From: Steve Golson Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 10:24:36 -0500 Organization: Trilobyte Systems Lines: 68 Message-ID: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: FLkF+edmv/0Nk4KooLQWo5uG9pnXOn7nrGFTLBXGWUMRAyIneADDsA== X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 6 Dec 1999 15:24:26 GMT X-Accept-Language: en X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.61 [en] (X11; I; SunOS 5.6 sun4u) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!news-fra1.dfn.de!news0.de.colt.net!colt.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!not-for-mail Happy tenth birthday to alt.folklore.computers! alt.folklore.computers was created in early December 1989, apparently by Keenan Royle of Indiana University. My archive of a.f.c is currently about 500Mbytes uncompressed. It is pretty complete, but if anyone has any posts to contribute, please let me know. Also I'd appreciate any suggestions about how/where to make this archive available to all. Here is the earliest article I have. Notice it took twelve days to arrive at my server! ############################################################################ From east!newstop!sun-barr!lll-winken!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!rochester!colbath Mon Dec 18 20:04:12 EST 1989 Article 7 of alt.folklore.computers: Path: east!newstop!sun-barr!lll-winken!uwm.edu!cs.utexas.edu!rutgers!rochester!colbath >From: colbath@cs.rochester.edu (Sean Colbath) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Welcome! Keywords: Posting #1 Message-ID: <1989Dec6.015828.27289@cs.rochester.edu> Date: 6 Dec 89 01:58:28 GMT References: <30902@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> <30904@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> Reply-To: colbath@cs.rochester.edu (Sean Colbath) Organization: University of Rochester Computer Science Department Lines: 34 In article <30904@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu> royle@iuvax.cs.indiana.edu (keenan royle) writes: >Well I received nothing but positive responces to this idea, so here it >is: alt.folklore.computers. Chalk up another positive response. I love to save folklore gems that I find on the net from time to time, and regale non-computer people with them (or up and coming computer people). >Everyone dig out your favority stories and post them please. >Don't be afraid to discuss stories you only know half of. >Other reader can fill in the blanks. Hmm. One of my all-time favorites is the origin of the phrase "Don't forget to mount a scratch monkey." If you have the original post (1985-1986) perhaps someone could post it; if not, I'll re-tell the story to the best of my ability in a day or two. NB: Knowing this story could give you an extra point on the hacker test. >A few people suggested that this subject might be worth having uder the >comp hierarchy. I think we should see how well the group does first. Ok, but I'll second that idea also. news.announce.newusers already provides some folklore, such as the origin of "foobar," also to be found in the Hacker's Dictionary. If such a group were in the comp hierarchy it might just cut down traffic in other groups. But what am I saying. Groups never decrease in traffic... ;-) >Keenan Royle >royle@iuvax.indiana.edu >Postmaster@iuvax Sean Colbath colbath@cs.rochester.edu ...uunet!rochester!colbath "And now for something completely different..." ############################################################################ -seg Steve Golson / Trilobyte Systems / +1.978.369.9669 / sgolson@trilobyte.com Consulting in: Verilog, VHDL, Synopsys, patent analysis, reverse engineering ###### From: floyd@ptialaska.net (Floyd Davidson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 6 Dec 1999 16:47:31 GMT Organization: __________ Lines: 22 Message-ID: <82gpb301aji@enews2.newsguy.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> Reply-To: floyd@ptialaska.net NNTP-Posting-Host: p-991.newsdawg.com Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!pln-w!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!floyd Steve Golson wrote: >Happy tenth birthday to alt.folklore.computers! ... And quoting from an early article: >Hmm. One of my all-time favorites is the origin of the phrase >"Don't forget to mount a scratch monkey." What the chances you could dig out a copy of the scratch monkey story? And another one I'd like a copy of was the story about Mel, the old programmer. Floyd -- Floyd L. Davidson floyd@barrow.com Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) ###### From: nobody@star.East.Sun.COM (Andrew W. Rogers) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 6 Dec 1999 18:42:22 GMT Organization: Sun Microsystems Inc. - BDC Lines: 14 Message-ID: <82h02e$qj$1@eastnews1.east.sun.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <82gpb301aji@enews2.newsguy.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: star.east.sun.com Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!news-feed.fnsi.net!newsfeed.icl.net!colt.net!easynet-uk!easynet.net!btnet-feed2!btnet!carbon.eu.sun.com!new-usenet.uk.sun.com!eastnews1.east.sun.com!star!nobody In article <82gpb301aji@enews2.newsguy.com> floyd@ptialaska.net writes: >What the chances you could dig out a copy of the scratch monkey >story? > >And another one I'd like a copy of was the story about Mel, the >old programmer. Both of those are in the Jargon File: http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html under "scratch monkey" and "The Story Of Mel" [appendix A] respectively. Andrew ###### From: floyd@ptialaska.net (Floyd Davidson) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 6 Dec 1999 20:09:30 GMT Organization: __________ Lines: 30 Message-ID: <82h55q089m@enews2.newsguy.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <82gpb301aji@enews2.newsguy.com> <82h02e$qj$1@eastnews1.east.sun.com> Reply-To: floyd@ptialaska.net NNTP-Posting-Host: p-714.newsdawg.com Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newsfeed.stanford.edu!logbridge.uoregon.edu!pln-w!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!floyd Andrew W. Rogers wrote: >floyd@ptialaska.net writes: >>What the chances you could dig out a copy of the scratch monkey >>story? >> >>And another one I'd like a copy of was the story about Mel, the >>old programmer. > >Both of those are in the Jargon File: > > http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/jargon/html/index.html > >under "scratch monkey" and "The Story Of Mel" [appendix A] respectively. > >Andrew Thanks for the pointer! I didn't see the scratch monkey story, but will look deeper. It was nice to see that the Mel story includes a 1999 update that Mel has been identified as one Mel Kaye. Floyd -- Floyd L. Davidson floyd@barrow.com Ukpeagvik (Barrow, Alaska) ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 07 Dec 1999 00:16:23 +0100 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 14 Sender: neil@chonsp.franklin.ch Message-ID: <6uso1fwth4.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Steve Golson writes: > > My archive of a.f.c is currently about 500Mbytes uncompressed. It is > pretty complete, but if anyone has any posts to contribute, please let > me know. Also I'd appreciate any suggestions about how/where to make > this archive available to all. a) Website (yes that is a big one), because it is zero distribution work b) CD-R (just fits nicely), because it is cheapest "download" for most -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ ###### From: "Charlie Gibbs" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 06 Dec 99 14:38:51 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 20 Message-ID: <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-207.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!news-out.cwix.com!newsfeed.cwix.com!pln-w!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!news1 In article <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) writes: >Fri.31.Dec.1999 23:59 GMT is the cut-off point for inclusion in >all manner of Doomsday Books and archival CD-Roms of the outgoing >millennium, not to mention time capsules and spatial propagations. Given that the millennium doesn't really end until the end of the year 2000 - _not_ the beginning - what are you going to do about the stuff that occurs in the last year of this millennium? Does it just get lost? Cross-post to alt.memetics retained - this millennium screw-up is one of the most persistent and widely-propagated memes that has occurred since the term "meme" was coined. -- cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs) Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply. ###### From: bjm10@cornell.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 20:54:50 -0500 Organization: Cornell University Lines: 19 Sender: verified_for_usenet@cornell.edu (bjm10 on potato.cit.cornell.edu) Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: potato.cit.cornell.edu X-Trace: news01.cit.cornell.edu 944531690 1061 132.236.156.18 (7 Dec 1999 01:54:50 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news01.cit.cornell.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Dec 1999 01:54:50 GMT X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!fu-berlin.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.syr.edu!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!bjm10 In article <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca>, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote: > Fri.31.Dec.1999 23:59 GMT is the cut-off point for inclusion in > all manner of Doomsday Books and archival CD-Roms of the outgoing > millennium, not to mention time capsules and spatial propagations. So mentipoo is one of those morons who thinks the millenium ends at the end of 1999, eh? -- Whatever the reasons, which are no doubt complex, the American public seem to believe that science is socially and economically valuable, whereas the majority of the British public seem to believe that scientists only take a break from torturing animals to plot ever more devious ways of undermining the great British way of life. -----Dr. Jordan Raff ###### From: ktakki@xensei.com (Karlo Takki) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 22:28:26 -0500 Organization: Artcrime Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> X-Complaints-To: newsabuse@supernews.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-transfer-encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: Yet Another NewsWatcher 2.2.0b13 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!nntp.ntr.net!remarQ60!rQdQ!supernews.com!remarQ.com!corp.supernews.com!ktakki In article <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca>, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote: > Oh no, a who-dun-it flame war. Peter Seebach created a.f.c; no, it > was Theodor Holm Nelson; naw, George "Kibo" Parry let there be a.f.c. ^^^^^^ George? GEORGE? Leader Kibo shares a name with a WACKY CHIMP?? The HORROR! The HORROR! k. p.s.: YM "Theodor Holm Nelson Reilly". HTH! -- "In spite of everything, I still believe that people are really good at heart. Parry. James Parry" - Anne Frank ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> Organization: Plethora . Net - More net, less spam! X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Lines: 16 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 04:43:19 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.166.146.8 X-Complaints-To: abuse@plethora.net X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 944541799 205.166.146.8 (Mon, 06 Dec 1999 22:43:19 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 22:43:19 CST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!news-kar1.dfn.de!news-fra1.dfn.de!unlisys!news.snafu.de!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!ptah.visi.com!not-for-mail In article <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com>, Charlie Gibbs wrote: >Cross-post to alt.memetics retained - this millennium screw-up >is one of the most persistent and widely-propagated memes that >has occurred since the term "meme" was coined. What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are much more pedantic than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually be a widespread failure of computers and software *in 2001*. -s -- Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon! Will work for interesting hardware. http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/ Visit my new ISP --- More Net, Less Spam! ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> Organization: Plethora . Net - More net, less spam! X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Lines: 25 Message-ID: <0h034.2595$Sz5.383855@ptah.visi.com> Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 04:44:44 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.166.146.8 X-Complaints-To: abuse@plethora.net X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 944541884 205.166.146.8 (Mon, 06 Dec 1999 22:44:44 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 22:44:44 CST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!news-kar1.dfn.de!news-fra1.dfn.de!news0.de.colt.net!colt.net!news-lond.gip.net!