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Day 418
What will happen to the world's millions of computer systems (plus all the "embedded" microchips in every sort of equipment imaginable) when the clock rolls over to 12:01 a.m. on January 1, 2000? Will they think it is now the year 1900, or will they merely cease working? The long-standing custom of using only two digits to represent the calendar year (98 = 1998, not 1898 or 2098) has set the stage for a potential cascade of system glitches. An army of thousands has been working for the last few years on correcting millions of lines of computer code (and searching for embedded devices with potential problems), but the mainstream media has not had much to say about the issue until just recently. The bulk of detailed, serious information previously appeared to reside only on the Internet. Now, in November, 1998 (with 418 days to go, at this writing), we are starting to see attention paid to this subject in a variety of mainstream television programming, such as UPN's 10:00 news report (Los Angeles, channel 13). Since July, 1998, when I first started digging deeply into the subject, there has been no indication that significant progress has been made. Corporate press releases and government agency statements now speak of "contingency planning," "triage," and other terms that indicate there is flatly not enough time (nor enough programmers available) to fix everything. The immovable deadline and late start, coupled with the sheer number of systems, embedded processors, and lines of code, virtually guarantee that we will see disruptions in our lives. The severity and duration of these disruptions are uncertain. This entire document is a Year 2000 information disclosure as defined in the Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act, S 2392. |
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