Following are some dates and the problems that may be encountered because of Year 2000 or similar problems. (Most of these are from an e-mail from a friend.)
Not every computer counts forward like you and me. Some look
down the road one entire year and count backward to determine
the date. (Please don’t ask why.)
On January 1, 1999, some will look forward one year and see “00.”
Like humans, the computers may balk at having to count
backward from 00.
Any company that begins its fiscal year after January 1, 1999 and before January 1, 2000
will have to contend with dealing with the year 2000. (See also “October 1, 1999” below.)
We all know that the year 2000 problem is the biggest software
project in history. But many Americans are unaware that
programmers throughout the world are also at work on the second
biggest software project in history: converting the currencies of
11 European nations into a single currency called the Euro. Banks
and financial institutions will begin transacting business in Euros
on January 1, 1999, although the actual bank notes won’t be issued
until January 1, 2001. The introduction of the Euro is to continue through
the year 2002. There’s no direct link between the Euro project and
the Y2K project, but the massive size of the simultaneous projects
will soon take most of the world’s available programmers.
The world’s 24 global positioning satellites record time by counting
the weeks that have passed since their launch in 1980. The weeks
fill up a counter much like the odometer on your car. And like your
odometer, the counter rolls over to 0000 when it’s full. At midnight
on August 21, 1999, the counter will be full. Equipment that uses the
GPS signals may malfunction.
Many computers have been programmed to recognize 9999 as an
“end-of-file” command. Perhaps some computers will conclude,
quite logically, that a date of 9/9/99 means it’s the end of all time.
Big Daddy rolls
its clock forward October 1, 1999. As of that date, the federal government
officially enters its 2000 budget year. Every federal function will be
affected, from defense to Medicare to payments on the federal debt.
This undoubtedly applies to state and local governments as well.
(See also “January 1, 1999 to December 31, 1999” above.)
By now, you’ve heard that many of the world’s computers will roll
the date clock forward from “99” to “00” with potentially disastrous
consequences. Year 2000 authorities prophesy problems as minor
as erroneous overdue notices from the library and as major as a
failure of the nation’s power grid.
Corporate America will switch on most of its desktop computers
Tuesday, January 4th, after a long holiday weekend. Boot up and hang
on to your morning mochas.
Most programmers know the rules for calculating leap years: Any year
evenly divisible by 4 with no remainder is a leap year, except years that are also
evenly divisible by 100. So 1700, 1800 and 1900 weren’t leap years. So 2000 won’t be either?
Well, there’s a third, lesser-known rule that cancels the first two:
Any year evenly divisible by 400 is a leap year, including--you guessed it--2000.
The question is: How many programmers know this rule?
Some computers work by counting the number of days in the year.
If they aren’t programmed to know that 2000 is a leap year, the
machines will be bewildered when they reach December 31, 2000,
the seemingly impossible 366th day of the year.
Unix is the “other” major operating system, a set of instructions
that, like Windows, DOS and MacOS, run the basic functions of a
computer. Unix powers many commercial and Internet computers.
Unix tells time differently, which means that it does not have a year
2000 problem. Unfortunately, it does have a September 8, 2001, problem.
In Unix language, that date is represented by the number 999,999,999--the
same number that some Unix applications use to denote the
end of a file.
By the year 2025 or so, the United States will simply run out of
available seven-digit telephone numbers and area codes. Telephone
companies will have to add digits or revamp the numbering system.
That, in turn, will force software programmers to overhaul every piece of
software that uses phone numbers, plus all databases and archives
that store phone numbers.
The Unix operating system tells time by counting the number of
seconds elapsed since January 1, 1970. But like your odometer, there
are only so many places on its counter. At seven seconds past
3:14 a.m. on January 19, 2038, the counters on every Unix computer
in the world will be full and will roll over to “0.” Many computers will
assume it’s either January 1, 1970, all over again (who wants to relive
the ’70s?) or that it’s the end of the world (which may be a better
alternative than the preceding).
If you use an older Macintosh, you’ll be accurate until February 6, 2040.
At that point it will roll around to January 1, 1904.
The latest models should last until the year 29,940!
By 2075, the United States will have exhausted the 1 billion unique Social Security numbers possible under its nine-digit numbering system. Year 2000 expert Capers Jones suggests that the nation must be prepared by 2050 to expand or replace the many software applications that depend on those numbers.
If the world still revered Latin (why don’t we??) we would have no Y2K problem.
The year 2000 in Roman numerals is MM. This uses considerably fewer digits than 1999, MCMXCIX.
The year up ’til now with the largest number of Roman numerals is 1888, MDCCCLXXXVIII--thirteen of them! So we’ve been going relatively downhill since that time.
But watch out for the 2888 or 3888 problem!
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© David Sheppard 06/24/1999 All Rights Reserved [disclaimer] |