Argument for the statement "The Year 2000 bug will have such extensive
repercussions that families and individuals should begin planning now for the
imminent chaos." The Ticking Bomb Introduction A serious problem called the
"Millennium Bug", and also known as the "Year 2000 Problem"
and "Y2K", is bringing a new century celebration into a daunting
nightmare. In the 1860s and 1970s, when computer systems were first built, the
computer hardware, especially information storage space, was at a premium. With
an effort to minimise storage costs, numeric storage spaces were drained to the
smallest possible data type. Ignoring the fact that a software may be run in
multiple centuries, programmers started conserving storage spaces by using two
digits to specify a year, rather than four. Consequently, on January 1, 2000,
unless the software is corrected, most software programs with date or time may
malfunction to recognise the entries in the year fields "00" as the
year as "1900" instead of "2000" . Year 2000 problem is not
restricted only to the above exigency. 20 years ago, everybody understood that a
leap year came every 4th year except for every 100th year. However, a piece of
algorithm has been forgotten by most people – a leap year does exist every 400
years. So, under the first two rules, year 2000 is not a leap year, but with the
third rule, it actually is. Computing errors will also occur before Year 2000.
Values such as 99 are sometimes used for special purposes not related to the
date. The number 99 is used in some systems as an expiration date for data to be
archived permanently – so some computers may lose the data a year before 2000.
Programmers and software developers were surprised to see some of their programs
survive for only a few years but failed to anticipate the problems coming by the
year 2000. It is sorrowful to find most programs are still in use or have been
incorporated into successor systems. Because of the need for new applications to
share data in a common format with existing systems, inheriting the six-digit
date field that has become a standard over time. The disaster scenario envisaged
is that a great number of computer systems around the world will make processing
errors and will either crash or produce incorrect outputs . As a result
financial institutions, businesses organisations, informational technology and
even aeroplane radar communications will all then be in a welter of confusion.
In military services, the system meltdown may also worsen the appropriate
control of nuclear missiles in silos. It is a ticking time bomb destined to
wreak havoc on millions of computer systems in every economy, both commercial
and residential, and thus need everyone's serious attention. However, the bug is
likely to affect more staggeringly the business computers which imply an
alarming economic problem. Many organisations have not yet started projects to
examine the impact of the millennium bug on their systems. By applying The
Standish Group’s CHAOS research to Year 2000 projects, 73% of Y2K projects
will fail according to the pace now taking. The biggest challenge for these
companies is convincing top level management of the severity of the year 2000
problem and the amount of time, money and resources needed to fix it. On that
account, to ensure this disaster is minimised, none of us should worm out of
devoting resources in preventing the potential anarchy. It is a costly Task As
simple as the problem sounds, the fix for the Millennium Bug will cost up to
US$600 billion world-wide, according to estimates by the Gartner Group, a
leading information technology consultancy. The software fixes are very
time-consuming, requiring considerable effort to examine millions of lines of
source code in order to locate problem date fields and correct them. The costs
to apply the fixes will vary from company to company, but research has given the
figure of approximately between US$0.50 to $2 per line of source code for
modification, with these costs expected to escalate as much as 50 per cent for
every year that projects are delayed. Unfortunately, this average excludes date
conversions on military weapons systems software, which is expected to be
significantly more expensive to convert, and the real figure should even be much
larger. One of the first steps an organisation needs to take on the way to
ensuring Year 2000 compliance is to determine what they have to be changed. The
business will need to prepare an inventory of hardware and software utilised to
allow assessment of problem areas. It is hard to address the potential for
problems when no clear picture of the problem space is available. Documentation
showing the processing steps being performed by the company's computer system in
order to accomplish business functions needs to be available to ensure that all
procedures are present and accounted for. There is no "Silver Bullet"
The problem looks straightforward, all we need is just to check each line of
code, locate the two-digit date fields, expand them to four digit and test the
correction. Unfortunately, these modifications are mostly manual labour – not
an automatic process. Software Dilemma Six-digit date fields are generally
scattered throughout practically every level of computing, from operating
systems to software applications and databases. Some dates have numeric
representation, while other have alphanumeric representations. This adds to the
complexity of the problem from a management and technical point of view. The bug
contaminates a large area that nearly all of the program codes must be examined
to ensure that correction is free from side-effects. A case in point, a typical
medium size organisation, a state comptroller's office in United States, is
predicted to spend US$5.6 million to $6.2 million to make the software
conversion, that is, nearly a billion lines of code must be repaired.
Furthermore, there are computing languages still in use today that only a
handful of people are even aware of, let alone proficient enough to be called
experts. Skills for some older, more obscure languages and systems will, more
than likely, make the Y2K a more serious problem. Some uses of two digit dates
may not be obvious. For example, the UK Driving Licence number encodes the
holder's date of birth – using a two digit year code. Dates used in this
nature will create Year 2000 problems without the obvious use of dates in the
program. Some systems use dates fields for non-standard uses, such as special
indicators and how your systems have abused the date field is something you can
only find out by looking at every line of code, which is a huge costs in time
and resources. With the variety of programming languages and platforms in use
throughout that past three decades, and the multitude of uses for date fields,
and the extensiveness of infected programming area, no single "silver
bullet" could exist to correct the problem. Moreover, the problem cannot be
solved individually. Y2K is a universal problem which will bring a chain effect
among industries and firms. No business is immune, every firm is affected –
either directly in its own operation, or indirectly, by the action or inaction
of others. A Year 2000 compliant computer system may fail to process, produce
error messages or generate incorrect data even if it receives contaminated
programs or data from a third party that is not Year 2000 compliant. With all
these issues involved, and with remaining time ever decreasing, management
awareness must focus on these problems. The Hardware Dilemma If the computer
hardware cannot handle dates past 31/12/99 then no software solution can fix it.
