You may have heard of the Year 2000 (y2k) problem.
What is it and how may it effect you?
To put it simply the problem is how a date field is recorded in a program or in hardware.
Until recently dates were stored in a shorthand notation of mm/dd/yy.
The problem is with the year (yy) part in such short notation.
More specifically in doing calculations with the year.
September 15, 2001 can be represented in short notation as 09/15/01.
September 15, 1999 can be represented in short notation as 09/15/99.
However, to calculate the number of days between the two dates a simple subtraction will not work.
The simple subtraction would yield 0 months, 0 days and -98 years.
We know that the correct answer is, of course, 0 months, 0 days and 2 years.
The problem is how to convert negative years to the correct number of positive years?
The simplest solution is to add 100 to any result that yields negative years.
Another solution would be to convert all dates to the notation of mm/dd/yyyy.
When you consider that there are hundreds of millions of lines of program code running today the size of the problem becomes apparent.
Checking every program and changing the date fields in them to this longer notation is a huge task.
Most current systems have had hardware adjustments made to them such that the system date is stored in mm/dd/yyyy format.
To test your system for y2k compliance use the test method shown in the 'How to Test Your System' link.
Older systems (XTs, 286s, 386s and most 486s) do not have BIOS provisions for the year 2000 crossover.
Interestingly most Microsoft software suffers from incomplete compliance with y2k standards.
| Year 2000 table of Links | |
|---|---|
| Anchor Desk July 1999 | A recap of stories from earlier months. |
| How Y2K Could Choke Small Business | The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) says 750,000 small business may be shut down. |
| Latest ZD Story | This just in from Ziff-Davis. Pointed towards home rather than office PCs. |
| Ziff Davis Y2K Page | An excellent starting point to understanding the problem. Also has a count down clock. |
| Yahoo's Time Page | Here you will find more on time and how it is recorded. |
| Triaxsys | Triaxsys Research LLC specializes in the production of research reports containing interdisciplinary information about Information Technology (IT) challenges facing companies through the Year 2000 and beyond. |
| How to Test Your System | Document should download into WordPad or Word 97. You can print test procedure from there. |
Updated: 7/28/99