as a observation of therate at which the amount of information available on the Internet hasbeen growing. An advanced search of "year AND 2000 AND problem" throughthe Altavista index yielded over 60,000 pages! Even this volume ofinformation does not sufficiently judge the magnitude of the problem.Early IBM-PC machines and compatibles will be rendered useless for dateapplications without running software patches as the system clocks onthe hardware level will not handle the four-letter date format.This problem is not only limited to personal computers and mainframes,however. Most electronic devices that make use of dates will haveserious unpredictable problems. The micro controllers that are in carignition control systems, clocks, microwaves, and even nuclear weaponsall suffer from the same problem. The unpredictable effects come fromboth the microprocessor used in the device and the compiler or linkerused to generate the code. As any programmer knows, when software isgiven a input which it does not expect, anything can happen. Anythingranging from an error message to a serious program crash. The materialeffects of these could be anything from your BIOS preventing yourcomputer from booting to your car not starting the morning after yourmillennium party.Strange effects have already begun to occur with many programs on the PCplatform not understanding the 2000-year field, or when it is entered,defaulting to 00 or 1900. This is of particular concern with widespreadversions of home database and spreadsheet software becoming obsoleteunless patches are released to fix this behavior. For many companies,however, the attitude has been to make a complete upgrade of thesoftware necessary - hardly an ideal solution for the home user."According to a variety of experts, it will take, on average, 6 monthsto do and impact analysis of the systems before beginning another threeto six months worth of pilot projects. Then, production itself couldeasily take...