Some applications request the system date directly from the hardware and cannot
be trapped by the operating system, which obviates a software resolution. For
instance, the PC hardware problem can be explained as follows. The standard PC
computer system maintains two system dates: one is in the CMOS Real Time Clock
chip, a hardware component normally located on the machine’s motherboard that
stores time, date and system information such as drive types; and the other one
is in the operating system software, these two dates are represented
differently, influencing one another. When the computer boots, it normally
initialises its current date by reading the date in the CMOS Real Time Clock and
converting it to days since January 1, 1980. The PC maintains its date as long
as the system is running; the CMOS Real Time Clock hardware maintains its date
whether the system is running or not, but it does not maintain the century. So,
the standard flaw lurks in the CMOS Real Time Clock date when Year 2000 is
reached as it reads an out-of-range date. Moreover, a few specific Basic
Input/Output Systems cause behaviour other than the standard flaw. Importantly,
the Award v4.50 series BIOS will not allow any date after 1999 and can not be
corrected by any software. Dates are integrated in computer hardware, from
mainframe, mid-range machines, all the way down to network infrastructure. Date
fields are used in some of the most basic computer functions such as calculating
and sorting and will affect a large majority of systems. If year fields are
expanded to 4 digits, this will automatically give rise to the need for
additional storage space. In due course, the original reasons for the
introduction of 6 digit dates will resurface. Any computer application that
accepts or displays dates on the screen or produces a report with date fields
will need to be redesigned. On-line transaction databases will need to be
converted and the new expanded database will need to be kept in sync with the
old active database during the conversion process. In some cases there will be
insufficient space available to accept or display additional data, forcing a
major revision. If paper forms are used for input, these will also need to be
redesigned. Screen, report and form redesign appear to be a minor issue in the
context of the Millennium Bug, but the design of screen and reports are
important from a usability perspective, and the redesign process cannot be
automated. Any changes to the way dates are handled in an organisation will need
to be coupled with staff training to ensure that all staff are aware of any new
standards. Other Dilemma Implied However, to ensure that the corrected work runs
free of errors after January 1, 2000 midnight, testing of the changed code must
be performed. There is no way around this. As testing is around 50% of all
programming tasks, the actual programming tasks are just one small cog in the
wheel used to resolve the Millennium Bug. With the rigidly fixed deadline, and
the ever decreasing amount of time, this will require a large investment in
resources, to ensure a smooth run from the development to production phases.
Less seriously discussed in the Year 2000 issue by the public, as the Year 2000
deadline approaches and the time remaining for corrective work shrinks,
companies may choose, or be forced into, outsourcing the resolution of their
Millennium Bug to a Year 2000 service provider. The 'service provider' would
have to load a copy of the software onto its computer system to perform the bug
fixes, and this raises the issue of software licensing. Many licences contain
restrictions barring licensees from providing a copy of the software to any
third party without the consent of the licenser, and this could present problems
in the event of a dispute between vendor and client. Conclusion The year 2000
challenge is inescapable and omnipresent, affecting every businesses and
individuals, regardless of age or platform. As discussed, there are many aspects
of the Millennium Bug problem that are not immediately obvious, ranging from
legal issues such as copyright and licensing, to issues of available resources
and existing bugs. Carrying out a solution in any business involves careful
planning in order to be successful. The four steps – awareness, planning,
implementation, and testing – are crucial for a company to run successfully
beyond the year 2000. Unlike most other IT projects there is a definite, fixed
and immovable deadline for implementation. If there is not enough time to
complete the programming and testing, or if unexpected delays occur, the
deadline remains fixed and cannot be moved. Only if companies start corrective
action soon enough and devote sufficient resources to the effort can minimise
the effect of this universal nightmare. Table A – Example of the Year 2000
Problem With Current Date Format (mm/dd/yy) Current Date Birth Date Calculated
Age 06/19/99 06/19/59 40 06/19/00 06/19/59 - 59, 59, or Error Corrected to
8-Digit Date Format (mm/dd/yy) Current Date Birth Date Calculated Age 06/19/2000
16/19/1959 41 N.B. this requires that two dates be changed (both current date
and birth date) Figure B – Some Sources of Year 2000 Problem Computer Central
Processing Unit8 Hardware Clock8 BIOS (Basic Input/ Output System)8 Network
server Other Hardware8 Modem8 Added Printed Circuit Card8 Telephone Answering
Machine8 Video Equipment Software8 Operating System8 Packaged Software8 In-house
Code, Databases, Spreadsheets, etc. Embedded Chips8 Process Control Systems8 Fax
Machines8 Video Cassette Recorder8 Heating, Ventilation and Air conditioning
Control8 Internal Combustion Engine8 Automatic Camera8 Security System8 Fire
Detection System8 Medical Equipment8 Time-keeping and Attendance Systems8
Bar-code Reader System
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