Re: Y2K heads up - is this trouble??? -- MIDRANGE-L

People like to use short hand.  I like to use "Dec 4" & leave the year off 
entirely.
But then different people like to use different systems & they like to 
communicate with each other.

> From: keg@exchange.gasco.com (Graap, Ken)
>  
>  I think if everyone just used mm/dd/yyyy format, there wouldn't be an 
> issue
>  .... 02/03/2001 can only mean one thing....
>  
>  Kenneth

Is the original poster (Joel Stone) a programmer, a manager, a user, or a 
comedian?  
No offense intended.  I just seek a vision of how you came to the notion that 
this kind of problem might be connected to Y2K.

Once upon a time there was no confusion.  Everyone in any given enterprise 
knew what the rule was for that company, and then along came Y2K & "educated 
then" and now we have confusion.  Also there is e-business such that if we 
truly want international visitors to our web sites, our software had better 
have a standard for screen input (MM/DD/YYYY) or whatever any place they 
enter a date by other than click on button & select pieces of the date.

Although the software should verify date keyed in is a valid date, when we 
have these 01/02/03 ambiguities, there is a risk that some users will key in 
a wrong valid date, so the interface with user also needs to make sure the 
information is there about what format should be keyed in.

The original Y2K mess was a collection of technical messes that most 
non-technical people did not understand, so we had misleading stories about 
what probably would go wrong & what were the problems with various ways to 
resolve them.  

Now assuming we are working with good software that checks clerical person 
input to see if a date that is being keyed is a valid date, the people who 
work for any given company with any software package should know that 99% of 
our software requires human communication with the computer in the form 
MM/DD/YY and there are some exceptions for particular applications that need 
YY/MM/DD.

There is always the fear of bugs, such that some software is not correctly in 
sync with the window system that we are currently using in which 2039 is the 
end of our universe & 1940 is the beginning, but the window can be moved.  
During Y2K testing where we would do a date FROM 1996 TO 2003 but key in 96 
to 03, a lot of people got confused with how the software was supposed to 
work.

If your software is not doing a competent job of checking that dates are 
valid, you have bigger problems than knowing what is the right date.

If you have significant volume of data from users in which you cannot trust 
them to key the right stuff, then you have an internal corporate education 
problem.

In e-commerce it is not unusual to be in communication with people who march 
to a different set of band music, such as DD/MM/YY and so long as you know 
what they are doing, the idea that there might be some confusing dates is not 
a new phenomena, you just need to know what the standards are of the various 
places you do business with, and this is a standard piece of research info 
for people writing conversion software.

So when there are people using data & they do not know what the standards are 
for that data, that is not a technical issue like the original Y2K ... I 
think it really needs a different label.

>  If a clerk is given a date of 01/03/02, he may key 2002 today and 2001
>  tomorrow, depending on what he was doing a few minutes before or how close
>  he is paying attention, etc!

Since time immemorial we have had an el typo issue in the immediate vicinity 
of year changes & with some people also month changes, perhaps I should call 
it "el dato" errors.  They are keying in orders with due dates of next month 
& sometimes forget that next month is next year, or are keying in data 
deliberately past due at time of entry & make a mistake with month or year.  
Sometimes there is a need for an "are you sure" 
the date you are keying in is past due ... to do so is a corporate policy 
issue regarding notification of various people.
the date you are keying in is further away from today than the usual 
standard, it might be a keying error
Well input software should not be harrassing people whose job requires entry 
of a lot of date exceptions & who are not the el dato data entry folks.
This is an issue of managing data to find suspicious input - how best to do 
it.

There are many messes to divert the media.  
I do not know "What is REAL NEWS." anymore.

Is the US economy really in trouble?  Or are the stock market pundits working 
with yet another theory to explain what can not be explained?

Doing Business in some European countries, according to the Praxis newsletter 
that I got this weekend, laws require that prices be displayed in BOTH the 
EURO and the particular national currency, but some do not translate 
correctly.  One example in the newsletter, which I can forward you if you 
want the whole thing (8 pages & HTML are a bit long for this list) ... 
there's a price displayed as EURO20.05 correctly translated to IEP1.61 but if 
the 2 prices listed, correct translation from IEP1.61 is EURO20.04 so the 
consumer might think the merchant was trying to cheat using rounding errors.

To read previous issues of the Praxis newsletter visit their web site at <A 
HREF="http://www.sysmod.com/praxis/">http://www.sysmod.com/praxis/</A> 

> I was expecting a scare in the news about y2k fears next year, but haven't
>  noticed anything.
>  
>  Maybe because of the presidential mess, everyone is watching something 
else!
>  
>  During year 2000, it was implicit in every date which digits represented 
the
>  year.
>  
>  01/02/00 was obviously January 2, 2000.

It could also be February 1, 2000 in European D/M/Y standard.

>  00/06/03 was obviously June 3, 2000.
>  
>  
>  Next year it will not be so obvious!
>  
>  What is 03/02/01?  March 2nd, 2001?   Or February 1st, 2003???

or February 3rd, 2001 in European D/M/Y 

>  What is 01/02/01?  January 2, 2001?    Or February 1st, 2001???
>  
>  When a clerk keys in an order date or ship date (or blood expiration
>  date!!), I hope they know where the year should go!!!
>  
>  
>  Just something to ponder!!!
>  
>  Has anyone seen this in the press???

MacWheel99@aol.com (Alister Wm Macintyre) (Al Mac)
AS/400 Data Manager & Programmer for BPCS 405 CD Rel-02 mixed mode (twinax 
interactive & batch) @ http://www.cen-elec.com Central Industries of 
Indiana--->Quality manufacturer of wire harnesses and electrical 
sub-assemblies - fax # 812-424-6838

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