Basically, the Year 2000 bug is this: When mainframe computers were first being de- veloped in the 1950's, computer memory was at a premium, so in order to save space, programmers and designers allowed the computers to store dates by only remembering the last two digits of the year. A "19" would automatically be added in front of these two digits, so a mainframe computer would remember "1976" as "76." This may not seem like a significant reduction in space, but imagine how much it matters when the com- puter has to handle thousands of millions of dates.
The problem with this system is that there is no way tor the mainframe computers to re- member dates after December 31, 1999. In fact, as it stands now, the year 2001 will appear to a mainframe as 1901, as the last two digits are the only ones it records and the first two are always seen as "19."
Needless to say, there is currently as huge demand for engineers to intercede for busi- nesses and stop this problem from being a huge one. However, to handle these ma- chines, one must be a COBOL programmer, and since that is such an out-of-date lan- guage, most COBOL programmers are retired and potentially 20 years past any CO- BOL programming they have done.
Those who would panic say that this problem will lead to the Ultimate Doomsday, and those who are a bit too relaxed say this whole thing is an overblown hoax. Meanwhile, most in the middle say that some people will suffer, and some companies may disap- pear, and there may even be a mild change in society, but the world won't end. Re- gardless, it has been estimated that fixing this mess before the clock strickes midnight on January 1, 2000 will cost $600 billion or so.
Below are links to mirrors of sites which gave a good cross-reference of the Year 2000 Bug in September of 1997:
Sun's Year 2000 Information Site!
CNN - Teen claims he has solved millennium bug - Sept.
14,1997
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This site was created especially for students of the UNC School of Journalism's JOMC 050 Class, and anyone else who may be interested. For more information, please contactdaikat@email.unc.edu |