Newspapers find problems with on line editions

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

http://www2.startribune.com/stOnLine/cgi-bin/article?thisStory=81245470

Published Monday, January 3, 2000

Newspapers find problems with online editions

Some newspapers needed to look no further than their online editions to find examples of Y2K problems.

The St. Paul Pioneer Press; the Daily Globe of Worthington, Minn., and two of its sister papers, the Forum of Fargo, N.D., and the Daily Republic of Mitchell, S.D., had glitches. While news content wasn't affected, the four Internet sites contained date errors.

At midnight Jan. 1, the Pioneer Press' home page published the date as "January 1, 2010," whereas the home pages of the Globe and the Daily Republic reported the date as "January 1st, 19100."

"It hasn't been automatically corrected," an unidentified woman who works on the Pioneer Press' Web site said Sunday night about the newspaper's problem. She said the dates are being fixed manually.

Globe managing editor Bob Van Enkenvoort didn't know what caused the problem on its Web site, which is serviced by technicians at the Forum.

The Forum's problem was confined to its weather page, where on Sunday afternoon the date read "January ,(,/),(0(:,( AM."

Steve Wagner, a reporter with the Forum who formats stories for its Web page, said the newspaper isn't rushing to fix the problem because it doesn't appear to be a major glitch.

"Everything appears to be fine other than that one little missing date," he said.

Jackie Crosby, an online editor at the Star Tribune's Internet site, said Sunday that the newspaper's Web site had no unexpected technical problems when Jan. 1 arrived.

-- Associated Press

-- Homer Beanfang (Bats@inbellfry.com), January 04, 2000

Answers

My local newspaper's online Y2k forum has date stamp problems. You'll need to go all the way to the bottom of the page to see the most recent posts. The time stamp for the most recent post is "00-10-10 29:01 PM".

-- Steve (hartsman@ticon.net), January 04, 2000.

My future's broker get his web page quotes from a 3rd party. The following is an example of todays' gold quotes:

Contract Month Time of Last Trade
GCQ00 Aug '00 104 82041
GCV00 Oct '00 12/30 14:42

No biggie -- unless you want data on when the last trade was made (sometimes valuable!)

-- (4@5.6), January 04, 2000.


Moderation questions? read the FAQ