Men born between 1893 and 1897 reminded to register for the draft

http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2014/07/10/the-selective-service-just-reminded-14000-men-born-between-1893-and-1897-to-register-for-the-draft/

by bjfish • 12 years ago

27 31 12 years ago

washingtonpost.com

facorreia• 12 years ago

the agency uses a two-digit code for the birth year

I find that surprising, I would expect even newcomer professionals to at least have heard about the Y2K bug.

x1798DE2• 12 years ago

Not sure why anyone is memory conservative these days anyway, but it's possible they thought about it but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around, and even if they get a letter reminding them to register for the draft, they'd just ignore it.

Igglyboo• 12 years ago

Or it's a legacy system they never bothered properly fixing and just used some quick hack when 2000 rolled around.

donutello• 12 years ago

but figured that there weren't that many people over the age of 118 floating around

The letter shown in the example was sent to someone who died in 1992 so there's at least some evidence to suggest that floating around is not a necessary condition to receive the letter.

michaelt• 12 years ago

I just started LibreOffice Calc (the version distributed with the latest version of Ubuntu), chose a cell and entered "1-December-2014"

The program tidied it to 01/12/14 (I'm in the UK, presumably the field order is locale-dependent) then exported a CSV with the default settings. Voilia, I have a file with the date expressed as 01/12/14

My guess is this process only gets run once a year, so it's not been a high priority for automation, and someone's spreadsheet program is configured to work out two-digit years automatically.

mandalar12• 12 years ago

"These letters were sent due to a computer error, the agency said in a message posted online"

No this is a human error. Are they trying to avoid responsibility when this is a minor (and a little funny) mistake ?

noelwelsh• 12 years ago

In the final analysis, very very few computer errors are the responsibility of the computer.

Gracana• 12 years ago

The point is to say it's an error in an automated system, rather than a human who decided to intentionally send out notices to 120-year-olds. Of course humans programmed the system, but they surely didn't mean to program it to do that.

burkaman2• 12 years ago

And more importantly, the humans who programmed it probably don't work for the selective service. Obviously all "computer errors" are technically the fault of a human somewhere down the line, but in common usage it means that "I didn't make a mistake, the computer didn't do what I told it to do".

eli2• 12 years ago

This gets sort of philosophical. What would be an example of a computer error?

oh_sigh• 12 years ago

A computer seeing an instruction, be deciding on its own free will to not follow it, an do something else.

ccozan• 12 years ago

That would be a pure hardware error. For example a cosmic ray hitting a cell the DRAM and flipping a bit. Or maybe the Intel FP-Bug, could also be a computer error.

Anything else in software is a programming error, but not necessarily a programmer error, since it might start with wrong HW specs, compiler bugs, etc.

opendais• 12 years ago

2014-1997 = 17 [to 21 @ 1993].

To me it looks like a Y2K bug.

jeroen• 12 years ago

It sure does:

".. the agency uses a two-digit code for the birth year, which is why the years 1893 to 1897 were mixed up with the years from 1993 to 1997."

maxerickson• 12 years ago

Earlier discussion:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8018399

lukecampbell2• 12 years ago

The article said 14,000 men. Is that possible that there are that many folks in Pennsylvania that were born between those dates?

InclinedPlane• 12 years ago

The article also said that they sent letters addressed to individuals who were no longer living.

Fuxy• 12 years ago

Their recruiting zombies i tell you! :P

Sorry couldn't help myself.

lukecampbell2• 12 years ago

Ok, that makes more sense.

Someone1234• 12 years ago

That must be distressing for the families.

As an aside: Do the SS send letters to dead people born between 1993-1997? You'd assume they'd check for death records or have some way of being notified about that.

For example if a boy is born in 1993 but died at age 5, do the parents get a letter from the SS in 2011 telling the boy to register for the SS?

josu• 12 years ago

According to this graph [1] and to the fact that the population of Pennsylvania is 12 million, it doesn't seem plausible.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_the_United_Stat...

evan_• 12 years ago

It actually gives a number twice that at the end of the article- they managed to stop it early.

squozzer• 12 years ago

Or maybe it's part of the global project to eliminate the world's installed base of land mines.

dylanrw• 12 years ago

I registered for the selective service and all of that, and it never really crossed my mind. 12 years later, the act seems alarmingly misandristic. It also makes me wonder if any feminists are fighting to have this law updated to include all citizens and not just males...

burkaman2• 12 years ago

Not sure about feminist efforts, but all recent efforts to reinstate some kind of draft included women: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_National_Service_Act

I know the National Organization of Women's position has always been that they oppose any kind of draft, but if it has to continue they would like women to be included. I think most feminists would understandably rather work to get rid of all selective service rather than include women.

Men born between 1893 and 1897 reminded to register for the draft

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