Y2k

Can someone tell me if there was Y2K conspirecies.

Cause I think it was done just for people waste their money.

Out,
Russian

i think it's a very likely possibility that the Y2K scare, particularly the date thing, was a profit-machine. I remember seething in jealousy about ppl who knew less about computers than I do who were making $50-100 an hour for making patches and fixes for the so-called problem. Lots of companies and multinational enterprises spent hundreds of millions of dollars on this bogus fix that has very little to do with actual binary code, 0 and 1.

No, but there was a lot of misunderstanding about it.

There WERE some "conspiracies" (small ones) designed to get people to buy stuff that individuals were producing. There was a lot of misinformation and hysteria about it and people who wanted to set themselves up as gurus and those who wanted a future where they were heroes played the disaster scenario to the hilt.

The date problem actually was never a real threat (as geeks kept trying to tell everyone.) It would mess up date figures for financial calculations -- BUT WE KNEW ABOUT THIS IN 1980 (it was discussed in one of my programming classes again under "really bad programming practices").

I have an old machine that wasn't Y2K compliant and it runs just fine. The date isn't right, but it runs games and everything else.

Same with the upcoming "Unix date problem." We know about it but it's a non-issue.

I agree with Byrd. It was one of the biggest media hypes in history.

Originally posted by Byrd
Same with the upcoming "Unix date problem." We know about it but it's a non-issue.

The Unix date problem happens because of the way Unix operating systems keep track of time. Time is measured in seconds since midnight, 1 January 1970 -- this is known as the "epoch." It is stored in such systems in a variable called "time_t," which can store a value up to 2,147,483,647 -- but no larger.

On 19 January 2038 at 03:14:07, that number of seconds will have been reached, and time will be up.

Newer UNIX operating systems are already using 64bits to represent time_t.
Its something like: 9,223,372,036,854,775,807
64 bit signed value, (2^62 - 1)

For some reason I do not think that we will see this anytime soon. Thats well over 291 billion years.

Yawn. 64bit values. 128bit values. A new "Epoch". Wake me when something serious is about to happen.

Heck, even the 64bit versions of windows are safe and have time_t defined as 64bits.

But if you are still worried, I am seeling Year 2038 Insurance. Just in case!

[Edited on 1/15/04 by crayon]

Originally posted by Russian Can someone tell me if there was Y2K conspirecies.

Why is this posted in "Really Above Top Secret"?

Originally posted by SkepticOverlord

Originally posted by Russian
Can someone tell me if there was Y2K conspirecies.

Why is this posted in "Really Above Top Secret"?

To make the other member waste their money to read this GREAT info.

Out,
Russian