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97_98_articles/MacLette.TXTTo the Editor of the Bismarck Tribune:
In reference to the Quotable section of the Opinion page of the Tribune; there was a little paragraph talking about the "Year 2000" computer apocalypse. This is, of course, the error in computer programming software, operating systems and hardware that only reads the last two numbers of a year. So, when the year 2000 comes up, the computers for the government will go crazy and not work at all because they think time has been changed and it’s the year 1900. It also states that it will cost at least $2.3 billion to fix this deadly error, and could possibly cost up to 30 billion of the government’s dollars. This problem is also not just limited to computers for the government. All DOS and Windows-based machines will go crazy too.
So, in the paragraph it says “Couldn’t some genius have anticipated the problem at the get-go and asked computers to” read all four numbers? Well there actually was some genius who thought about this. It was some very, very smart programmer who works for the Apple Computer company. And so was made the ability for the Mac to always and forever correctly handle dates between January 1, 1904 and February 6, 2040. Then, when System 7.1 came out (This is about the equivalent to your Windows 95, and it’s already 4 years old.) , the Mac gained the ability to handle dates from all the way back to 30,081 BC & up to 29,940 AD. I doubt many computer programs would’ve been made before Christ was even born...
Anyway, if the government would’ve just bought Macs in the first place they could’ve saved on space. I’m sure some of their big fancy computers fill up rooms the size of a small house. Secondly, they wouldn’t have any trouble at all with this big date thing. And then we could’ve taken that $30 billion to the bank and cashed it in for some other technology. Possibly upgrading all the old Macs they would’ve had and getting some Multi-Processor Power Macs.
Not that I’m bashing IBM. IBM started all the big computing craze mainstream. In fact, they’ve actually been helping Apple with hard drives, designing add-ons and accessories (Including a kickin’ new PowerBook) that work with the Mac OS...Hmmm. It almost appears to me that IBM has figured out its own worthlessness and is helping the platform that really should own the world. But still, I like IBM. I just don’t like Bill Gates and his evil team of programmers and lawyers up at Microsnot...errr, Microsoft. Sorry, I apologize for the senseless name calling, but it’s actually a web site. Go to www.microsnot.com for some great Windows bashing things.
So as all you Windows users are worrying about what you should do about this big scary date thing that will cause your precious, but memory hogging, Windows 95 machine to crash, you could’ve saved yourself a lot of worrying and back-up time by just getting a Mac in the first place. Even a Mac IIe would be better than your Windows machines. In fact, I’m going to end by giving you my advice on what to do for the big Year 2000 apocalypse-Get a Zip drive (Computer users should know what I mean) , store all your little company data on it, buy some stinkin’ fast 300MHz Power Mac, transfer all the data over to it, and it will work. Mac is cross-compatable with Windows. Windows is not.
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Karl
Becker, the author of all these articles, uses New
Tricks for his writings.
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