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Billenium Bug
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27/12/1999 13:37:50
 
 
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Forum:
Visual FoxPro
Catégorie:
Autre
Titre:
Billenium Bug
Divers
Thread ID:
00308844
Message ID:
00308844
Vues:
57
Since Fox only supports dates to 12/31/9999, do we have a problem with the following?

REDMOND, Wash, March 17, 9999--Archaeologists excavating the site of the
early headquarters of Microsoft Corp. have unearthed more tantalizing bits
of missing source code that could help programmers head off what may be one
of the greatest technological disasters of our time in the months remaining
before the year 10000.

Historians interpreting the data found at the Redmond site, which the
software giant abandoned and detonated in the early 8000s, after it acquired
the moon for its present headquarters, have determined that the Y10K bug has
its roots in the 20th and 21st centuries, and thus is actually a case of
history repeating itself.

Software engineers in the mid-20th century mistakenly assumed the systems
they designed with two-digit year fields would be updated or replaced before
the year 2000. But many were not repaired until the closing years, or even
months, of the 1990s. Likewise, many of today's computer systems have been
in continuous operation and evolution since the four-digit revolution of the
early 21st century.

Early software engineers have been universally denounced for their
shortsightedness in expanding the year field to only four digits. According
to popular theory, programmers 8,000 years ago were aware of the problem but
chose to ignore it because they knew their bones would have long since
turned to dust when the programming error again reared its ugly head.

Popularly dubbed "Y10K" or the "Billennium Bug," this programming defect
threatens to bring civilization as we know it to a screeching halt when the
clock strikes midnight on Dec. 31 and the year outgrows the four-digit space
it has occupied for some 8,000 years. Many experts fear that when the
computerized calendars roll back to "0000" at the end of the year, the
majority of computers, including those running on the Windows 9800 operating
system, implanted in the brains of more than 90 percent of the installed
base of human beings, will misinterpret the date as the beginning of time.

A small, yet vocal minority insists that "0000" doesn't really represent the
beginning of time. Since the modern calendar began with the year 0001, and
the year 0000 did not actually exist, the Y10K problem doesn't actually
exist, either.

BILL 9000, Microsoft's supercomputer CEO, has offered a temporary solution
to the problem by declaring the present year to be 8019, based on the
controversial theory that modern history actually began in 1980, when MS-DOS
1.0 was introduced. The proposed calendar revision would also buy the
software giant almost two additional millennia in which to ship the
perennially delayed Windows 10000 on time.

While most cranial computer (CC) users have pinned their hopes on a timely
release of Windows 10000 to update their wetware, BILL 9000 is downplaying
the importance of the Y10K fix. "The reason for creating a new version of
the operating system is to add the new features that consumers want, not to
fix bugs from previous versions, BILL said.

Although many technological pundits are predicting gloom, doom, and the end
of humanity as we know it, experts in the field of human behavior suggest
the outcome might not be so dire; however, they acknowledge it might take
some time for people to adapt to independent thought again after so many
centuries of relying on CCs.

Elsewhere in the computing world, the "Open Mind" movement continues to gain
momentum as CC users who have installed the latest build of the Linux
operating system are now uploading their brains to the Internet so that
others can take advantage of the improvements they have made. Meanwhile,
users of Apple Computer's popular eyeMac, who sport the latest fruitfully
trendy colors on their irises, are blissfully unconcerned about Y10K, since
their operating system has employed a five-digit field since its
introduction in the early 8400s.

In other news, Microsoft suffered yet another setback in its latest court
battle with the Department of Justice. The computer giant is accused of
denying rival wetware makers access to the right hemisphere of the brain by
"welding" its Internet browser in the right hemisphere to its operating
system in the left hemisphere. Expert witnesses for the Justice Department
have claimed that although it's a tedious and time-consuming procedure, the
two hemispheres can be separated, thus debunking Microsoft's contention that
the right hemisphere is merely a feature of the left hemisphere. According
to Justice officials, if that were the case, nobody would be in their right
mind.
Craig Berntson
MCSD, Microsoft .Net MVP, Grape City Community Influencer
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