Remember Y2K?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

Last edited Sun Mar 1, 2020, 12:22 PM - Edit history (1)

Remember how airplanes fell out of the sky, and we couldn't access ATMs for weeks and, oh wait. None of that happened.

Never mind.

Yes, I'm being reminded of the hype leading up to Y2K with the corona virus hysteria.

[OnDoutside]

1. That's because us programmers did such a great job !!!

[TexasTowelie]

2. Exactly.

During the summer of 1998, we learned that the computer applications that I used at work were not Y2K compliant. My supervisor spent weeks creating detailed plans for another woman that I worked with and myself to correct the issue. With the amount of emails, labor, and supervision it probably would have cost nearly $100,000 to fix everything.

It turned out that the other person that was supposed to help me ended up quitting in February 1999 and nearly all of the planning work that my supervisor did was tossed in the trash can. I told my supervisor that I needed three days to clear the paperwork from my desk that arrived with the last quarterly deadline. Afterwards, I turned around and coordinated with our vendor that completed the data entry to update the record layout procedures, rewrite all of the programming that was in COBOL in a Unix environment into VBA for Microsoft Access, eliminated file transfers from multiple platforms, and enhanced the programming within a six week period with an estimated cost of about $7,000.

It was the second time that decade that I (the underpaid statistician) impressed the computer programming staff at the agency where I worked. None of the full-time programmers wanted to touch that project because they remembered that the project became bogged down in 1992 when the programming was written in COBOL. It also won cheers for migrating the programs and data storage from a mainframe environment to a desktop environment.

[mahina]

3. I don't understand most of that but it's cool you did that.

A program we use at work only works on Windows pre-10 and our server and main office work station is on windows 7. I’m looking for a windows 7 admin person who can share the updates. I’m going to post this in computer help forum but if you have any good ideas could you please pm me?

Sorry to make it about me~

[TexasTowelie]

6. I can't help you on this unfortunately.

I know a retired person that still has programs he uses that were written for a Windows XP environment so I can understand the frustration. Since the programming is old and Windows 7 is no longer being supported by Microsoft, it seems like the best step is to do the upgrade the program to Windows 10 when your company finally does migrate to a newer operating system.

It does seem silly to have to keep a stand-alone PC operating on an older operating system, then have to transfer that information into a more recent operating system. If the old computer is no longer functional what backup plans do you have? If the programs are essential to keep the business operational then it seems like this needs to get top priority.

[mahina]

14. Thanks TT. Good points. Mahalo!

[Roland99]

9. Can always create a Windows 7 VM and run older software in that

I use VMPlayer, personally but there’s also Hyper-V or VirtualBox

[SwissTony]

10. An underpaid statistician!!!

Me too. But I was also the goto man when it came to programming matters. I wrote mainly in Borland Delphi at the time. I used Stata for my stats work.

I was given the job of checking if all our gear was 2000 compliant - about 6 months ahead of 1/1/2000! It seemed to be. My department was fairly new, so our PCs were pretty much state of the art. Still it was pretty worrying. I could easily have overlooked something. Jan 3 was a Monday (my memory and the Internet assures me) and I came in early and walked around a little nervously waiting for disaster to happen. Fortunately, it didn't.

And, as several posters have pointed out, Poindexter, we've already had nearly 3000 deaths from the corona virus, and it's just getting started.

COVID-19 map, # of cases, # of deaths from John Hopkins. Thanks to whoever first posted this (I forget who it was).

https://gisanddata.maps.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6

[OnDoutside]

18. I agree with all of that. The negative opinion out there stems from the

Big Five, who did scaremonger though. Y2K was a genuine issue due to the use of 2 digits for dates when storage was expensive, but it is hard to explain that to people.

After 2038 the next issue will be 2040 as there are lots of If < 40 date comparisons.

[underpants]

27. So your saying foresight and planning

Yeah that always helps.

[sdfernando]

38. I remember Y2K and everyone in IT at our company was on call that entire week.

That really put a wrench in most of our New Years Eve plans! In the end it was the biggest hyped non-event the world has ever seen. No, I don't think that is hyperbole.

Back in the day...way back before even I was born...computer memory was extremely expensive so to save 2 bytes (yes I said bytes, not kilo-bytes, not mega-bytes, etc...) system clocks, BiOS, and programs were written so the year was represented by only the last 2 numbers, 1920=20, 1959=59. The century was assumed. So the scare is what would happen when the clock turned from 1999 (1999=99) to 2000 (1900=00). It was a big unknown. Lots of work and planning went into fixing this issue. Some companies started decades earlier but most probably waited until the last 5 years or less.

