[11379] in Public-Access_Computer_Systems_Forum
Will Your Computer Crash in 2000?
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Steve O'Keefe)
Fri Jun 13 21:54:42 1997
Date: Fri, 13 Jun 1997 11:17:34 -0500
From: Steve O'Keefe <IPS@olympus.net>
To: PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU
Reply-To: Public-Access Computer Systems Forum <PACS-L@LISTSERV.UH.EDU>
----------------------------Original message----------------------------
On January 1, 2000, many of the world's largest computer systems will
crash. Why? Because their date routines were not programmed to handle
century changes. For some people, the inconvenience will be minor -- senior
citizens being told they must register for the draft, for example. For
others, it will be devastating: some software uses "99" in the year field
to mark a file for deletion. Files are already being deleted, systems are
already crashing, and we're 30 months away from 2000.
Fixing "the Year 2000 Problem," as it's known, has proven complicated --
and expensive. An estimate to fix the problem for the City of Phoenix,
Arizona, came in at $63 million. That's one municipality out of thousands.
Imagine the cost to fix this problem at all the banks, insurance companies,
stock brokerages, airlines, manufacturing plants, government agencies, and
other organizations that rely on date-sensitive information.
The Year 2000 Problem is so big that two individuals have spent years
trying to warn people. Peter de Jager is the "original prophet" of the Year
2000 Problem and appears at two conferences a month to address the issue.
Richard Bergeon edits the "Millennium Journal" which deals with Year 2000
planning and applications. Together, they have co-authored the new book,
"Managing 00: Surviving the Year 2000 Computing Crisis," which explains the
problem and the planning and patching necessary to circumvent it.
John Wiley & Sons, publisher of "Managing 00," has given me permission to
distribute a sample chapter from the book. It's an overview of the scope of
the problem and how companies are dealing with it, including how Kaiser
Permanente won contracts because it addressed the Year 2000 Problem early
on. To get the sample chapter, send mailto:IPS@olympus.net with the subject
line, "Send Year 2000." If my computer doesn't crash, I'll reply with the
sample chapter.
