By Lindsay J. Hamilton
Picture this: You try to draw money from an ATM on Jan. 1, 2000, but it says you don't have an account. The ATM thinks it is Jan. 1, 1900, and has no record of you for that year! Or you don't receive your unemployment or social security benefits because, based on the computer's calculation of your age, you are not entitled to receive them.
You don't have to worry; these scenarios are not likely to happen, right? Think again.
These hypothetical situations illustrate the growing concern over the rapidly approaching year 2000 and the so-called "millennium bug," which could lead to a breakdown of many systems that depend on computers.
As a result of media attention, numerous myths have grown up around this impending problem. Many of us think of it as a problem primarily associated with the larger computer systems within governments and corporations -- but our systems at home and work may run into difficulties if they are not examined as well.
Why is all of this happening now? The year 2000 problem surfaced because most computers today record dates as two digits, recording 1997, for example, as 97. This makes the year 2000 indistinguishable from 1900. Thus, the millennium bug affects all computer systems that rely on dates for operation and calculations. The year 2000 is also a special leap year, one that occurs every 400 years and adds an extra day in order to keep the calendar accurate. Unfortunately, most computer products do not account for this extra day.
Cornell Information Technologies (CIT) has staff members from its three divisions -- Administrative Systems and Distributed Technologies (ASDT), Academic Technology Services (ATS) and Network and Computing Services (NCS) -- working together on campuswide year 2000 problems. It plans to work with other Cornell units to identify both mainframe and non-mainframe mission critical systems and ensure that none are overlooked in the analysis.
The year 2000 project will:
Marilyn Baxter, project manager for Year 2000 (Y2K) in CIT's ASDT division, says that CIT will be working to identify and educate the campus about steps individuals can take to prevent their own millennium problems. According to Baxter: "You should be concerned about your own computer, as computer dates occur everywhere. They are used internally for storage and computation and externally for display and data exchange."
For example, you rely on the computer to date all your e-mail messages and files. If this is incorrect in your system, you will not be able to find current files where they should be, nor will you be able to sort e-mail messages by date to keep your records straight.
For now, Baxter recommends that users become familiar with their own desktop's compliance and keep abreast of the larger elements of this problem.
To prevent any year 2000 hardware problems, she recommends that you go straight to the manufacturer or check in your owner's manual to find out if the products you use are year 2000 compliant. Phoenix Technologies Ltd., an outsourcing company that sells software to manufacturers of PCs and other computing devices, has a list of frequently asked questions on the Web at http://www.phoenix.com/techsupp/biosfaq.html to help test your hardware to see if it is year 2000 compliant.
To ensure that your software is year 2000 compliant, Baxter advises checking the Computer Information Centre (CompInfo) at http://www.compinfo.co.uk/wnit/curry2k.htm. This contains links to many manufacturers' year 2000 compliance information.
"The important thing to remember," Baxter said, "is that you must act soon to give yourself enough time if you encounter problems. Your hardware/software should be fixed or replaced by the end of 1998 to allow one full year of date usage before the century rollover occurs."
In the coming months, CIT plans to keep the Cornell community informed about year 2000 issues through a series of articles such as this one. Topics will range from program code remediation and software testing to embedded computer chips and prioritization of Cornell's mission critical systems.
For more information, use this easy reference for year 2000 issues:
