Talk:Year 2000 problem

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Archive 1 (November 2006-March 2007)

Opposing/Support paragraphs

This section is not written much like a encyclopedia, i suggest a rewrite and change of headings to: Costs involved, opposition and support Kernel geek (talk) 18:36, 13 January 2009 (UTC)

Photograph requested

Someone has placed the photo requested template above. What kind of picture would we use for an article on Y2K? A picture of a computer not knowing what the date is? Voortle 20:44, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

A screenshot of an error message? 142.59.172.187 11:14, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

There must something that could be added - a large article without a single picture isn't normally desirable. Richard001 04:26, 29 July 2007 (UTC)

I put together a quick illustration. Intended for aesthetics only. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 11:12, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

The picture of the gasping man, a hourglass, a computer and a bug? Why is it worthy of this article?116.15.90.76 (talk) 18:30, 28 December 2007 (UTC)

The purpose was aesthetic, not explanatory. I figured there wasn't much need for an explanatory image, but if you can come up with one, feel free to replace the current image. — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 03:39, 29 December 2007 (UTC)

Complacency

In 1989 I was working on a computer system destined for use by the UK government. My role was as an independent quality consultant. The system represented dates internally in two-digit format (despite being programmed in C), and would fail if the system date was changed to anything after 2000. I repeatedly raised this point, much to the annoyance of the project manager, who even threatened to have me removed from the project! His argument? The system was warranted for ten years, and the developing company would have no liability when it failed.

The system, as installed, did continue to work after the critical date, so evidently some of the investment in tracking down and fixing Y2K bugs bore some fruit! I was no longer involved, and the company that had written the original software went bust in 1990. --King Hildebrand 16:58, 20 April 2007 (UTC)

Jargon

This article is waaaaay too technical. How are lay people unfamiliar with computer languages, etc expected to understand this.

I'll cut it down then. 76.27.163.35 17:10, 1 June 2007 (UTC)

Since Y2K was a technical problem, this is unavoidable. Mr Barndoor 11:12, 8 June 2007 (UTC)

One Question

"It caused widespread concern that critical industries (such as electricity or finance) and government functions would cease operating at exactly midnight, January 1, 2000,..." What time zone was this supposed to happen? --68.183.43.30 02:03, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

Whichever time zone the computer was using. The failures occurred (and the prevented ones would have occurred) on a system-by-system basis, not all at once. Mr Barndoor 14:57, 31 May 2007 (UTC)

World ends in 2156!

Why do people always seem to overlook the fact that one byte can hold a value up to 255? The bug should be triggered, then, in 2156, not 2000. Am I missing something? 142.59.172.187 11:16, 10 June 2007 (UTC)

In some systems this might be the case, but it is not so common I think. There are several dates in the future that can cause software problems, like 2038, 2100, 2156 etc. The world will not end. -- BIL 14:51, 16 June 2007 (UTC)

The date problems will be those involving not storing 4 digit years at all [Y2K], incorrect interpreation of a user entered 2 digit years [potenitally always], simpilified leap year calculations [Y1900 due to bug in Excell, but numerious programs will have it in 2100 if they are still in use], and overflow [Y2038] . Someone has also added a Y2007 problem to the see also, but that is unrelated [only dealing with times being off by an hour due to change in US daylight savings time start & end dates]. I'm not aware of any special significance to 2156. Jon 21:06, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

Like 142.59.172.187 said, the problem with 2156 is in storing dates in single bytes with 1900 as the base year. A byte can only hold 256 values (0-255) and after that (at 256), it will roll over back to 0. 1900 + 256 is 2156. Thats where this come from. — Jaxad0127 21:41, 22 August 2007 (UTC)

I strongly doubt they'll be any significant problems for 2156. The smallest number fields I've ever seen anyone actually use in DB2, Oracle, or M$ Access was a 16 bit small int even when it's known the data won't prossibly exceed 10. Jon 20:26, 5 November 2007 (UTC)

US Government Y2K Information Center

I suspect this falls under "original research" or "personal recollection", but I've not seen much documentation of the actual US operational facilities.

