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THE MILLENNIUM BUG Problems and Solutions THE MILLENNIUM BUG Problems and Solutions The so-called 'Y2K problem’ is much bigger than most governments, businesses and the public realise. e've been hearing about this problem for some time now, but, like most peo- ple, we have been ignoring it. As with many problems, we clip articles about it, then file them for later reference. It's the Y2K problem. To a sci- entist, "Y" means "year" and "K" means "1,000", so "Y2K" refers to the year 2000 problem. It's a computer problem with possibly serious environment and health implications. Like most people, we are very suspicious of alarming predictions about the year 2000. What finally focused our attention on the Y2K problem was a small item in the back pages of the New York Times of Saturday, June 13, 1998.' It began: "The nation's utilities told a Senate panel today [June 12] that they were working to solve expected computer roblems when 1999 ends but that they could not guarantee that the lights would not go out on Jan. 1, 2000." The utilities say the lights may go out. This seems like a problem worth examining. The Times went on: "An informal survey by a Senate panel of 10 of the nation's largest utilities serving 50 million people found none had a complete plan in case its computers failed because of the problem." The Times explained: "Many electrical plants use date- sensitive software to run built-in clocks that monitor and control the flow of power. These could fail if not updated." The utilities say the lights may go out, yet none of them has a full contingency plan. How serious could this problem become? As we examined the items in our Y2K file, we found opinions ranging all over the place. Some people said, "This is a fake problem invented by people who want to sell fixes." Others said, "This is going to be the end of civilisation as we know it.". Where does the truth lie? I worked five years in the Computing Center at Princeton University, so have more than a passing familiarity with computers. My crystal ball is as hazy as anyone else's, but here is an attempt to offer a realistic look at the nature of this Y2K problem. Unlike most problems, we know when this one is going to hit us: on January 1, 2000, just a little over 500 days from now. Here is the crux. Many computers only recognise dates by two digits, e.g., 67 is 1967 and 98 is 1998. But in these computers a 00 date will mean 1900, not 2000, unless their software is rewritten. When such computers start calculating or comparing dates after 1999, they won't work right: they may simply shut down, or they may seem to run fine but produce incorrect information that is very hard to detect. Computers that have this Y2K problem are called "non-compliant" computers, and it turns out there are quite a few of them. Many non-compliant computers are the really big "mainframe" machines that serve as the central nervous systems of financial institutions (banks, savings & loans, credit unions), stock exchanges, air traffic control systems, missile defence systems, government tax agencies, the Social Security Administration, the Medicare program, the insurance industry, and all of the Fortune-1000 multinational corporations. (And of course, this problem is not limited to the US. Every industrialised country depends heavily upon large mainframe computers.) A report published by Merrill Lynch, the financial management company, states flatly: "When the millennium arrives, many computer systems and global networks will fail because of an inability to properly interpret dates beyond 1999." Mainframes will not be the only computers to fail on January 1, 2000 if they are still by Peter Montague © 1998 First published by Rachel's Environment & Health Weekly #604, 25 June; #605, 2 July 1998 Environmental Research Foundation PO Box 5036 Annapolis, MD 21403-7036, USA NEXUS - 13 by Peter Montague © 1998 AUGUST - SEPTEMBER 1998