In any major move that strikes the Earth there are 3 classes that come out of it, True Believers, Make Believers & Unbelievers.

* Unbelievers are those that did not prepare * True believers are those that prepared for security reasons and are now over it. * But that "Make Believer". He's the guy that is here to stay. He will never admit it's over. He's the guy that will post:

- A package was late in the mail, Y2k - The car that normally drives by my house at 6:00am didn't, Y2k - The clock reads an hour late, Y2k - My car didn't start this morning, is there a chip in the engine? I bet, Y2k - Light bulb out at the Jone's residence, Y2k - Bucksnort, TN, a street light was out for 5 minutes, Y2k

Jesus had his Judas, Y2k has it's Make Believers also. cork p.s. I bet someone will comment, you have to, you can't help it.

-- cork (corcorab@hotmail.com), January 07, 2000

Answers

cork, make believe this... http://www.techserver.com/noframes/story/0,22 94,500151419-500185270-500772697-0,00.html

Glitch duplicates credit card charges daily

Copyright ) 2000 Nando Media Copyright ) 2000 Associated Press

From Time to Time: Nando's in-depth look at the 20th century

NEW YORK (January 7, 2000 3:00 p.m. EST http://www.nandotimes.com) - Buyers beware: Your credit card might get charged over and over again because some merchants failed to update their computer software for the year 2000.

Visa and Mastercard said Friday they have checks in place to catch duplicate charges, but they suggested that customers review their credit card statements anyhow. They added that the vast majority of transactions are going through without problems.

The culprit is IC Verify software from CyberCash, which makes electronic transaction processing software. About 100,000 merchants use the software. The company offered free fixes last year, but some merchants didn't get them.

As a result, merchants using the outdated software are charging customers over and over for the same purchase. For example, a customer's credit card gets charged $400 Monday for a new TV purchased that day. The card is again charged $400 on Tuesday, another $400 on Wednesday, and so on, until the software is fixed.

The Y2K bug usually stems from a programming practice of using only two digits to represent the year, so "00" might be misread as 1900. In this case, though, the problem occurs because of the way the software names its files.

The software keeps monthly records using the last digit of the year, "0," followed by the month, "01." However, "001" corresponds with another file that contains charges not yet posted. So when the software adds up payments at the end of each day, it wrongly interprets items in the monthly paid file as outstanding charges.

CyberCash spokeswoman Sydney Rubin said many merchants made the upgrades, but CyberCash received a flood of calls late this week from merchants who still need them.

The problem came to light late Wednesday when credit card processors began noticing unusual charges.

Smaller businesses were among the least prepared for Y2K. The National Federation of Independent Business had estimated that up to 1.5 million small employers did no Y2K preparation.

Linda Locke, a Mastercard spokeswoman, said banks usually catch the duplicated transactions and reverse them. Customers should contact the bank that issued the credit card for any problems, she said.

Visa spokeswoman Rosetta Jones said the number of duplicate charges were in the thousands, out of 100 million transactions each day.

Again - for the 1 millionth time, a few thousand credit card mis-postings are not cause for a reasonable person to buy 2000 cans of tuna.

Frankly cc's mistakes are made all the time. Get a grip.

-- H.H. (dontscrewme_2000@yahoo.com), January 07, 2000.

2000 cans of tuna! Recipies: 10 for $5! LOL!

-- Faith Weaver (suzsolutions@yahoo.com), January 07, 2000.

Problem is: I only bought 1 friggin can of tuna and got charged for 8,799. Now that is a damn Y2K calamity.

-- Bob Dole (bdole@stiff.com), January 07, 2000.

Hey Bob, don't feel bad......according to some of the most outlandish doomer predictions we've had here, $8,799.00 is a cheap price for a can of tuna........remember some of the old posts how a loaf of bread or can of tuna would be worth a truckload of gold and a pack of cigarettes would make you an instant millionaire.......

Cool, we haven't had any really good doomer stuff for a while now........

I have a sixpack of tuna and (Lord have mercy) a 24 pack of Spam. Wonder if I can trade them in for some real food....hmmmmmmmmm.

-- Craig (craig@ccinet.ab.ca), January 07, 2000.

Hey! I just had a wonderful meal of canned roast beef over rice, with canned green beans and biscuits, cooked on a wood stove. With canned grapefruit slices for dessert. Yummy! Total grocery bill for the week: $2

Life is good.

-- Flint (flintc@mindspring.com), January 07, 2000.

Flint,

ROTFLMAO !!! jhc

-- (I'm@pol.ly), January 07, 2000.