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!".


--
(c) John Stockton, Surrey, UK. Turnpike v6.05 MIME.
Merlyn Web Site - FAQish topics, acronyms, & links.

Dr J R Stockton wrote:
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!".

Well, as we soon learned, the problem wasn't any sort of Y2K issue. But in
any case, Y2K type bugs date from software designed 40 or more years ago,
when every byte mattered; Oyster is far too recent for the designers to
have been trying to save microscopic amounts of memory.

In article id,
lid (Dr J R Stockton) wrote:

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!".

I think they'd learned that lesson before the millennium.

--
Colin Rosenstiel

In message
-sept
ember.org, at 23:52:54 on Mon, 4 Jan 2016, Recliner
remarked:
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!".

Well, as we soon learned, the problem wasn't any sort of Y2K issue. But in
any case, Y2K type bugs date from software designed 40 or more years ago,

Nope, plenty of things which actually failed were much more recent than
that.

when every byte mattered; Oyster is far too recent for the designers to
have been trying to save microscopic amounts of memory.

That doesn't explain why the NCT Smartcards broke on 1/1/2006.
--
Roland Perry

On 03/01/2016 17:32, Paul Corfield wrote:

Paul, thanks for your explanation.

Well far too many people were getting ridiculously excited about "free
travel" - it was all over Twitter. By the time the excitement reached
fever pitch the fault had been fixed.

I wonder how they brought the system back up - I assumed that there
would have been quite a number travelling using Oyster who didn't have
their card read on entry who would have been expected to touch out after
the system came back up, thereby getting an unresolved journey and a
hefty penalty. I haven't heard any howls of protest about that
occurring so maybe it didn't. Or maybe lots of people get unresolved
journeys so often and are rich enough that they simply don't care?


--
Clive Page

On Tue, 5 Jan 2016 09:54:33 +0000
Clive Page wrote:
On 03/01/2016 17:32, Paul Corfield wrote:

Paul, thanks for your explanation.

Well far too many people were getting ridiculously excited about "free
travel" - it was all over Twitter. By the time the excitement reached
fever pitch the fault had been fixed.

I wonder how they brought the system back up - I assumed that there
would have been quite a number travelling using Oyster who didn't have
their card read on entry who would have been expected to touch out after
the system came back up, thereby getting an unresolved journey and a
hefty penalty. I haven't heard any howls of protest about that
occurring so maybe it didn't. Or maybe lots of people get unresolved
journeys so often and are rich enough that they simply don't care?

Apparently they'll get a refund. Whether it'll happen or not is anyones guess.
If it had been me I'd have just gone to the guy at the gate and explained the
situation and refuse to touch out.

--
Spud

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

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 02/01/2016 11:44, Roland Perry wrote:

In message , at 11:00:45 on Sat, 2 Jan 2016,
Peter Smyth remarked:

The free travel ended at 0430 1st Jan and there weren't any reports of
problems yesterday.

That's a good point. I was expecting the free travel to have been all
day on the 1st.

Why? It's been 2345 NYE to 0430 NYD for years and years and years.