When this error first occurred a few days ago, my immediate thought was it was a remnant of the Y2K fixes that were implemented back in 1999.

The computer bug that brought Bank of Queensland's Eftpos transactions to a grinding halt in the first days of the New Year has hit other banks - including the Commonwealth-owned BankWest.

One of the memes that those who deny AGW come up with is that AGW is just like Y2K - a non issue. My suspicion is that the code in the EFTPOS machines was a qucik fix (much like the code that caused Y2K in the first place), and that code is now causing the problem.

Perhaps this problem will put and end to the meme that Y2K was all a beatup, when in fact it was the diligence of IT departments around the world that prevented Y2K from being an issue.