`Year 2000' is closer than you think
Date-related difficulties will start to hit long before Jan. 1, 2000
By Gregory Crawford
REUTERS
CHICAGO, Sept. 21 - Beware. The Year 2000 bug is
closer than you think. In fact, it's as close as
three months away, and the effects could last 50
years. Forget Jan. 1, 2000 as the date when
many computers and computer systems might
crash because they will read the "00" in the date
as 1900 rather than 2000. The "millennium bug"
could bite as early as Jan. 1, 1999.
Do you believe that
problems associated
with the Year 2K bug
will result in a global
economic crisis?
"THE FIXATION IS THAT the house of cards is
going to come tumbling down Jan. 1, 2000, but that's just
not true," said Lee Freeman at Source Recovery Co., a
Framingham, Mass.-based company that recovers
computer source code.
"There are a myriad of dates - some with bigger
tripwires than others - it's just that the most apparent
tripwire is Jan. 1, 2000," he said.
Some experts say banks and financial exchanges,
mainly in Europe, could shut down on Jan. 1, 1999 with the
launch of the single European currency because of computer
problems.
If not corrected, computers that forecast or plan
budgets a year in advance will have problems because they
will be looking ahead into 2000.
"January 1 of '99 is going to be a big one," said Ken
Orr, who runs the Ken Orr Institute, a business technology
research organization based in Topeka, Kan.
"The real problem with Year 2000 is not the date but
the date horizon - today's date plus enough to punch you
into the next century," he explained. "We've had people
failing in this already."
Capers Jones, one of the leading Year 2000
researchers in the United States, says the biggest problems
on Jan. 1, 1999 will likely be related to the launch of the
European currency.
"Before the year 2000, the advent of the Euro, the
European currency, in January 1999 is going to be a major
problem, and I'm expecting all kinds of software failures
connected with that," he said.
A REAL APRIL FOOL'S DAY
After Jan. 1, the next date likely to cause problems is
April 1, 1999, because that is when some government and
corporate fiscal years start.
"The significance of April 1 is not just April Fools Day,
but it's the start of the fiscal year for New York State,
Canada and Japan," among others, Freeman said.
"Those government organizations are going to be
processing their fiscal year 2000 at that time, so those
systems have to be up to snuff," he said. From then on,
different government agencies start hitting their fiscal years
nearly every month through the end of the year.
The federal government's fiscal year begins Oct. 1.
"You can lump that all together and call it the
government fiscal calendar, and that has a real significance,"
he said.
Jones, who is chief scientist at Artemis Management
Systems, a Boulder, Colo.-based project management
software and consulting company, said he was not confident
federal, state and local governments would meet their
deadlines.
"The federal government is not exactly setting records
for getting things right" regarding the millennium bug, he
said. "State governments are worse than federal, and city
governments are the worst of all."
THE "NINES" PROBLEM
Experts said other dates next year that could pose
problems for computers are the so-called "nines" - April
9, which will be the 99th day of the year, and Sept. 9,
which will be the ninth day of the ninth month.
On a Julian calendar, which simply adds up the days of
the year, April 9 would read 9999, as would Sept. 9 in the
more common Gregorian calendar.
The 9999 dates could pose a problem because some
computer programmers have used that string either as an
end code or as a "flag" to trigger a specific computer action,
such as expunging certain files or shutting down altogether.
"There's a lot of debate, a lot of Internet bantering, as
to whether or not that's a true problem or a contrived
problem," Freeman said, referring to the nines. "It's
speculative, but it's something that's there to be observed."
GENERATORS COULD FAIL IN AUGUST
Year 2000 experts said one date next year that is not
specifically related to the millennium but could potentially
cause big problems is Aug. 22, when the date counter on
the network of 24 global positioning satellites (GPS) rolls
over.
"That has to do with a built-in limitation of the GPS
system," Orr Institute senior partner Dave Higgins said.
"There is a counter in that clock like an odometer that was
built into the specifications."
The counter will reset to 0000 around Aug. 22, but if
organizations that receive information from the GPS are not
prepared for the rollover, they could be in trouble.
Jones said some electric power companies use the time
broadcasts from the satellites for controlling electronic
generators, and if they are not prepared for the GPS
rollover, the generators could shut down.
Also, some financial institutions use the GPS clocks for
synchronizing international funds transfers and if they are not
prepared for the change, transfers could fail to be recorded
or be recorded with inaccurate dates.
BEYOND THE YEAR 2000
Many people think that once Jan. 1, 2000 passes, the
Year 2000 computer problem, but computer experts warn
that is not so.
Feb. 29, 2000 could trip up some computers if their
programs have not factored in the quadrennial leap year.
"Nineteen hundred was not a leap year, but 2000 is, so
systems will need to read 2000 as a leap year" and account
for that extra day in February, said Cathy Hotka, vice
president of information technology at the National Retail
Federation, an industry group for retailers.
Source Recovery's Freeman said the problem would
emerge on the following Friday, March 3, because if
computers have not accounted for the extra day, they will
think Friday is Saturday, causing such potential problems as
keeping bank vaults closed, for instance.
But even that won't be the end of it.
Jones has estimated that over the next 50 years, at least
60 million software applications will need modification
because of various date problems.
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