I was the external network architecture consultant to the Y2K Information Center, the operating agency under LTG (Ret) Peter Kind, which reported to John Koskinen in the Executive Office of the President. The Center's headquarters were at 1800 G St. NW, a few blocks from the White House, and had backup facilities in FEMA headquarters and a hardened site outside the immediate area. Online access by the public and most government agencies was hosted at two AT&T data centers, one in New York and the other in San Diego. Then under the Department of Justice, the Critical Infrastructure Protection Group was started in the Center offices. The facility was equipped to receive and disseminate reports at all security classification levels, although the great bulk of information was readily available.

As a bit of trivia, we did have an informal motto on a fair number of bulletin boards, "The Dark Ages were caused by the Y1K Problem." Hcberkowitz 03:00, 25 June 2007 (UTC)

Digimon in popular culture?

The article states "In the 2000 anime film, Digimon: Our War Game, the villainous Diaboromon is a personification of the Y2K bug. In an exaggeration of some expected events, he cuts off the phone networks and launches a nuclear missile at Tokyo." However, while the virus did indeed do this, I can't recall it being mentioned anywhere that the virus was related in any way to the Y2K, nor do we have any way of telling if it's the year 1999/2000 in the middle segment of the movie (which is divided in 3 segments across 3 different years). Should I remove it? Jaimeastorga2000 00:45, 15 August 2007 (UTC)

Exploding microwave oven anecdote

I recall a story, usually attributed to a name, of a guy who set the clock in a microwave oven past the year 2000 and it exploded. If this can be sourced, it seems to be a notable anecdote, with indication as to its veracity. We need only indicate that the anecdote existed. --Scottandrewhutchins 20:51, 13 September 2007 (UTC)

I have never seen a microwave, let alone any small appliance with a clock, ask for a year to be set. Even if one did, I find it highly unlikely that the input of an invalid string would cause physical damage - that could be compared to typing a date in the year 10000 into Excel and having your computer blow up.

Jb17kx (talk) 10:38, 18 November 2007 (UTC)

worlds biggest scam?

shouldn't this be categorized as the worlds biggest money making scheme? many urban legends, and nothing actually happened besides some website displaying a wrong clock. Markthemac 02:06, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

I worked on the US government Y2K Information Center, where we had awareness of remediation efforts, as well as actual problems. As I remember, two critical systems did have malfunctions, one in a nuclear power reactor and one in an intelligence satellite system, both recoverable.

At the same time, we were aware of a great number of systems that would have malfunctioned had they not had their code updated. My impression was that the remediation effort was worth it, and prevented a fair number of things ranging from annoyances to catastrophes. For you to say it was a scam because things did not happen, are you prepared to demonstrate that nothing would have happened had code not Y2K-ready been left in place? Howard C. Berkowitz 02:35, 14 September 2007 (UTC)

No, that title belongs to Global Warming which does not have a continent end date like Y2K. 219.89.230.230 (talk) 03:54, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

It was most certainly a scam. It was an overblown fear that allowed for countless hours of useless consultancy time to be foisted off on businesses. And it also allowed more than a few corporate-ladder-climbers to make it appear that they actually contributed something. But...that's just my two cents. Personally, I am starting a new business...."Y10K Remediation Services". You think Y2K was bad? Just wait till 9999 when that fifth significant digit appears in the year-field. Anyone ready to sign a contract with me? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 208.67.104.4 (talk) 16:32, 15 April 2008 (UTC)

