Here's the article:
************************
April 19, 1998
Year 2000 hype is relentless
You may have filed your taxes, but deadlines still await you. Only 621
days are left to make yourself year 2000 (Y2K) compliant.
DonOt delay! Failure to fix your computer systemsO Y2K problem can
create tragedy and death at turnover ¥ when calendars flip from Dec.
31, 1999, to Jan. 1, 2000.
As big as the Y2K problems and its costs may appear, they pale in
comparison to the hype that surrounds them ¥ hype of such legendary
proportion that it produces its own market, luring the hapless and
paranoid to pricey and gratuitous solutions.
Steer clear. As the great F.D. Roosevelt once cautioned, speaking of a
different matter, the biggest fear with the Y2K problem is fear itself. The
Y2K bug dates back to the O60s and O70s, when computer memory
and storage were both scarce and expensive. To save bits (storage
space), early programmers decided to designate years with two digits
(e.g. 68) rather than four (e.g. 1968).
At the time, few developers imagined that the systems they built in O65
would still be used in O99. In a way they were right. Technology blazed
forward, but instead of replacing the original systems, many
businesses built onto them ¥ guaranteeing compatibility in the short
term, confusion in the long. Although memory grew plentiful and
cheap, many computersO years never re-grew their first two digits.
Why a bug? Computers understand time numerically ¥ larger numbers
mean the future; smaller numbers, the past. While all dates begin with
19, the two-digit system sees 1999 as the future, 1997 as the past.
Come 2000, though, the system breaks. If your computer says New
Year's Eve is 99-12-31 and New Year's Day 00-01-01, time will have
moved backward. One day in the future becomes 100 years in the past.
Because computer systems work together (e.g., the bank account
database you access with Quicken on your PC), fixing one component
(e.g., bill-generating software) required fixing all other pieces with
which it worked (e.g. the records it sorts). The more time that passed,
the bigger the problem grew, and the bigger the problem became, the
less anyone wanted to fix it.
Fortunately, like most computer problems, the Y2K bug can be fixed. In
many cases, including the huge databases where it strikes the deepest
blows, it already has been fixed by programmers who built patches and
rewrote code. Unfortunately, like most computer problems, the Y2K
bug's potential dangers have been exaggerated -- in this case, to
science fiction proportions that humble the supercomputer HAL in
Arthur C. Clarke's sci-fi classic, "2001."
News reports of the impending apocalypse pollute newspapers,
magazines and TV. On the Web, where people should know better,
Yahoo (www.yahoo.com) lists hundreds of sites devoted to the Y2K
problem: 100 describing dangers and 500 selling cures.
Y2K, they say, is deadly. According to Y2K spin-laden soothsayers,
when clocks turn over to 01-01-00, we should expect the worst:
Power outages darken streetlights, causing countless car crashes. Tap
water runs cold and contaminated, spreading killer plague. Airplanes
collide in mid-flight. Public transportation halts, trapping BART riders
beneath the Bay. Elevators hover between floors, then plummet to the
ground. Banks lose all records and seal safe deposit boxes
permanently. Prison gates fling open, freeing all inmates. All taxpayers
are called for audit; all voters, for jury duty. The stock market crashes.
Economic depression ensues. Riots destroy the cities that mass suicide
has spared.
Or so the solutions sales force will have you believe. Then they'll sell
you their books, like "Time Bomb 2000," by Y2K consultant Edward
Yourdon, or their millennium testing services costing $100,000 a day,
such as those of Comdisco (www.comdisco.com).
They'll even scare you into buying their videotapes if you let them.
"Whose computer's (sic) will fail? Everyone's!!" screams the Web site
of Y2K Solutions Group Inc. (www.y2kvideos.com/fail.html). "The
'millennium bug' can devastate your hardware, software, applications
and data files," it continues, causing "erroneous dates, incorrect
checkbook and financial calculations, incorrectly sorted information,
missing data, Internet problems, corruption in transferred files (and)
total crash of system." But you can be safe! Buy Y2K Solutions
Videotapes for $300.
Each consumer's $300 is a business's $3 million. Thus it should come as
no surprise that many of the "industry analysts" who foretell Y2K
doom also sell Y2K "solutions."
