Squeak 2.3 for Windows

Peter William Lount paradigm at unixg.ubc.ca
Wed Jan 20 05:07:27 UTC 1999


To 	News Organizations, 
	Microsoft Technicial Support (see middle below) and 
	Squeak e-mail list (see below),

To Whom It May Concern,

I just throught that people should know that Internet Explorer's built in
FTP Client software version 4.72.2106.8 and version 3.02 (4.70.1310) have a
year 1999 bug in it. I have not tried later versions of IE. It reports the
file date of 98 as 99. This is obviously incorrect! Just wait till the Y2K
hits us...

While this bug may be non critical it demonstrates that date bugs can show
up where you least expect them. And it's been in the product for quite
sometime. Netscape handles the display correctly reporting a year of 98.
WS_FTP Limited Edition version 4.60 98.03.17 also handles the display
correctly. 

The ftp client on a linux box shows a date of 'Nov 28 04:03' for the
problem file with an implied year of 1998 as is usual with the UNIX
directory listing date format. This would indicate to me, as a first guess
in debugging, that there is a logic bug in the way that Internet Explorer
reads the directory listing from the ftp server. The directory listing
comes in two flavours "MMM DD HH:MM" and "MMM DD YY". This particular date
is 'Nov 28 04:03' and refers to the year 1998. Internet Explorer seems to
be assuming that "MMM DD HH:MM" are to be intrepreted in the same year as
the current year and incorrectly displays 99 as the year. It also
incorrectly shows a time of 12:00AM for the "MMM DD YY" format when a time
is unknown. 

I guess that the programmer at Microsoft who wrote the ftp client in IE
just didn't know that unix ftp servers deliver dates to ftp clients in more
than one format. IE's ftp client seems to be trying to present a uniform
format for the dates, but in the process introduces two errors, or one
outright error (incorrect year) and an smaller error of an unknown time
shown as 12:00AM.

The other interesting thing about this bug discovery (or is it
rediscovery?) is that it took two people (Bill Dargel and myself, Peter
William Lount) to discover it. I noticed a discrepency and reported it
thinking someone had mucked with the dates. Bill reported back that it was
showing correctly in Netscape's ftp client. Collaborative debugging via the
internet. 

All the best,

Peter William Lount
(604) 736-2461


Hi Microsoft Technicial Support Feedback,

Please forward this to technicial support imediately. It's an urgent Y1999K
BUG in Internet Explorer!

I could not find an email address for technicial support anywhere on your
web site. It was all by WEB page form. This is a very poor design of a
technicial support team's web site. It shows that aren't flexible in how
you receive bug reports. I find it amazing that you don't accept email for
bug reports. Please correct your web site to allow people to email in bug
reports.

Also you should have a Y2K bug report web page and email link visible. This
also applies to the news organizations. Get a y2k bug report email account
set up a.s.a.p..

Thanks, Peter


Hi Squeak E-mail list,

WOW! I checked with another ftp client that I have and you are right (see
below)!!! It's the ftp client software that's messing up!!!! You'll never
guess what I was using! That's right Microsoft Internet Explorer versions
4.72.2106.8 and 3.02 (4.70.1310)! (I tried it on two different computers
with the same result). It has a Year 1999 BUG!! It can't display 98 dates
correctly! It displays them as 99!

I guess that it's not even y1999k complient so look out for a year from
now! Run and hide. Install linux or Netscape and jettison all yer Windows
machines...

Peter

----------
From: William O. Dargel <wDargel at shoshana.com>
To: paradigm at unixg.ubc.ca
Cc: squeak at cs.uiuc.edu
Subject: Re: Squeak 2.3 for Windows
Date: January 19, 1999 5:31 PM

Peter William Lount wrote:

> Hi,
>
> Woops... There are some curious file dates in this directory:
> /pub/Smalltalk/Squeak/win32/image/ at st.cs.uiuc.edu
>
> 10/16/99 11:17AM 3,888,951 Squeak2.2.zip
> 01/16/99 12:47AM 4,475,244 Squeak2.3.zip
> 11/26/99 12:39PM 4,875,930 Squeak2.3beta.zip
>
> 10/16/99? and 11/26/99? What's up, shouldn't these two be 98?

Those two are in '98 for me. This is what I see for those files using
Netscape:
  Squeak2.2.zip       3797 Kb   Fri Oct 16 11:17:00 1998
  Squeak2.3.zip       4370 Kb   Sat Jan 16 00:47:00 1999
  Squeak2.3beta.zip   4761 Kb   Thu Nov 26 12:39:00 1998
What FTP client are you using to look at them? It seems like it must be
confused somehow.

-------------------------------------------
Bill Dargel            wdargel at shoshana.com
Shoshana Technologies
100 West Joy Road, Ann Arbor, MI 48105  USA





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