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[email protected] · January 5th 16, 07:34 PM posted to uk.transport.london

In article , d () wrote:

On Tue, 5 Jan 2016 11:21:09 +0000 (UTC)
Peter CS wrote:
Dr J R Stockton wrote in
. invalid:

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.

In a back end system certainly. In a smartcard with perhaps only a
few KB of RAM possibly not.

The time when dates had to be so compressed passed before the advent of
smartcards, believe me.

--
Colin Rosenstiel