An oldy but a goody. Hadn't see it so I thought I had better post it. Toronto Transit telephone hotline is a gonner as it was not Y2K compatible and too expensive to upgrade. System running since 1987 and receives about one "million calls per month."

Question: If Y2K is a hoax, and some third world countries successfully ignored the bug with no problems, then what happened here? This system should be just fine. Hmmm?

-- Ron Sellar (y2kbook@telusplanet.net), January 10, 2000

Answers

As I see it..the more computers i.e. (software with dates) the greater likeliness of problems. Third world countries are not near as technology dependant, so the at risk systems they did have were more likely to be remediated or replaced. I am amazed we haven't heard of more problems out of Russia and Italy. There are most likely plenty, we are just not hearing about them.

-- Dennis Stroud (ghusker@hotmail.com), January 17, 2000.

A lot of European countries use Unix-based systems which inherently have fewer problems since the operating systems calculate the date differently. Most programmers writing for a Unix system use the 4-digit system date provided and, hence, no problems and no fixes required. Is is not well known, but a lot of large global IT companies donated programmers and time in order to ensure that at least the critical Russian systems would be ok. This was not widely reported but more time and effort went into Russia than they paid for.

-- Ember Anderson (embers@hotmail.com), January 17, 2000.