[Fwd: fwd: Y2K Computer Glitches Hit Sweden Taxis, Gas Pumps]

-------- Original Message -------- Subject: fwd: Y2K Computer Glitches Hit Sweden Taxis, Gas Pumps Date: Tue, 5 Jan 1999 15:33:30 EST From: "Willis Emerson" <wemerson(a)natick-amed02.army.mil> Reply-To: <wemerson(a)natick-amed02.army.mil> To: <wpe101(a)banet.net> ---------- Original Text ---------- From: AMSSCSIM@IMD@natick, on 1/5/99 2:40 PM: To: *@* Cc: AMSSCSIM@IMD@natick ---------- Original Text ---------- From: AMSSCSIM@IMD@natick, on 1/5/99 2:27 PM: To: AMSSCSIM@IMD@natick Y2K computer glitches hit Sweden taxis, gas pumps. STOCKHOLM, Sweden - For a while, some taxi passengers got unexpectedly cheap rides and some motorists had trouble buying gas due to computer glitches that accompanied the new year in Sweden. Stockholm's largest taxi service recently changed the way it calculates fares. But when 1998 became 1999, some of its computers didn't adjust properly and passengers were charged normal rates, instead of the higher holiday and late-hour fares. "The problem has been patched, and now we'll get to the root of the problem," Taxi Stockholm managing director Anders Malmqvist said in a telephone interview Saturday. Customers of Statoil, Norway's state oil company that operates about 600 gas stations in Sweden, couldn't use their credit cards Friday because pumps were programmed to accept them only through December 1998. "There was nothing wrong in the data technology, but rather it was we who programmed badly," Statoil spokesman Henrik Siden told the regional newspaper Oestgoeta Correspondenten. The day before, police at Stockholm's Arlanda international airport were temporarily unable to issue provisional travel documents to four travelers who had misplaced their passports, the Swedish news agency TT reported. When they attempted to input the date, some computers would not accept "99" and transmitted in response: "end of run" or "end of file."