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Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

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Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#381

Post by bridgerj »

klenwell wrote: post #257
dwheeler wrote: post #30

Yes, the y2k crisis was real, or more accurately, would have been a serious crisis if people had not rushed and spent lots of money to deal with it ahead of time. In many systems it would have been no big deal if unfixed, but there were a huge number of really important systems that would have been a serious problem had they not been fixed. Part of the challenge was that this was an immovable deadline, often if thing…

I remember hearing a story on NPR years ago years after Y2K with someone knowledgeable on the subject that addressed this question. He gave basically the same answer you did: a lot of effort went into avoiding disaster and a lot of people treated it after the fact as if it was hype or hysteria. I recall the interview because it changed my significantly thinking on the subject. (I wasn't in the industry at the time of…

I think a more accurate way of describing the Indian engagement is that a lot of recruiters and Indian firms discovered there was very little vetting of candidates, and that almost anyone could be put forward and start earning money for the recruiter or offshorer.

It was money for jam.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#382

Post by bridgerj »

foobar1962 wrote: post #309
dwheeler wrote: post #30

Yes, the y2k crisis was real, or more accurately, would have been a serious crisis if people had not rushed and spent lots of money to deal with it ahead of time. In many systems it would have been no big deal if unfixed, but there were a huge number of really important systems that would have been a serious problem had they not been fixed. Part of the challenge was that this was an immovable deadline, often if thing…

I worked at a University that had a 28 story tower. Around 1998 they set the clock in the lift management system to 1 January 2000 and all the lifts lowered themselves to the bottom of the lift wells because they hadn't been serviced for 50 years (or something). So yes indeed stuff was broken, but it got fixed before the big date.

This sounds apocryphal. If setting the date forward triggered a maintenance warning, it sounds like the date system was working correctly.

More importantly, lift systems are not sensitive to long duration dates. They do not need to be.

This story reflects one of the myths that emerged from the media. Around 1997 they started discovering the topic of embedded systems and that many devices, including lifts, contained "computers." Not understanding the restricted and specialized nature of embedded systems, they then claimed all these systems were vulnerable to Y2K, and that the whole world was about to crash.

Most embedded systems, in lifts and other devices, had been designed in the 1990s. If they used dates, they did not use mistakes from the 1960s.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#383

Post by foobar1962 »

bridgerj wrote: post #382
foobar1962 wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I worked at a University that had a 28 story tower. Around 1998 they set the clock in the lift management system to 1 January 2000 and all the lifts lowered themselves to the bottom of the lift wells because they hadn't been serviced for 50 years (or something). So yes indeed stuff was broken, but it got fixed before the big date.

This sounds apocryphal. If setting the date forward triggered a maintenance warning, it sounds like the date system was working correctly. More importantly, lift systems are not sensitive to long duration dates. They do not need to be. This story reflects one of the myths that emerged from the media. Around 1997 they started discovering the topic of embedded systems and that many devices, including lifts, contained "…

The system was using 2-digit year and the service interval was went negative. It indeed happened, I was working in the IT department at the time.

The system was probably designed in the 1970s.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#384

Post by ncmncm »

Diederich wrote: post #347
ncmncm wrote: post #290

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Story I heard from someone who was at Walmart recently was that the surest way to get in trouble was to finish in a week what they had planned to take three months.

Things in Bentonville definitely started going downhill around 2004, and by the time I was laid off in 2009, most of the magic had been lost. My contacts over the past 11 years have said that the division has continued its slide into bullshit. Given how fantastic things were, it makes me very sad.

That's life in a cost center.

It is hard to contemplate just how destructive the "cost center" / "profit center" distinction has turned out to be. For us, though, it means we had better stay the hell out of cost centers.

A business performing the duties of another's cost center, where costs may be amortized over multiple customers, can shift identically same tasks into a profit center.

Re: Ask HN: Was the Y2K crisis real?

#385

Post by rospaya »

TedDoesntTalk wrote: post #105
kitteh wrote: post #14

There were parts of our telecom infrastructure that weren't ready but got fixed before y2k. A certain mobile phone switching vendor (think cell towers, etc.) ran tests a year before to see what happened when it rolled over and the whole mobile network shut down (got in a wedged state where calls would fail, no new calls, signalling died). They fixed it and got customers upgraded in time.

I dont think I even had a mobile phone in 1999. Probably not a critical system back then.

I was 10 and got my first phone around that time. As far as I know Americans were behind in mobile phones up until the iPhone.
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