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Y2K and early Internet
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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Just watching the nineties on Sky Arts and the terror of the Y2K and stockpiling
Did you think the world would end? Did you get tins in 'just in case' there was no electricity  |
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"Just watching the nineties on Sky Arts and the terror of the Y2K and stockpiling
Did you think the world would end? Did you get tins in 'just in case' there was no electricity "
No, I wasn't worried.
Hubby got plenty of work out of it though. |
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By *ynecplCouple
over a year ago
Newcastle upon Tyne |
I was living in Italy at the time and we honestly thought the whole country would grind to a halt. In the end it all went off without a hitch but that might have been because the Italians had barely started to embrace the computer by 2000. |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"I was living in Italy at the time and we honestly thought the whole country would grind to a halt. In the end it all went off without a hitch but that might have been because the Italians had barely started to embrace the computer by 2000."
I stopped short of buying extra food but yeah, similar thoughts |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"I spent months putting mega effort in at work, then spent a fortnight in Majorca over Christmas and the New Year so anything that went wrong wasn't my issue.
Such a shirker!"
What a place to be if it all went wrong! At least you'd have the sunshine |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"I was in Australia - shocking - and a friend had family calling from Italy to see if the apocalypse had come.
Because the apocalypse cares about time zones."
Oh but there's theory there, the time would be 00.00 midnight one hour earlier  |
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"I was in Australia - shocking - and a friend had family calling from Italy to see if the apocalypse had come.
Because the apocalypse cares about time zones.
Oh but there's theory there, the time would be 00.00 midnight one hour earlier "
Ten hours earlier  |
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"I was in Australia - shocking - and a friend had family calling from Italy to see if the apocalypse had come.
Because the apocalypse cares about time zones.
Oh but there's theory there, the time would be 00.00 midnight one hour earlier
Ten hours earlier "
Oops I read Austria |
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"I was in Australia - shocking - and a friend had family calling from Italy to see if the apocalypse had come.
Because the apocalypse cares about time zones.
Oh but there's theory there, the time would be 00.00 midnight one hour earlier
Ten hours earlier
Oops I read Austria "
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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No, but then I worjed in IT and fully understood the problem.
The Y2K problem was basically all down to how certain programming languages dealt with dates.
COBOL which was in widespread use in the 60's - one of the languages I can code in - has to have date fields defined in the program.
The problem arose because when a lot of these programs were written, it was assumed that they'd no longer be in use come the year 2000.
When defining a date as being DD MM YY you are allocating memory to store certain data.
Unfortunately, computers don't work the same way our brains do, so, if a program has a 2 digit date field, what happens when you add 1 to 99?
You get 00 - because the program only deals with a two digit date field.
So all the programs with DDMMYY date fields had yo be edited and amended to DDMMYYYY.
So that's a lot of wortk for programmers to go through hindreds or thousands of lines of code.
Some programmers were earning ipwards of £50 per hour at the time.
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By (user no longer on site) OP
over a year ago
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"No, but then I worjed in IT and fully understood the problem.
The Y2K problem was basically all down to how certain programming languages dealt with dates.
COBOL which was in widespread use in the 60's - one of the languages I can code in - has to have date fields defined in the program.
The problem arose because when a lot of these programs were written, it was assumed that they'd no longer be in use come the year 2000.
When defining a date as being DD MM YY you are allocating memory to store certain data.
Unfortunately, computers don't work the same way our brains do, so, if a program has a 2 digit date field, what happens when you add 1 to 99?
You get 00 - because the program only deals with a two digit date field.
So all the programs with DDMMYY date fields had yo be edited and amended to DDMMYYYY.
So that's a lot of wortk for programmers to go through hindreds or thousands of lines of code.
Some programmers were earning ipwards of £50 per hour at the time.
"
Wow. Still it's a lot of work to do  |
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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Just that little detail though can have massive impact.
For example, if you go to a bank or financial institution and give them your date of birth and a program they run has to calculate your age, at the turn of the millenium you could find yourself with a negative age and therefore fall outside of certain parameters and not get a payment.
