Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
translate.google.pl
Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
1–10 of 25 posts
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#2I would love to hear what bizarre encoding they used that resulted in 2020 being an issue.
(I'm assuming these machines aren't all < year old and just break on any new year)
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#3I would love to hear what bizarre encoding they used that resulted in 2020 being an issue. (I'm assuming these machines aren't all < year old and just break on any new year)
2020 was a common pivot year used in the "windowing" workaround to the Y2K bug. 2-digit years = 20 are defined as 19XX.
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#4I would love to hear what bizarre encoding they used that resulted in 2020 being an issue. (I'm assuming these machines aren't all < year old and just break on any new year)
I would assume that they were made Y2K compliant by pushing the cutoff date back to 2020, so date math are operating on 1920 dates by accident.
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#5On the topic of dates broken around New Year's, there is this perennial favorite:
http://dangoldin.com/2019/01/06/javas-simpledateformat-yyyy-...
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#6I wouldn't be surprised if something alone the lines of `split("20")` or `replace("20", ““)` was the culprit somewhere (to turn it into a 2-digit year). I've seen the most absurd date handling code...
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#7Similar issue in NYC with parking meters: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/nyregion/nyc-parking-mete...
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#8Similar issue in NYC with parking meters: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/nyregion/nyc-parking-mete...
The official explanation from the vendor is that this was an "anti-fraud security setting".
Can anyone familiar with CC processing provide insight on whether that's a reasonable explanation?
Regardless, a problem that requires a "software fix" from the vendor and manual visitations to each individual machine doesn't sound like a mere "setting"
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#9Apparently it's a "bug in the software of popular Delio cash printers from Novitus". The product page of the printer mentioned is:
https://www.novitus.pl/en/produkty/systemy-fiskalne/delio-pr...
It can be seen that the printer already existed in 2009 and then got something ("Polish Promotional Emblem" according to Google Translate) https://www.novitus.pl/sites/default/files/certyfikaty_tp_55...
Even if it's only one model, if the companies have only that one model of printers they won't be able to sell anything until the printers are serviced.
Effectively, having such a bug in software, even in multiple units of the same model translates to a single point of failure for the company using it.
Re: Cash registers in Poland fail due to new year bug (PL)
#10Similar issue in NYC with parking meters: https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/03/nyregion/nyc-parking-mete...
The official explanation from the vendor is that this was an "anti-fraud security setting". Can anyone familiar with CC processing provide insight on whether that's a reasonable explanation? Regardless, a problem that requires a "software fix" from the vendor and manual visitations to each individual machine doesn't sound like a mere "setting"
I assume the meters are network-connected because they take credit cards, but they can't be remotely updated? Seems like an obvious omission.