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!feeder.qis.net!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!ptah.visi.com!not-for-mail In article , Karlo Takki wrote: >In article <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca>, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur >T. Murray) wrote: >> Oh no, a who-dun-it flame war. Peter Seebach created a.f.c; no, it >> was Theodor Holm Nelson; naw, George "Kibo" Parry let there be a.f.c. > ^^^^^^ >George? GEORGE? Leader Kibo shares a name with a WACKY CHIMP?? >The HORROR! The HORROR! >k. Hey, *you're* Kibo! You signed your name with a "k". (By the way, I actually *did* create alt.folklore.computers; I did it under an assumed name because I wasn't near a computer at the time and didn't want anyone asking difficult questions.) -s -- Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon! Will work for interesting hardware. http://www.plethora.net/~seebs/ Visit my new ISP --- More Net, Less Spam! ###### From: a@a.a (spot the robot) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.religion.kibology Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 06:26:20 GMT Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 21 Message-ID: <384ca461.11657091@enews.newsguy.com> References: <384c91df.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-721.newsdawg.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.5/32.452 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!feeder.qis.net!newshub.northeast.verio.net!verio!newsfeed.mathworks.com!pln-e!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!enews2 On 7 Dec 99 04:49:35 GMT, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote: > >What will your Kibitzer Leader say when he finds out about >"The HORROR! The HORROR!" (horresco referens) the -- >are you sitting down? here comes the ictus, Kibicillus -- >the *parking lot attendant* on Pier 51 in Seattle WA USA >who sat on a stool collecting money while writing out >http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Agora/7256/ntj3.html -- >a Theory of Mind for http://mentifex.netpedia.net/ >Technological Singularity as prophesied unto us by that wacky >http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix/vinge/vinge-sing.html Vernor >Vinge? > Sounds like a job for that Sarfatti feller. Anyway, wasn't this material covered in the second Terminator movie? I have to go play Quake3 now. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics From: malcolm@geog.leeds.ac.uk (Malcolm McMahon) Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers X-Accept-Language: en Message-ID: <384CD8A6.92237216@geog.leeds.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: aloo.leeds.ac.uk X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (WinNT; I) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Tue, 7 Dec 1999 09:53:50 +0000 (GMT) References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> Lines: 17 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!gxn.net!server6.netnews.ja.net!leeds.ac.uk!news Charlie Gibbs wrote: > > Cross-post to alt.memetics retained - this millennium screw-up > is one of the most persistent and widely-propagated memes that > has occurred since the term "meme" was coined. > It's just common sense. We have a big party this year then, during 2000, we can change our minds and have a big party _next_ year as well. It's not like the end of a mullenium has any real signficance. By the best reckonings of those that study these things Christ's second millenium went past unnoticed about 3 years back. Malcolm ###### From: ignatios@cs.uni-bonn.de (Ignatios Souvatzis) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 7 Dec 1999 10:38:57 GMT Organization: RHRZ - University of Bonn (Germany) Lines: 18 Message-ID: <82io41$ri0@news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: theory.cs.uni-bonn.de Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 0.9.8 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!newsfeed.Austria.EU.net!newscore.univie.ac.at!fu-berlin.de!RRZ.Uni-Koeln.DE!news.rhrz.uni-bonn.de!usenet In article <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com>, Steve Golson writes: > Happy tenth birthday to alt.folklore.computers! > > alt.folklore.computers was created in early December 1989, apparently > by Keenan Royle of Indiana University. > > My archive of a.f.c is currently about 500Mbytes uncompressed. It is > pretty complete, but if anyone has any posts to contribute, please let > me know. Also I'd appreciate any suggestions about how/where to make > this archive available to all. Try www.leo.org... maybe they're interested. -is -- * Progress (n.): The process through which Usenet has evolved from smart people in front of dumb terminals to dumb people in front of smart terminals. -- obs@burnout.demon.co.uk (obscurity) ###### From: Tim Shoppa Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:05:13 -0400 Organization: Trailing Edge Technology Lines: 39 Message-ID: <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: timaxp.trailing-edge.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ffx2nh5.news.uu.net 944582805 13547 63.73.218.130 (7 Dec 1999 16:06:45 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@ffx2nh5.news.uu.net NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Dec 1999 16:06:45 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (X11; I; OpenVMS V7.0 DEC 3000 Model 300L) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!schlund.de!newsfeed01.btx.dtag.de!newsfeed.tli.de!news.algonet.se!algonet!tank.news.pipex.net!pipex!uunet!zur.uu.net!ffx.uu.net!ffx2nh5!not-for-mail Peter Seebach wrote: > > In article <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34>, > Dave Hansen wrote: > >On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 04:43:19 GMT, seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) > >wrote: > >[...] > >>What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are much more pedantic > >>than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually be a widespread failure of > >>computers and software *in 2001*. > > >Since it's computer pedantry, wouldn't that be 2048? > > No, they were programmed by people. At least, if the trend towards Unix continues, all the computer systems would've crashed horribly in 2038 anyway. Unix may be one of the worst things that ever happened to computing, but at least it has a self-imposed expiration date. 19-Jan-2038 03:14:07 GMT is when the Unix 32-bit time word overflows into the sign bit and becomes negative. With most modern Unices, the kernels keep on running all right, but anything that does a signed compare on the time word dies horribly - and this involves everything from your favorite windowing system to networking. Most Unix/C geeks will tell you that to fix this problem - or at least delay the nastiness till 2106 - you go into the system headers and make the time word be an unsigned 32-bit int. These geeks are to be likened to those who thought Y2K would be as simple as "change the year field definitions and recompile". And don't get me started about folks who talk about 64-bit time words as being the "real" solution. There's too many filesystems and databases and other *files* out there that assume that the time word will always fit into 32 bits. Tim. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Dec 99 11:15:04 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 24 Message-ID: <82iuu7$n7t$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <0h034.2595$Sz5.383855@ptah.visi.com> X-Trace: ep6OYbpuTBZEKZtOmO9X/9ibJb3VxfXyZRx14Jr3klY= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Dec 1999 12:35:19 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!news-out.cwix.com!newsfeed.cwix.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-97-26 [snip newsgroups] In article <0h034.2595$Sz5.383855@ptah.visi.com>, seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote: >(By the way, I actually *did* create alt.folklore.computers; Thank you. >I did it under an assumed name because I wasn't near a >computer at the time ... So, how does one create a newsgroup without a computer? > ...and didn't want anyone asking difficult questions.) Would you give an example of what you considered was a difficult question? /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: bjm10@cornell.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:59:25 -0500 Organization: Cornell University Lines: 22 Sender: verified_for_usenet@cornell.edu (bjm10 on potato.cit.cornell.edu) Message-ID: References: <384c7be4.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: potato.cit.cornell.edu X-Trace: news01.cit.cornell.edu 944585964 7971 132.236.156.18 (7 Dec 1999 16:59:24 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news01.cit.cornell.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Dec 1999 16:59:24 GMT X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.syr.edu!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!bjm10 In article <384c7be4.0@news.victoria.tc.ca>, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote: > Bryan J. Maloney, bjm10@cornell.edu, wrote on Mon, 06 Dec 1999: > > > > In article <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca>, > > uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote: > > > >> Fri.31.Dec.1999 23:59 GMT is the cut-off point for inclusion in > >> all manner of Doomsday Books and archival CD-Roms of the outgoing > >> millennium, not to mention time capsules and spatial propagations. > > > >So mentipoo is one of those morons who thinks the millenium ends at the > >end of 1999, eh? > > Yes. And you will be remembered for eons for your entry in > http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/webcyc.html#recipes -- The Blort's Snork. I doubt that a few beer recipes would render me memorable for eons. -- "NASA": From the Attic Greek for "oopsie". ###### From: bjm10@cornell.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:59:32 -0500 Organization: Cornell University Lines: 22 Sender: verified_for_usenet@cornell.edu (bjm10 on potato.cit.cornell.edu) Message-ID: References: <384c7be4.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> NNTP-Posting-Host: potato.cit.cornell.edu X-Trace: news01.cit.cornell.edu 944585972 7971 132.236.156.18 (7 Dec 1999 16:59:32 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news01.cit.cornell.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Dec 1999 16:59:32 GMT X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!news-kar1.dfn.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.syr.edu!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!bjm10 In article <384c7be4.0@news.victoria.tc.ca>, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote: > Bryan J. Maloney, bjm10@cornell.edu, wrote on Mon, 06 Dec 1999: > > > > In article <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca>, > > uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote: > > > >> Fri.31.Dec.1999 23:59 GMT is the cut-off point for inclusion in > >> all manner of Doomsday Books and archival CD-Roms of the outgoing > >> millennium, not to mention time capsules and spatial propagations. > > > >So mentipoo is one of those morons who thinks the millenium ends at the > >end of 1999, eh? > > Yes. And you will be remembered for eons for your entry in > http://www.scn.org/~mentifex/webcyc.html#recipes -- The Blort's Snork. Not my entry. Mentipoo -- "NASA": From the Attic Greek for "oopsie". ###### From: Tim Shoppa Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 12:44:10 -0400 Organization: Trailing Edge Technology Lines: 27 Message-ID: <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: timaxp.trailing-edge.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ffx2nh5.news.uu.net 944588743 20976 63.73.218.130 (7 Dec 1999 17:45:43 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@ffx2nh5.news.uu.net NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Dec 1999 17:45:43 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (X11; I; OpenVMS V7.0 DEC 3000 Model 300L) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!news-kar1.dfn.de!news-was.dfn.de!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!uunet!ffx.uu.net!ffx2nh5!not-for-mail Peter Seebach wrote: > > In article <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com>, > Tim Shoppa wrote: > >At least, if the trend towards Unix continues, all the computer > >systems would've crashed horribly in 2038 anyway. Unix may be one > >of the worst things that ever happened to computing, but at least > >it has a self-imposed expiration date. > > And your suggested fix is...? > > Really, I'd love to hear how you think it should be solved. The best solution is to not use C or Unix in the first place. Note that many OS's that now have system components written in C have troubles come Y2038, because C programmers always assume that 1-Jan-1970 00:00 is the base date, and that you've got 31 bits to count up from there. In particular, some components of VMS now suffer from the Y2038 Unix-brain-deadness, because these components were written in C. (Read comp.os.vms to hear us old-timers bitch and moan about this SNAFU!) Older versions of VMS, before C started to leak in, do just fine through the Y9999. Tim. ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Dec 99 14:13:49 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 17 Message-ID: <82j9db$i4q$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <0h034.2595$Sz5.383855@ptah.visi.com> <82iuu7$n7t$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: eFKLHbrsvAXx8X8G3d/iG26BMrzAXPmVuj2OeX71ctQ= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Dec 1999 15:34:03 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newsfeed.cwix.com!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!207-172-97-26 In article , seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote: >In article <82iuu7$n7t$4@autumn.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >>Would you give an example of what you considered was a >>difficult question? > >Sure. For instance, I don't think I could answer a >question like "where were >you on the night of October 11th, 1965". Oh, that one's easy, home. But why would you be asked this question as a result of creating a newsgroup for us old farts? /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <0h034.2595$Sz5.383855@ptah.visi.com> <82iuu7$n7t$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> Organization: Plethora . Net - More net, less spam! X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Lines: 14 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:28:39 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.166.146.8 X-Complaints-To: abuse@plethora.net X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 944576919 205.166.146.8 (Tue, 07 Dec 1999 08:28:39 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 08:28:39 CST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.datacomm.ch!newscore.gigabell.net!newsfeeds.belnet.be!news.belnet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!ptah.visi.com!not-for-mail In article <82iuu7$n7t$4@autumn.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >Would you give an example of what you considered was a >difficult question? Sure. For instance, I don't think I could answer a question like "where were you on the night of October 11th, 1965". -s "Not without consulting a theologian, anyway." -- Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon! Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/ Get paid to surf! No spam. http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=GZX636 ###### From: bjm10@cornell.edu (Bryan J. Maloney) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 14:40:15 -0500 Organization: Cornell University Lines: 15 Sender: verified_for_usenet@cornell.edu (bjm10 on potato.cit.cornell.edu) Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: potato.cit.cornell.edu X-Trace: news01.cit.cornell.edu 944595615 25399 132.236.156.18 (7 Dec 1999 19:40:15 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@news01.cit.cornell.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 7 Dec 1999 19:40:15 GMT X-Newsreader: MT-NewsWatcher 2.4.4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.syr.edu!newsstand.cit.cornell.edu!bjm10 In article , seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote: > That said, you were talking about "bad" solutions to this, which I felt > implied that you could suggest something better than, e.g., just trying to > convert to 64-bit. Unix is the democracy of OS's; it's awful, but everything Obviously, the only solution is to convert to 1024 bit post-haste and immediately! In the name of Archiewahwah Noowhatsisis and the Great Mentipoo, I invoke it forthwith! -- "NASA": From the Attic Greek for "oopsie". ###### From: dhansen@btree.com (Dave Hansen) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Organization: B-Tree Systems, Inc. Message-ID: <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.21/32.243 Lines: 16 Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 15:09:34 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 209.32.152.113 X-Trace: newsfeed.slurp.net 944579042 209.32.152.113 (Tue, 07 Dec 1999 09:04:02 CDT) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 09:04:02 CDT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!fu-berlin.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.slurp.net!not-for-mail On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 04:43:19 GMT, seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote: [...] >What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are much more pedantic >than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually be a widespread failure of >computers and software *in 2001*. Since it's computer pedantry, wouldn't that be 2048? Regards, -=Dave Just my (10-010) cents I can barely speak for myself, so I certainly can't speak for B-Tree. Change is inevitable. Progress is not. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> Organization: Plethora . Net - More net, less spam! X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Lines: 19 Message-ID: <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 15:52:28 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.166.146.8 X-Complaints-To: abuse@plethora.net X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 944581948 205.166.146.8 (Tue, 07 Dec 1999 09:52:28 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 09:52:28 CST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!ptah.visi.com!not-for-mail In article <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34>, Dave Hansen wrote: >On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 04:43:19 GMT, seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) >wrote: >[...] >>What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are much more pedantic >>than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually be a widespread failure of >>computers and software *in 2001*. >Since it's computer pedantry, wouldn't that be 2048? No, they were programmed by people. -s -- Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon! Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/ Get paid to surf! No spam. http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=GZX636 ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> Organization: Plethora . Net - More net, less spam! X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Lines: 32 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 17:16:06 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.166.146.8 X-Complaints-To: abuse@plethora.net X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 944586966 205.166.146.8 (Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:16:06 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:16:06 CST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!ptah.visi.com!not-for-mail In article <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com>, Tim Shoppa wrote: >At least, if the trend towards Unix continues, all the computer >systems would've crashed horribly in 2038 anyway. Unix may be one >of the worst things that ever happened to computing, but at least >it has a self-imposed expiration date. And your suggested fix is...? Really, I'd love to hear how you think it should be solved. >And don't get me started about folks who talk about 64-bit time >words as being the "real" solution. There's too many filesystems >and databases and other *files* out there that assume that the >time word will always fit into 32 bits. Yeah, and there are too many that assume that the file size will fit in 32 bits, and that integers always fit in 16 bits, and that system uptime is never more than 32-bits of microseconds, and so on. With modern compilers, you recompile some code, look for warnings, and write file converters. It worked on file sizes... Yes, it's a lot of work. It's not insurmountable, and it's what I expect will eventually have to happen. -s -- Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon! Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/ Get paid to surf! No spam. http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=GZX636 ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> Organization: Plethora . Net - More net, less spam! X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Lines: 37 Message-ID: Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 18:43:22 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.166.146.8 X-Complaints-To: abuse@plethora.net X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 944592202 205.166.146.8 (Tue, 07 Dec 1999 12:43:22 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 12:43:22 CST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!ptah.visi.com!not-for-mail In article <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com>, Tim Shoppa wrote: >The best solution is to not use C or Unix in the first place. Hmm. >Note that many OS's that now have system components written in C >have troubles come Y2038, because C programmers always assume that >1-Jan-1970 00:00 is the base date, and that you've got 31 bits >to count up from there. No. C assumes nothing of the sort. C on non-Unix systems has used a variety of time-measuring systems. C's only problem comes in the year 34,667 on 16-bit architectures. ;-) >In particular, some components of VMS now >suffer from the Y2038 Unix-brain-deadness, because these components >were written in C. (Read comp.os.vms to hear us old-timers bitch >and moan about this SNAFU!) >Older versions of VMS, before C started to leak in, do just fine >through the Y9999. I don't think you can blame C for the way Unix represents time_t; C allows for other representations. That said, you were talking about "bad" solutions to this, which I felt implied that you could suggest something better than, e.g., just trying to convert to 64-bit. Unix is the democracy of OS's; it's awful, but everything else is worse. ;) -s -- Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon! Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/ Get paid to surf! No spam. http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=GZX636 ###### From: gah@ugcs.caltech.edu (glen herrmannsfeldt) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 7 Dec 1999 19:05:24 GMT Organization: California Institute of Technology, Pasadena Lines: 18 Message-ID: <82jlpk$5m@gap.cco.caltech.edu> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: photo.ugcs.caltech.edu X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 #3 (NOV) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news.idt.net!attbtf!ip.att.net!nntp-server.caltech.edu!gah Tim Shoppa writes: (snip) >Note that many OS's that now have system components written in C >have troubles come Y2038, because C programmers always assume that >1-Jan-1970 00:00 is the base date, and that you've got 31 bits >to count up from there. In particular, some components of VMS now >suffer from the Y2038 Unix-brain-deadness, because these components >were written in C. (Read comp.os.vms to hear us old-timers bitch >and moan about this SNAFU!) I used to hear stories (though it was before I used DEC machines) about the PDP-11 16bit data wraparound. Which was a real problem because they had compilers that would test the data of the source and object, and recompile if the source was newer. (Before make.) -- glen ###### From: Tim Bradshaw Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 07 Dec 1999 19:06:51 +0000 Organization: Cley Ltd Sender: tfb@lostwithiel Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: mailgate.tfeb.org X-NNTP-Posting-Host: mailgate.tfeb.org:212.240.242.98 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 944595301 nnrp-02:20289 NO-IDENT mailgate.tfeb.org:212.240.242.98 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.2.25/XEmacs 19.14 Lines: 11 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!diablo.theplanet.net!diablo2!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!mailgate.tfeb.org!lostwithiel!nobody * Tim Shoppa wrote: > And don't get me started about folks who talk about 64-bit time > words as being the "real" solution. There's too many filesystems > and databases and other *files* out there that assume that the > time word will always fit into 32 bits. There were `too many filesystems and databases and other *files*' out there which assumed that a file could only be 2Gb or maybe 4Gb, but we have 64bit file offsets now... --tim ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> From: werme@nospam.mediaone.net X-Newsreader: NN version 6.5.0 CURRENT #119 Message-ID: Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 01:06:57 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.128.109.1 X-Complaints-To: abuse@mediaone.net X-Trace: wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net 944615217 24.128.109.1 (Tue, 07 Dec 1999 20:06:57 EST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 20:06:57 EST Organization: Road Runner Lines: 28 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!newsfeed.nacamar.de!