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The BBC News reports that:
The agency that manages the dormant US military draft has apologised after sending conscription registration notices to men born in the late 1800s.
The Selective Service System (SSS) said the error occurred after a clerk neglected to select the century in a search for newly eligible young men.
It sent 14,250 notices to Pennsylvania men born 1893-97 in addition to 1993-97 before discovering the error.
Further:
Agency spokesman Pat Schuback said they did not catch the error because Pennsylvania used a two-digit code for the year of birth, meaning those born in 1893 and in 1993 had the same code.
"It's never happened before," Mr Schuback said.
Pennsylvania transport spokeswoman Jan McKnight said the error occurred when a clerk at the department, which manages driving licence information, transferred records to the SSS but forgot to select only the 20th Century.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by turgid on Sunday July 13 2014, @08:10PM
...when they get sent to soak up bullets, they're not going to get any deader.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 2) by Jeremiah Cornelius on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:31PM
Y2K! I told you so! :-)
You're betting on the pantomime horse...
(Score: 3, Informative) by VLM on Sunday July 13 2014, @08:13PM
Typical example of a failing state... obsolete since the early 70s, still can't close down and fire all those .gov people.
(Score: 2) by tathra on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:39PM
a computer error is an example of a failing state? by law, everyone over 18 must be registered for "the draft" (the selective service system). i've seen arguments saying that the "militia" requirement of the 2nd amendment is fulfilled through this system, as everyone registered is part of the inactive army/militia, so getting rid of it may have some strange, unintended consequences.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Sunday July 13 2014, @10:18PM
This would be a poor example of a failing state. I have seen far larger blunders in the "civilian" world. You also don't typically fire people for making mistakes like this.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by anubi on Monday July 14 2014, @12:28AM
To the phrase:
"To err is human... to really foul things up requires a computer."
It was ONE error, replicated 14,250 times.
This is yet another demonstration why we computer folk have to be so concerned with even the slightest thing that's not understood, and our managers need to be tolerant of this kind of "perfectionism".
Its not the error itself that's so bad. One letter getting sent is not a big deal. Everyone makes mistakes now and then.
Its the replication of that error whose cost to fix makes a year's salary look like a dropped peanut.
Nothing on this planet can replicate an error faster than a computer.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Monday July 14 2014, @06:57AM
I think he means the fact that there are gods-only-know how many people drawing paychecks from tax coffers to continue managing a draft that we haven't had in decades.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday July 14 2014, @11:32AM
"managing a draft that we haven't had in decades."
And will probably never need. Needed one in Vietnam. In Vietnam 2.0, yet another empire tries to take over Afghanistan and fails again (lots more examples than just USA and USSR) we didn't need a draft. In Vietnam 3.0, "lets fight over a great pile of sand in Iraq", we again didn't need a draft.
So when we have a war, if we win, like the first Iraq/Kuwait adventure, we tend to win so quickly we have no use for a draft. And when we lose, we've lost the last two wars and even during the bloody occupations we didn't need a draft, even with two simultaneous drafts.
The purpose of SS in 1915 was we didn't have great records of every teenage boy to send off to war, so felt a "need" to create one. In 2015 you could simply rm -Rf the whole department saving millions and contract to facebook and/or about 50 bazillion other data warehouses for a simple one line SELECT statement of a report.
Finally big brother is watching, and data sources have been merged back and forth so many times there is no longer a point for this separate data silo. Locally, SS, drivers license/ID cards, anyone who gets financial aid while attending higher ed, any registered voters, lists of possible jury service members, and anyone who ever pays a bill from phone to tuition gets recorded by the credit score people. And the data flows approximate a mesh network, such that the silos with a financial interest in quality data are almost certain to contain better data.
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday July 14 2014, @01:34PM
Ah, i see. Thanks : ) Do you think it's a good idea to remove the draft then? Or just the registration process for it?
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 1) by GeminiDomino on Monday July 14 2014, @08:35PM
Honestly, at this point, I'm too old to care for my own sake, and too jaded to care for anyone else's.
"We've been attacked by the intelligent, educated segment of our culture"
(Score: 4, Funny) by Thexalon on Sunday July 13 2014, @08:14PM
If they hadn't fired Michael Bolton and Samir, Initech might have actually finished that Y2K update and prevented this!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by mrcoolbp on Monday July 14 2014, @12:24AM
Bill: "So you fired him."
Bob: "No, no, we fixed *the glitch*"
(Score:1^½, Radical)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Sunday July 13 2014, @08:29PM
There's more to this story than we're being told. Why is historical date from the fin de siecle period in a live database in the first place? I can understand digitizing historical records (draft records are invaluable for researching family history), but not putting them in a live database that's used to track today's potential soldiers. Doesn't pass the smell test. What possible purpose could putting this historical data into a live production database possibly serve?
I keep wondering if the same consultants who tested Goldman's document system with live sensitive data and live e-mail addresses wasn't involved in this project.
Note that the Selective Service database since 1960 is live online:
https://www.sss.gov/RegVer/wfVerification.aspx [sss.gov]
Wait, they have all the SSNs of every male in the USA since 1960 online!? Yeah, we're going to have a data breach headline about this one, too! Look for it! Having this data online is not going to end well.
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @10:56PM
Probably using SAP
They love to put everything in 1 crm db
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:10PM
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kunasou on Sunday July 13 2014, @09:11PM
Since Oracle usually stores years this way: YY, they don't know which century are (using another value doesn't work at all) and make stupid mistakes, updating their database it's something they should do but .gov doesn't want to.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday July 13 2014, @11:45PM
So if the state already hands over all this data to the Feds, then why bother asking for separate registrations?
(Score: 1) by bibendumsn on Wednesday July 16 2014, @04:44AM
Obviously there is only one logical explanation... they are recruiting an army of zombies.