What is the Year 2000 Problem?
The current mess started over thirty years ago as a simple cost-saving measure, used to record dates in a mainframe computer. A prudent economy measure at the time, that through neglect has come back to haunt the computer world.Simply, way back in the 1960’s and 1970’s decisions were made to write the date, in computer programs, as 2 digits. 1970 was written as “70” the 19 being taken as understood, by the system.To calculate the age of someone born in 1940, represented as “40” , the computer took that days date, and subtracted the birthdate. “70” minus “40” gave an age of “30” , all was well.The problem comes when the computer reaches midnight on December 31st 1999. It will then see the date “00” and interpret it as 19″00″So on January 1st 2000 someone born in 1940 would be “00” minus “40”, or -40 years old, and as you can’t have a negative age, it equals “unborn”, which equals “not here” – you won’t get paid, benefits, money or anything.
