Not sure why anyone is memory conservative these days anyway, but it's possible they thought about it but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around, and even if they get a letter reminding them to register for the draft, they'd just ignore it.
I don't think so. It's always 118-126 years, no matter what year it is right now, so we'll only see this blow up if there's an explosion in that population.
> but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around
The letter shown in the example was sent to someone who died in 1992 so there's at least some evidence to suggest that floating around is not a necessary condition to receive the letter.
I just started LibreOffice Calc (the version distributed with the latest version of Ubuntu), chose a cell and entered "1-December-2014"
The program tidied it to 01/12/14 (I'm in the UK, presumably the field order is locale-dependent) then exported a CSV with the default settings. Voilia, I have a file with the date expressed as 01/12/14
My guess is this process only gets run once a year, so it's not been a high priority for automation, and someone's spreadsheet program is configured to work out two-digit years automatically.
The point is to say it's an error in an automated system, rather than a human who decided to intentionally send out notices to 120-year-olds. Of course humans programmed the system, but they surely didn't mean to program it to do that.
And more importantly, the humans who programmed it probably don't work for the selective service. Obviously all "computer errors" are technically the fault of a human somewhere down the line, but in common usage it means that "I didn't make a mistake, the computer didn't do what I told it to do".
That would be a pure hardware error. For example a cosmic ray hitting a cell the DRAM and flipping a bit. Or maybe the Intel FP-Bug, could also be a computer error.
Anything else in software is a programming error, but not necessarily a programmer error, since it might start with wrong HW specs, compiler bugs, etc.
As an aside:
Do the SS send letters to dead people born between 1993-1997? You'd assume they'd check for death records or have some way of being notified about that.
For example if a boy is born in 1993 but died at age 5, do the parents get a letter from the SS in 2011 telling the boy to register for the SS?
I registered for the selective service and all of that, and it never really crossed my mind. 12 years later, the act seems alarmingly misandristic. It also makes me wonder if any feminists are fighting to have this law updated to include all citizens and not just males...
I know the National Organization of Women's position has always been that they oppose any kind of draft, but if it has to continue they would like women to be included. I think most feminists would understandably rather work to get rid of all selective service rather than include women.
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[ 7.8 ms ] story [ 30.9 ms ] threadI find that surprising, I would expect even newcomer professionals to at least have heard about the Y2K bug.
My estimate is we will see this blow up again in 2018.
The letter shown in the example was sent to someone who died in 1992 so there's at least some evidence to suggest that floating around is not a necessary condition to receive the letter.
The program tidied it to 01/12/14 (I'm in the UK, presumably the field order is locale-dependent) then exported a CSV with the default settings. Voilia, I have a file with the date expressed as 01/12/14
My guess is this process only gets run once a year, so it's not been a high priority for automation, and someone's spreadsheet program is configured to work out two-digit years automatically.
No this is a human error. Are they trying to avoid responsibility when this is a minor (and a little funny) mistake ?
"Screw that batch processing job. I wanna get to 2048!"
Anything else in software is a programming error, but not necessarily a programmer error, since it might start with wrong HW specs, compiler bugs, etc.
To me it looks like a Y2K bug.
".. the agency uses a two-digit code for the birth year, which is why the years 1893 to 1897 were mixed up with the years from 1993 to 1997."
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018399
Sorry couldn't help myself.
As an aside: Do the SS send letters to dead people born between 1993-1997? You'd assume they'd check for death records or have some way of being notified about that.
For example if a boy is born in 1993 but died at age 5, do the parents get a letter from the SS in 2011 telling the boy to register for the SS?
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...
I know the National Organization of Women's position has always been that they oppose any kind of draft, but if it has to continue they would like women to be included. I think most feminists would understandably rather work to get rid of all selective service rather than include women.