In the end...my New Years ever for 12/31/99 was quite and subdued and I felt cheated I couldn't celebrate like everyone else was.

[jg10003]

7. damn right, I get angry when people say y2k was no big deal

From 1998 - 2000 I was a senior systems analyst at one of the world's largest financial services company. We worked our butts off fixing the damn thing. Although I have as much contempt for large corporations as anyone, I have to admit that dealing with y2k was corporate America's finest hour. They put everything they could into fixing it, no corners were cut. My company had hundreds of programmers and analysts working on it. We were extremely well paid and the perks were great (pool tables and putting greens on every floor, subsidized cafeterias that were excellent, even free shoeshines at your desk.). All of the major banks, brokerage firms, and credit card companies did a great job. This is probably the only time I'll say anything good about them.

Of course we will have to wait and see what happens in 2038. (Google "y2k" and "2038".)

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

13. We did good work, but were we confident?

Maybe a bit confident, but I (and my team) celebrated New Year's Eve at work, at our computers, verifying system results. We declared victory as the sun was rising.

Today's young programmers need to prepare for 03:14:07 GMT on 1/19/2038, when the 32-bit date-time on some systems can no longer count beyond the number of seconds since 1/1/1970.

At that time, I hope to be playing bingo in the old folks' home.

[sinkingfeeling]

15. Yep, old COBOL programmers made a fortune.

[OnDoutside]

17. And us RPG programmers too ! I had started contracting in Jan 1998

which was great timing.

9/11 was the start of the decline though in my area.

[Bantamfancier]

23. I may be the only other person

That knows you didn’t mean Role Playing Games when you wrote RPG.
The AS400 platform kept me and my family supported for the last 30 years.
I am still an admin for a system running our core business but they have assured me we will migrate to the cloud within 2 year. ( I can’t believe I wrote that with a straight face)

[OnDoutside]

26. Bless you ! ;) The AS400 must surely be in the running for the greatest machine ever made ?

I started on the S/36, then S/38, before moving onto the nirvana of the AS400. I moved on to JD Edwards One World, and became disconnected from the AS400 as One World is platform independent, but my latest company has brought me back to using the AS400 for SQL etc.

[Bantamfancier]

28. Only to those of us who know the OS.

Well and a few unix guys. Windows people don’t know what it is like going years without an unplanned IPL.

[OnDoutside]

30. Well said.

[dem4decades]

4. People died because of Y2K? Cause they're dying now.

[Nature Man]

5. The two things are not the same or even similar

analogy fail.

[RandySF]

8. We already have COVID-19 fatalities, including here in the US.

[GusBob]

11. Bad analogy

In your crusade against those you consider Chicken Little on DU (the sky is falling!), you should try the hysteria surrounding shark attacks.

That was a thing awhile back. Jeez when was that, shark attacks were dominating the headlines and DUers were all upset about it distracting from an election IIRC

[Submariner]

12. Y2K was a nightmare for the oceanography survey business

It cost thousands of dollars to mobilize the ship and crew to go offshore of Puerto Rico each day to put instruments over the side to collect seawater samples and chemical data. To do that work accurately, we needed to use a differential GPS, accurate to within just a few feet of a designated sample point.

Unannounced, the USAF would take all the GPS satellites offline for hours, leaving a message on the GPS readout that said “All GPS shutdown for next 4 hours for Y2K testing”. We would have to cease the survey and return to port, causing another waste of everyone’s time and money.

[Niagara]

16. Keep on living in your imaginary world

Y2K was a real issue that resulted in some problems with financial, power plants and transportation for starters.



This is a real problem for everyone, no matter what country one lives in. China detained and silenced a doctor named Li Wenliang from warning others about the corona virus. They accused him of fear mongering. A human rights lawyer turned journalist named Chen Qiushi is now missing and hasn't been heard from after filming the dead in the hallway at a Wuhan hospital.


As of yesterday, the shelves at Wuhan's Walmart are empty. I couldn't even want to imagine how difficult it would be to get food and supplies right now in Wuhan at any store. Again, this is a real issue.


https://www.businessinsider.com/walmart-store-wuhan-empty-coronavirus-2020-1

[NickB79]

19. You've been telling people COVID isn't a big deal since the first Chinese deaths

Aren't you getting a little embarrassed by now?

