From mboxrd@z Thu Jan 1 00:00:00 1970 X-Spam-Checker-Version: SpamAssassin 3.4.4 (2020-01-24) on polar.synack.me X-Spam-Level: X-Spam-Status: No, score=0.1 required=5.0 tests=BAYES_05,INVALID_MSGID autolearn=no autolearn_force=no version=3.4.4 X-Google-Language: ENGLISH,ASCII-7-bit X-Google-Thread: 103376,ac0d4971a4f38c0d X-Google-Attributes: gid103376,public From: Markus Kuhn Subject: Re: CFCSEIC News Briefs Week Ending April 10, 1998(Y2k Problems) Date: 1998/04/12 Message-ID: <35313699.5625B4B5@cl.cam.ac.uk>#1/1 X-Deja-AN: 343414887 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <3.0.3.32.19980412120019.007dec10@mail.4dcomm.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Organization: Cambridge University, Computer Laboratory Mime-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: comp.lang.ada Date: 1998-04-12T00:00:00+00:00 List-Id: Robert C. Leif, Ph.D. wrote: > Has anyone found a Y2k, year 2000, problem in Ada? No, but there is a built-in Year-2100 problem in Ada.Calendar, and I think it is urgent time that we immediately start Year 2100 awareness campaigns, because there might still be some ignorant journalist out there who hasn't yet been made fully aware of how uttery bad things really will be in 2100. Not to forget the Year-2038 collapse of the global economy due to the Unix time_t overflow after we barely survived the 2028 near-miss of asteroid 1997XF11!!! God help us all!!!!! Argl ... if people only started to look at real software engineering problems instead of all this Y2K paranoia. The problem is not that some computers will cause some minor inconvenience because of the date overflow, the real problem that should be addressed is that we have become so dependent of systems that we can't maintain any more! Hiring old COBOL programmers is in no way going to fix this underlying problem! On the contrary, it is a waste of money that only delays the solution of the real problem: Systems that cannot be maintained by current staff should be sent to the bitgraveyard and replaced by maintainable modern ones asap. Yes, my Panasonic video recorder will also show the wrong day of the week starting 2000-01-01, and no, I still love it and I will still be able to use it and not panic, and the fix will not be an overpaid COBOL programming fossil, it will not even be a firmware update, but some adhesive tape and a piece of paper with a translation table for the quite flexible user. Markus, not yet Ph.D. -- Markus G. Kuhn, Security Group, Computer Lab, Cambridge University, UK email: mkuhn at acm.org, home page: