Masonry Magazine October 1997 Page. 41
The Year 2000 Problem?
This article contains a simple test to try with your PC. The test involves resetting the date and time to see if your PC would recognize the year 2000 as a legitimate date. Wait a minute, is this really a problem?
Well, believe me, it IS a problem. Years ago, to save expensive computer storage space, YEAR was converted to a two digit year (example: 79 or 82). You may not think this is a big deal, but saving two bytes here, and two there among hundreds and thousands of user programs (millions of lines of code), can add up to a whole bunch of storage saved when storage costs were very high.
Since then, hardware costs, especially storage, dropped considerably but the two digit YEAR remained because now programming costs are expensive. Up until now it was easy to calculate differences between two digit years. 89 minus 87 equals 2. But how does the computer calculate 00 minus 99 if it thinks 00 represents 1900, not 2000? Multiply this type of calculation among all the banks, insurance companies, leasing companies, etc., and you get an idea of the scope of the problem. It's such a big problem it's predicted some companies will go out of business because they can't cope with it.
A real life example: In 1993 an equipment leasing company discovered its 7 year leasing program ground to a halt because the system could not handle the year 2000. Rather than fix the problem, they stopped offering 7 year leases. In 1995 the problem resurfaced within the company's 5 year leasing program. A temporary manual workaround was initiated but barely functions under an ever-increasing work load. If the company continues this approach, it will be out of business by the end of next year. Many people point out that A) their computer will be replaced before the year 2000, B) someone will fix it with a software patch, and C) the next release of the operating system will solve the problem. If you believe all these, I have a bridge for sale that I'd like to talk to you about. All this leads to the conclusion that this is indeed, a BIG PROBLEM. But by acting now, we can test for it, and if present, eliminate it as a problem in the near future.
What Information Systems Departments around the nation should be engaged in is inventorying all the software on their Local Area Networks (LANs), PCs, minicomputers, and mainframes, determining the scope and depth of their problem, then taking action to correct it. It will be an expensive undertaking. It's been estimated that it will cost anywhere from $1.00 to $1.50 per line of code assuming that work begins now!
Continued on next page
How big is the Internet?
At the moment...
55,000 networks worldwide.
45 million people with some type of access.
The Internet reaches more than 200 countries.
Growth is at 10 percent per month, with commercial growth at 10 to 13 percent.
Eighty percent of the Internet is of commercial domain.
There are 5.9 million hosts, with 100 million predicted by 1998."
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MASONRY-SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER, 1997 41