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The Lighter Side of Sysadm | Ranting & Raving | Pete's Back Yard

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Millennium Problem - Deja Vu All Over Again

Author Unknown

The Millennium caused an enormous problem with information processing which reverberated throughout all information processing personnel in the Western world. This problem became widely known as the Year 1000 problem.

Hundreds, if not thousands, of monks had to be retrained to reduce the space left for the date field in 1000 AD since the space needed for manuscripts in Roman numerals was less. Whereas they were used to leaving space for DCCCCLXXXXVIIII, now they only had to put M. This training was especially difficult since the monks were scattered around in isolated monasteries and some were forbidden to speak, making training difficult.

Afterwards they were quoted as saying, "We're sure humanity will be smart enough by the year 2000 to plan ahead and not make the same horrible mistake. Probably war, hunger, disease, and greed will also have been eliminated."

Yes, the same type of nerd monk as today, e.g. didn't bath, dressed in sackcloth robe with sandals, was unintentionally chaste, tried to speak in Latin to local women, etc., in the Year 1000 pointed out that since there is no year 0, i.e. Christ was one year old when he was born, only 999 years had passed since His birth and that it wasn't really the Millennium.

This didn't stop lots of cult groups from planning for Armageddon by trying to sail off the edge of the flat world that year. The world was still flat in those days until about 1480 when it became round; fortunately just in time for Columbus' trip. (Only a few years thereafter, in fact, the universe was rearranged so that the earth was no longer at the center any more, but just a round planet in a tiny solar system in a remote galaxy).

We, in the midst of the Year 2000 challenge, should remember those that came before.

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