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!howland.erols.net!europa.netcrusader.net!192.148.253.68!netnews.com!chnws02.mediaone.net!24.128.1.101!chnws05.ne.mediaone.net!24.128.44.7!wbnws01.ne.mediaone.net.POSTED!not-for-mail seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes: >In article <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com>, >Tim Shoppa wrote: >>At least, if the trend towards Unix continues, all the computer >>systems would've crashed horribly in 2038 anyway. Unix may be one >>of the worst things that ever happened to computing, but at least >>it has a self-imposed expiration date. >And your suggested fix is...? How appropriate. An article on the tenth anniversary of a.f.c (TEN years!, but I coulda sworn that alt. is no more than five! Oh yeah, I read this for a few years at Alliant before it folded in 1992....) oops. How appropriate. An article on the tenth anniversary of a.f.c and here it is topic drifted into something entirely different. At least there are some things you can rely on. It didn't occur to me until a couple months ago that we should be calling this the penultimate year of the millennium. I think the few people who know what penultimate means probably realize this is the penulitmate year and the rest will penultimately party on regardless. -Ric Werme -- Ric Werme | werme@nospam.mediaone.net http://people.ne.mediaone.net/werme | ^^^^^^^ delete ###### From: korpela@islay.ssl.berkeley.edu (Eric J. Korpela) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 8 Dec 1999 01:42:39 GMT Organization: Cal Berkeley-- Space Sciences Lab Lines: 22 Message-ID: <82kd2f$5ne$1@agate.berkeley.edu> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <6uso1fwth4.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> NNTP-Posting-Host: islay.ssl.berkeley.edu X-Trace: agate.berkeley.edu 944617359 5870 128.32.98.192 (8 Dec 1999 01:42:39 GMT) X-Complaints-To: abuse@berkeley.edu NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Dec 1999 01:42:39 GMT Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!agate.berkeley.edu!agate!islay.ssl.berkeley.edu!korpela In article <6uso1fwth4.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch>, Neil Franklin wrote: >> My archive of a.f.c is currently about 500Mbytes uncompressed. It is >> pretty complete, but if anyone has any posts to contribute, please let >> me know. Also I'd appreciate any suggestions about how/where to make >> this archive available to all. > >a) Website (yes that is a big one), because it is zero distribution work > >b) CD-R (just fits nicely), because it is cheapest "download" for most I can't believe that no one's come up with the obvious solution. Create a group called alt.folklore.alt.folklore.computers and post the archive to it at the rate of one week's worth of articles per day. Then deja will do the archiving and distribution for you. :) Eric -- Eric Korpela | An object at rest can never be korpela@ssl.berkeley.edu | stopped. Click for home page. ###### Message-ID: <384DF86C.ED4020F5@home.com> From: Miss Felicity Organization: @Home Network Member X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en]C-AtHome0405 (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 10 Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 06:02:57 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.67.46.170 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.sshe1.sk.home.com 944632977 24.67.46.170 (Tue, 07 Dec 1999 22:02:57 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 22:02:57 PST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!blackbush.xlink.net!howland.erols.net!netnews.com!feeder.via.net!newshub1.home.com!news.home.com!news1.sshe1.sk.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Charlie Gibbs wrote: > Cross-post to alt.memetics retained - this millennium screw-up > is one of the most persistent and widely-propagated memes that > has occurred since the term "meme" was coined. Tell me about it. I'm considering staying home with the cats and a stack of _Adbusters_ in protest. Miss Felicity ###### Message-ID: <384DF8BC.3AFE73D6@home.com> From: Miss Felicity Organization: @Home Network Member X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.5 [en]C-AtHome0405 (Win98; U) X-Accept-Language: en MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 12 Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 06:04:18 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 24.67.46.170 X-Complaints-To: abuse@home.net X-Trace: news1.sshe1.sk.home.com 944633058 24.67.46.170 (Tue, 07 Dec 1999 22:04:18 PST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Tue, 07 Dec 1999 22:04:18 PST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!newsfeed.germany.net!newsfeed.nacamar.de!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gctr.net!feeder.via.net!newshub1.home.com!news.home.com!news1.sshe1.sk.home.com.POSTED!not-for-mail Dave Hansen wrote: > [...] > >What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are much more > >pedantic than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually be a wide- > >spread failure of computers and software *in 2001*. > > Since it's computer pedantry, wouldn't that be 2048? Why? Miss Felicity ###### From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (Derek Peschel) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 8 Dec 1999 06:08:19 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 27 Message-ID: <82kskj$rps$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> <82jlpk$5m@gap.cco.caltech.edu> NNTP-Posting-Host: saul9.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 944633299 28476 (None) 140.142.17.38 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: dpeschel Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!sunqbc.risq.qc.ca!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news.u.washington.edu!dpeschel In article <82jlpk$5m@gap.cco.caltech.edu>, glen herrmannsfeldt wrote: >I used to hear stories (though it was before I used DEC machines) about >the PDP-11 16bit data wraparound. Which was a real problem because they >had compilers that would test the data of the source and object, and >recompile if the source was newer. (Before make.) I thought make did the same thing. Maybe I'm living in the past. I'm trying to write a new makefile, and I wish it _did_ use that simple test for "up-to-dateness" (or allow me to define my own) because it insists on making even when it need not. There's also the problem of defining circular dependencies (the TeX file and the index files interact with each other -- a common example of circular dependencies). And to make things worse, I can say that multiple files have the same dependencies, but make won't _check_ that they are all created, and insists on creating each file separately. Bleah. ObAFC: I've been reading Lions' Commentary on the kernel of V6 UNIX. Does anyone know what algorithm improvements later versions had? Or have the commentary Lions wrote about Plan 9? -- Derek ###### From: Dennis Ritchie Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 07:57:21 +0000 Organization: Bell Labs, Lucent Technologies Lines: 18 Message-ID: <384E0F60.3B9E@bell-labs.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> <82jlpk$5m@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <82kskj$rps$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> Reply-To: dmr@bell-labs.com NNTP-Posting-Host: cebu.cs.bell-labs.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.01 (Win95; U) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news-peer.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!den-news-01.qwest.net!qwest!nntphub.cb.lucent.com!news Derek Peschel asked in a footnote: > > ObAFC: I've been reading Lions' Commentary on the kernel of V6 UNIX. Does > anyone know what algorithm improvements later versions had? Or have the > commentary Lions wrote about Plan 9? The algorithm improvements were there, but the functional things were probably more important in (say) v7 or 32V or early BSD systems. Things like 32-bit file sizes instead of 24: we should have been more aggressive here and elsewhere in looking ahead. The Lions Plan 9 commentary is lost, so far as I can determine; I've looked for it. It would be useful to have and I would make it available if I could. Dennis ###### From: dpeschel@u.washington.edu (Derek Peschel) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 8 Dec 1999 10:09:09 GMT Organization: University of Washington, Seattle Lines: 20 Message-ID: <82lao5$j0q$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <82jlpk$5m@gap.cco.caltech.edu> <82kskj$rps$1@nntp1.u.washington.edu> <384E0F60.3B9E@bell-labs.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: saul9.u.washington.edu X-Trace: nntp1.u.washington.edu 944647749 19482 (None) 140.142.17.35 X-Complaints-To: help@cac.washington.edu NNTP-Posting-User: dpeschel Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!news-feed.inet.tele.dk!bofh.vszbr.cz!nntp.primenet.com!nntp.gctr.net!logbridge.uoregon.edu!news.u.washington.edu!dpeschel In article <384E0F60.3B9E@bell-labs.com>, Dennis Ritchie wrote: >Derek Peschel asked in a footnote: >> ObAFC: I've been reading Lions' Commentary on the kernel of V6 UNIX. Does >> anyone know what algorithm improvements later versions had? Or have the >> commentary Lions wrote about Plan 9? >The Lions Plan 9 commentary is lost, so far as I can determine; >I've looked for it. It would be useful to have and I would >make it available if I could. I'm very sorry to hear that. The irony is that the Plan 9 distribution was supposed to eliminate exactly the licensing problems the V6 commentary had to deal with. So I can't think of any reason why the Plan 9 commentary should have gotten lost. Are you feeling a strong sense of deja vu about all this? -- Derek ###### From: Malcolm McMahon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 11:07:11 +0000 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: pigsty.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: pigsty.demon.co.uk:158.152.84.59 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 944651099 nnrp-07:27457 NO-IDENT pigsty.demon.co.uk:158.152.84.59 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.7/32.534 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 20 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!newsfeed.icl.net!colt.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!pigsty.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail On Wed, 08 Dec 1999 01:06:57 GMT, werme@nospam.mediaone.net wrote: >It didn't occur to me until a couple months ago that we should be >calling this the penultimate year of the millennium. I think the >few people who know what penultimate means probably realize this is >the penulitmate year and the rest will penultimately party on regardless. > I suspect that most of the people who _do_ know what penultimate means will party on regardless too, and maybe next year they'll do it again. The real question is, what are we going to call the next decade? You can call, say, 1980-1989 the eighties and that sounds OK, but what do you call 2000-2009? The zeros? Sounds aweful. For that matter what about 2010-2019, the teens? (And BTW nobody thinks the nineties should have started in 1991). Incidentally anyone here of any religious cults who expect The End of Civilisation As We Know It 1/1/2001? ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 08 Dec 99 11:39:06 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 54 Message-ID: <82lkni$o1v$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> X-Trace: QD99Cmg2ic+aDuv9mdFLImjVUiGBuQ71eun83jmoIZs= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Dec 1999 12:59:30 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d15 In article , seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote: >In article <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com>, >Tim Shoppa wrote: >>The best solution is to not use C or Unix in the first place. > >Hmm. Well, he's [Tim] right but for the wrong reasons :-). > >>Note that many OS's that now have system components written in C >>have troubles come Y2038, because C programmers always assume that >>1-Jan-1970 00:00 is the base date, and that you've got 31 bits >>to count up from there. > >No. C assumes nothing of the sort. C on non-Unix systems >has used a variety of time-measuring systems. C's only >problem comes in the year 34,667 on 16-bit architectures. ;-) But it is an aspect of using a compiler. Compiler-thinking people don't seem to consider the internal representation of numbers. And that's by design because of this new-fangled notion of transportability. When writing transportable code, one isn't supposed to know about internal bits. > >>In particular, some components of VMS now >>suffer from the Y2038 Unix-brain-deadness, because these components >>were written in C. (Read comp.os.vms to hear us old-timers bitch >>and moan about this SNAFU!) > >>Older versions of VMS, before C started to leak in, do just fine >>through the Y9999. > >I don't think you can blame C for the way Unix represents time_t; C allows >for other representations. > >That said, you were talking about "bad" solutions to this, which I felt >implied that you could suggest something better than, e.g., just trying to >convert to 64-bit. Unix is the democracy of OS's; it's >awful, but everything else is worse. ;) Well, when we had the problem (1975), I asked the question why the dates had to be a count in the first place. Nobody gave me an answer. So, I'll ask it again. Why do internal date representations have to be a count of days from some randomly picked date? Why was that 1970 date chosen as the zeroeth day? /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: cb@df.lth.se (Christian Brunschen) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 8 Dec 1999 11:45:31 GMT Organization: The Computer Society at Lund University and Lund Institute of Technology Lines: 33 Message-ID: <82lgcr$r96$1@news.lth.se> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: bartlet.df.lth.se Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=iso-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit NNTP-Posting-User: cb X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!feed2.news.luth.se!luth.se!news.lth.se!not-for-mail In article , Malcolm McMahon wrote: >On Wed, 08 Dec 1999 01:06:57 GMT, werme@nospam.mediaone.net wrote: > >>It didn't occur to me until a couple months ago that we should be >>calling this the penultimate year of the millennium. I think the >>few people who know what penultimate means probably realize this is >>the penulitmate year and the rest will penultimately party on regardless. >> > >I suspect that most of the people who _do_ know what penultimate means >will party on regardless too, and maybe next year they'll do it again. > >The real question is, what are we going to call the next decade? You can >call, say, 1980-1989 the eighties and that sounds OK, but what do you >call 2000-2009? The zeros? Sounds aweful. Well, since '0' can also be pronounce 'nought' .. that would make the '200x' years .. the noughties! (all right, spell that with an 'a' if you want :) >For that matter what about >2010-2019, the teens? the 'tens' would be my guess >(And BTW nobody thinks the nineties should have >started in 1991). > >Incidentally anyone here of any religious cults who expect The End of >Civilisation As We Know It 1/1/2001? // Christian Brunschen ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics From: ns8rl@bath.ac.uk (R Lucas) Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Newsreader: knews 1.0b.0 Organization: School of Natural Sciences, University of Bath, UK Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> Mime-Version: 1.0 Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 12:10:02 GMT Lines: 10 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!diablo.theplanet.net!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!gxn.net!server6.netnews.ja.net!server1.netnews.ja.net!hgmp.mrc.ac.uk!pegasus.csx.cam.ac.uk!bath.ac.uk!ns8rl In article , Malcolm McMahon writes: > > The real question is, what are we going to call the next decade? You can > call, say, 1980-1989 the eighties and that sounds OK, but what do you > call 2000-2009? The zeros? The naughties? Rayner ###### From: jmfbahciv@aol.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 08 Dec 99 14:15:10 GMT Organization: UltraNet Communications, Inc. Lines: 56 Message-ID: <82lts5$nj2$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> <82lkni$o1v$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> X-Trace: QdehJanDF/uaAOSx0QgjpFDx60Cy/Pd0lQdNd2OdSh4= X-Complaints-To: abuse@rcn.com NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Dec 1999 15:35:33 GMT X-Newsreader: News Xpress Version 1.0 Beta #4 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!news-out.cwix.com!newsfeed.cwix.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!d15 In article , Malcolm McMahon wrote: >On Wed, 08 Dec 99 11:39:06 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: > >>But it is an aspect of using a compiler. Compiler-thinking >>people don't seem to consider the internal representation >>of numbers. And that's by design because of this new-fangled >>notion of transportability. When writing transportable code, >>one isn't supposed to know about internal bits. >> > >Yes, but practically speaking you've got to put up with _some_ limit to >storage, unless you advocate variable length integer variables >throughout (an efficiecy nightmare). Even if you've never used an >assembler you need a feel for these limits. > >>Well, when we had the problem (1975), I asked the question why >>the dates had to be a count in the first place. Nobody gave >>me an answer. So, I'll ask it again. >> > >So you can: > > Add or subtract numbers of days to/from them. > Subtract two dates to get a time interval. > >Try writing a routine to subtract two dd/mm/yyyy dates. It's messy >(especially having to allow for leap years). Right. But that doesn't explain the count of days having to have a common absolute zero. This implies that the raw data is a date-time stamp. So when comparing two, one isn't really interested in when that abolute zero was. > >This can only be achived by mapping time onto real or interger numbers >and that necessitates chosing a zero. This choice of zero has to be recalculated everytime a system comes up. I still think it's an aribitrary zero that really doesn't have anything to do with the data. If you are recording as dd/mm/yyyy the internal count is very uninteresting. > >>Why do internal date representations have to be a count of days >>from some randomly picked date? Why was that 1970 date chosen >>as the zeroeth day? >> > >A round number less than any date which a Unix system will actually >experience. > Nope. Picking that date was not Unix-unique. /BAH Subtract a hundred and four for e-mail. ###### From: greg@apple2.com Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Organization: II Infinitum References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <384DF8BC.3AFE73D6@home.com> <82mb6s$ncm$1@sun-cc204.lboro.ac.uk> User-Agent: MT-NewsWatcher/3.0 (PPC) X-Face: &@UA7$)=n9C7!qu%-5s},3tR@NEy+B>8PW"^,8?A>%."0{J2c1Yr]NKw';5/( J\r@/{UADjCdE~iRnOEOfbre(/1Y=$TS3Wt7B`a4sz, Lines: 34 NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 15:09:01 CST X-Trace: sv2-oEYacBIh6xRTn1GTrV/xFg8QX0ouuAZAclsBXlt9I6xS4iUY6QE8ZFta4tYk4djKagOJ4Ml+xXF/jNG!uYmDCRHBdlvRn8diEICbht5W3Q== X-Complaints-To: abuse@GigaNews.Com X-Abuse-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 15:08:50 -0600 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!schlund.de!newsfeed01.btx.dtag.de!newsfeed.tli.de!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!nntp2.giganews.com!news4.giganews.com.POSTED!greg In article <82mb6s$ncm$1@sun-cc204.lboro.ac.uk>, "Ronnie Clark" wrote: >Miss Felicity wrote: >>dhansen@btree.com (Dave Hansen) wrote: >>>seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) wrote: >>>> What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are much >>>> more pedantic than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually be a >>>> widespread failure of computers and software *in 2001*. >>> Since it's computer pedantry, wouldn't that be 2048? >> Why? > Due to binary mathematics, 1 Kilobyte is NOT 1000 bytes, it is 1024 > bytes. So two kilobytes is 2048 bytes. Therefore, 2KB=2,048Bytes and > 2K=2048, and so Y2K = The year 2048. But years aren't bytes, and kilo- is not a prefix reserved exclusively for computer-related terminology. And the definitions changed last year such that a kilobyte IS 1000 bytes and a kilo-binary-byte (or kibibyte: KiB) is 1024 bytes. It is official (though I would have preferred K2B for the abbreviation). Yes, I know it's a joke, but it's gotten old very fast. And, if you have to explain it, it's not funny. :-) -- -- --- -- -- -- ------------------------------------------------------------------ -- -- --- --- (Not associated with Quake Clan Deimos, War Machine of Mars) ###### From: Malcolm McMahon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 15:14:25 +0000 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> <82lkni$o1v$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: pigsty.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: pigsty.demon.co.uk:158.152.84.59 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 944665932 nnrp-08:27897 NO-IDENT pigsty.demon.co.uk:158.152.84.59 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.7/32.534 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 38 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newshunter!cosy.sbg.ac.at!newsfeed.Austria.EU.net!EU.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!colt.net!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!pigsty.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail On Wed, 08 Dec 99 11:39:06 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >But it is an aspect of using a compiler. Compiler-thinking >people don't seem to consider the internal representation >of numbers. And that's by design because of this new-fangled >notion of transportability. When writing transportable code, >one isn't supposed to know about internal bits. > Yes, but practically speaking you've got to put up with _some_ limit to storage, unless you advocate variable length integer variables throughout (an efficiecy nightmare). Even if you've never used an assembler you need a feel for these limits. >Well, when we had the problem (1975), I asked the question why >the dates had to be a count in the first place. Nobody gave >me an answer. So, I'll ask it again. > So you can: Add or subtract numbers of days to/from them. Subtract two dates to get a time interval. Try writing a routine to subtract two dd/mm/yyyy dates. It's messy (especially having to allow for leap years). This can only be achived by mapping time onto real or interger numbers and that necessitates chosing a zero. >Why do internal date representations have to be a count of days >from some randomly picked date? Why was that 1970 date chosen >as the zeroeth day? > A round number less than any date which a Unix system will actually experience. ###### From: J. Chris Hausler Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 8 DEC 99 16:49:02 -0500 Organization: Delphi (info@delphi.com email, 800-695-4005 voice) Lines: 37 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> <82lkni$o1v$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: 199.93.4.2 X-To: Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!colt.net!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!cam-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!cambridge1-snf1.gtei.net!news.gtei.net!news.delphi.com!news writes: >Well, when we had the problem (1975), I asked the question why >the dates had to be a count in the first place. Nobody gave >me an answer. So, I'll ask it again. > >Why do internal date representations have to be a count of days >from some randomly picked date? Why was that 1970 date chosen >as the zeroeth day? First off, its a count of seconds, not days. I suggest that seconds was chosen cause that's as detailed as normal day to day timekeeping gets. The reason to keep it all in one "storage location" is for the ease of doing time comparisons. I remember doing time/date comparisons in Fortran in the 70's using separate "words" for years,months,days,hours, munutes,seconds in a minicomputer where code had to be "overlayed" in relatively small chunks. One time comparison would take up a third of an overlay. If that OS had had a single word time value I would have gladly used it! The need for an epoch date, ie January 1 1970 for UNIX is so the internal time value can be converted to an external one ie years,months,days,hours, minutes,seconds. Many uses of these "time words" in systems (including a lot of stuff I write) does not require any reference to external time. If the time word is made unsigned, and you do your tests right (in C or I assume other HL languages where making the word unsigned causes the compiler to use the correct tests, in assembly code the programmer makes that choice as signed/unsigned makes no difference, 2's complement anyway, I haven't thought about 1's complement in a looooong time.), you have no problem if the word wraps just as long as the interval your measuring is less than the range of the word. Regards, Chris AN GETTO$;DUMP;RUN,ALGOL,TAPE $$ ###### From: Paul Jarc Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 08 Dec 1999 18:08:56 -0500 Organization: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt, human pyramid? Lines: 15 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: multivac.student.cwru.