A 21:39 2002-03-19 +0000, Michael Everson a écrit :
>At 06:32 +0900 2002-03-20, Dan Kogai wrote:
>>Y2K is a good example. It was not program's bug but that of data
>>representation.
>
>I don't understand why people are writing '02 and the like. Were they not
>paying attention?
[Alain] Writing it in text is not a problem if context is known.
Impressionists in the XIXth Century, for example, already signed their
paintings with a format such as « Claude Monet 89 »(we know it was 1889).
Not indicating the truncated information in data files used by dumb
programs which can be exposed to a different context is another story.
Losing information in data files -- whatever the nature of the data -- is
always a problem over time...
Alain LaBonté
Québec
