BBC: Minor bug problems arise

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From the BBC:

Saturday, 1 January, 2000, 02:56 GMT

Minor bug problems arise

The millennium bug has failed to deliver the disaster scenarios predicted by the gloomiest commentators, but minor problems have cropped up.

Japan appears to have suffered most with two nuclear power plants developing faults seconds after entering the year 2000. However, officials have said that these do not represent any danger and have not even confirmed that the Y2K bug caused the problems.

Also in Japan, a computer system that collates flight and weather information for small planes and helicopters has stopped functioning, a Transport Ministry official said. He added that the problems were not affecting air traffic control systems. The failure had not been fixed by 0130GMT.

No ticket to ride

Australia had a Y2K problem in two states when bus ticket validation machines failed to operate.

In North America, even before midnight passed, some difficulties arose. About 150 slot machines at race tracks in the US state of Delaware stopped working. But according to John Koskinen, who has been leading US efforts to tackle the Y2K bug, the machines have been fixed.

In Ottowa, Canada, access keys to Defence Office safe rooms have been found non-Y2K compliant after tests.

The small number of other problems reported from around the world have mostly involved the wrong date appearing on documents.

France's national weather forecasting service, Meteo France, said the Y2K bug was responsible for a glitch on one of the pages on its internet site. The date on the page, which showed a map with Saturday's weather forecast, read 01/01/19100.

"It's really a very minor problem," said Phillippe Courpier, assistant director general of Meteo France.

Hackers on track

The Spanish news agency Efe reported that a worker had been summoned to an industrial tribunal in Murcia in the south east of the country on 3 February, 1900. A similar problem occurred in South Korea, where a district court issued summonses to 170 people asking them to attend court on the 4 January 1900.

In the UK, hackers broke into the Railtrack website which provides online information on train times to travellers. They posted a message saying that because of Y2K problems no trains would be running in the country.

Railtrack quickly corrected the site and stressed that trains would be operating according to timetables.

A number of countries have seen telephone systems jam for short periods, but in all cases the sheer number of New Year well-wishers making calls has been blamed rather than the Y2K bug. Countries affected include Brazil, Japan, Macedonia, Italy and the UK.

-- Old Git (anon@spamproblems.com), January 02, 2000

Answers

good hints in this article. i find it hard to believe with some of these errors, we aren't going to see lots more once THE GYM OPENS AND THE 90% TRY TO WORK OUT.

-- tt (cuddluppy@aol.com), January 02, 2000.

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