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu!not-for-mail seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes: > In article <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com>, > Tim Shoppa wrote: > >Note that many OS's that now have system components written in C > >have troubles come Y2038, because C programmers always assume that > >1-Jan-1970 00:00 is the base date, and that you've got 31 bits > >to count up from there. > > No. C assumes nothing of the sort. Right, but Tim said that C *programmers* make these assumptions, so he's probably right too. (Though I wouldn't have said "always".) paul ###### From: Paul Jarc Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 08 Dec 1999 18:21:11 -0500 Organization: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt, human pyramid? Lines: 12 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: multivac.student.cwru.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu!not-for-mail Malcolm McMahon writes: > (And BTW nobody thinks the nineties should have started in 1991). Right, and the nineteen-hundreds started in 1900, but the 20th century started in 1901, and the 200th decade started in 1991. It just happens that we don't typically refer to decades ordinally. (Of course, these are all the Nth intervals *since the beginning of 1 CE*. We could just as easily talk about intervals since the beginning of 1 BCE. *That* second millenium ends in 23 days.) paul ###### From: Malcolm McMahon Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 18:22:34 +0000 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> <82lkni$o1v$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> <82lts5$nj2$1@autumn.news.rcn.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: pigsty.demon.co.uk X-NNTP-Posting-Host: pigsty.demon.co.uk:158.152.84.59 X-Trace: news.demon.co.uk 944677221 nnrp-03:2087 NO-IDENT pigsty.demon.co.uk:158.152.84.59 X-Complaints-To: abuse@demon.net X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.7/32.534 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 51 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!dispose.news.demon.net!demon!news.demon.co.uk!demon!pigsty.demon.co.uk!not-for-mail On Wed, 08 Dec 99 14:15:10 GMT, jmfbahciv@aol.com wrote: >> >>So you can: >> >> Add or subtract numbers of days to/from them. >> Subtract two dates to get a time interval. >> >>Try writing a routine to subtract two dd/mm/yyyy dates. It's messy >>(especially having to allow for leap years). > >Right. But that doesn't explain the count of days having to >have a common absolute zero. This implies that the raw data is >a date-time stamp. So when comparing two, one isn't really >interested in when that abolute zero was. > No, but remember this may be persistent data, stored in a file or database. And the dates being compared may originate on different systems. It makes life a lot easier if everyone agrees on an arbitary origin. >> >>This can only be achived by mapping time onto real or interger numbers >>and that necessitates chosing a zero. > >This choice of zero has to be recalculated everytime a system comes up. >I still think it's an aribitrary zero that really doesn't have >anything to do with the data. If you are recording as dd/mm/yyyy >the internal count is very uninteresting. Yes, it _is_ arbitary but it makes life easier if everyone uses the same arbitary origin date. >> >>>Why do internal date representations have to be a count of days >>>from some randomly picked date? Why was that 1970 date chosen >>>as the zeroeth day? >>> >> >>A round number less than any date which a Unix system will actually >>experience. >> >Nope. Picking that date was not Unix-unique. > It's been used on other than unix systems, sure, but I suspect it's origins are on unix systems and it's become an aribary standard with systems that have to communicate with unix systems. ###### From: Tim Shoppa Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 18:24:01 -0400 Organization: Trailing Edge Technology Lines: 37 Message-ID: <384EA240.798C8908@trailing-edge.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: timaxp.trailing-edge.com Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Trace: ffx2nh5.news.uu.net 944695535 11650 63.73.218.130 (8 Dec 1999 23:25:35 GMT) X-Complaints-To: news@ffx2nh5.news.uu.net NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Dec 1999 23:25:35 GMT X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.03Gold (X11; I; OpenVMS V7.0 DEC 3000 Model 300L) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!blackbush.xlink.net!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.mathworks.com!nntp-out.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!uunet!ffx.uu.net!ffx2nh5!not-for-mail Paul Jarc wrote: > > seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes: > > In article <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com>, > > Tim Shoppa wrote: > > >Note that many OS's that now have system components written in C > > >have troubles come Y2038, because C programmers always assume that > > >1-Jan-1970 00:00 is the base date, and that you've got 31 bits > > >to count up from there. > > > > No. C assumes nothing of the sort. > > Right, but Tim said that C *programmers* make these assumptions, so > he's probably right too. (Though I wouldn't have said "always".) There's lots of other things that C programmers almost always assume (and if you don't believe, see my posts to comp.arch in the past month where I was told I was being silly for assuming that these aren't always true): 1. A character is exactly 8 bits wide 2. Two's complement math is always used 3. Dereferencing a NULL pointer will yield a NULL (for some programmers) or a segmentation fault (for other programmers) 4. An int is the same width as a pointer and lots of other gotchas. I've been "gotcha'd" by all the above many times in my career porting supposedly "portable" C code. The only thing I now believe is that the only way to make portable C code is to have about 95% of the code inside #ifdefs for particular platforms. Tim. ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> <82lkni$o1v$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> Organization: Plethora . Net - More net, less spam! X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Lines: 83 Message-ID: <43z34.3739$Sz5.445658@ptah.visi.com> Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 20:19:12 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.166.146.8 X-Complaints-To: abuse@plethora.net X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 944684352 205.166.146.8 (Wed, 08 Dec 1999 14:19:12 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 14:19:12 CST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!ptah.visi.com!not-for-mail In article <82lkni$o1v$4@autumn.news.rcn.net>, wrote: >But it is an aspect of using a compiler. Compiler-thinking >people don't seem to consider the internal representation >of numbers. And that's by design because of this new-fangled >notion of transportability. When writing transportable code, >one isn't supposed to know about internal bits. Right. It's a *feature*. Of course, you're supposed to know some things when you *pick* a type - like "this holds all the numbers I need to represent". >Well, when we had the problem (1975), I asked the question why >the dates had to be a count in the first place. Nobody gave >me an answer. So, I'll ask it again. >Why do internal date representations have to be a count of days >from some randomly picked date? Why was that 1970 date chosen >as the zeroeth day? Well, it's not days, it's second. It was chosen because it was (however briefly) in the past, I believe. Why a count? Because this gives you very useful things: 1. Trivial comparisons of timestamps. 2. Guaranteed monotonically increasing values across the board. Let's compare code to sort by 'struct tm' with code to sort by 'time_t'. int tmcmp(void *t1, void *t2) { struct tm *tm1 = t1; struct tm *tm2 = t2; if (tm1->tm_year != tm2->tm_year) { return tm1->tm_year - tm2->tm_year; } if (tm1->tm_mon != tm2->tm_mon) { return tm1->tm_mon - tm2->tm_mon; } if (tm1->tm_mday != tm2->tm_mday) { return tm1->tm_mday - tm2->tm_mday; } if (tm1->tm_hour != tm2->tm_hour) { return tm1->tm_hour - tm2->tm_hour; } if (tm1->tm_min != tm2->tm_min) { return tm1->tm_min - tm2->tm_min; } if (tm1->tm_sec != tm2->tm_sec) { return tm1->tm_sec - tm2->tm_sec; } return 0; } int time_tcmp(void *t1, void *t2) { time_t *time1 = t1; time_t *time2 = t2; if (time1 > time2) { return 1; } else if (time1 < time2) { return -1; } return 0; } (you can't just subtract, because we don't know that the result makes sense as an int.) More generally, say you're doing inline comparisons; with time_t, you just say "if (t1 < t2)" and you're done. It's a set of tradeoffs, but I think that, at an underyling level, a count of ticks since some time is a logical and good way to measure time; you just need a broader range than is currently provided. -s -- Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon! Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/ Get paid to surf! No spam. http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=GZX636 ###### From: "Ronnie Clark" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 21:20:02 +0200 Organization: Loughborough University Lines: 20 Message-ID: <82mb6s$ncm$1@sun-cc204.lboro.ac.uk> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <384DF8BC.3AFE73D6@home.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: te-hall-student-119.lut.ac.uk X-Trace: sun-cc204.lboro.ac.uk 944680988 23958 131.231.244.119 (8 Dec 1999 19:23:08 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@lboro.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Dec 1999 19:23:08 GMT X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.1 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!blackbush.xlink.net!news0.de.colt.net!colt.net!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news5-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!server4.netnews.ja.net!server2.netnews.ja.net!sun-cc204.lboro.ac.uk!not-for-mail >> >What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are much more >> >pedantic than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually be a wide- >> >spread failure of computers and software *in 2001*. >> >> Since it's computer pedantry, wouldn't that be 2048? > >Why? Due to binary mathematics, 1 Kilobyte is NOT 1000 bytes, it is 1024 bytes. So two kilobytes is 2048 bytes. Therefore, 2KB=2,048Bytes and 2K=2048, and so Y2K = The year 2048. Ronnie (who hates boolean wibble and nonsence, but is forced, alas to understand it) -- And now for some gratuitous spam: Get paid to surf the net! http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=FJE591 ###### From: "Ronnie Clark" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Wed, 8 Dec 1999 21:22:49 +0200 Organization: Loughborough University Lines: 13 Message-ID: <82mb6t$ncm$2@sun-cc204.lboro.ac.uk> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <384DF86C.ED4020F5@home.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: te-hall-student-119.lut.ac.uk X-Trace: sun-cc204.lboro.ac.uk 944680989 23958 131.231.244.119 (8 Dec 1999 19:23:09 GMT) X-Complaints-To: usenet@lboro.ac.uk NNTP-Posting-Date: 8 Dec 1999 19:23:09 GMT X-Newsreader: Microsoft Outlook Express 4.72.3110.1 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V4.72.3110.3 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-lond.gip.net!news.gsl.net!gip.net!news5-gui.server.ntli.net!ntli.net!server4.netnews.ja.net!server2.netnews.ja.net!sun-cc204.lboro.ac.uk!not-for-mail >Tell me about it. I'm considering staying home with the cats and a >stack of _Adbusters_ in protest. I want to be daring, and begin to fly a GP orientated plane easterly over the international date-line just as 23:59:59 December 31st 1999 clocks up. Ronnie -- And now for some gratuitous spam: Get paid to surf the net! http://www.alladvantage.com/home.asp?refid=FJE591 ###### From: harper@mcs.vuw.ac.nz (John Harper) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 9 Dec 1999 02:06:58 GMT Organization: School of Math and Comp Sci, Victoria Uni. of Wellington, New Zealand. Lines: 16 Message-ID: <944705218.416350@bats.mcs.vuw.ac.nz> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <82lkni$o1v$4@autumn.news.rcn.