Speaking from first-hand experience, I can assure you it was not a scam. We tested our legacy financial services applications in 1997 by rolling the system date forward to various future dates and testing the applications. They simply didn't work correctly - even functions that we didn't think were date-dependent failed. Sometimes we had an outright crash, sometimes an error would be obvious from the data presented on screen, other times all appeared to be OK until we took a close look at the database and discovered errors. Nobody made any money out of the 18 months elapsed (10 man years) we spent modifying and testing the applications so they'd continue to function. On the contrary, the company had to spend a huge sum of money just to keep things as they stood. There were no money-grubbing consultants involved - just the staff who knew the systems and knew what needed to be done to fix them. And on a personal note, this was the most boring spell of my career as a software developer. No amount of money could have compensated for the sheer tedium of going back to COBOL and fixing thousands of date fields. Mr Barndoor (talk) 12:55, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

It was certainly not a complete fabrication, although it may well have been exagerrated to some extent, but it's often easy to be wise after the event. I did some work myself on Year 2000 problems on a medical informatics program. Maybe some money was misspent, but I query 2 of the arguments here. Firstly, while I recognise that in some countries the govt. did not do much to publicise the problem, all competent computer professionals would still have been aware of it in the late 1990s and taken appropriate action. Also, some small computer systems used by schools, small businesses etc. may not have had any problems, or just minor glitches which they could work their way around, but this would not have applied to larger or more sophisticated systems. PatGallacher (talk) 13:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Wierd info

says some guy in iowa was charged video overdue 100 years cause of computer and penn. kid was charged overdue book.. please validate. 130.13.47.58 04:31, 1 November 2007 (UTC)guybethename??

(un) Documented errors

The list of unsourced incidents is getting larger...¿does anyone feels it's time to remove all unsourced incidents? (like "In the Solomon Islands, a ferry ticket was rejected for being 100 years out of date.")Seba5618 (talk) 03:02, 20 November 2007 (UTC)

Confusion - Literal vs. Popular Millenium

What does "It was also named the Millennium Bug because it was associated with the (popular, rather than literal) roll-over of the millennium." mean? What does a "popular millenium" and a "literal millenium" mean? --RaphaelBriand 16:57, 1 December 2007 (UTC)

Properly, the new millennium started on January 1st 2001 - this would be what is meant by the "literal millennium". 2000 was the last year of the old millennium. But most people treated January 1st 2000 as the start of the new millennium, because the first digit of the year changed from "1" to "2" - hence this would be what is meant by the "popular millennium". Mr Barndoor 11:08, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

Thanks --RaphaelBriand 20:05, 3 December 2007 (UTC)

I disagree on this "(popular, rather than literal)", if it is possible to disagree on such a thing. I mean it's poorly worded don't you think? Step through the definitions of each word. What you're effectively saying is that a thousand years would have passed by the start of 2001, but not by the start of 2000 - and we know this to be mathematically incorrect because time did not start in year 1001 or year 1000, but in fact far earlier than either of these dates. Or have I missed something here? Have we suddenly disproven the existence of God, and the dinosaurs? And I missed it!? Wow, the Earth is only 1006 years old, I would have never suspected this. The popular representation, where December 31st 1999 23:59:59 as the end of a period of a thousand years, is in fact literally correct, and no more or less so that the idea of the same one year later. What the person who wrote this is effectively saying is that anybody who chooses a cardinal system of numbering for years is doing it incorrectly, and that the method is invalid. I think there's a strong argument, if we must say that one is incorrect and not the other, for saying that the UNpopular method is not the literal method. As i said above, BOTH methods are in fact literal methods of numbering, but I would like to see some reason for for the implied invalidity of counting from zero? ? ? ? ? 125.236.211.165 05:36, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

In the Western calendar system, we assume a starting year of 1, not 0. The Millennium article gives a clear explanation of the popular versus literal millennium. Mr Barndoor 11:27, 4 December 2007 (UTC)

The majority popular approach was to treat the end of 1999 as the end of a millennium, and to hold millennium celebrations at midnight through December 31, 1999 to January 1, 2000, as per viewpoint 2. The cultural and psychological significance of the events listed above combined to cause celebrations to be observed one year earlier than the formal Gregorian date. This does not, of course, establish that insistence on the formal Gregorian date is "incorrect", though some view it as pedantic (as in the comment of Douglas Adams mentioned below).

