

14,000 draft notices sent to men born in 1800s - frankydp
http://www.marinecorpstimes.com/article/20140710/NEWS/307100049/14-000-draft-notices-sent-men-born-1800s

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Mandatum

        A clerk working with the state’s database failed to select the century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997
    

Wait so.. The US is drafting?

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fennecfoxen
Right. It's essentially a ceremonial piece of paperwork, dating from a more
militarized time (USSR etc) when un-computerized governments didn't have many
other ways to keep track of its citizens. Nowadays, no human being _really_
cares if you register anymore, because there's no draft, and if there ever
needed to be, they could require registration again and track down the
delinquents using computers.

So it'll probably be required forever. Wikipedia says the agency gets $24
million a year.

~~~
Turing_Machine
There are some consequences for not registering (can't get federal government
jobs, can't get federal student aid) so it's not quite true that no one cares.

~~~
fennecfoxen
Well, yes, the bureaucracy _always_ cares. But I said human beings. :)

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wintersFright
I didn't know America maintains a register of men they could potentially
conscript should the need arise.

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Selective_Service_System)

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greenyoda
_" The glitch, it turns out, originated with the Pennsylvania Department of
Transportation during a transfer of nearly 400,000 records to the Selective
Service. A clerk working with the state’s database failed to select the
century, producing records for males born between 1993 and 1997 — and for
those born a century earlier, PennDOT spokeswoman Jan McKnight said Thursday.
...

The Selective Service didn’t initially catch it because the state used a two-
digit code to indicate year of birth, spokesman Pat Schuback said."_

So apparently they store their year field as two digits and have a separate
field for century, instead of expanding the year field to four digits? Looks
like their shoddy programming finally came back to bite them.

Maybe in 2016, when people born in 2000 start applying for drivers licenses,
they'll be rejecting them, saying that 116-year-olds are too old to drive
safely?

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chrismcb
That is what we call a y2k bug

~~~
trapexit
Century field? In all likelihood, this is actually a _repair_ to a y2k bug.

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BWStearns
Gov tech is always fun. I just remember when I had to do it I tried to
register sometime late at night (2am-ish?) and was surprised to see that their
system had crazy amounts of planned downtime per week. It took a few days
before I remembered to do it when it was accepting registrations.

Found wayback link: It is not operational when system maintenance is scheduled
from 2 a.m. to 4 a.m. U.S. Central Time Tuesday through Saturday and from 6
p.m. Wednesday to 2 a.m. Thursday.

([https://web.archive.org/web/20011101001831/http://www4.sss.g...](https://web.archive.org/web/20011101001831/http://www4.sss.gov/regver/reg_server_down.asp))

~~~
negativity
At first glance, I'm gobsmacked at the idea of an electronic system that
hovers around 90% planned uptime, but then again, of all the services I might
wish to demonstrate a total lack of efficiency, the selective service would
probably be my first choice.

Even now, to look at the website, it seems like it might be running on some
server dating back to covered wagon times. Here's to hoping it stays that way.

~~~
mpclark
Slightly related, but Companies House, the UK's official registry of
incorporated businesses, used to close up the database search function on its
website every day at, ISTR, 5:30pm, then open it again the next morning. This
would have been in the late 90s/early 2000s.

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rustyconover
It's getting closer and closer to 2038, the 32-bit time_t overflow... I'd
figure by now more bugs would be found with that event than Y2K bugs 14.5
years after the fact.

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poulsbohemian
Two odd things about this story 1)That nobody noticed what I have to assume
was a significantly larger number of selective service notices for the state
of Pennsylvania being sent and 2) That any of them got actually delivered to
anyone who could even respond to it. My great-grandfather fits the criteria -
born in PA in the late 1800's - but he's been deceased for _decades_ and had
at least four separate addresses as an adult - none of which are places where
family members live today.

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cyphunk

        The glitch, it turns out, originated with the Pennsylvania
        Department of Transportation during a transfer of nearly 
        400,000 records to the Selective Service
    

No drivers license, no problems.

~~~
sliverstorm
More like No ID, no problems.

Except no ID is its own problem.

~~~
cyphunk
from experience, this isnt true.

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lotsofmangos
Is a pity they didn't show. Perhaps they need louder trumpets.

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mantis369
Silly Selective Service. You need the stone of Erech, and to be the heir of
Isildur, to summon the army of the dead.

