| From: | Brett Borger <bxb121@***.EDU> |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Re: Real-Life Computing ... |
| Date: | Wed, 27 May 1998 10:48:43 +0000 |
>
> The whole problem has been blown *way* out of proportion. I expect
> that the most interesting thing happening on Jan 1, 2000 will be lots
> of people getting drunk and watching the big apple drop. :-/
For the individual the problem has been blown out of proportion, but
corporations are panicing. a LOT of corporate Db's are
OLD....written in COBOL or proprietary languages, running on PDP-11's
or something older, held together with ducktape...They can't just
"change the date", and their DB's start dying left and right when
inventories etc. are screwed.
To bring this On-topic, here is my question: How much information,
assuming it was protected from the crash of '29, could be transfered
to the matrix?
Here's why: For most Y2K fixes, they can't change the Database, so
they cheat...they modify the program that interprets the database to
regard dates "before" a trigger date as 20xx, and after as 19xx.
(where I work, this is 39, but I imagine different places have
different dates). What if someone, say....BMW, had a huge database
of information regarding their design research over the last hundred
years...and when they "fixed" it, they chose a date of...."60".
Thus, in 2060, the bloody thing crashes again. And likely, only a
few people remember that this was built into their system. Anything
that nails S-K where it hurts sounds like great material for a run.
Potential Problems with this thought:
1) The info would have been trashed in the Crash
-Lots of companies didn't lose EVERYTHING...and if this was an old
database, I'm willing to bet it wasn't "connected". Since BMW was
still powerful after the crash, I'll assume this survived.
2) They couldn't transfer it to the Matrix
-Your guess is as good as mine. I say they did. Perhaps they hired
a special programming/hardware team to transfer it, because this
database was so important to them.
3) They would have fixed the problem when they transferred it
-No problem. Maybe they had too much trouble trying to get through
the spaghetti code of the Y2K fix on top of the original spaghetti
code. Maybe they only had executables that they didn't bother to
disassemble and examine in great detail beyond doing their job. This
is the kind of stuff that the players have to learn.
4) It would be easy to fix once it was on the Matrix.
-I'm GM, I say it wouldn't be. Complaints? (sound of a distant
"mooing" and whistling sound)
Comments?
-=SwiftOne=-
Brett Borger
SwiftOne@***.edu
AAP Techie
