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To: Ahda who wrote (6845)	1/27/1998 3:04:00 PM
From: William Jones	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 116756

Hi Darlene, Perhaps this will help. October 23 / 1997 Y-2 K " The Millenium Bug " Year 2000 problem, non event or cataclysmic, lets review the facts. The problem is so simple, many people refuse to believe the problem actually exists. The problem, when time puts this millenium to rest and begins the new millennium, many computers won't know what year or century it is. Crazy as it sounds, this is the problem. Why? The story begins back when computers started entering the world of business and governments, mid 1960's and early 1970's. The key punch era, and those key punch cards which only stored 80 characters of information, causing early programmers to shortcut the year date from 1967 to 67 saving a valuable 2 characters. Who knew this compromise would become the industry standard, or we would still be using old Legacy systems thirty years later. The problem occurs when 1999 becomes 2000 [ 99 to 00 ], telling the computer its now 1900 with all the associated headaches. That in a nutshell is the cause of the problem. Simple remedy, look at the lines of code containing the date calculation, correct and presto, problem solved, most programmers can do this fix in a flash. A solution? Hardly. The nub of the problem is twofold, sheer volume of code to be checked and testing the system after the corrections. Many modern businesses have between 10,000,000 and 250,000,000 lines of code to be checked at a cost of US $ 1.00 - 1.50 per line. Examples: Chase Manhattan Bank is budgeting $250, 000, 000, Merrill Lynch $200,000,000, Hertz Rent-A-Car $15,000,000 and these costs will have to be absorbed by the economy. This situation has drawn a line in time which is immutable. Time does not forgive deadlines. Be ready or face the consequences. Consequences, like what? Most problems will likely occur from ripple effects, one system failing causing another to encounter problems. Some area's that may affect you, remembering this will be occurring January 1, 2000, wintertime. Some systems could be down hours, days or weeks. The electrical system may experience problems on the grid, telephones may crash, airlines and air traffic control down, banks and financial institutions closed, hospitals and health care providers impaired, Government agencies be it IRS, Medicare or Social Security hobbled. Imagine if your employer physically could not pay you for one or two weeks because of glitches in the system or your credit cards won't work This is a global problem which will have global impacts. Global costs to repair this are conservatively estimated to be in the $1,000,000,000,000 range and many experts feel this is very low and does not address the costs of litigation which will follow. Grave concerns are developing about Japan's tardiness in addressing this problem because they rely more heavily on mainframe legacy applications than any other country. These levels of expenses could put some businesses out of business. We have the opportunity to prepare ourselves, forewarned is forearmed. My interest in this problem has been developing for some time and the quest for information has taken me to many varied sites on the Web. I hope the following list will assist those wishing to further their understanding of this fascinating situation. y2ktimebomb.com erols.com yourdon.com compinfo.co.uk year2000.com Regards, willyum