[LINK] Fwd: Fwd: Digital Access Online Event: Celebrate 20 years of Digital Access

[Tom Worthington]

On 18/5/20 9:48 am, jwhit at internode.on.net wrote:

> Sorry this isn't as pretty as the original I received ...

Appropriate it is in plain, readable, text:

> From: "Vision Australia Digital Access"
> 
> ... Y2K ... was it all just a hoax? ...

No. In 1987 it looked like there would not be a problem as by 1999 
everyone would have switched to new languages which supported four digit 
dates, such as Ada: "A Date with Ada in the year 2000" (Computerworld, 6 
November 1987) Anyone find it on-line?

Everyone did not switch to Ada, so in 1997 the Australian Computer 
Society suggested critical systems be checked in a timely fashion:
https://web.archive.org/web/19991013043745/http://www.acs.org.au/news/y2k.htm

That didn't happen either, so from late 1998 to mid 1999, I helped spent 
$255M checking and replacing stuff at the Defence Y2K Project Office. 
https://parlinfo.aph.gov.au/parlInfo/search/display/display.w3p;query=Id%3A%22media%2Fpressrel%2FS6D06%22;src1=sm1

We did not find many critical Y2K bugs, but we found a lot of flaky 
code, and obsolete hardware, which needed replacing. The spring cleaning 
of Defence's IT systems came in handy when Australia lead an 
international force into East Timor.

> ...  Sydney Olympic Games ... Mr Bruce Maguire ... wanted to purchase
> tickets ...

After finishing at Defence in 1999, I was contacted by Mr Maguire's 
lawyers and asked to be an expert witness in the SOCOG case. They were 
having difficulty finding a real expert, so I was the best they could 
do. Later the Beijing Olympics flew me over to explain what went wrong 
in Sydney: http://www.tomw.net.au/2003/bws.html


-- 
Tom Worthington, MEd FHEA FACS CP IP3P http://www.tomw.net.au
+61(0)419496150
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Honorary Lecturer, Computer Science, Australian National University
https://cecs.anu.edu.au/research/profile/tom-worthington