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By (user no longer on site)
over a year ago
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1999 was a weird year. Nostradamus preditcton, end of the world cults. Used to receive religious faxes at work telling us all to repent and save our souls. Daily emails going on about Jesus. Religious nutter shouting in town about repenting. I must admit was a bit nervous at midnight on the year 2000. Some cash machines stopped working and some digital dates went to 1900. That’s it. |
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"1999 was a weird year. Nostradamus preditcton, end of the world cults. Used to receive religious faxes at work telling us all to repent and save our souls. Daily emails going on about Jesus. Religious nutter shouting in town about repenting. I must admit was a bit nervous at midnight on the year 2000. Some cash machines stopped working and some digital dates went to 1900. That’s it."
It was the worst year of my life to date, but... teenager. Very little awareness of world events |
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Ahhhhhhh I remember NYE into the Millennium. I was at my Grandparent's house. We were taken to a "supper" at the church hall, which ended just after midnight with "Auld Lang Syne". My Grandparents house had no television set, no computer, no internet, no central heating etc. Basically, we'd not even have noticed if the Millennium HAD buggered things up |
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"Ahhhhhhh I remember NYE into the Millennium. I was at my Grandparent's house. We were taken to a "supper" at the church hall, which ended just after midnight with "Auld Lang Syne". My Grandparents house had no television set, no computer, no internet, no central heating etc. Basically, we'd not even have noticed if the Millennium HAD buggered things up "
Right now I'm trying to imagine my NYE at that stage with... heating  |
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"Ahhhhhhh I remember NYE into the Millennium. I was at my Grandparent's house. We were taken to a "supper" at the church hall, which ended just after midnight with "Auld Lang Syne". My Grandparents house had no television set, no computer, no internet, no central heating etc. Basically, we'd not even have noticed if the Millennium HAD buggered things up
Right now I'm trying to imagine my NYE at that stage with... heating "
The house had heating, from two fires. Just not central heating! I think the church hall had 'leccy plug in ones. The church didn't have much heating |
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"Ahhhhhhh I remember NYE into the Millennium. I was at my Grandparent's house. We were taken to a "supper" at the church hall, which ended just after midnight with "Auld Lang Syne". My Grandparents house had no television set, no computer, no internet, no central heating etc. Basically, we'd not even have noticed if the Millennium HAD buggered things up
Right now I'm trying to imagine my NYE at that stage with... heating
The house had heating, from two fires. Just not central heating! I think the church hall had 'leccy plug in ones. The church didn't have much heating "
My house had heating too. It wasn't bloody on.
I think we had air con at that stage |
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"No, but then I worjed in IT and fully understood the problem.
The Y2K problem was basically all down to how certain programming languages dealt with dates.
COBOL which was in widespread use in the 60's - one of the languages I can code in - has to have date fields defined in the program.
The problem arose because when a lot of these programs were written, it was assumed that they'd no longer be in use come the year 2000.
When defining a date as being DD MM YY you are allocating memory to store certain data.
Unfortunately, computers don't work the same way our brains do, so, if a program has a 2 digit date field, what happens when you add 1 to 99?
You get 00 - because the program only deals with a two digit date field.
So all the programs with DDMMYY date fields had yo be edited and amended to DDMMYYYY.
So that's a lot of wortk for programmers to go through hindreds or thousands of lines of code.
Some programmers were earning ipwards of £50 per hour at the time.
"
But why does it matter if a computer thinks its 1900? |
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"No, but then I worjed in IT and fully understood the problem.
The Y2K problem was basically all down to how certain programming languages dealt with dates.
COBOL which was in widespread use in the 60's - one of the languages I can code in - has to have date fields defined in the program.
The problem arose because when a lot of these programs were written, it was assumed that they'd no longer be in use come the year 2000.
When defining a date as being DD MM YY you are allocating memory to store certain data.
Unfortunately, computers don't work the same way our brains do, so, if a program has a 2 digit date field, what happens when you add 1 to 99?
You get 00 - because the program only deals with a two digit date field.
So all the programs with DDMMYY date fields had yo be edited and amended to DDMMYYYY.
So that's a lot of wortk for programmers to go through hindreds or thousands of lines of code.
Some programmers were earning ipwards of £50 per hour at the time.
But why does it matter if a computer thinks its 1900? "
Because if you were born in 1990 and the computer thinks it's 1900, then the computer thinks your age is -90 or would just bring up an error. Pretty much everyone alive on 1st Jan 2000 was born after 1900 (apart from the very few people aged 100+). |
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By *ty31Man
over a year ago
NW London |
No. Mainly because even at the age of 16 I knew it was bollocks. And also because at the age of 16 there were more important things to be thinking about on NYE in London. Like drinking and girls. |
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