We’d barely concluded our 2009 Dumb Report rankings earlier this week when the Twittersphere lit up with reports that a “sizeable” number of Bank of Queensland and BankWest ATM and eftpos machines had malfunctioned due to an internal glitch of ‘millennium’ proportions.
An internal clock in the devices ticked over to 2016 instead of 2010, thereby rendering any card with an expiry date earlier than 2016 out of date. Its seems that the Y2K doom sayers of 1999 were indeed right (in a way), just 10 years too early.
What I found particularly interesting about this story is that the bug also affected Windows Mobile software, dating SMS messages six years ahead of the actual date.
What does that mean? If I receive a text message on the 7th of January 2010 from affected Windows Mobile software, my phone will tell me that the message was sent from six years in the future!
Of course, with a little bit of inspiration from the mozo blog, this got me thinking. What might our business and political leaders be texting from 2016?
“You really should have given the budgie-smugglers a rest after the 2010 ‘election’ debacle”.
Kevin Andrews to Australia’s longest ever serving opposition leader (in 2016).
“I remember when $300 million was worth something. Who would have thought that cinema popcorn could get so expensive!”
James Cameron to Ron Howard, from the Village Cinemas candy bar queue.
“F*#king legislators. This f*#king thing is f*#king inevitable. Can’t they f*#king get a life!”
Bill Gates to Eric Schmidt on the proposed merger of Google and Bing, to create ‘Bingle’, and the response of anti-monopoly law-makers.
“Just my luck. They’ve added banana smoothies to the healthy choice menu.”
Gail Kelly to one of her colleagues at her new job on the drive-through window at McDonald’s.
“Ashton Kutcher for President!”
Tweet to RSS feed to SMS announcing USA presidential candidate for the 2016 Party Party.
“I can’t believe you still use SMS. That’s so 2010.”
Anthill editor Paul Ryan to James Tuckerman, as always attempting to keep Tuckerman’s natural luddite-ness at bay.
