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Obviously a system can only do what it was designed to do...
In that case, wouldn't faulty "instructions," such as "these two numbers for
the year always have a '19' in front of them" be considered a bug?
I humbly reply
From what I was taught in school (yes, I went to school to learn computer
stuff...) the Y2K issue was not a fault in the programming, it was a lack of
foresight. Because the computer industry changes so fast, and new hardware
is old as soon as it's on the shelf, the programmers of the systems that
will have the date problem just didn't think anyone would still be using the
machines by the year 2000.
Think of it in terms of a sci fi writer who assumed we'd be living on the
moon by now - they overshot, while mainframe (etc.)creaters and programmers
undershot.
And just as an interesting point, I seem to remember a computer maven saying
(in the early 80s) that (loosely quoted) 'no one will EVER need more than
640K of memory' - hence the problem with DOS that eventually brought us Win
95.
Lisa Comeau
Ontario, Canada
"I love to dance in the light of the TECHWR-L flames...it makes me feel
free..."
-attributed to a crazy techwhirler singed to death on afternoon in May
