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Web-Lines Talk Vol. I.2
What is this Y2K thing?
...and why can't it be fixed easy?
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Once upon a time when computers were new..programmers and designers only used the last two digits of the year for all their computational data. These date models were wide spread into many different systems and hard drives that are still in use today. Many electronic control machines that are used in business and operate time delayed mechanisms also use these computer date devices.
Even if the hardware is fixed and the dates are corrected on the machines, there are still softwares and informational databases that use only the last two digits in a year that could foul up any number of processes. To fix this problem completely, Hardware time devices need to be replaced or software to convert dates put in place, software needs to be replaced or rewritten to include 4 digits (Now what are the people going to do in 9999?... move to 6 digits? Time just keeps marching on.) and electronic devices using date time delays need to be replaced or fixed to function.
There are countless hundreds of thousands of devices which rely on these date machines, not just computers. Examples of a time delay device would be at a water treatment plants where chemicals are electronically added at certain times during the day. Work schedules are arranged, shipping orders taken and filled, and paychecks issued all with the aid of date orientated machinery and computers.
If a company hasn't taken the time to review all of it's devices, there could be a time lag while they calculate these things by hand, take phone calls for orders, reissue checks, correct billing statements, and fix a multitude of other problems that come up.
A paycheck might suddenly come up as a negative value because 00 minus 99 equals a minus 99...instead of what it should be: 2000 minus 1999 which equals a plus 1. A person born in 1950 might show up as being minus 50 in a database. In the years since computers were introduced to business, millions of databases have been created, most of them with date entries of two digits which all need to be fixed.
People are worried about banking, especially because their interest rates, balances, deposits, and withdrawals are all date dependent and all computer managed. Nobody wants to wake up on New Years Day to find that their money has poofed away in one caluculation.
While there will unlikely be any great catastrophy in year 2000, there may be delays. It's always good advice to stock up on some food supplies for emergency and fix your computer hardware or software . Remember software fixes may work, but at any time the software may become corrupt or someone may accidentally delete the fix files...and then it's back to an incorrect current date data again.
Hardware datefixes are permanent. If you have an old machine which is not Y2K compliant that you want to keep using, get a hardware datefix to permanently solve the problem or at the very least a software fix . Change all your database entries for dates to 4 digits in old databases and new. When using software to calculate date relevant data, make sure year data is recorded as a 4 digit date, and the computer is reading the current date correctly.
Good Luck In The New Year
Y2K - Year 2000 |
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