Patrick J. Kidd - Year 2000 Problem Topics -

Year 2000 Problem Topics =Y2K =MillenniumBug

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"If you can sleep at night, you don't understand the problem." W.Ulrich, President of Tactical Strategy Group.

	Dates
19990909	19990910	9/9/99-9/10/99 Sometimes used to indicate an unknown or unresolved date
19991231	20000101	12/31/99-1/1/00
20000228	20000229	leap year
20000229	20000301	leap year
20001231	20010101	12/31/00-1/1/1
20000110 20001010	seven numerals eight numerals	1/10/2000 10/10/2000
20000908	Unix problem	Represented internally as 999,999,999

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Y2K Burps Up Some Weird Dates | WIRED
- In some cases, Y2K-related errors occurred on aviation Web sites, where year 2000 readiness was supposed to be of prime concern. Take, for example, the Auckland International Airport's Y2K Update News flash page, which assures visitors that all is well with Auckland's airport.
  "The airport is operating as normal," reads the site. "No Y2K problems have been experienced and all operations are continuing as usual."
  Too bad the site was dated 1 Jan 100
- Anyone with plans to travel on a blimp commandeered by the American Blimp Corporation anytime soon, best think again. By Monday morning PDT, the Web site displayed the date as January 3, 192000.
- n China, according to an article in The Wall Street Journal, a customer returning a video was fined the equivalent of US$7,000 because the store's computer thought it was 100 years overdue.
- he Journal, citing an Information Ministry official, also reported that Korea University sent out graduation certificates dated Jan. 13, 1900.
- And the London Independent reported that a man in Germany logged onto his home banking computer account to find that he had the equivalent of $6,826,253.67 extra in his account -- and the transaction date was 30 December 1899.
  It is not known whether he gets to keep the dough.
Was the Y2K threat real, imagined, or invented? - Freakonomics - Opinion - New York Times Blog
- "I was recently told a story on how Boeing took one of their airplanes into a hanger started it up and set the onboard clock to a minute before the year 2000.
  When the clock ticked over to midnight the plane shut down.
  Now can you imagine if they hadn’t been prepared for that and an unfixed plane had been flying at that time? — Posted by CalvinV
year 2000 and computers, The | International Journal of Government Auditing | Find Articles at BNET
- The year 2000 problem exists because of the way that dates are recorded and computed in many computer systems. Since the birth of the computer era, computer systems have typically used two digits to represent the year, such as "97" for 1997, in order to conserve electronic data storage and reduce operating costs. In the two-digit format, however, 2000 is indistinguishable from 1900 because both are represented as "00." As a result, if not modified, computer systems or applications that use dates or perform date-or-time-sensitive calculations may generate incorrect results beyond December 31, 1999. In fact, such problems will begin well before that date because they will affect all calculations that project into the 21st century.
The Year 2000 Report

What is the "problem"? Most computer systems were programmed using two-digit "fields" for the year in any given date, with the result that two-digit dates exist on countless data files world-wide. For instance, the date "October 23, 1995" may be held within some computer data files (and handled by computer programs) as "102395". This means that when the year 2000 arrives, the year will be recorded as "00" , which has potentially huge implications for almost all computer applications and systems.
In what way? The date field is a key component of many systems, affecting calculations, data comparisons and sorting of data. An example: in a pension system, the system may compute an individual’s age in 1996 by subtracting the two-digit year of birth (say 25) from the current year (96), giving a result of 71. If not corrected by the year 2000, the system will attempt the same computation and get an answer of -25 (00 minus 25). This result will not only be garbage but has the very real potential to cause serious losses (and data integrity and system reliability problems) for an organization.
What kinds of systems are affected? Any system that uses time spans. The date field is a key factor in just about any business or government computer application, be it operational, accounting or statistical. Interest calculations, payroll payments, depreciation calculations and investment records are just some randomly selected examples of computer systems where the date field plays a key role.