Re: XyWrite III+

[Peter Evans peterev@xxxxxxxx]

An asper [?] Walter Jowers:

>Since you seem to know so more than I do about this, maybe you can
>tell us how you know that XYIII *won't* "blow up," by which I mean
>just plain refuse to work.

Well, OK, maybe I was a bit inflammatory last time (though I don't think I
criticized anybody). Sorry about that. But the question does seem more
than slightly analogous to "How do you know that [name] *won't* kill his
wife?"

>Have you gone through the code, tested and proved it to be Y2K
>ready?

No, and for at least three reasons, any one of which is sufficient to stop
me -- among them, my total incomprehension of assembly language.

>If you use your imagination, you don't see *any* problems with Y2K &
>12-year-old applications?

Yes, but no non-trivial problems with this one.

I hadn't heard that software would stop on 1 January 2000. OK, it's
imaginable. Well, the simplest way to find out is to set your system clock
either to a time just before the new year, and thereby watch Armageddon
occur in realtime, as it were--or to a time just after the new year, and
then observe the "Mad Max" -style post-apocalypse. If the worst imaginable
happens, and a program (e.g. Xy3+) locks itself up, it can't thereby
rewrite itself, so it will still be workable through the dog end of the
present millennium (or, to avoid argument, quasi-millennium).

Incidentally, setting your clock forward may have minor but unexpected
consequences. I did it on one machine months ago, in order to show the
resulting non-event to a student who said in all seriousness that she
wanted to buy a computer but only in January 2000 because that would be
safer. Well, the computer didn't blow up. Nothing blew up. Nothing even
ground to a halt (though I wasn't running any version of Xy at the time).
However, once (and only once), later, when I did something that somehow
involved the date (perhaps July '99), I was asked if I didn't mean January
or February '00. Sorry, I forget the details. Anyway, it's imaginable
that fooling around with the time will cause demo software and nagware to
cop out. ("Ah, you've turned the clock back! You're trying to get six
more months worth of free use out of me!")

Walter, if you're new here, welcome. Please understand that mixed in with
the helpful experts on this mailing list there are a few snotty jerks such
as myself. Ignore the latter group in order to benefit from the wisdom of
the former.
:::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
Peter Evans