When this is done,......

frnash

Active member
Agreed. I compare this to the Y2k scare but this is much worse with businesses closed and people losing their jobs. Leading up to Y2k I was working for a company that spent untold man hours and probably millions proofing every piece of equipment to ensure it would work, wouldn't fall out of the sky, or blow up at the stroke of midnight. The next day, we were scratching our heads and saying, "what the **** was that?"

I'm an IT guy, and we worked A LOT of hours fixing code to handle Y2K, and most of us laughed at the "world is coming to an end" crap. Yeah, we need to fix the computers to handle the date roll, but the media (Not unlike today) had a lot of peoples shorts in a bundle.....
gary_in_neenah, xcr440, when were y’all working that Y2K thing?
We “fixed” that problem at GE/Honeywell ca. 1972; no point waiting ‘til the last minute!
 

xcr440

Well-known member
gary_in_neenah, xcr440, when were y’all working that Y2K thing?
We “fixed” that problem at GE/Honeywell ca. 1972; no point waiting ‘til the last minute!

HA - That's awesome, I was 6 then! I was actually working for Polaris for about 8 months (Contracting), the first part of 1999.
 

elf

Well-known member
HA - That's awesome, I was 6 then! I was actually working for Polaris for about 8 months (Contracting), the first part of 1999.

Kevin,
Which Polaris location were you in then? I was working at the Osceola location then.
 

elf

Well-known member
They had an IT office in Plymouth back then. I'm pretty sure they have moved since, but I could be wrong.

I'd been to the Plymouth office once when I worked there. Was out at the Medina office quite a few times working with the industrial design guys.
 

frnash

Active member
HA - That's awesome, I was 6 then! I was actually working for Polaris for about 8 months (Contracting), the first part of 1999.
I was in a bit of a hurry when I made that last post.
Actually there's a bit more to it.

I was working at the GE Computer Division's "Software Factory" at the time, with one of the digital computer pioneers and a native Yooper — born in Sault Ste. Marie, MI …

(click →) Robert W. "Uncle Bob" Bemer (no relation), the "Father of ASCII";

… consider, without the ASCII character codeset, we would not be here today!

Bemer is recognized as the first person in the world to publish warnings of the Year 2000 (Y2K) "Millennium Bug" problem -- first in 1971, and again in 1979.

Bob earlier served on the committee which amalgamated the design for his COMTRAN language with FLOW-MATIC from …

(click →) Admiral Grace Murray Hopper

… and thus produced the specifications for the COBOL programming language.

Grace Hopper (then Commander Hopper) visited our Software Factory one day, handing out pieces of wire that were just under one foot long (11.8 inches (30 cm)) — the distance that light travels in one nanosecond. She gave these pieces of wire the metonym "nanoseconds", and she further regaled us with the tale of the "first actual case of a bug being found", in 1947, when engineers working on the Mark II computer at Harvard University found a moth stuck in a relay, impeding the operation of the relay. They taped the insect in their logbook and labeled it "first actual case of bug being found." The words "bug" and "debug" soon became a standard part of the language of computer programmers.

Working with "Uncle Bob" was one helluva interesting experience!
 
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IMHO49953

Member
Whoa... let's not get carried away... OR... before you know it, we will be posting comments in Hexadecimal or binary and have to make everything align on full word boundaries! Now, count to ten 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 1010 and carry on!
 

xcr440

Well-known member
Whoa... let's not get carried away... OR... before you know it, we will be posting comments in Hexadecimal or binary and have to make everything align on full word boundaries! Now, count to ten 0001 0010 0011 0100 0101 0110 0111 1000 1001 1010 and carry on!

LOL - where’s the hard right turn 30 mph clover leaf at 70 emoji!!
 
G

G

Guest
Gowd I remember binary. A guy named Wang - not kidding - was the teacher. It was his opinion that all the latest languages like Fortran would fall by the wayside.

- - - Updated - - -

270 Punch cards. If one was wrong no cigar. And only 3 punch card machines for 75 students. One guy got it right and we all copied.
 

IMHO49953

Member
And for those interested in a bit of docudrama history - and having time in isolation: https://archive.org/details/PIRATESOFSILICONVALLEY

Plan B is this:

Original Tinkertoy Computer | X39.81 | Computer History ...
www.computerhistory.org › collections › catalog
Description. Object is an assembly of standard Tinkertoy rods and wheels in a 3x3 array of units (as seen from the front). There are a number of strings used as ...

Tinker Toy computer - Constructing Modern Knowledge
constructingmodernknowledge.com › uploads › 2013/03
PDF
A Tinkertoy computer that plays tic-tac-toe by A. K.. Dewdney indirectly kicks an "output duck," a bird-shaped construction. The output duck swings down from its.

But wait, there's more! Plan C
Combine snowmobiles, computer programming and graphics and a bunch of people with opinions, and you get:

https://www.snowmobilefanatics.com/forums/11-general/32062-snowmobile-video-games.html
 

euphoric1

Well-known member
when this is done.... we need to bring America back to America...quit being so reliant of foreign countries. We need to realize and come to grips with the fact that as long as we occupy this wonderful planet we will encounter germs, illnesses, bacteria and disease that we have never seen before. We need to stop the fear mongering, media needs to cool it and stop turning mole hills into Mt. Everest's . We need to think about how we react to "difficult times" consider ramifications and potential end results before taking actions and take a very hard look at what is and isn't acceptable results of action and inaction. We as a society need to learn how not to react so selfishly during "difficult times" and remember that we are all one sharing one world with common needs. When this is done.... we need to look back as this continues and realize that this was NOT the way to react and yes lives were lost just as they are each and every year from things we have no control over and things we do and look the other way, except this time countless lives and dreams were also destroyed from a clear overreaction that we have yet to see the complete end result of. We need to learn how to ACT and REACT in the future to "difficult times" IMO
 

dfattack

Well-known member
when this is done.... we need to bring America back to America...quit being so reliant of foreign countries. We need to realize and come to grips with the fact that as long as we occupy this wonderful planet we will encounter germs, illnesses, bacteria and disease that we have never seen before. We need to stop the fear mongering, media needs to cool it and stop turning mole hills into Mt. Everest's . We need to think about how we react to "difficult times" consider ramifications and potential end results before taking actions and take a very hard look at what is and isn't acceptable results of action and inaction. We as a society need to learn how not to react so selfishly during "difficult times" and remember that we are all one sharing one world with common needs. When this is done.... we need to look back as this continues and realize that this was NOT the way to react and yes lives were lost just as they are each and every year from things we have no control over and things we do and look the other way, except this time countless lives and dreams were also destroyed from a clear overreaction that we have yet to see the complete end result of. We need to learn how to ACT and REACT in the future to "difficult times" IMO

Totally agree. This country/world cannot go through this ever again.
 
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