Y2K+10 problems

15 years ago

I find this quite unbelievable, considering all the palava we went through for the Y2K cavalcade, but it seems that many systems around the world have been crashing or doing bizarre things once the first of January 2010 came around.

Firstly we have Australians in the north of the country unable to use their debit and credit cards because the Bank of Queensland's systems think it's actually 2016 and therefore every card has expired (article).

Then we have a set of German banks, not including Deutsche Bank, where something similar is happening: their systems aren't recognizing 2010 as a valid date (article).

Following that up, we have Symantec getting caught out with a 2010 bug all of their very own, meaning that their Endpoint Protection Manager (SEPM) no longer accepts any updates from 31st December 2009 (article)

Just to make sure that we're on our toes, SpamAssassin is rejecting valid email because the date is in 2010 and marking it as spam.

Surely, using dates and date algorithms in computer programs is a solved problem. Isn't it?

Posted via email from Julian's posterous

Tue 5-Jan-2010 7:15 PM posterous / tags: no tags given
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5 Responses

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#1 Andrew Denton said...
06-Jan-10 7:14 AM

You would indeed think so, Julian. However, I would venture that a large proportion of developers/programmers/CallThemWhatYouWill care little for their craft (or even see it as such). Those that care about code quality tend to produce good quality code, those that don't... well the results speak for themselves.

julian m bucknall avatar
#2 julian m bucknall said...
06-Jan-10 7:19 AM

Andrew: There was a jokey comment on The Register that said that a lot of code was "fixed" for Y2K by using an if statement: if (year < 10) add 2000 else add 1900. Somehow, as you say, I can imagine that "fix" being used in a lot of places...

Cheers, Julian

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#3 Dustin Campbell said...
06-Jan-10 8:46 PM

Really, shouldn't it be called Y2KX?

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#4 Marcel Popescu said...
08-Jan-10 1:17 AM

"Surely, using dates and date algorithms in computer programs is a solved problem. Isn't it?"

You must not have read Jon Skeet's article, then :)

msmvps.com/.../omg-ponies-aka-

julian m bucknall avatar
#5 julian m bucknall said...
08-Jan-10 10:51 AM

Marcel: Heh, I hadn't seen that article: how so very true.

Cheers, Julian

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