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Peter CS · January 5th 16, 11:21 AM posted to uk.transport.london

Dr J R Stockton wrote in news:d6s+
lid:

In uk.transport.london message , Sat, 2
Jan 2016 16:58:52, Richard J. posted:

You mean there was a very similar incident 16 years ago? But what is
special about 1/1/2016 compared to 1/1/2015, 1/1/2014, etc?

It is the first year 20xx for which xx cannot be stored in four bits.

If memory space was limited in a system designed a decade ago, someone
might have chosen to use just four bits for the variable part of the
year, thinking "Well, I'll not be in this job in 2016, ha ha!".

The certainly was a time when saving 4 bits in a date would be worthwhile,
but by 1999 we'd got beyond that, I hope.

During a particularly wearisome Y2K fix job one of my team remarked that
we'd better allow for 5-digit years or we'd have to do the whole thing
again in 8000 years' time.

Peter