IP: more coincidences?

[Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu>]

Date: Mon, 4 Jan 1999 15:58:32 -0500 (EST) 
From: Manny Farber <mfarber () interport net> 
To: Dave Farber <farber () cis upenn edu> 
Subject: Re: IP: may be coincidence but 
In-Reply-To: <4.1.19990104115337.03ba30b0 () linc cis upenn edu> 
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The computerized system for selling 
movie tickets by telephone in New York City went kaputt. 
All the theaters said "due to technical difficulties at this 
theater, we can't sell tickets at this time. Hurly Burly is also 
playing at ..."
Manny


and

Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 11:12:22 -0800 
To: farber () cis upenn edu 
From: Ken Deifik <kend () loop com> 
Subject: Re: IP: may be coincidence but 
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> I have seen a number of annoyance computer failures over the weekend. 
> Nothing bad just annoying. For example, Quickens pc payment system had a 
> major problem. 
Dave, 
I was told about a similar problem with Quicken last night at a party.
The weird thing in my own experience came when I was uploading some files to my 
web server on 12/31. I noticed that some files I uploaded the day before were 
dated 12/30/99. That upset me for any number of reasons, but my server claims 
to be serving 125,000 websites, so I figured that support wouldn't be reachable 
in time to avert a Y2K problem. The dates are fine today, and there was no 
problem serving my pages through the weekend.
Ken Deifik


and finally

To: farber () cis upenn edu 
From: Peter Salus <peter () mids org> 


My guess is that *all* the programs were interpreting 
foo99 as ``exit'' and never got to the third -9.
The Swedish passport control folks had this problem 
on the 31st/1st, and fixed it in about 3 hours.
Peter

and

Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 09:12:19 -0800 
To: farber () cis upenn edu 
From: Dennis Allison <allison () shasta stanford edu> 


Beginning programming classes, especially those for Cobol, used to use '99' 
as a sentinal record. 
-dra