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: bats.mcs.vuw.ac.nz Cache-Post-Path: bats.mcs.vuw.ac.nz!unknown@circa.mcs.vuw.ac.nz X-Cache: nntpcache 2.3.2.1 (see http://www.nntpcache.org/) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!newsfeed.icl.net!newspump.monmouth.com!newspeer.monmouth.com!newsfeed.clear.net.nz!news.telstra.net.nz!news.wlg.netlink.net.nz!harper In article , Malcolm McMahon wrote: > >Try writing a routine to subtract two dd/mm/yyyy dates. It's messy >(especially having to allow for leap years). A worse messiness (at least for those wanting to access really old data especially in USA) is having to allow for different dates of conversion from the Julian to the Gregorian calendar. It was 1752 for the Thirteen Colonies that were then British; it was earlier than that in the French or Spanish colonies (now CA? TX? FL? LA? ...); it was 1867 for AK; but when was it for HI? PR? American Samoa? Guam? John Harper, School of Mathematical and Computing Sciences, Victoria University, Wellington, New Zealand e-mail john.harper@vuw.ac.nz phone (+64)(4)463 5341 fax (+64)(4)463 5045 ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384EA240.798C8908@trailing-edge.com> Organization: Plethora . Net - More net, less spam! X-Newsreader: trn 4.0-test70 (17 January 1999) From: seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) Lines: 16 Message-ID: <78F34.3826$Sz5.465631@ptah.visi.com> Date: Thu, 09 Dec 1999 03:14:11 GMT NNTP-Posting-Host: 205.166.146.8 X-Complaints-To: abuse@plethora.net X-Trace: ptah.visi.com 944709251 205.166.146.8 (Wed, 08 Dec 1999 21:14:11 CST) NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 08 Dec 1999 21:14:11 CST Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!news-out.cwix.com!newsfeed.cwix.com!news.maxwell.syr.edu!hermes.visi.com!news-out.visi.com!ptah.visi.com!not-for-mail In article <384EA240.798C8908@trailing-edge.com>, Tim Shoppa wrote: >The only thing I now believe is that the only way to make portable >C code is to have about 95% of the code inside #ifdefs for particular >platforms. This is only true of badly written code. In fact, only a couple of the assumptions you refer to *ever* make sense; most of them, you should just avoid entirely. -s -- Copyright 1999, All rights reserved. Peter Seebach / seebs@plethora.net C/Unix wizard, Pro-commerce radical, Spam fighter. Boycott Spamazon! Consulting & Computers: http://www.plethora.net/ Get paid to surf! No spam. http://www.alladvantage.com/go.asp?refid=GZX636 ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics From: malcolm@geog.leeds.ac.uk (Malcolm McMahon) Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers X-Accept-Language: en Message-ID: <384F81B6.6C83BFDA@geog.leeds.ac.uk> NNTP-Posting-Host: aloo.leeds.ac.uk X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (WinNT; I) Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii MIME-Version: 1.0 Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 10:19:50 +0000 (GMT) References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <384D011A.79EC73A3@trailing-edge.com> <384EA240.798C8908@trailing-edge.com> Lines: 22 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newspeer.clara.net!news.clara.net!nntp.news.xara.net!xara.net!gxn.net!server6.netnews.ja.net!leeds.ac.uk!news Tim Shoppa wrote: > and lots of other gotchas. I've been "gotcha'd" by all the above > many times in my career porting supposedly "portable" C code. > > The only thing I now believe is that the only way to make portable > C code is to have about 95% of the code inside #ifdefs for particular > platforms. > You can avoid most of these problems by always using typedef types rather than basic variable types. Then the variation between systems can almost all be handled by variations in one header. A lot of the problems have been addressed with ANSI C and C++ anyhow. There's no excuse for storing pointers as integers since void * was introduced, for example. Malcolm ###### Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics From: engebret@sg1.cr.usgs.gov (Chris Engebretson) Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers X-Nntp-Posting-Host: sg1.cr.usgs.gov Message-ID: Sender: news@igsrsparc2.er.usgs.gov (Janet Walz (GD) x6739) Reply-To: engebret@sg1.cr.usgs.gov Organization: Raytheon Systems Company X-Newsreader: xrn 9.01 References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> Date: Thu, 9 Dec 1999 21:50:56 GMT Lines: 19 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!newsfeed.stanford.edu!info1.fnal.gov!sws1.ctd.ornl.gov!news.er.usgs.gov!sg1.cr.usgs.gov!engebret In article , seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes: |> What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are |> much more pedantic than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually |> be a widespread failure of computers and software *in 2001*. No, the failure of computers and software in "2001" was due to a machine psychosis brought on by being told to withhold information from the crew. HAL didn't know how to lie, but he was told to lie by people who find it very easy. The Y2K bug was unrelated. Daisy, Daisy, give me your answer, do .. -- Chris Engebretson - Raytheon Systems Company | Ph#: (605)594-6829 USGS EROS Data Center, Sioux Falls, SD 57198 | Fax: (605)594-6940 http://edcwww.cr.usgs.gov/ mailto:engebret@sg1.cr.usgs.gov Opinions are *not* those of Raytheon Systems Company or the USGS. ###### From: Dave Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 10 Dec 1999 01:25:34 -0600 Organization: Hey Pal - Organize This! Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.6/32.525 X-No-Archive: yes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!skynet.be!howland.erols.net!novia!sequencer.newscene.com!not-for-mail On Mon, 06 Dec 1999 10:24:36 -0500, Steve Golson wrote: >Happy tenth birthday to alt.folklore.computers! > >alt.folklore.computers was created in early December 1989, apparently >by Keenan Royle of Indiana University. > >My archive of a.f.c is currently about 500Mbytes uncompressed. It is >pretty complete, but if anyone has any posts to contribute, please let >me know. Also I'd appreciate any suggestions about how/where to make >this archive available to all. It should compress to around half that size. I would dearly love to get a copy of it, somehow! You could always RAR it into 5 meg or so pieces and upload it to alt.binaries.misc. Whatever you decide, be sure to announce it here! Dave ###### From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 09:06:24 -0700 Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.dot.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: <54g15s8k69j04pk5b5ptjce4u0evoj2ehv@4ax.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.7/32.534 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.148.141.96 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.148.141.96 X-Trace: 10 Dec 1999 09:06:25 -0700, 207.148.141.96 Lines: 89 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.50.1.43 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.idt.net!nntp.cadvision.com!news.cadvision.com!207.148.141.96 On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 11:05:13 -0400, Tim Shoppa wrote: >Peter Seebach wrote: >> >> In article <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34>, >> Dave Hansen wrote: >> >On Tue, 07 Dec 1999 04:43:19 GMT, seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) >> >wrote: >> >[...] >> >>What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are much more pedantic >> >>than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually be a widespread failure of >> >>computers and software *in 2001*. >> >> >Since it's computer pedantry, wouldn't that be 2048? >> >> No, they were programmed by people. > >At least, if the trend towards Unix continues, all the computer >systems would've crashed horribly in 2038 anyway. Unix may be one >of the worst things that ever happened to computing, but at least >it has a self-imposed expiration date. > >19-Jan-2038 03:14:07 GMT is when the Unix 32-bit time >word overflows into the sign bit and becomes negative. With >most modern Unices, the kernels keep on running all >right, but anything that does a signed compare >on the time word dies horribly - and this involves everything from >your favorite windowing system to networking. > >Most Unix/C geeks will tell you that to fix this problem - or at >least delay the nastiness till 2106 - you go into the system headers >and make the time word be an unsigned 32-bit int. These geeks >are to be likened to those who thought Y2K would be as simple as >"change the year field definitions and recompile". > >And don't get me started about folks who talk about 64-bit time >words as being the "real" solution. There's too many filesystems >and databases and other *files* out there that assume that the >time word will always fit into 32 bits. > >Tim. IMHO the real problems are no Standard date handling functions that avoid time_t except when intervals need to be generated: no Standard date parsing function (strptime() or getdate()) to insulate programmers from converting strings to times, and forcing them to use the rest of the Standard date handling routines, resulting in many botched date handling routines IME; most date handling routines I have seen use sscanf() and simple minded code that is lucky if it can handle the dates in any year properly; the C library mktime() conversions from struct tm to time_t that speed up the process using a binary search thru the assumed 31 bit time_t space; this assumption pervades the rest of the library routines, so that you can't rely on them outside the range 1970-2038 (some support 1970-2038, 1902-2038, or 1970-2106); extremely slow library functions when L10N (localization), I18N or NLS is supported: one commercial Unix system I worked on was 30,000 times slower using C library function calls than making database calls to a stored procedure to perform the same work on the same system! I did not bother tracing the cause, because I did not have the source code available to fix, but the only cause I could come up with was that the functions went out and read and interpreted the (proprietary precompiled) locale file on every conversion to or from strings, without checking to see if the locale had changed. I ended up using database calls instead of C library functions to handle dates. And the database worked with dates between -/+4700 years at least (may have been good for -/+9999 years) with one second resolution. Dennis, Peter, Bill, Jim, anyone working with standards -- remove date handling catastrophes, nuisances and bugs from the folklore and isolate programmers from dates by adding some decent comprehensive date handling to the Standard before a.f.c reaches 20 and long before Y2.04K! Not every programmer has been playing with dates since they read Al Koran's Master Memory Tricks booklet in the fourth grade, although I believe they should be forced to, before being allowed to treat dates as anything but totally opaque types. Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada -- Brian_Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) use address above to reply ###### From: Brian Inglis Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Fri, 10 Dec 1999 09:06:25 -0700 Organization: Systematic Software Reply-To: Brian.dot.Inglis@SystematicSw.ab.ca Message-ID: <1cg15sc0lprg115prrq1o1rc3lb1tnfeni@4ax.com> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.7/32.534 MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.148.141.96 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 207.148.141.96 X-Trace: 10 Dec 1999 09:06:27 -0700, 207.148.141.96 Lines: 13 X-Original-NNTP-Posting-Host: 204.50.1.43 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!remarQ-easT!remarQ.com!supernews.com!feeder.qis.net!newsfeed.nyu.edu!nntp.cadvision.com!news.cadvision.com!207.148.141.96 On 6 Dec 99 16:05:30 GMT, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) wrote: [snip] >Fri.31.Dec.1999 23:59 GMT is the cut-off point for inclusion in ^^^^ 2000-12-13T23:59:59 for an ISO millenium >all manner of Doomsday Books and archival CD-Roms of the outgoing ^^^^^^^^ Domesday Book -- a census or catalogue >millennium, not to mention time capsules and spatial propagations. Thanks. Take care, Brian Inglis Calgary, Alberta, Canada -- Brian_Inglis@CSi.com (Brian dot Inglis at SystematicSw dot ab dot ca) use address above to reply ###### Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!usenet From: Neil Franklin Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt. memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 10 Dec 1999 21:45:31 +0100 Organization: My own Private Self Lines: 15 Sender: neil@chonsp.franklin.ch Message-ID: <6u3dtale38.fsf@chonsp.franklin.ch> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <1cg15sc0lprg115prrq1o1rc3lb1tnfeni@4ax.com> X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.3/Emacs 19.34 Brian Inglis writes: > > On 6 Dec 99 16:05:30 GMT, uj797@victoria.tc.ca (Arthur T. Murray) > wrote: > [snip] > >Fri.31.Dec.1999 23:59 GMT is the cut-off point for inclusion in > ^^^^ 2000-12-13T23:59:59 for an ISO millenium ^^ Methinks, you are missing 18 days here. If you want to nitpick, then... -- Neil Franklin, neil@franklin.ch.remove http://neil.franklin.ch/ ###### From: Lou Poppler Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 11 Dec 1999 06:38:13 GMT Organization: Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong Lines: 13 Message-ID: <82srgl$gr1$1@server1.powernet.net> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384d2301.685685984@192.168.2.34> <03a34.2665$Sz5.394547@ptah.visi.com> <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> Reply-To: lwp@mail.msen.com NNTP-Posting-Host: aa-01-ppp69.reno.powernet.net Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!rz.uni-karlsruhe.de!blackbush.xlink.net!