The Year 2000 Bug and You

By now, even the most casual computer users have heard of the Year 2000 (or "Y2K") bug, the shortsighted technological legacy of using only two digits in computer code to specify the calendar year. In short, systems suffering from this malady think of "1998," for example, as simply "98." What once seemed like efficient programming will be a problem when systems which habitually take the "19" for granted perceive the beginning of the year 2000 as, instead, the start of 1900. As you might imagine, this has serious implications for automated systems, from warehouses with perishable products to banks that calculate interest on financial accounts, that rely on date calculation.

Air-traffic control systems disabled, utility companies off-line, banks and financial markets crippled: the resulting scenarios painted in the media have grown gloomier, even as industries rush to meet that intractable deadline. If you're part of your company's Information Technology staff, you're probably in the process of finding solutions right now. But what does it mean for the average PC user? Most Y2K media coverage focuses on large institutional systems, which in some cases predate the desktop computing revolution. Surely they're the ones that need to worry, right?

Pat Burke, president of Year 2000 services at the IT consulting firm SRA International, Inc., warns against assuming that the problem is limited to large corporations that still maintain old mainframes.

"To say it's a legacy problem is a mischaracterization. Many smaller companies think that because they're using off-the-shelf products, they won't be affected, but in some cases their problem is greater because the software can be customized to the point that the macros that users create aren't Y2K compliant, even if the application itself is."

For instance, if you're using Microsoft Excel, you may have created a customized spreadsheet with only two digits for the year value. Even if your computer's hardware and all its applications are Year 2000 compliant, Excel would have no way of interpreting those two digits as a date, and your spreadsheet's calculations could fail. (Microsoft has created its own Year 2000 center to address these and other concerns.)

To ensure that your PC is Year 2000 compliant, Burke suggests that users test both their hardware and software. The biggest hardware issue for PC owners is testing the machine's BIOS, or Basic Input/Output System. The BIOS is a read-only memory chip that provides basic information for the computer to boot--including one of the internal clocks, which in some BIOS chips may mishandle the century rollover.

There are several possible solutions for this instance of the Y2K bug, ranging from an operating system upgrade to overwriting (or "flashing") the BIOS chip with new date calculations. To determine whether your PC's BIOS is Y2K compliant, check the list of diagnostic tools at PC Magazine Online. (Macintosh users can hold their heads high: the Mac's internal clock was properly designed to recognize the millennium.)

When testing software applications on your PC, Burke says that "the real issue is understanding the implications of age dating in a system--for example, running an e-mail system that checks messages based on a date and deletes them after a certain date, or a file management system that does the same." By manually resetting your computer's date to the year 2000 and running each application, you may be able to determine which applications will work properly, and which may need to be patched or replaced.

Of course, not every problem with the Year 2000 bug can be addressed on your own desktop. As Burke notes, "if the telecommunications backbone has a problem, or your Internet service provider has a problem, it'll affect your ability to telecommute." Systemic problems like this have already begun, such as non-Y2K compliant companies rejecting credit cards with post-2000 expiration dates. Burke expects the first large-scale effects of the bug to hit in early 1999. But in preparing for them, he also warns against the effects of assuming the worst.

"The scenario is if people start taking actions themselves in terms of what they expect will happen, it becomes in essence a self-fulfilling prophecy--people saying, 'if we're going to have power outages, we should start to stockpile items.' It has serious implications on the financial side, if people withdraw funds because there might be problems with the markets."

If there is indeed a crisis in the year 2000, it seems the technology itself may not be solely to blame.

Sean G. Thomas, Sean Thomas, Sean Garrett Thomas