from the they-need-someone-like-MartyB-he-breaks-things-early dept.
Microsoft fixes harebrained Y2K22 Exchange bug that disrupted email worldwide:
Microsoft has released a fix for a harebrained Exchange Server bug that shut down on-premises mail delivery around the world just as clocks were chiming in the new year.
The mass disruption stemmed from a date check failure in Exchange Server 2016 and 2019 that made it impossible for servers to accommodate the year 2022, prompting some to call it the Y2K22 bug. The mail programs stored dates and times as signed integers, which max out at 2147483647, or 231 - 1. Microsoft uses the first two numbers of an update version to denote the year it was released. As long as the year was 2021 or earlier, everything worked fine.
When Microsoft released version 2201010001 on New Year's Eve, however, on-premises servers crashed because they were unable to interpret the date. Consequently, messages got stuck in transport queues. Admins around the world were left frantically trying to troubleshoot instead of ringing in the New Year with friends and family. All they had to go on were two cryptic log messages [...]
"What in the absolute hell Microsoft!?" one admin wrote in this Reddit thread, which was one of the first forums to report the mass failure. "On New Year's Eve!? First place I check is Reddit and you guys save my life before we even get an engineer on the phone."
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 05 2022, @11:55AM (3 children)
unless microsoft is paying for the relevant overtime, they're not being blamed properly.
also: 231 - 1 = 230, not the big number stated in the summary. is it ok to also blame microsoft for the mindless copy/paste habbits that everyone has, or is it an earlier apple/xerox thing?
(Score: 5, Touché) by Dr Spin on Wednesday January 05 2022, @12:32PM
is it ok to also blame microsoft for the mindless
No.
Blame the mindless for Microsoft.
Warning: Opening your mouth may invalidate your brain!
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Wednesday January 05 2022, @01:45PM
Just party like it's 2021, dude!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rblt2EtFfC4 [youtube.com]
“I have become friends with many school shooters” - Tampon Tim Walz
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 05 2022, @08:45PM
learnt something today thanks. 231-1 used to represent 2,147,483,647. is either a typo or ASCI representation of 231 - 1
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 05 2022, @07:02PM (2 children)
"Y2K" made sense as an abbreviation: it has fewer characters and fewer syllables than "year 2000", so it was a win in two ways.
"Y2K22" is just asinine. It has just as many characters, plus you have to go out of your way to stick a letter in the middle. I don't see a syllable savings, but I do see a fraction of a second wasted translating the failed attempt at 1337-speak to what it should be.
I assume the people who insist on doing this are the same ones who insist on appending "-gate" to scandal names.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 05 2022, @07:59PM
Y2K22 says heaps more than "Y2022 problem" does. Where a hard numeric limit, easily forseeable, easily correctable, thus avoidable, has caught out the kings of bad software.
Not even a MS basher here, but they deserve it here. (1) for using 2digit year mentality a mere 15 years post Y2K, (2) also the whole Int32 thing in this way, without considering the effects a mere 3-6 years later. Even if this was buried in legacy codebase, is just plain dumb.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 06 2022, @03:01AM
It's just someone faking technical expertise and failing. They're pretending to emulate the 2k2-style E12 or E24 electrical engineering values, like writing 2k2 or 3M7 for 2200 resp 3700000 Ohm, or 6u2 for 6.2 microFarad. But they're failing badly at that, because "2k2" means 2.2k, not 2.002k. So Y2k22 refers to the year 2220, which is just under 200 years from now.
I think these people are even more dangerous than normal marketdroids, because everyone knows to never let marketdroids operate anything complex. These people know just enough technobabble to get past the MBA's, and might get into positions where they could do real damage. I imagine Wordpress is written by people like this.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12 2022, @01:43PM
Who the f*ck auto installs a new version of an application in PRODUCTION the same day it is released from Vendor?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday January 12 2022, @01:46PM
I celebrate New Years Eve on December 31st so I would not be hit by it...