What's the significance of Oct 12 1999? [closed]

Elementary my dear Watson:

• Oct 12 1999 is exactly 80 days before 1-1 2000.
• For some people the year 2000 was the end of the world
• As we know, it takes 80 days to go around the world.
• So oct 12 1999 was the last possible day to go around the world.
• As we know internet is wrapped around the world.
• So packets (and also cookies) travel around the world.
• The expiration date of Oct 12 1999 is the symbolic last day a packet could be send.
• There is no need to send it later than this date.
• So this is the symbolic date for do not expire.

Ok, folks, I talked to a dozen different people on the ASP.NET Team. The dev who wrote THAT line of code, we think, is gone. We asked The Gu, and he wasn't sure.

Stefan Schackow, from the team, said, after speaking with Manu Vasandani:

"The ASP.NET developers were being chased by a pack of feral ninjas on fire and thus were under intense pressure to complete the feature whilst fearing for their lives. As a result in the heat of the moment(ary passion) the snap decision was made to set the constant to the current point in time, less one year. Unfortunately the developer who made that decision wasn’t fast enough checking it in, and despite the shortcut ended up dying an agonizing death at the hands of the ninja leader 'Eviscerati Extremus Minus One'."

Translation? The date is one year before the date that line of code was written.

Maybe that line was written on Oct 13th 1999, and they picked "yesterday" as an arbitrary date that would always be in the past.