
Court Computer Says All Hartford Is Dead (1992) - adamnemecek
http://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/30/nyregion/court-computer-says-all-hartford-is-dead.html
======
csense
If you think "things are different now and this kind of thing would never
happen in modern times," keep in mind that in 2014 a Y2K bug resulted in the
government mailing 14,000 draft registration notices to men turning 118 [1].

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020235](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8020235)

------
terinjokes
Article is light on details, but sounds like a fixed length field issue with
"d" overflowing into the status field because the city name was included in
the wrong field.

I wonder what field it was included in. The city name would have been included
on the questionnaire mailer, but those never went out, so I guess the field
could have been anything.

~~~
danso
Was just going to say the same thing. Seems like all data of that era and
before was fixed width for efficiency purposes...I wonder what the 7-char
field was

~~~
rhplus
State + zip? Example: CT06101

------
wyldfire
> The problem came to light in a lawsuit challenging the racial makeup of the
> grand jury that indicted Luis Colon Osario, a defendant in the $7.1 million
> robbery of a Wells Fargo depot in West Hartford in 1983.

Gee, it started out as a chuckle but this is scary. Tsk, seems like there
should be some sort of check in place. How would we know if our counties had a
similar issue? Sure, sure, that was 1992 but we've got plenty of clever bugs
hiding in code written in this century too.

------
ChuckMcM
"In related news the entire town was listed on a single line as the 'd'
appeared in column 72 which everyone knows is the "continuation" column on
punched cards."

------
awinter-py
Cool article! Clearest example I know for demonstrating buffer overflow to
laypeople.

------
ForcesOfOdin
Good for a laugh.

------
a3n
Form overflow.