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

20. Not at all.

Yes, it's spread. Yes it's going to spread. Yes people will die, just as they do every year from seasonal flu. I am seen as completely calloused when I point out that those who die tend to be elderly and/or have underlying health issues. That's a factual statement, as is saying good hand-washing is the very best public health measure ever. You don't need to buy buying masks, and people here have gotten (so it seems to me) a bit frantic over the shortage of them because people who don't need them are buying the hype and snapping them up. Or have done so already.

I'd think the people who are anticipating staying home for two weeks or more, just because, should be embarrassed.

[Niagara]

24. You didn't say that.

That fact of the matter is that this virus is not containable since it seems to be airborne. This a potential problem. Is this going to cause food transportation issues? Is this going to influence our food production? Are people going to able to work to be able to get a paycheck? I hardly call this hysteria, it's valid fear and the worse thing about it is that we have incompetent moron as a leader.


You never once mentioned face masks in your original OP. Like in typical fashion, you're thumbing your nose at others. It's getting old. I'm embarrassed that I have to read your insensitive and inappropriate remarks on a Democratic forum.

[Blues Heron]

33. Airborne - where did you hear that? Do you have a link?

[Niagara]

36. I said it seems to be airborne

In this video, Dr. Jennifer Ashton stated that it's highly transmittable. From 6:38-8:09 she talks about how the particles of the influenza and corona virus are so small that they go through a face mask. The corona virus doesn't seem to be able to be contained at the moment, this makes me think that it's airborne.




https://www.democraticunderground.com/100213032739



Also, an article from Newsweek that China stated that it could be airborne. https://www.newsweek.com/coronavirus-could-airborne-chinese-official-claims-1486493

[Blues Heron]

41. I think at this point it's irresponsible to be making such claims

without either personal expertise in the matter, or definitive information from official sources.

[Niagara]

42. Please reread what I typed

I said it seems like it. I didn't say it's definite. If a physician says particles of this virus can come through a face mask and it's highly transmittable that tells me it's possible.


I'm not sitting here all day arguing with you about words that I didn't actually type. I know that some of you get off on arguing all day.


Goodbye.

[Maeve]

21. My husband worked until after 8 pm New Years Eve in 1999

Making sure the Y2K bug didn't bring down his company's clients. And he had been working on it for months (and that was for a small, local company)

From all the computer geeks--you're welcome

[mshasta]

22. Very childish post

[dawg]

25. For what it's worth, I thought the Y2K thing was being hugely overblown at the time ...

and I ended up being right. Partly due to the programmers and companies who took it seriously and fixed their coding in time, and partly due to the fact that my toaster and my refrigerator didn't really give a damn what date they thought it was.

But with this virus, I see a real possibility that tens of thousands of Americans could die from it. Possibly even someone I know. Hopefully, all of the people who are downplaying the risks will prove to be right, but for now, they are being irresponsible as all hell.

[flibbitygiblets]

29. So because something didn't happen 20 years ago, nothing can be happening now?

Part of the fatality rate from COVID-19 will depend on whether people have access to medical care. How prepared are we for 2% of the population being hospitalized?

VP Pence said today that we have 15K tests for a country of 350M. Part of the reason S. Korea is identifying so many people is that they're scanning people for fevers upon entering public spaces, and testing for the virus if there's any doubt. So at least they know who's got it. Meanwhile in the US, we have evidence of community transmission, with no known contact with anyone at risk. And we have a government that is telling us it's overblown threat meant to harm the administration.

It was fortunate that Y2K was not the global disaster once predicted. And it was good that we prepared ourselves.

We are NOT prepared for this. We need to act to slow the spread of this disease. Because unlike the Y2K threat, people are dying, and more will die. How many will die depends on how responsibly we act.

[LiberalFighter]

31. I remember. I didn't get go crazy about it.

I just figured if necessary just change the computer clock so it thought it was before 2000.

[Zambero]

32. Y2K was a science fiction-esque theory that did not materialize

The emerging pandemic is quite real.

[edhopper]

34. It was not hype

thousands of programmers spent millions of hours to prevent what could happen.

This is a very ignorant post.

[Polybius]

35. I wanted some mayhem to happen on 1-1-2000

Not deaths or anything like that, but ATM's not working, blackouts, computers crashing, etc. Sue me, I was young and stupid, and thought it would be funny and something to tell the grand-kids.

[dewsgirl]

37. This is very different in several ways.

[Coventina]

39. Unrec. n/t

[JCMach1]

40. Seriously?

[uponit7771]

43. 750 million people in China were quarantined for weeks, that's no small matter

[Lancero]

44. Still think this is another Y2K?