I was around 13 at the time. At a superficial glance the Y2K thing looked like it was a made up problem. I kind of suspected that behind the scenes there was a different story.
I actually forgot about that. I just got WWE Legends of Wrestlmania and I really hope he's in there.

it gave chris jericho a nickname.

so there's that.

That whole Y2K thing was a hoot! When I first heard about it I dug my old 286 PC out of the closet, fired it up and set the BIOS date to 12/31/99. I then waited a day to see what would happen. Other than the date appearing as 1/1'00 in a few places, there was nothing else different about the machine or any of my software. I figured if that machine was fine then I had nothing to worry about on my newer equipment. I even tried it out on the computers at work and found no problems there, however my boss still made me install an updated system patch on all machines as that was the directive given. Since I was in the Army at the time and the directives were coming from the Pentagon I decided to humor them.

I then proceeded to laugh at how much people were freaking out, my own mother stocked the garage with water, rice, canned food and various survival items. When I told her there was nothing to worry about she said something about not putting all her faith in Bill Gates to solve the problem. So I guess I was affected by Y2K in that I was highly amused for several months.

This is really fucking funny. XD

No but that's because I haven't dare power up any of my old 8 bit computers.

Seriously, to people who think that way since old computers did not blow up or implode: Try running financial software that did not care about the century for your simulations, x years of interest is not quite the same as -x years of interest.

Yes, there were a number of isolated incidents around the world as expected. Traffic lights not working properly, and stuff like that mostly.

Keep in mind that Y2K was massively publicized primarily as a problem in various computer software storing 2 digit years instead of 4 digit years, and while that was the most well known problem and was very widespread out there, it was only one of numerous computer date/time related buts that occurred after the rollover to 2000, as well as some time related problems that happened later in the year such as software that was smart enough to know that leap years do not occur on years that are centuries, but were not smart enough to know that they do happen on centuries that are divisible by 400. Before Y2K, probably few computer programmers ever knew all of the intricate details of the Gregorian calendar system. Sadly though, most still probably don't either.

What's always somewhat amusing though is people who think that Y2K was all needless hype and nonsense though because there was no visible end of the world scenario. The various Y2K computer software bugs were indeed very serious and throughout the financial industry and many other critical industries. Had people sat on their hands and said "I think it's just all hype, what a waste of time" then the aftermath of the year 2000 rollover would have been much more dramatic than it ended up being. The reason why there were no real massive catastrophes in the end was that despite it being left more or less until the last possible second, the computer industry realized all too well just how big the problems would end up being in not only the financial industry, but in just about every other industry as well if they did not track down all of the flaws in software and fix them ASAP.

The Y2K problems were reported so widely and heavily simply because they were so well known that there would be serious problems if they didn't get fixed in time, and that heavy media coverage regardless how how heavily it was hyped up (or how some might have perceived it as hype who didn't understand the problems) - caused such a massive awareness that there really weren't any governments or companies out there that were not taking it seriously. Naturally, since it was taken so seriously, the majority of critical systems and software out there did get fixed in time and avoided the catastrophes that would have happened had they not fixed it.

It seems too many people just saw all the "hype" and didn't ever register that behind that hype was thousands of computer programmers working furiously and endlessly cramming for a date that could not be changed, and that thanks to that happening, it's now just a footnote in computer history. One that's still greatly misunderstood by the masses unfortunately.

Don't worry though, the Y2038 bug is only 22 years from now and it will be handled the same way. :) First by people saying we have nothing to worry about because it's 22 years away which is such a long time that we wont be using 32bit computers with older operating systems and software anymore by then. Next by saying everyone will be using 64bit computers for decades by the time the date comes around, and that most 32bit operating systems have been updated to work around the bug also.

But... then we'll find out just how many 32bit systems, satellites and other unexpected embedded systems managing traffic lights, maybe pacemakers, various other stuff that has been running so well for decades that nobody expects to have to replace it. It'll be left until the last second, Y2038 D-Day looms near.... governments, companies, etc. rush feverishly to get rid of old legacy 32bit systems that are affected, billions of dollars are spent cleaning up the mess while a media frenzy unfurls. Then they'll resolve most of the problems in time, perhaps a few satellites go dark that nobody cares about anyway, and the world doesn't come to an end due to the billions spent to fix the problem at the last second. Joe Blow doesn't know about any of that, and just remembers all the "hype" and waste of money for something that wasn't ever a problem in the first place. :)

It's almost a bad Yogi Berra quote, waiting to happen. :)

How do you think TinyE came to have only one ball?

Y2K got it.

Loved My Name is Earl.

perhaps.. perhaps we might start to let this point of discussion just fall out of use why not?
and fuck yeah that was the shit.

:o

Now, now. He didn't mean rolls, he meant wraps. He said, "it's a t wrap!"

You came to the GOG forums. And boy, has THAT been interesting.

It was either that, or some random comment about lubrication ;)

My clicky pen wouldn't click anymore.

Computers back then just defaulted to 1980 1/1/80

Aww.. isn't it amazing

http://www.old-computers.com/history/images/Eniac.jpg