Uh, yeah. It mentions the popular one but it currently omits the literal one, or at least by name. What it does do is point out that a millennium is a millennium no matter which day you begin measuring from. 125.236.211.165 (talk) 00:19, 24 December 2007 (UTC)

The International Standardisation Organisation has recently clarified its date numbering system that the year before 1 was the year 0, before that -1 etc., so those who celebrated the millenium on 1 January 2000 were right after all. PatGallacher (talk) 13:16, 8 October 2008 (UTC)

Okay to scrap general references?

We have a solid pool of 26 inline citations (not counting duplicates), mostly from very reputable sources. I think general references (by that I mean, references without inline citations) are better than nothing in that they add to the credibility of the article and provide a starting point for further research, but with a strong assortment of inline citations I don't think the general refs really have much use. Would anyone object to nuking them? — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 08:04, 10 December 2007 (UTC)

Guess I'll be bold and go ahead with it. Open to post-action review if anyone disagrees, of course. :) — xDanielx ^T/_C\^R 08:59, 13 December 2007 (UTC)

War of the worlds

I find that the inclusion of "War of the worlds" is of poor relevance, and may formulate an opinion (comparing the Y2K reaction to the hysteria following this show's broadcasting?). The only link seems to be that an english or us tv catastrophe show about the y2k bug was showed with a disclaimer to avoid a "war of the worlds" effect (see war of the worlds article). Anyway if none objects i'd delete it.82.224.109.80 (talk) 21:51, 26 January 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft Excel Date/Time Storage

I believe this statement is incorrect:

The popular spreadsheet Microsoft Excel stores a date as a number of day since an origin (often erroneously called a Julian date). A "Julian date" stored in a 16-bit integer will overflow after 65,536 days (approximately 179 years).

Current versions (and certainly version since Excel 97 i.e. predating Y2K) use a (32 bit) floating point number to repesent a date, whereby the integer part of the number represents the number of days since an arbitary start date which is actually the zeroth of January 1900. Using the floating point format naturally allows the system to accomodate time as the fraction of a day resolved down to the accuracy of the floating point representation of the number. It also allows date difference to be obtained simply using the subtraction operator and simplifies date comparison.Fizzackerly (talk) 13:52, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Obviously, it also allows dates significantly further into the future than 179 years after 1900 to be represented!Fizzackerly (talk) 14:05, 25 March 2008 (UTC)

Y2K The Movie

Why is there nothing about this movie on here? [1] I find it a bit strange, given the warning that were put at the start of this film so not to panic people. Katana Geldar 11:38, 31 May 2008 (UTC)

Origin of the term

Are we sure about that story? I seem to remember references specifically to Y2K in the Movie Strange Days. It was released in the fall of 1995, so was probably in post production by the time the term was created. Anyone has insight on this? Observer31 (talk) 00:11, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I swear that I've not heard of movie "Strange Days" & certainly didn't see it... I was way too busy. It was simply a lazy abbreviation "year 2000" is 9 keystrokes, while Y2K is just 3. Nothing more. DEddy (talk) 01:02, 12 August 2008 (UTC)

I am not 100% certain my affirmation, and until I can find a copy of the film and confirm I'm not going to change the article. If someone else has it and can look it up it would be good. I'm not trying to make a point, just be accurate :) Observer31 (talk) 04:17, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

You'll then have to analyze if there was cross fertilization between the movie & Peter de Jager's Year 2000 forum. I rather doubt it. I didn't know I'd coined the term in the year 2000 technical community until sometime in 1998, a good 3 years after I accidently coined it in 1995. DEddy (talk) 13:12, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I've done some searching and found a few links. http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews/strangedays.html , and http://64.233.169.104/search?q=cache:yqxCCgqoTeMJ:www.infoshop.org/sf/Strange_Days_(film)+strange+days+y2k&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=42&gl=us which seem to indicate that the movie did indeed contain the term Y2K. Observer31 (talk) 21:50, 13 August 2008 (UTC)

I didn't see anything in those TERTIARY sources that indicates they coined the term. A PR piece written after the fact is NOT a primary source. If you can dig up the original screenplay then I might be willing to reconsider. Do note that this wiki page is umpty-ump years old & the folks who own the movie have never stepped forward to claim origination rights. Also... there is the ever so slight <sarcasm> point that Y2K means the software challenge, NOT the end-of-the-world hype that the media blew it into.

