Sunday October 4, 6:30 pm Eastern Time
Nasdaq's Zarb says worried by Year 2000 bug
BOCA RATON, Fla., Oct 4 - The head of the nation's second-largest stock market says he is worried by the looming millennium crisis, the software bug that threatens to crash the world's computers on January 1 of the year 2000, but that Nasdaq is preparing for battle.
''I believe we're in good shape but I'm still worried,'' said Frank Zarb, the chairman of the National Association of Securities Dealers, parent of the Nasdaq stock market.
''We know, like everyone else does that there are going to be some crises,'' he said, ''so we formed crisis teams that can parachute in after that day.''
Zarb spoke at the 65th annual convention of the Securities Traders Association, a trade group, here at the posh Boca Raton Hotel & Beach Club, an enclave of palm trees, pools and golf courses a stone's throw from the Atlantic Ocean.
Nasdaq said it has spent more than $50 million so far combatting the millennium bug, spokesman Michael Jones said.
In a move to save programming space, many older software systems were designed to read only the last two digits of the year, '98 for 1998. But when the digits flip to ''00'', many computer systems are expected to read the year as 1900 and either spit out erroneous data or crash all together.
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