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!news-out.uswest.net!uunet!ffx.uu.net!news2.reno.powernet.net!not-for-mail In alt.folklore.computers Malcolm McMahon wrote: : The real question is, what are we going to call the next decade? You can : call, say, 1980-1989 the eighties and that sounds OK, but what do you : call 2000-2009? The zeros? Sounds aweful. Since another name for zero is "naught", I suggest: the naughties. -- Lou Poppler http://www.msen.com/~lwp/ It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles. -- G. B. Shaw ###### From: "Charlie Gibbs" Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 11 Dec 99 21:00:48 -0800 Organization: http://extra.newsguy.com Lines: 21 Message-ID: <802.14T2410T12605359@sky.bus.com> References: <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <82srgl$gr1$1@server1.powernet.net> NNTP-Posting-Host: p-944.newsdawg.com X-Newsreader: THOR 2.5a (Amiga;TCP/IP) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.mathworks.com!pln-e!spln!extra.newsguy.com!newsp.newsguy.com!news2 In article <82srgl$gr1$1@server1.powernet.net> lwp@mail.msen.com (Lou Poppler) writes: >In alt.folklore.computers Malcolm McMahon >wrote: > >: The real question is, what are we going to call the next decade? >: You can call, say, 1980-1989 the eighties and that sounds OK, but >: what do you call 2000-2009? The zeros? Sounds aweful. > >Since another name for zero is "naught", I suggest: the naughties. Surely this problem has already been solved: what did people say a hundred years ago? We had the "Gay Nineties" (my, how the meaning of that word has changed between then and the current "gay nineties" :-), so people were obviously doing two-digit abbreviations back then. -- cgibbs@sky.bus.com (Charlie Gibbs) Remove the first period after the "at" sign to reply. ###### From: jvarela@mind-spring.com (John Varela) Newsgroups: comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 12 Dec 1999 22:02:51 GMT Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Lines: 18 Message-ID: References: <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <82srgl$gr1$1@server1.powernet.net> <802.14T2410T12605359@sky.bus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: a5.f7.51.4c Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: ProNews/2 Version 1.50 Beta 1 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!newsfeed.ision.net!ision!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!news.mindspring.net!firehose.mindspring.com!not-for-mail On Sun, 12 Dec 1999 05:00:48, "Charlie Gibbs" wrote: > >Since another name for zero is "naught", I suggest: the naughties. > > Surely this problem has already been solved: what did people say > a hundred years ago? We had the "Gay Nineties" (my, how the meaning > of that word has changed between then and the current "gay nineties" > :-), so people were obviously doing two-digit abbreviations back then. I think they referred to individual years as ought one, ought two, etc., but when it came to naming the decade they copped out and referred to it as Edwardian, since Edward VII conveniently reigned 1901-10. -- John "anyone for Charlesian?" Varela to e-mail, remove - between mind and spring ###### From: Paul Jarc Newsgroups: comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 15 Dec 1999 19:20:12 -0500 Organization: What did you have in mind? A short, blunt, human pyramid? Lines: 17 Message-ID: References: <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <82srgl$gr1$1@server1.powernet.net> <802.14T2410T12605359@sky.bus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: multivac.student.cwru.edu X-Newsreader: Gnus v5.5/Emacs 20.3 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!newsfeed.mathworks.com!newsfeed.enteract.com!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!usenet.INS.CWRU.Edu!not-for-mail jvarela@mind-spring.com (John Varela) writes: > On Sun, 12 Dec 1999 05:00:48, "Charlie Gibbs" > wrote: > > Surely this problem has already been solved: what did people say > > a hundred years ago? > > I think they referred to individual years as ought one, ought two, > etc., Only mistakenly. It was "nineteen naught one", etc., but the "n"s ran together and when the "nineteen" was elided, the other "n" went with it. "Naught one", etc., would be more proper. The same thing happens with, e.g., "another": instead of "a whole other", we often say "a whole 'nother". paul ###### From: simotit@evitech.fi (Simo Tuominen) Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Thu, 16 Dec 1999 18:36:30 GMT Organization: Dis-, if any. Lines: 20 Message-ID: <385665ad.106265832@nnrp.funet.fi> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: dialin-0-02.evitech.fi X-Newsreader: Forte Free Agent 1.11/32.235 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!news.datacomm.ch!newscore.gigabell.net!news.ndh.net!newsfeed.tli.de!newsfeed1.swip.net!swipnet!newsfeed2.funet.fi!news2.funet.fi!not-for-mail On Thu, 9 Dec 1999 21:50:56 GMT, engebret@sg1.cr.usgs.gov (Chris Engebretson) wrote: >In article , > seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes: > >|> What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are >|> much more pedantic than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually >|> be a widespread failure of computers and software *in 2001*. > >No, the failure of computers and software in "2001" was due to a >machine psychosis brought on by being told to withhold information >from the crew. HAL didn't know how to lie, but he was told to lie >by people who find it very easy. The Y2K bug was unrelated. Actually, HAL was told to ensure the success of the journey, and that the crew might prevent success. Ergo, to maximize the probability of success, get rid of the crew. Besides, we *know* that HAL was able to lie (unless it was the result of the logical mess). Remember module AE-35. ###### From: jvarela@mind-spring.com (John Varela) Newsgroups: soc.history.science,alt.memetics,alt.folklore.computers,comp.society.futures Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 17 Dec 1999 02:31:39 GMT Organization: MindSpring Enterprises Lines: 22 Message-ID: References: <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <82srgl$gr1$1@server1.powernet.net> <802.14T2410T12605359@sky.bus.com> NNTP-Posting-Host: a5.f7.50.ba Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit X-Newsreader: ProNews/2 Version 1.50 Beta 1 Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news-ge.switch.ch!enews.sgi.com!newsfeed.mathworks.com!feeder.qis.net!cpk-news-hub1.bbnplanet.com!news.gtei.net!firehose.mindspring.com!not-for-mail On Thu, 16 Dec 1999 00:20:12, Paul Jarc wrote: > jvarela@mind-spring.com (John Varela) writes: > > On Sun, 12 Dec 1999 05:00:48, "Charlie Gibbs" > > wrote: > > > Surely this problem has already been solved: what did people say > > > a hundred years ago? > > > > I think they referred to individual years as ought one, ought two, > > etc., > > Only mistakenly. It was "nineteen naught one", etc., but the "n"s ran > together and when the "nineteen" was elided, the other "n" went with > it. "Naught one", etc., would be more proper. The same thing happens > with, e.g., "another": instead of "a whole other", we often say "a > whole 'nother". For aught I know you may be correct. -- John "a napron, a norange, who cares" Varela to e-mail, remove - between mind and spring ###### From: Dave Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 16 Dec 1999 20:56:57 -0600 Organization: Hey Pal - Organize This! Lines: 21 Message-ID: References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <385665ad.106265832@nnrp.funet.fi> X-Newsreader: Forte Agent 1.6/32.525 X-No-Archive: yes MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!uunet!ams.uu.net!grolier!news-spur1.maxwell.syr.edu!news.maxwell.syr.edu!newsfeed.berkeley.edu!newsfeed.stanford.edu!novia!sequencer.newscene.com!not-for-mail On Thu, 16 Dec 1999 18:36:30 GMT, simotit@evitech.fi (Simo Tuominen) wrote: >>No, the failure of computers and software in "2001" was due to a >>machine psychosis brought on by being told to withhold information >>from the crew. HAL didn't know how to lie, but he was told to lie >>by people who find it very easy. The Y2K bug was unrelated. > >Actually, HAL was told to ensure the success of the journey, and that >the crew might prevent success. Ergo, to maximize the probability of >success, get rid of the crew. Besides, we *know* that HAL was able to >lie (unless it was the result of the logical mess). Remember module >AE-35. That was the lie the started the psychosis! Check out 2010, it's all explained there. In fact, the line above " HAL didn't know how to lie, but he was told to lie by people who find it very easy" is a direct quote from the book/movie. Dave ###### From: Larry Wolff Newsgroups: comp.society.futures,soc.history.science,alt.memetics,alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 23:57:42 -0600 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit References: <384CE9E9.61B17D5D@trailing-edge.com> <82srgl$gr1$1@server1.powernet.net> <802.14T2410T12605359@sky.bus.com> X-Posted-Path-Was: not-for-mail X-Accept-Language: en Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-ELN-Date: 29 Dec 1999 05:57:23 GMT X-ELN-Insert-Date: Tue Dec 28 22:05:04 1999 Organization: AustinHelpdesk.com Lines: 21 Mime-Version: 1.0 NNTP-Posting-Host: cs2892-21.austin.rr.com Message-ID: <3869A2D5.D606CC77@austin.rr.com> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.7 [en] (WinNT; U) Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!news.ifi.unizh.ch!newsfeed.rhein-neckar.de!news.rhein-neckar.de!news-kar1.dfn.de!news-han1.dfn.de!news.fh-hannover.de!news-FFM2.ecrc.net!europa.netcrusader.net!207.172.3.37!feed1.news.rcn.net!rcn!newsfeed1.earthlink.net!nntp.earthlink.net!posted-from-earthlink!not-for-mail So if 1901 was "Nought One" then is 2001 "Twat One?" Paul Jarc wrote: > jvarela@mind-spring.com (John Varela) writes: > > On Sun, 12 Dec 1999 05:00:48, "Charlie Gibbs" > > wrote: > > > Surely this problem has already been solved: what did people say > > > a hundred years ago? > > > > I think they referred to individual years as ought one, ought two, > > etc., > > Only mistakenly. It was "nineteen naught one", etc., but the "n"s ran > together and when the "nineteen" was elided, the other "n" went with > it. "Naught one", etc., would be more proper. The same thing happens > with, e.g., "another": instead of "a whole other", we often say "a > whole 'nother". > > paul ###### From: Eric Chomko Newsgroups: alt.folklore.computers Subject: Re: Ten years of alt.folklore.computers Date: 29 Dec 1999 17:19:29 GMT Organization: IDT Internet Services Lines: 32 Message-ID: <84dfr1$g69@nnrp1.farm.idt.net> References: <384BD534.26B90954@trilobyte.com> <384bdeca.0@news.victoria.tc.ca> <775.9T2569T8785410@sky.bus.com> <385665ad.106265832@nnrp.funet.fi> NNTP-Posting-Host: u3.farm.idt.net X-Newsreader: TIN [UNIX 1.3 unoff BETA release 961025] Path: chonsp.franklin.ch!pfaff.ethz.ch!news-zh.switch.ch!newsfeed-zh.ip-plus.net!news.ip-plus.net!News.Amsterdam.UnisourceCS!newspeer.te.net!news.indigo.ie!diablo.theplanet.net!newsfeed.wirehub.nl!howland.erols.net!news.idt.net!nntp.farm.idt.net!u3.farm.idt.net!not-for-mail Simo Tuominen wrote: : On Thu, 9 Dec 1999 21:50:56 GMT, engebret@sg1.cr.usgs.gov (Chris : Engebretson) wrote: : >In article , : > seebs@plethora.net (Peter Seebach) writes: : > : >|> What I'm expecting is to discover that, since computers are : >|> much more pedantic than most people, the "Y2K" bug will actually : >|> be a widespread failure of computers and software *in 2001*. : > : >No, the failure of computers and software in "2001" was due to a : >machine psychosis brought on by being told to withhold information : >from the crew. HAL didn't know how to lie, but he was told to lie : >by people who find it very easy. The Y2K bug was unrelated. : Actually, HAL was told to ensure the success of the journey, and that : the crew might prevent success. Ergo, to maximize the probability of : success, get rid of the crew. Besides, we *know* that HAL was able to : lie (unless it was the result of the logical mess). Remember module : AE-35. Is the original poster talking about the movie 2001 or the year and the potenial for the millenium bug to actually have an eefect on us a year after we thought? I'll answer it as the latter as the movie has been hashed and re-hashed here already. The worry is that programmers will make quick and diryt fixes to handle Y2K that will not handle Y2K+1. I think both are overblown. If you're not Y2K compliant as a business then you deserve to fold, IMO. Eric