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IP: Brits warn of Y2K and collapse of government
From: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>
Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 13:25:37 -0500
From: declan () well com http://cgi.pathfinder.com/netly/opinion/0,1042,1860,00.html The Netly News March 30, 1998 Do the Brits know something we don't? Yesterday's Sunday Times quoted "a senior executive at Barclays" bank who warned people to sell their homes, buy gold, and head for the hills when the millennium bug hits. "I am talking about the need to start buying candles, tinned food and bottled water," the anonymous bank director said. On Friday the UK Telegraph reported the government's former Y2K czar, Robin Guenier, concluded it was too late to fix "a problem that could bring down a government." Tony Blair will give his first public statement on the Y2K problem today. ***** Date: Mon, 30 Mar 1998 11:57:31 From: [anonymized --dbm] To: declan () well com
Declan McCullagh <declan () well com> 03/27/98 07:11pm >>>
I would be interested in hearing more about the Dow and phone networks. I know there are a bunch of telco types on politech. Want to respond? I'll anonymize if you like. --Declan] I'm not really a telco type, I just work for them. I don't know a lot about the public switched network's Y2K status, although my impression is with so many new digital switches (something in the 90% ballpark, I'm guessing) it probably won't be much of a problem getting dial tone. Some might have problems with billing software if they're behind the times, but that shouldn't cause phones to go dead 1/1/00. I'm not a techie, but I talked to many of them in my last position where I edited a newsletter for telecom managers at mid to large businesses. From what I understand, the Y2K problem is slight on the telephony side for business users. Most PBXs are either already compliant or easily patched. In most cases, even non-compliant systems won't totally fail. They'll still provide dial tone, but advanced functions like conference calling, usage tracking, caller ID and other applications might be at risk while calls still go through. Or so I've been informed; can't vouch for it myself. ******** Date: Fri, 27 Mar 1998 21:52:28 -0700 From: Aaron Weissman <aweissman () mocc com> To: "'declan () well com'" <declan () well com> Subject: RE: Dow Jones, telephone networks & Internet: Y2K compliant?
This assertion is demonstrably false. Think about it. A two- digit number requires how much storage? Two bytes, that is, sixteen bits? No, much less: numeric data are seldom stored in text format, since a more compact representation is readily available. A two-digit year would be a number ranging between 00 and 99. That can be represented in just 7 bits.
sorry, this viewpoint ignores semi-recent history. Many 70's era legacy systems were designed with backwards compatibility with old 80 and 88 character punchcard input systems. If your total record width is 80, and every record needs a date, then two seemingly irrelevant characters become INCREDIBLY dear. We are still with some of these systems. If you look at some of DoD's procurement system web pages, you see that they still call for input restricted to total record width of 80 characters, for download to some of these legacy systems. Aaron Aaron Weissman PGP Key Fingerprint: FA28 725D 4B5B F221 6CA8 6560 F1B7 C95D -------------------------------------------------------------------------- POLITECH -- the moderated mailing list of politics and technology To subscribe: send a message to majordomo () vorlon mit edu with this text: subscribe politech More information is at http://www.well.com/~declan/politech/ --------------------------------------------------------------------------
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- IP: Brits warn of Y2K and collapse of government Dave Farber (Mar 30)