Y2K | |||||||||||||||||
| Just What is the Problem?? | |||||||||||||||||
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The problem is, most computers use two digits to represent the year, which means, that it will think it is 1900, instead of 2000. The organizations that run everything-goverment, business, banking, utillities, military-have, as a whole started too late to complete the job of making their computer systems recognize that"00" means 2000 instead of 1900. It was posted on an Internet news group about an apartment management company that has 14 PC-386's running software written years ago. The entire system will die by late '99 payments. To avoid going back to paper sytem managing for 3500 apartments, they must spend at least $10,000-15,000 on upgrading the software and even more on hardware. | ||||||||||||||||
| Can you fix the Problem?? | |||||||||||||||||
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Are repairs underway for Y2K? Yes, many who are making these repairs are large businesses (but not all). Also in the Federal Goverment they are making repairs. Most of their special systems will not be ready in time. Some of the Thousands of state, country, and local systems will not be ready in time. It could be a real mess. Think of any system-utilities, finances, insurance, welfare, health-the computers control it, and much of the software needs fixing. Some that software will not be ready in time. There is a Y2K shield but for older computers such as ones most banks use, you must update your hardware, and that in it self could cause thousands! | ||||||||||||||||
| Misconceptions | |||||||||||||||||
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They can just set all the clocks back, right? Mabye, But only in some cases. This will not work for large corperations that use two diget dates, such as Banks and anyone who uses checks. This could also be a problem with Credit Card users and the Credit Card company. Your probably wondering why don't they just use four digits for a date. One of the reasons they do not use four digit dates is because it costs thousands to upgrade for big corperations. Also, most people think that it won't effect me and don't spend time looking up Y2K and learn about it,and how it can effect them. They have until Jan. 1, 2000 to fix it,right? No, actually they don't, at least not for information systems. Fiscal 2000 begins for many firms and governments some time in 1999 (April 1999 for Nw York state, for example). Mid- 1999 is the DEADLINE!! This is the kind of problem that software Engineers solve regularly? There is the kernal of truth. Software Engineers do encounter problems of information, formating and incompatibility regularly and they fix them. However, this kind of maintenance does not affect more than about 1% of the code on a system in any one year. Y2K will have them modifying perhaps 30% of the code or more in a short time and then have them test it all and its compatibility with other systems in an even shorter time. Yes, they solve this kind of problem all the time, no, they don't do this much solving in a time this short. We'll just go back to Paper-Based Systems! That's way funny! All organizations of any size are managed with the help of computer systems (most which are vulnerable to Y2K). In many cases, the computers have replaced entire layer of management, people whose jobs were to collect data for presentation to higher layers of management. It would take a tremendous amount of effort and the hiring of tons of people to return to the paper-based system, such as what used to exist in your bank. Why do you think that banks used to occupy large, prominate buildings with lots of clerks and filing cabinets behind the tellers. Now they only occupy 500 square feet in the corner of a super market. What work do you think gets done when our computers are down? Absolutly NONE!! "Computer Down Buisness Halts." So you see, the paper-based system is gone and could not be recreated is a short time. So go back to Paper-Based systems? NO WAY!!! | ||||||||||||||||
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