What is the Millennium Bug (Y2K)?
SPOTLIGHT ON ISSUES Stabroek News July 31, 1999 At 12:01 am on January 1, 2000, it is feared that many computer systems worldwide will malfunction or produce incorrect information because of a date change anomaly. The Year 2000 problem, as it is called, is as a result of the way computer systems store and manipulate dates. Dates are often used as part of a computer-based system’s algorithm or decision process. For efficiency and to economise storage space, most computer manufacturers and programme designers omitted the first two digits of the year (i.e. the century) when they referred to dates in computer programs. Therefore, when the date rolls over from 1999 (99) to 2000 (00), many computer programmes will fail to recognize the change in the century and misread “00” as 1900 instead. As the year 2000 approaches, the date roll-over problems associated with various computer systems become more apparent. These problems include the following: Inability of sort routines to perform properly
