Y2k Essay Research Paper The Y2K problem

Y2k Essay, Research Paper

The Y2K problem : A global threat or a business opportunity.

It is a couple of minutes before the midnight on 31st of December 1999. A huge mob of people is standing on the Times Square in New York. Many of them are drunk, everyone is happy, everyone is singing and dancing. Dressed up, in good mood, the people are waiting for the year 2000. Then the last minute of the year shows up on the large clock. People start to countdown . 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1… Suddenly, the electricity collapses. There.s dark all around. People start to panic. Fear and chaos starts to spread all along the East coast. As the time goes on, disorder and confusion rules in the whole United States, in the whole World.

This was one of numerous apocalyptic visions of the New Year.s day. As the idea of the Y2K problem first appeared, these visions were more common and more often to see in the newspapers, magazines and TV shows. The millenium bug was never officially discovered and described. It just showed up as a hypothetical thing. Then the tests begun. Almost nobody paid attention to it that time. First in the 90`s it has become a proclaimed threat. Big businesses, governments, armies, but also households and small shops has started to worry. The Y2K has become a symbol of upcoming electronic chaos.

The millenium problem definitions vary from one to another. The very basic refers to older computers who used two-digit convention to represent the year. According to MITRE Y2K Team this showed to be a real problem in the late 60`s, when the IBM 360 had difficulties in handling of the dates past 31st of December 1969, so they started collapsing after midnight local time. The other day IBM recommend to set a different date to fool the computers temporarily (Frederickson, J. 1999). This problem was accidentally caused by the constructors and programmers of microchips, computers and software, because they have used the two-digits to represent the year. This thing was implemented to almost all electronic devices which used or displayed date.(Christie, B. 1999)

There is a simple example of the possible two-digit mismatch. A computer has worked out the value of money transferred in or out of a money account based on the following simple calculation.

VALUE = (YearNextYear . YearRightNow) x $1000

If the hypothetical computer uses a four-digit dates it will transfer this amount into the particular account.

VALUE = (2000 . 1999) x $1000 = $1000

If the computer is not Y2K compliant, the system will debit the account.

VALUE = (00 . 99) x $1000 = MINUS (-) $99,00

This is a demonstration of the problems that millenium bug could cause. Not only software but also hardware components of the computers are controlled by date. So the problems could occur also as a hardware failure.(Christie, B. 1999)

The year 2000, as it is a leap year, may bring more of the problematic situations. Another problem is that in this year there is an additional date . 29th of February. According to John Koskien of the Y2K`s Council.s Information Coordination Center the glitches would affect mostly software. He said that there are numerous ways to make clear what is a leap year, there is a chance of some programs lacking the code to calculate the last day of February. This could affect banks ,payrolls and interest calculating. (Broder, C. 2000).

Another problem that could occur is in the number of weeks. Almost every year has 53 weeks, in some of them 51 or 52 are 7-day weeks. With a 364-day years the number of weeks would be exactly 52. Unfortunately, as the years have 365 days, none of them has less than 53 weeks. This year has one week more. Such event appears every 28 year, so it means that the last 54-week year was 1972, long before the today software and hardware systems were developed. Allegro Consultants, Inc. , who has been working on the Y2K problems for many years, claimed that many programs have coded only 53-week years. According to this company, some programs restrict the user to enter a number of week no higher than 53. Another proposed problem is that range-checking programming languages like Pascal could abort or use incorrect information. This could lead to failures and even damages.

The problems that could have occurred are of different size and seriousness. From a simple malfunction of an old alarm clock radio to a nuclear pleat meltdown. Because there are dates used almost in every system, in every computer the Y2K should have affected a number of different systems. The first Y2K indication was a computer misread of the date, when the 00 would appear as a 1st of January 1900. This wouldn.t be such a big problem, but the computer software, especially accounting and statistics software, could calculate false date and consecutively malfunction. Such software is used in many institutions like airports, hospitals, banks, governments and army. It is not difficult to imagine what a software failure could do to an airport or a hospital. As nowadays these are wired together via the Internet or another network, the electronic apocalypse could easily spread along. The problems were significant and clear and there was a good reason to invest to protection.

However the reason was good, the investments were well excessive. According to Robin Guenier ,the executive director of Taskfor