Frank and Ernest by Thaves for March 15, 2012
March 14, 2012
March 16, 2012
Transcript:
Ask Me About The Mayan Calendar Frank: Chicken Little needs help.
Ask Me About The Mayan Calendar Frank: Chicken Little needs help.
I remember a cartoon (might have been F&E) with the stonecarver standing with his calendar in front of the king and answers “Because I ran out of room!”
As fo Y2K, Kea and SCAATY are absolutely correct. The problem was real and it was a computer programming problem, not a numerology or calendar problem.
Programmers working in the 1960s and 1970s used two digits for the year to save precious bits, and everyone assumed that the software would be replaced within ten years anyway — so, no worries. Do you remember what Ben Franklin said about “assume”? Yep, that software was still in use 30 and 40 years later as the year 2000 approached, and people began to awaken to the problems an ambiguous century would raise.
The problem first manifested itself in the late 1980s when new shipments of stuff received with an expiration date of “00” or “01” were immediately tagged for disposal by the automated inventory system. Fortunately, the warehousemen used common sense and notified the higher-ups that there was a problem, and the automated inventory system got fixed.