[lit-ideas] Y2K+11
- From: cblists@xxxxxxxx
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Thu, 30 Dec 2010 12:51:09 +0100
The year Y2K+10 was too much for the computer geniuses in the European
banking world (the following quotation from a reprot in the Guardian
succinctly tells the story):
A 2010 software bug has left millions of German debit and credit
card holders unable to withdraw money or make payments in shops, and
thousands stranded on holiday with no access to cash.
About 30m chip and pin cards – a quarter of those in circulation in
Germany – are thought to have been affected by the programming
failure, which meant that microchips in cards could not recognise
the year change to 2010.
A French card manufacturer, Gemalto, admitted today it was to blame
for the failure, which it is estimated will cost €300m (£270m) to
rectify.
Apparently it all had to do with the great difficulty computers have
in recognizing that one wants the number "10" to follow the number
"9". (I noticed that while naming and sorting files within the first
week of owning my first computer sometime not so late in the last
century. One would have thought that professional programmers would
have caught on to this before the year 2009. Ah well, what's €300
million here or there - the 30 million chip and pin cards were
replaced by the end of January, and I'm sure all of the
embarrassments, inconveniences, interest charges, etc., etc. will be
sorted out before the next millennium.)
Any chance that the computers will have difficulty in recognizing that
"2011" follows "2010"?
Chris Bruce,
stuffing a little extra into
an old sock, just in case, in
Kiel, Germany
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