The current version of Agent [1.8] is Y2K-compliant.

WARNING: if you use Agent 1.6, update to v1.8 immediately. V1.6 has a design flaw which interferes with normal operation and one of its major bugs seriously endangers your database. If you are still using any pre-1.6 version of Agent you are now having Y2K problems as described below.

If you are still using an early build of Agent .99, you are even worse off; in addition to the 'regular' Y2K problems, you can expect to see frequent "Overflow in Date Time Calculation" error messages (which may make that already antique program effectively unusable).

The current version of Free Agent [1.21] is Y2K-compliant . WARNING: if you use Free Agent 1.2, update to v1.21 immediately. V1.2 has a major bug in handling Date: headers of the form

Date: 20 Nov 99 01:08:45 GMT

Date: 20 Nov 00 01:08:45 GMT

(in which the year part is two digits). Messages with such Date: headers are given incorrect timestamps; they appear at the wrong place in the message list and may purge at the wrong time. If you are still using any pre-1.2 version of Free Agent you are now having Y2K problems as described below.

If you are still using Free Agent 1.0, you are even worse off; in addition to the 'regular' Y2K problems, you can expect to see frequent "Overflow in Date Time Calculation" error messages (which may make that already antique program effectively unusable).

See http://jlbradley.home.att.net/LANCE1.HTM

for links to download sites for both programs and related items. WARNING: this is what happens if you continue to use a non-compliant version of either program (but note that the 'antiques' have far more pervasive problems as mentioned above):

| There are three known Y2K problems with Agent 1.5 and earlier and Free | Agent 1.11 and earlier. |

| 1) If the Windows system Short Date Style specifies yy, the yy part | of dates in the years 00 through 09 will display in the message list | as 0 through 9. This is entirely cosmetic. If you find it annoying | enough, a work-around (changing the Short Date Style in the Windows | control panel to display the full four-digit year) is available; that | may affect displays in all programs, of course, not just [Free] Agent. |

| 2) [mentioned in the Release Notes but not on the Forté web site] | The "get new groups" (not to be confused with the "get new headers") | command will elicit an error response similar to this | Error reported by Server:

| 501 Usage: NEWGROUPS yymmdd hhmmss ["GMT"] [] | from most servers. The "refresh" command is not affected, so that | could be used instead (at some [considerable in some cases] cost in | increased update time). The newsrc mechanism can be used as a work- | around in both programs, but that is very inconvenient in Free Agent | and only slightly less so in Agent. |

| 3) On messages dated early in the new century with a Date: header having a | two-digit year (a format that is deprecated but still in use), the timestamp | calculated by [Free] Agent will be wrong; those messages will sort (Agent) | and purge or export (both programs) incorrectly. In most groups the ratio | of articles with such headers is now well below 1%, but in the netscape.* | hierarchy and email (especially spam) it may approach 10%. |

|Note: there is no work-around for this case in [Free] Agent. If you |are desperate to keep using an older version you may be able to prevail |upon the author of one of the popular proxies (Nfilter or Hamster) to |provide a [seemingly trivial] fix. Alternatively, you could just hope |that posting or transport agents would stop using the two-digit format |after 99; if that miracle happens [fat chance!], this issue goes away. |

|Also: all versions of [Free] Agent generate the Date: header in the |correct [four-digit year] format; the problem is only with incoming |messages containing a Date: header in the two-digit year format. |

| a) A message with this date header |Date: Sat, 08 Jan 00 15:19:14 GMT | will be timestamped as 14 Feb 2036 16:47. |

|If it starts a new thread, it will appear at or near the bottom of the |message list [Free Agent, or Agent if the message list is threaded or |sorted by date ascending]. If it is a follow-up, it should thread |'properly'. In either case it may not purge until some time in 2036. |

| b) A message with this date header |Date: Thu, 19 Feb 02 05:28:22 GMT | will be timestamped as 19 Feb 1902 05:28. |

|If it starts a new thread it will appear at or near the top of the |message list [Free Agent, or Agent if the message list is threaded or |sorted by date ascending]. If it is a follow-up, it should thread |'properly'. In either case, if you have configured messages of its |type (unread or read) to purge by date, it will vanish during the |first purge after you download it. Note: the Y2K-compliant versions of both programs handle incoming Date: headers in both formats correctly (as mentioned above, outgoing Date: headers are in the correct [4-digit] format in all versions) but they have a limitation common to many unix systems and some Windows applications, as follows:

| 1) Time started at 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT; a message with a Date: | header which evaluates earlier is flagged internally and displayed | in the message list with that timestamp.

| | 2) Time will end at 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT; a message with a Date: | header which evaluates later is flagged internally and displayed | in the message list with that timestamp.

Also: despite an RFC which suggests a different rule, both programs convert two-digit years in the range 70-99 to the 1900s; all others are converted to the 2000s.

Finally, if you're sick of the blather about the Y2K problem (which has generally been nonsense) just wait for the Y2.038K problem (which will be the real thing).

BTW: do you have a 40-year mortgage initiated after 19 Jan 1998? Have you checked to see whether your bank is amortizing it correctly?

-- Anonymous, May 05, 2001