Y2K and other matters affecting various [Free] Agent versions
JimB
If you use any older version you should update before, well, you
know when.
WARNING: if you use Agent 1.6, don't wait; update immediately. It
has a design flaw which interferes with normal operation and a major
bug which endangers your database.
The current version of Free Agent [1.21] is Y2K-compliant.
If you use any older version you should update before, well, you
know when.
WARNING: if you use Free Agent 1.2, don't wait; update immediately.
It has a major bug in handling Date: headers of the form
Date: 20 Nov 99 01:08:45 GMT
Date: 20 Nov 00 01:08:45 GMT
in which the year part is two digits.
See
http://home.att.net/~JLBradley/LANCE1.HTM
for links to download sites for both programs and related items.
WARNING: this is what happens if you continue to use a non-compliant
version of either program:
| There are three known Y2K problems with Agent 1.5 and earlier and Free
| Agent 1.11 and earlier.
|
| 1) If the Windows system Short Date Style specifies yy, the yy part
| of dates in the years 00 through 09 will display in the message list
| as 0 through 9. This is entirely cosmetic. If you find it annoying
| enough, a work-around (changing the Short Date Style in the Windows
| control panel to display the full four-digit year) is available; that
| may affect displays in all programs, of course, not just [Free] Agent.
|
| 2) [mentioned in the Release Notes but not on the Forté web site]
| The "get new groups" (not to be confused with the "get new headers")
| command won't work from 2000 through 2009. The "refresh" command is
| not affected, so that could be used instead (at some [considerable in
| some cases] cost in increased update time). The newsrc mechanism can
| be used as a work-around in both programs, but it is very inconvenient
| in Free Agent and only slightly less so in Agent.
|
| 3) On messages dated early in the new century with a Date: header having a
| two-digit year (a format which is already obsolete today), the timestamp
| calculated by [Free] Agent will be wrong; those messages will sort (Agent)
| and purge or export (both programs) incorrectly. In most groups the ratio
| of articles with such headers is now well below 1%, but in the netscape.*
| hierarchy and email (especially spam) it may approach 10%.
|
| Note: there is no work-around for this case in [Free] Agent. If you
| are desperate to keep using an older version you may be able to prevail
| upon the author of one of the popular proxies (Nfilter or Hamster) to
| provide a [seemingly trivial] fix. Alternatively, you could just hope
| that posting or transport agents would stop using the two-digit format
| after 99; if that miracle happens [fat chance!], this issue goes away.
|
| Also: all versions of [Free] Agent generate the Date: header in the
| correct [four-digit year] format; the problem is only with incoming
| messages containing a Date: header in the two-digit year format.
|
| a) A message with this date header
| Date: Sat, 08 Jan 00 15:19:14 GMT
| will be timestamped as 14 Feb 2036 16:47.
|
| If it starts a new thread, it will appear at or near the bottom of the
| message list [Free Agent, or Agent if the message list is threaded or
| sorted by date ascending]. If it is a follow-up, it should thread
| 'properly'. In either case it may not purge until some time in 2036.
|
| b) A message with this date header
| Date: Thu, 19 Feb 02 05:28:22 GMT
| will be timestamped as 19 Feb 1902 05:28.
|
| If it starts a new thread it will appear at or near the top of the
| message list [Free Agent, or Agent if the message list is threaded or
| sorted by date ascending]. If it is a follow-up, it should thread
| 'properly'. In either case, if you have configured messages of its
| type (unread or read) to purge by date, it will vanish during the
| first purge after you download it.
Note: the Y2K-compliant versions of both programs handle both formats
of the Date: header but they have a limitation common to many unix
systems and some Windows applications, as follows:
| 1) Time started at 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT; a message with a Date:
| header which evaluates earlier is flagged internally and displayed
| in the message list with that timestamp.
|
| 2) Time will end at 19 Jan 2038 03:14:07 GMT; a message with a Date:
| header which evaluates later is flagged internally and displayed
| in the message list with that timestamp.
Also: both programs convert two-digit years in the range 70-99 to the
1900s; all others are converted to the 2000s.
Finally, if you're sick of the blather about the Y2K problem (which
has generally been nonsense) just wait for the Y2.038K problem (which
will be the real thing).
BTW: do you have a 40-year mortgage initiated after 19 Jan 1998?
Have you checked to see whether your bank is amortizing it correctly?
--
JimB <mailto:JLBr...@worldnet.att.net.gov> The best .gov is no .gov.
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