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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
June 27, 1997 -- Allentown, PA. WeatherTrac Industries disclosed today the issues surrounding the "Year 2000" problem as it relates to WeatherTrac software. The issue has been fully addressed, and the primary impact areas and steps taken to address them have been outlined below.
The WeatherTrac image analysis software relies on accurate time and date stamping of image files in order to perform Earth location of imagery without the need for "Ground Truth" points. This feature has been provided since 1988. At that time, the impending Year 2000 problem was recognized, and all dates used internally by the software are arbitrarily referenced as relative signed minutes since midnight, Jan 1 1988. Thus, in terms of the internal date processing, there is nothing special about the year 2000. As far as the WeatherTrac software is concerned, it is year 12. The software is dependent only upon the underlying operating system to report the correct time and date, including century. The latest WIN32 release obtains the current system date & time from the MICROSOFT MFC COleDateTime::GetCurrentTime function and adjusted to UTC, corrected for local time and daylight saving offset, as specified by the operating system and as maintained by the user.
The image acquisition time and date is embedded into the .wtc file header, and is also used to generate the default filename for the image. In the latest WIN32 release, the file directory date and time stamp is used to sort the images for animation, using the WIN32 file creation time and date FILETIME attribute. The FILETIME attribute is a 64-bit number representing the number of 100 nanosecond time intervals since midnight Jan 01, 1601, and is applicable to dates between 1601 and the year 60055 at 100 nanosecond resolution.
The WeatherTrac ensemble includes a utility for parsing satellite element data from NORAD/NASA 2LINE format data embedded (anywhere) in text files. The NASA 2LINE format includes an epoch date&time item, in which the date is specified with a 2 digit year. The current release of the import utility (SATDAT.EXE V3.57) interprets the years expressed as 00-95 as the years 2000-2095. If the format of these standard reports should change at some time in the future by the supplying source to address the Year 2000 problem directly, WeatherTrac will modify the SATDAT.EXE utility to correctly function with the new format. Click these links to download the latest versions of the SATDAT.EXE and EPOCHS.EXE utilities for your WeatherTrac installation.
The above utility also imports WMO TBUS format data embedded (anywhere) in text files, and the TBUS PART IV format also specifies epoch dates with 2 digit years. The SATDAT.EXE V3.57 utility interprets years expressed as 00-95 as the years 2000-2095. If the format of these standard reports should change at some time in the future to address the Year 2000 problem directly, WeatherTrac will modify the SATDAT.EXE utility to correctly function with the new format. Click these links to download the latest versions of the SATDAT.EXE and EPOCHS.EXE utilities for your WeatherTrac installation.
All current releases of the software are WIN32 based, and internally use the MFC "COleDateTime" and "COleDateTimeSpan" classes to handle time and date calculations. These standard MICROSOFT MFC classes are designed to handle dates from "1 Jan 100" to "31 Dec 9999", and provide a safe method of calculating date and time offsets. However, and this is important, WeatherTrac supplied software depends upon the underlying MFC libraries, operating system and BIOS to report the correct date, and cannot detect failures of these underlying components which may in fact be different on each and every customer installation. To the extent that we reasonably can, we have already addressed the Y2K issue within our own WIN32 based code, and to the extent that we reasonably can, we will continue to address yet unkown Y2K issues under the same terms, conditions, and policies which govern all such software 'bugs.' However, no specially fabricated extended warranty, guarantee, or certification applicable to this instance of 'bug' is, can, or will be offered, other than the statement of policy expressed above, backed by our already demonstrated willingness to post fixes to known problems free of charge to our customers whenever possible.
WeatherTrac Customers with concerns about the "Year 2000" problem can rest assured that we are aware of the potential problem and that the issue has been addressed.
Windows-NT and Windows-95 are registered trademarks of Microsoft Corporation.
For More Information Contact:
SFWX, Inc.
330 Schantz Rd. POB 3370 Allentown, PA 18106
Tel: (610)395-4441
FAX: (610)395-8534
Internet: info@sfwx.com