14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
marinecorpstimes.com
14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
1–10 of 36 posts
Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#2"The glitch, it turns out, originated with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation during a transfer of nearly 400,000 records to the Selective Service. A clerk working with the state’s database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997 — and for those born a century earlier, PennDOT spokeswoman Jan McKnight said Thursday. ...
The Selective Service didn’t initially catch it because the state used a two-digit code to indicate year of birth, spokesman Pat Schuback said."
So apparently they store their year field as two digits and have a separate field for century, instead of expanding the year field to four digits? Looks like their shoddy programming finally came back to bite them.
Maybe in 2016, when people born in 2000 start applying for drivers licenses, they'll be rejecting them, saying that 116-year-olds are too old to drive safely?
Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#3"The glitch, it turns out, originated with the Pennsylvania Department of Transportation during a transfer of nearly 400,000 records to the Selective Service. A clerk working with the state’s database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997 — and for those born a century earlier, PennDOT spokeswoman Jan McKnight said Thursday. ... The Selective Service didn’t initially cat…
Well see, they wrote all this bank software, and, uh, to save space, they used two digits for the date instead of four. So, like, 98 instead of 1998? Uh, so I go through these thousands of lines of code and, uh... it doesn't really matter. I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore.
Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#4It's getting closer and closer to 2038, the 32-bit time_t overflow... I'd figure by now more bugs would be found with that event than Y2K bugs 14.5 years after the fact.
Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#5 A clerk working with the state’s database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997
Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#6It's getting closer and closer to 2038, the 32-bit time_t overflow... I'd figure by now more bugs would be found with that event than Y2K bugs 14.5 years after the fact.
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Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#7I didn't know America maintains a register of men they could potentially conscript should the need arise.
Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#8A clerk working with the state’s database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997 Wait so.. The US is drafting?
You receive a notice when you become eligible (old enough) for the draft.
Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#9A clerk working with the state’s database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997 Wait so.. The US is drafting?
The notice was for the recipients to register, which all American men must do when they turn 18.
Re: 14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s
#10Two odd things about this story 1)That nobody noticed what I have to assume was a significantly larger number of selective service notices for the state of Pennsylvania being sent and 2) That any of them got actually delivered to anyone who could even respond to it. My great-grandfather fits the criteria - born in PA in the late 1800's - but he's been deceased for decades and had at least four separate addresses as an adult - none of which are places where family members live today.