I'd be more than willing to post a pdf image of the my email but I don't know how to. DEddy (talk) 00:37, 14 August 2008 (UTC)

I am well aware that these are not primary sources, which is why I used the wording "seem to indicate". I'm not going to change the article until I have solid evidence. Observer31 (talk) 04:15, 19 August 2008 (UTC)

99 years & 9/9/99

{{editsemiprotected}} I've worked on financial systems in Britain & Australia using COBOL as a programmer with over 25 years experience.

COBOL was used extensively in big business and many millions of programs had been written in this language dealing with various aspects of billing. 99 years would have been generated from date calculations using 2000 - 1999 because the result was stored in an unsigned field (no minus sign) thus 00 - 99 = -99, which in an unsigned field becomes 99. Therefore, billions of customers would've been billed for 99 years!

I fail to see how anyone in computing would think 9/9/99 would relate to 9999. I've never heard of this; so it must have been some stupid rumour. Dates were usually stored in yymmdd format and converted to the required format. Thus, 9/9/99 was actually stored as 990909; a far cry from 9999.

Malcolm Hill

The article presents the 9/9/99 problem as a theoretical concern, not as an actual occurrence or as a focus of remedial work. I think it's fair enough to let it stand as an example of the thinking that was going on around Y2K and other potentially problematic dates. Mr Barndoor (talk) 11:02, 2 September 2008 (UTC)

The editsemiprotected request doesn't have a clearly and agreed-upon change to make. Please provide or describe a specific change to make. —EncMstr (talk) 00:24, 13 September 2008 (UTC)

This is my first time in attempting to make a change, so please allow for my lack of protocol knowledge. I've made a few changes to the above. The article doesn't spell out that COBOL was used extensively in big business and that if the problem wasn't fixed, the business world would've collapsed under the weight of customer complaints. As I've never heard of the so called 9999 problem, I was trying to show that if anyone had heard of this, it was totally erroneous. I'm trying to set the record straight for future posterity as even today, people think it just a money making exercise. Malcolm Hill Molbrum (talk) 09:07, 16 September 2008 (UTC)

Arbitrary Trivia

ZimZalaBim... thank you for stepping up & deleting that irrelevant noise. DEddy (talk) 20:21, 15 December 2008 (UTC)

Microsoft Zune 30GB Bitten by Leap Year Bug

There are stories that Microsoft's 30GB Zune MP3 player has been bitten by a leap year bug. Shades of Y2K.

I predict there will be additional leap year bug stories. DEddy (talk) 15:52, 2 January 2009 (UTC)

The first sentence

I think the term bug is confused with virus, and should be defined in the first sentence. Also, maybe the word should be plural because the problem was in more than one program. I read the article to see if the text message term Y2K was invented to wonder why Dec 25 wasn’t January 1 and why it got associated with the feared virus Coast to Coast AM was talking about in in the late '90s. From clicking the link to "computer bug" I was reminded bug does not mean virus. So, I think the first sentence should define bug, maybe in parentheses. --Chuck (talk) 03:35, 11 January 2009 (UTC)

Replies: (a) The very fact there is a wikilink to computer bug in the opening sentence, providing you the definition you seek, solves your concern. That is the very purpose of the link. (b) It should remain singular since the "problem" itself is a singular phenomenon (albeit with multiple components). --ZimZalaBim ^talk 20:13, 12 January 2009 (UTC)