[kwlug-disc] OT: Apple's iPhone iPad etc Daylight to Std time bug

[John Johnson]

At 15:34 2010-11-06, unsolicited wrote:
>do we need ... a government committee to make sure similar problems 
>aren't going to occur with the new fighter purchase?

Apple is in good(?) company. In 2007, during the first overseas 
deployment of the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor, a flight of the 
fighters experienced multiple computer crashes, nav aids and comms, 
luckily not flight controls. These problems were coincident with the 
crossing of the International Date Line. The fighters were able to 
return to Hawaii by following their accompanying tankers. Go figure.

To add to Khalid's comments.

There was at least some justification for Y2K. Memory storage in the 
early days was expensive and every character in storage (nonvolatile 
and volatile) incurred a cost. Changes to Date/Time utilities buried 
into libraries meant that all systems using these libraries would 
need SQA. Deferring the problem was easy to do because in the next 
n-years there would surely be new systems. Else it would be the next 
guys's problem to handle. (And it was the next guys' problem to handle.)

IMHO There is no justification for certain kinds of problems in 
safety critical systems like those Khalid mentioned, or for problems 
like those some automobile engine / braking control systems as 
reported in recent months.

BTW: An issue, some called Y2K10, hit some banks in Europe at the 
beginning of the year. Some software systems did not recognize 2010 
as a valid year.

John