We had well over 20 years of warning on Y2K; management preferred to ignore it. Apres moi le deluge (the balloon won't go up before I retire.)
-- Shmuel (Seymour J.) Metz http://mason.gmu.edu/~smetz3 ________________________________________ From: IBM Mainframe Discussion List [[email protected]] on behalf of Paul Gilmartin [[email protected]] Sent: Wednesday, April 22, 2020 12:14 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: Here we go again On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 10:34:34 -0500, Tom Marchant wrote: >On Wed, 22 Apr 2020 13:43:03 +0800, Timothy Sipples wrote: > >>The Social Security Administration could easily give 20 years of advance > Something similar should have been done for Y2K to avoid the last-minute scramble. >>warning before expanding their number space if they wish. They've got >>several options before that far distant future, such as: >> >>1. Allowing capital letters except those that can be confused with numeric >>digits. > >If they are going to give warning so that computer systems can be changed, >this is not an interim option. Many years ago, I worked as an application >programmer on systems where SSN was stored in packed decimal. I'm sure >that others did the same, or stored them in a fullword. > >These would have to be changed if letters are allowed. > Two separate issues are coding and data storage space. -- gil ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN ---------------------------------------------------------------------- For IBM-MAIN subscribe / signoff / archive access instructions, send email to [email protected] with the message: INFO IBM-MAIN
