You need to qualify your statement about Y2K being fear mongering. People saying all technology would stop (think planes crashing out of the sky) were clearly fear mongering or conspiracy theorists. People saying certain financial systems needed to be updated so loans didn’t suddenly go from the year 1,999 to 19,100 or back to 1900 were not fear mongering. It’s only because of a significant amount of work done by IT folks that we have the luxury of looking back and saying it was fear mongering.
Look at this Wikipedia page for documented errors. One in particular was at a nuclear power plant. They were testing their fix but accidentally applied the new date to the actual equipment. It caused the system to crash. It took seven hours to get back up and they had to use obsolete equipment to monitor conditions until then. Presumably if the patch wasn’t applied this would happen at midnight on January 1st 2000 too.
Y2K was a real problem that needed real fixes. It just wasn’t an apocalyptic scenario.
Planes crashing out of the sky wouldn’t have been inconceivable. Say you have two air traffic control systems that are synchronizing - one handles dates with a modulo 100 (00-99, i.e. 1900-1999), another handles them in epoch time. All of a sudden the two reported time + positions of two different planes don’t match up by a century, and collision projection software doesn’t work right. I’ve seen nastier bugs than that, in terms of conceptual failure.
At no point is that a theory about a “conspiracy” either, IDK why you’re bandying that term around.
At no point is that a theory about a “conspiracy” either, IDK why you’re bandying that term around.
Conspiracy is probably the wrong term. What I mean is that some (keyword: some) predictions were quite extreme and apocalyptic. See the fringe group response section for examples of what I was trying to convey.
The New York Times reported in late 1999, “The Rev. Jerry Falwell suggested that Y2K would be the confirmation of Christian prophecy – God’s instrument to shake this nation, to humble this nation. The Y2K crisis might incite a worldwide revival that would lead to the rapture of the church. Along with many survivalists, Mr. Falwell advised stocking up on food and guns”.
That’s what I meant by the sort of “conspiratorial” response. Maybe I should reword my post to make it more clear?
You need to qualify your statement about Y2K being fear mongering. People saying all technology would stop (think planes crashing out of the sky) were clearly fear mongering or conspiracy theorists. People saying certain financial systems needed to be updated so loans didn’t suddenly go from the year 1,999 to 19,100 or back to 1900 were not fear mongering. It’s only because of a significant amount of work done by IT folks that we have the luxury of looking back and saying it was fear mongering.
Look at this Wikipedia page for documented errors. One in particular was at a nuclear power plant. They were testing their fix but accidentally applied the new date to the actual equipment. It caused the system to crash. It took seven hours to get back up and they had to use obsolete equipment to monitor conditions until then. Presumably if the patch wasn’t applied this would happen at midnight on January 1st 2000 too.
Y2K was a real problem that needed real fixes. It just wasn’t an apocalyptic scenario.
Planes crashing out of the sky wouldn’t have been inconceivable. Say you have two air traffic control systems that are synchronizing - one handles dates with a modulo 100 (00-99, i.e. 1900-1999), another handles them in epoch time. All of a sudden the two reported time + positions of two different planes don’t match up by a century, and collision projection software doesn’t work right. I’ve seen nastier bugs than that, in terms of conceptual failure.
At no point is that a theory about a “conspiracy” either, IDK why you’re bandying that term around.
Conspiracy is probably the wrong term. What I mean is that some (keyword: some) predictions were quite extreme and apocalyptic. See the fringe group response section for examples of what I was trying to convey.
That’s what I meant by the sort of “conspiratorial” response. Maybe I should reword my post to make it more clear?