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Science
Friday > Archives
> 1998
> July
> July 17, 1998:
Hour One: Computer Problems Ahead?
| A number of securities firms on Wall Street are taking a look into the future this week. In fact, Monday was December 29, 1999. And it's not a bizarre new form of futures trading, either - many of the companies being bought and sold don't even exist. It's all part of a shakedown of the computer systems that govern trades on Wall Street, looking for signs of the infamous Year 2000 computer bug. | 
| By now, most companies have heard of the problem, caused by the inability of some computer chips and code to correctly understand dates past after 1999. The problem is a relic of the early days of computing, back when memory was at a premium and programmers tried every trick in the book to make their programs smaller and faster. One of those tricks was to represent dates by using only the last two digits of the year - "85" instead of "1985," for instance. But as those last two digits get closer and closer to becoming "00," the computer industry is getting more and more nervous. If the bug is not corrected, computers around the world may become extremely confused come New Year's Day, 2000.
Signs of the problem have already begun to crop up. There have been tales of cash registers shutting down when asked to validate a credit card with an expiration date of "00." In Britain, a shipment of corned beef was marked for disposal - because computers, interpreting the "00" as 1900, decided that the meat was too old to be safely sold. And there are concerns that the problems will go beyond such minor annoyances as these as the year 2000 gets closer. Banks, insurance agencies, and other organizations that use dates to figure fees and payments may not be able to operate normally. The FAA, which depends on dates to keep track of flight plans, may choke on the computer glitch. And a raft of date-aware computer chips keeping track of service visits in everything from electric power plants to elevators may decide that they have been neglected for decades and shut down.
Will it really be as bad as all that? Some computer analysts are saying that they plan not to fly on January 1, 2000, and some plan to withdraw funds from banks before the big day. But others say that with a sufficient dose of money and hard work now, we can ward off what might be the biggest New Year's hangover of the century.
Guests:
John Panchery
Vice President, Year 2000 Project Manager
Securities Industry Association
New York, NY
Connie Morella
U.S. Representative (R-Md)
Chairwoman, House Subcommittee on Technology
Washington, DC
Mark Haselkorn
Head of the IEEE's Year 2000 Technical Information Committee
Professor of Technical Communication
College of Engineering
University of Washington
Seattle, WA
Stephanie Moore
Senior Analyst
Giga Information Group
Norwalk, CT
Books/Articles Discussed:
Related Links:
President's Council on Year 2000 Conversion
House Subcommittee on Technology Y2K info
Senate Special Committee on the Year 2000 Technology Problem
Federal Reserve Board Y2K information
Help for Small Businesses
Year 2000 and Microsoft
MITRE Corporation Fixes
Some Y2K Software
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