The Gartner Group, a Connecticut-based IT consultant firm whose
revenues rely primarily on selling expensive advice to corporate clients,
estimates that $600 billion will change hands globally on Y2K
compliance. Quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Bangkok Post and Irish
Times, Gartner analysts ware of catastrophe for businesses and
countries that don't comply by analyzing and updating every
business-related computer, program and line of code.
Enter Gartner's recently expanded set of Y2K consulting services,
including research accounts priced at $20,000 a year. Gartner's Web
site (www.gartner.com) peddles books and brochures, such as a report
on the growth in the IT services marketplace. Titled "Fixing Year 2000,"
it's 12 pages long and costs $795.
A small price to pay to avert global destruction?
"It is a sales tactic. They scare everybody, tell them that the world is
going to end, then sell an alleged solution to prevent that from
happening," said Jim Balderston, industry analyst at Zona Research
Inc. in Redwood City. "We call it the Fear Tour." The tactic is not new
to the computer industry, said Balderston.
"This is a similar to the way that Internet security products were sold.
You tell lots of horror stories about how hackers will steal all their stuff,
and then you sell them a firewall."
"The U.S. Y2K problem is badly overstated," agreed Tom Oleson,
research director at IDC Research, a market research firm in
Framingham, Mass. "The companies selling Y2K solutions tend to
exaggerate the problem to attract customers for their services or
seminars."
Other factors undoubtedly contribute to the terror. "Secretly we all
crave disaster," mused one programmer. The media "love the idea of
'Whoa! Computer problem!' " said another, bemoaning the media's
fetishistic fascination with computers and their proclivity to panic over
purported computer power.
Finally, under the hype lies a genuine grain of truth. Right now, at 20
months to countdown, Y2K-problem systems are pervasive. Even
Microsoft has admitted that a great number of its most popular
products will be affected by the Y2K turnover, including Windows 3.1
applications and the much-hyped browser, Internet Explorer. For most
computer users, though, the problems can be solved in a few minutes
by downloading and installing software patches, most of which are in
the works, if not already available.
A lot can happen in software in 20 months. Even though banks'
solutions are not complete today, Oleson noted, panic is premature.
"By the time that it really matters, they will have the problem solved."
IDC estimates that, come 2000, the bug will affect only 2.5 percent of
business applications. And, noted Oleson, "with a small amount of due
diligence" -- like installing software patches and checking businesses'
Web sites for certification of Y2K compliance before agreeing to
conduct business with them -- "that risk can be reduced 90 percent."
Additionally, Oleson said, Y2K is a date-coding problem. Thus, "the
role that dates play in a business is critical to whether or not the
problem will exist." In the case of electric companies, date-coding plays
only a minor role in the production of electricity, but it plays a crucial
role in the metering of electricity use. "They may have a Y2K problem,
but you can bet that they are going to solve it because they want to
charge and make money, which without working meters they cannot."
Even though numerous types of computerized equipment -- from
microwaves to minivans, televisions to toasters -- use date- or
time-based calculations, the Y2K turnover will jar precious few.
In stark contrast to Gartner's oft-cited figure of $600 billion, Oleson
estimates the cost of Y2K cleanup, at least for the United States, much
closer to $115 billion -- $35 billion of which will be paid to services that
directly renovate code. Because banks and large companies have great
financial incentive to upgrade their systems, Y2K will be "not a
problem at all" for most ordinary consumers.
In general, Oleson's point makes pragmatic sense: The more that
companies stand to lose from Y2K errors, the bigger their incentive to
fix them. If the risk is big enough, in fact, they may even fix all of the
small partners with whom they transact. If they want you as an on-line
banking customer, for example, they may even fix you.
We can't know for sure, and frankly, there isn't much most of us can
do. "It's like being in an airplane," said Balderston. "You can tell the
pilot to fly the plane from here to there and land it safely, but you can't
stick your arms out the window and flap if the plane starts to go
down."
At bottom, Y2K will bring almost nothing we have not seen before:
ATMs may go down for a day; credit cards may have to be
hand-processed; we may have pay with cash (or barter); the stock
market may plummet and close, then rise the next day. The involvement
of computers alone does not render annoyances fatal. When the
calendar changes, all companies, not just computer companies, incur
cost.
"Consider check-printing companies," said San Francisco
mathematician and programmer David Van Brink. "For decades, check
printing companies made checks with dates that start with 19__. Right
now they print checks that read ___. In a couple years, they will print
checks with 20__.
"It's not traumatic for the check-printing industry. They just deal," he
said. So should we.
|
