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Senate to release Y2K study 47

Posted by CowboyNeal from the my-toaster's-compliant dept.
CNN has a story about a Senate study into Y2K. It also involves the Justice Department and restrictions on Y2K lawsuits. I never thought I'd see members of the government try to help out writers of buggy software, but it seems to be the case.
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Senate to release Y2K study More

Senate to release Y2K study

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  • JAE (Score:1)

    by davie ( 191 )

    • Have all the 9-month look aheads run yet?
    • Have all the world's CIOs reported their results to you?
    • Do large corporations report every computer problem--especially when they're under intense scrutiny from the stockholders as is the case with Y2K-related problems?
    • Are all data output from all programs actually used the moment they are generated?
  • I can sum their study up in one sentence:

    "The year 2000 will eventually arrive."


  • This country is insane. Petty lawsuits damage our economy more than most realize. These legal issues are not unique to this Y2K problem - they are indicative of our entire Judicial system. Limiting Y2K liability is like putting a bandaid on a gunshot wound. Nothing short of full fledged tort reform will help.

  • America would be a really nice country if it wasn't for the lawyer added tax on everything. Of course the justice department opposes limits on litigation - they're all lawyers. The only long term beneficiaries of litigation are lawyers.

    Eventually it will be uneconomic to be anything except a lawyer in America. You won't be able to afford to drive because insurance will be so high with everyone suing everyone - you'll need to work as a lawyer to pay for it.

    The founding fathers were mostly lawyers, your politicians all mostly lawyers eventually you'll all be lawyers...

    America - government of the lawyers, by the lawyers, for the lawyers.

    ...

  • My company sells indemnity insurance to it's developers to protect them from their own board of directors. :-)

    BTW, I've been hanging around c.s.y2k for a while.
    Yesterday (March 1) was the start of fiscal 2000, which was supposed to bring on a whole slew of so-called "Jo-Anne Effect" bugs from the 9-month look-aheads. So far I haven't seen anything.

    Hm.


    --
  • Rebooting won't fix it :)

    Like the old AD&D rule: If your character dies of poison, cure the poison *before* ressurecting him or he will just die of poison again.

    Yeesh, AD&D analogies. How geeky is that.


    --
  • The record of your ownership will likely be maintained in a database somewhere.

    Buy precious metals, you can carry them with you.
    Hurry though, the US Mint has already run out of silver :-)


    --
  • That's fine for the long-term, assuming the records survive. What do you do in the interim? Can't use cash, can't eat dirt...

    You could grow stuff on it, that would be something anyhow.


    --
  • when we have buggy software from Redmond, people should be used to computers and bank machines crashing now. They know the routine. Hit the little button in front.

    Seems like politicians are getting lobbied and taxpayers are getting scammed by irresponsible businesses that hire and buy incomp programmers. They want to be bailed out with all these studies.

  • tell that to the patient who's dialysis machine's just crashed...

    A dialysis machine has no business knowing what year it is anyway. All devices should be kept simple, rather than adding every possible feature and bug.

  • A lot of these devices use off-the-shelf general-purpose contrillers that may or may not be aware of the date, and that may or may not crash because of it, depending on the chip.

    Are these chips microcontrollers? Where is this list? Or is this those old famous bios clock cards that were in 8088 computers that can no longer run Microsoft software? Who is this senator and does this list show actual part numbers, ie: 68HC11E2?

    I still think this is a scam blown up to sensational proportions. A better use of our money may be spent on fixing current bugs, like in NT. We know the company who should be responsible for those damages. Would you like to know NT is being used in production lines now? Want to know how much scrap can be produced due to one malfunction or crash?

  • Methinks its a little unreasonable to place the blame squarely on the programmers' shoulders. In normal conversation, people tend to use two digits for a date, so it isn't surprising that programmers opted for this abbreviation (limited memory or no).
    As far as lawsuits go, it needs to be balanced with how much of a good-faith effort the vendor made to correct the software, the nature of the warrantee provided with the software, and just how much the bug hurt the customer.
  • um whoops. darn -is there any way I can remove my own messages?
  • When some of these cases do go to court "expert witnesses" are going to be able to make a nice living getting paid to testify as the lawyers try to sort out whether the fault lay in the hardware (which part?) or the software (operating system or application ?)or in the combination and which company is what per cent of liable. Final case--last appeal should be settled just in time for y10K.



  • Quoting CNN directly:

    The bill, sponsored by Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-California), sets a 90-day "problem-solving" period during which companies can fix problems before lawsuits can be filed; encourages mediation; caps punitive damages at $250,000; puts some restrictions on class-action lawsuits; makes it easier for judges to dismiss Y2K lawsuits by setting higher standards for claims; and limits the personal liability of corporate officers and directors to $100,000 in many cases.

    OK, so let me get this straight...

    Let's suppose that a bank, for whatever stupid reason, is using WinNT to handle their systems. Y2k comes and the bank's systems crash. Microsoft now has a 90 day period to come up with a bug fix. Meanwhile the bank is still up the creek, as are the bank's customers, and the businesses that depend on those customers, and so on. In the space of 90 days a whole town can go bankrupt. The town residents file a class action lawsuit, they recover actual damages plus a maximum of $250k?? What's wrong here? Who the hell are these politicians listening to?


  • the LAWYERS! I heard one news story suggesting that lawyers were "salivating" over the opportunities for litigation associated with Y2K. I don't doubt it for a minute.
  • well, if you get in too deep you can always file
    for bankruptcy -- this is sort of analogous...mind you not that I support it, but the logic behind it, preventing many software
    companies from going under, makes a certain amount of sense..it would be better if they legislated
    mandatory free patches/fixes/etc (since many of the problems are hardware and firmware, as well
    as software)

    but yeah, corporate welfare in any form sucks

    rark

  • It's 1985 and you're told to write a piece of software. It's design life is given to you as 5-6 years. So are you going to make it Y2K compliant? Of COURSE NOT, since that increases cost/time to deployment. You get fired that way.

    Then the beancounters decide NOT to replace it as planned but to keep it for 250% the original planned lifespan to save a buck. And then it's 1999 and suddenly this is a BUG?

    Get wise.

  • Personally, I don't much like broad limits on liability. If a company blew it, they should be responsible for the results. I'd prefer:

    1. If the company discloses the problems up front, they cannot be held liable for more than the cost of users of their software switching to software that isn't affected.
    2. If a company makes a statement in good faith and it turns out to be wrong, they cannot be held liable unless they are first given the chance to correct the problem.
    3. No company can be held liable for the problems in someone else's software. If the application handles 4-digit dates correctly and the OS hands it the wrong current date, the app vendor cannot be sued.
    4. If a company makes a statement that it knows is wrong, or refuses to make any statements about the state of their software, there are no limits on their liability.
  • You heard it here first Y2K is going to be the biggest non event since Heroldo Rivera had a prime time show about the contents of Al Capones vault.

    January 1, 2000 will arrive and everyone will have the same look on there face when they were about to behold the great treasure of Al Capones vault. The hype applied by Heroldo for 2+hrs led to a large nothing...sound similar...wait and see.
  • Ah, Nirvana.

    What I wouldn't give for a scenario like this to
    unfold...

    --C

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