The year 2000 bug
The year 2000 bugThe Year 2000 Bug
As the millennium approaches we come closer and closer to what some say could mean the end of civilization as we know it. What is this great event that would have such an impact on the world that it could end civilization? The problem is a simple computer bug refereed to as the Y2K bug but its ramifications could be immense. This computer bug has been predicted to impact the world anywhere from a minor problem to the end of a civilization. Whichever view you take on the subject it is clear that this bug will have a definite impact on the economy. The depth of this impact is yet to be determined but by looking at what can realistically happen as a result of this bug and by looking at situations that have upset the economy in the past it will give us a better look at what may happen.
In order to understand the Y2K bug we must first understand what it is. For many years electronic storage was very expensive. In the early days of computing a Megabyte or a million bytes of information could have cost up to $100,000 to store electronically. This same amount of information storage can now cost around ten cents. Because of this expensive storage limitation code written for these older computers was compressed in any way possible. One way to cut down the size of code was to compress dates to a format only six characters long. So instead of April 14 1999 the date would be compressed to 4/14/99. At the time of this programming this seemed to be the best solution to the space saving dilemma. As we come closer to the millennium we see that this style of programming was a great overlook of programmers. Assuming that the machines would not still be functioning in the year 2000, programmers did not see this as a problem. Now that the year is approaching there are a great deal more of these machines around then anyone ever would have thought. This poses a problem because when the last two digits of the year section of the date roll around to 00 the computer will think that the year is 1900 because it simply assumed that the first two digits are 19.
At first glance this problem seems to be minor but at a deeper look we can see that this Y2K bug can cause a great deal of havoc with our computer systems. Many programs that are date sensitive will react to this bug in a negative way. A good example of a problem that could occur due to the bug would be that of banking software. In that case one of the software’s functions would be to bill all of its customers with outstanding loans. This...
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