Er Ed... I was not only around at Y2K I wrote some of the original systems that needed fixing! I did some y2k conversion work myself. I was FULLY aware of what the problem actually WAS. What I was referring to (obviously without clarity) was how the rest of the community reacted. There was some genuine panic going on and all generated by the same kinds of gobbledygook we are hearing now about Global Warming. Just as the proponents of the Y2K hysteria basically LIED to people to make their point, GW proponents have begun doing the same thing. We have lecturers openly saying that temperatures are rising at a faster rate than expected in direct opposition to the measured facts that temperatures are dropping. We had the hysteria that the arctic ice sheet was going to completely disappear this summer yet it expanded by 30%.
It does feel eerily like Y2K. -----Original Message----- From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Leafe Sent: Friday, 21 November 2008 8:04 AM To: ProFox Email List Subject: Re: [OT] A**hole Gore and his junk "science" whore On Nov 20, 2008, at 3:26 PM, Geoff Flight wrote: > We Ed... were you there at the time coz it sure doesn't sound like > it. We > had the prophets of doom predicting a world-wide collapse of > society. We had > thousands of people predicting chaos and disaster. People filled up > their > tubs with water expecting the water companies to fail. Spam (canned > meat) > had its biggest sales in history as people expected the food > distribution > system to fail. Batteries and torches and candles were the order of > the day > as people expected to be living without major services. No-one > wanted to fly > over midnight in case the planes crashed. Oh, sorry, my mistake. I thought we were still talking about the realm of science, not tabloids. In the sane world, the problem was recognized and most companies spent huge sums of money correcting the problem. There were numerous techniques developed for converting all fixed-width data programs to accommodate the extra two digits. More modern programs, such as Fox, added the concept of a rollover date that would serve to manage the interpretation of 2-digit years. Due to this investment of billions of dollars and lots of difficult and tedious work, all major systems were upgraded and tested well before 2000.01.01 rolled around. The problem wasn't imaginary; systems would either work incorrectly or fail completely if they hadn't been fixed. The hysteria you mention is what happens when people want to make a buck at the expense of the ignorant. -- Ed Leafe [excessive quoting removed by server] _______________________________________________ Post Messages to: [email protected] Subscription Maintenance: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profox OT-free version of this list: http://leafe.com/mailman/listinfo/profoxtech Searchable Archive: http://leafe.com/archives/search/profox This message: http://leafe.com/archives/byMID/profox/[EMAIL PROTECTED] ** All postings, unless explicitly stated otherwise, are the opinions of the author, and do not constitute legal or medical advice. This statement is added to the messages for those lawyers who are too stupid to see the obvious.
