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Technology Stocks : Y2K (Year 2000) Stocks: An Investment Discussion -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: JDN who wrote (13821)	3/23/1999 1:10:00 PM
From: Jeffrey S. Mitchell	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 13949

Bad Repair of Year 2000 Bug Causes Errors in Food Stamps By MIKE ALLEN In what some are calling the most widespread damage yet from an attempt to fix a year 2000 bug, New Jersey officials scrambled Monday to correct a computer error that gave $30 million in unexpected credits to food stamp recipients, who crowded grocery stores for the second day of a statewide shopping spree. Programmers warn that the mistake points to the potential for disruptions throughout the year, not just on the widely anticipated witching day of Jan 1. <snip> The mistake affected the 90 percent of New Jersey's food-stamp users who get their benefits by swiping a magnetic card, much like a debit card, at the cash registers of grocery stores. People discovered the mistake when they went to make purchases Sunday morning and found a surprisingly large balance on the receipt. The news galloped through low-income communities and grocery stores reported runs similar to those before a huge snow storm. At noon yesterday, 84,000 families still had use of the benefits, which average about $75 for each person. At the Western Beef Supermarket in East Orange, where the shelves were noticeably bare, Mary Smith of Newark, who had returned for the second day in a row, said that the pandemonium yesterday was nothing compared to Sunday. "People were taking out two, three carts of food at a time," she said. <snip> The magnetic food-stamp cards are administered by a private contractor in Milwaukee. When the state transmitted information about April benefits to the contractor early Sunday, a computer in Trenton -- which had been adjusted for year 2000 problems two weeks ago -- said the funds should be available on April 1, 1990, instead of 1999, resulting in an instant credit. Late yesterday, officials doing a computer autopsy discovered the reason. Because of an error introduced during the adjustment two weeks ago, it failed to fill in the year this weekend when data-processing workers were setting up the order for April's benefits. According to state officials, one of the workers then tried to fix the year manually by typing in "1999" but left off the last "9." The computer assumed the blank space was a zero. "This was somebody who was well-intentioned, trying to help things flow," said David C. Heins, director of the state's Division of Family Development, which runs the food-stamp program. "Based on a typing issue, it just didn't work." New Jersey's experience underscores warnings by computer experts that fixing Y2K problems is not a risk-free business. It also serves as a reminder that Y2K computer problems can strike both before and after Jan. 1, 2000, the day most people fear. <snip> In New Jersey, food banks warned that extreme hardship could result if the state cut future benefits to make up for the early spending. "To ask people to go six weeks without food stamps to make up for the state's problem seems incredibly cruel," said Betsy Shimberg, the policy analyst at Mercer Street Friends, which is based in Trenton and runs a food cooperative for Central New Jersey. nytimes.com - Jeff