Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.

Re: The miracle of the date line lets me tell your future

Author:Nick Sweeney
Posted:9/7/1999; 6:37:03 PM
Topic:Today's scriptingNews Outline
Msg #:10712 (In response to 10708)
Prev/Next:10711 / 10713

First of all, Dave, apologies if my last offended: local nuances sometimes don't translate across the time (and word) zones.

A more serious comment: how localised do we expect the problems of 9/9/99 and Y2K to be? We've been led to think that the danger points are self-contained integrated systems, but a single packet containing date information, sent by Stephen in NZ, could send a control sequence to a badly-written/obsolete database system anywhere in the world.

There's a lot of chaos theory at work, I think: things like XML-RPC show how our actions can have repercussions at a distance. It may only be later that the relative calm in New Zealand hides chaos on the other side of the globe.

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