems Inc., did work at the Social Security Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services. Its president, Jim McGovern, has complained about "an unacceptable number of errors" in software already fixed for Y2K.

In a publicity stunt that extended until Thursday, McGovern's company challenged some of the nation's biggest organizations to let it scan their repaired software free. If it found fewer than 50 errors for every million lines of computer code, it offered to donate $50,000 to local schools for computer education. No one accepted.

Despite its success discovering these overlooked mistakes, the industry has managed to attract interest mostly from the world's largest companies and governments - ironically those that generally did the best work during earlier software reviews.

"Companies that came to the process relatively late, maybe did some minimal amount of testing, are just crossing their fingers," said Harris Miller, president of the Information Technology Association of America.

Many organizations don't want to acknowledge there may be Y2K problems lurking in programs already repaired by vendors, which universally refused to sign contracts that might leave them liable for missed errors.

"People who need it most are the ones who did the poorest job," said Andy Kyte, a research director in London for the Gartner Group, an analyst firm. "All the customers wanted guarantees, and no vendors would provide one."

But companies that have gone back over already-fixed software "concluded there are a lot more errors in the code, a lot more problems than they had imagined," agreed Rich Evans of the Meta Group Inc., another analyst firm. "There really is a false sense of security."

-- C (c@c.com), December 29, 1999

Answers

WASHINGTON (AP) - Programmers double-checking for computer bugs just days before the new year are playing a high-priced form of the whack- a-mole arcade game, stomping out pesky errors in government and business computers previously certified as Y2K-ready.

whack-a-mole? ROFLMAO!!!

-- C (c@c.com), December 29, 1999.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