On Tue, 5 Jan 2016 11:21:09 +0000 (UTC)
Peter CS wrote:
Dr J R Stockton wrote in news:d6s+
:

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.

--
Spud

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

On 05/01/2016 19:34, wrote:
In article , d () wrote:


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.


Not true - when you are dealing with billions of transactions and/or
millions of smart cards whose cost is proportionate to the storage on
them there is still pressure to minimise the space that data occupies

In article , (Someone
Somewhere) wrote:

On 05/01/2016 19:34, wrote:
In article , d ()
wrote:

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.

Not true - when you are dealing with billions of transactions and/or
millions of smart cards whose cost is proportionate to the storage on
them there is still pressure to minimise the space that data occupies

Not to that extent. They learnt something from Y2K.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

On 06/01/2016 15:01, wrote:
In article , (Someone
Somewhere) wrote:

On 05/01/2016 19:34, wrote:
In article , d ()
wrote:


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

Not true - when you are dealing with billions of transactions and/or
millions of smart cards whose cost is proportionate to the storage on
them there is still pressure to minimise the space that data occupies

Not to that extent. They learnt something from Y2K.

As it's panto season "oh no they didn't"