What led to the thought of y2k?

Question

a website link would work too

Answer 1

The phrase became common just before the year 2000 when computer guys started using the terminology y2k to refer to the year 2000 computer problem.

As a real problem, it did adversely affect some computer systems, just not in the dramatic ways that were expected.

It's a REALLY good example of why its important to understand HYPE and hysteria. If however, the lights had actually gone out, even in a small percentage of places, well it wouldn't have been such a good thing.

The problem was and is this. Some old programmer in the 1970's writes a program that uses two digits to represent the year so 1972 is stored as just 72. Well everything works great

if you have rule on your computer that says

IF YEAR_A < YEAR_B THEN Turn the power off.

Its all good when YEAR_A is 72 and YEAR_B is 73,

it kinda sucks when YEAR_A = 99 and YEAR_B = 0.

OR  take the idea of some banking "armageddon"

(YEAR_B - YEAR_A) * your_balance * INTEREST_RATE

Again  taking that situation above,

(93 - 92) = 1

1 * your_bank_balance * INTEREST_RATE  = all good

0 - 99 = -99

-99 * your_bank_balance * INTEREST_RATE = very very bad

Pretty much any negative number * your bank balance is BAD.

That was not a completely unrealistic possibility, fortunately most computers were not affected too severely.

Answer 2

Panic without thought

Answer 3

*Background

Y2K is shorthand for the potential of computer operating systems, software programs and microchips to malfunction on January 1, 2000. Without being repaired or replaced, many of these information technology components may misread the century change as 1900 instead of 2000. Such an error can cause systems to provide inaccurate information or shut down all together,

*Impact

information technology has become an integral part of how we live and work. Such basics as food supplies, water, power, and health care are all, in part, delivered through computer technology.

Computers also help manage transportation, communications and financial services. Even some of the appliances and entertainment systems in our homes rely on microchips.

*The Challenge

Computer programs contain millions of lines of code. To fix the problem, programmers have to locate those lines containing a time/date/year sequence and reprogram the individual lines.Microchips are also vulnerable to the Y2K bug and exist in almost all appliance, product and equipment items that use electronic technology.The problem is further complicated because information systems seldom operate alone.If one part of the system fails -- from the small microchip to the big computer server -- the entire system is potentially shut down.

*History

In the 1950s, when computer programming language was being developed, information storage was limited and expensive. To save time and money, programmers chose to indicate the year with only two digits. For example the year 1957 was designated only as "57." That's why computer systems may read the century change as "00" and may not know which century it is.Computer scientists recognized the problem almost 40 years ago, but wrongly believed that the technology of the 1960s would no longer be in use by the year 2000. It wasn't until 1996, at the urging of New York Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan, that Congress sounded the alarm, producing its first report on the Y2K problem and establishing a commission to study its potential impact.,February 1998, President Clinton issued Executive Order 13073, "Year 2000 Conversion," which required all federal agencies to fix the Y2K problem in their systems.-June 1998, DoD named a director of Y2K Oversight and Contingency Planning to coordinate Y2K fixes throughout the services and defense agencies...................................

*Key Y2K Dates

July 1, 1999,August 22, 1999,September 9, 1999 ,

October 1, 1999,February 29, 2000

Answer 4

A lot of people thought there would be a bl\roblem when Y2k hit because when you list a directory on PCs of that day because the directory only displayed the last two digits.

This was a throw back to the earlier versions of DOS and the 40 column screens.

PC's had always stored the four digits of the year in the time and date stamp, and several viruses like Frodo and others had marked the infected files by seting the date stamp of the file 100 years into the future.

Answer 5

This mass hysteria was created by business-savvy, money hungry computer techs that scammed the world for billions by promoting themselves as the saviors of the world!

Answer 6

When most computer programmers write programs, they don't believe that they will be in use more than a year or two...  5 years at the most.  Well, the developers who were writing programs in the 1960's, 70's, and 80's on mainframes and the early Unix systems wrote quite a lot of code, and it was used a lot longer than they thought it would.

Many banks and utility companies used this code (writen in older programming languages like ASSM, COBALT), and because it seemed to be working, they never updated the code.  There were some predictive programs used by banks that were so complex and unreadable, that developers in the 80's and 90's were afraid to change them for fear of breaking the systems or modifying some financial logic that they didn't understand.

Well, since it was feasible that at least some of this code that was used for bank investments and for controling utilities might be using only 2 digits to represent a year (remember, this code was only supposed to be used for a short while), there was a concern that some of the programs would crash when the date changed over to the year 2000.

A huge industry developed in 1997-1999 to have developers go through old programs, check for code that represented dates in 2 digits, and upgrade them to use other date formats that would not be affected by Y2K.  The work was very valuable to some companies, and they paid dearly.

Would the world's financial markets have come to a screeching halt if this work wasn't done?  Would the power have gone out around the world?  Since these industries do not tolerate even a few hours of down time, thier programs had to be inspected and tested before January 1, 2000.

There were predictions of airplanes falling from the sky or entire cities going dark, or even of home coffe makers breaking, but nothing ever came to pass.

Answer 7

A number of computers designed in the 70s were handeling bank systems, airports and such. These systems used only the last two digits of the year for a date, and so things like interest would be all screwed up because it would be calculating interest from 1999 to 1900.

Some people felt it was going to crash the worlds financial systems and such and it was going to be the start of armageddon.

The fact that its about 2000 years after Jesus walked the earth made people think it was time for the second coming and the market crash would be the devastating earthquake which starts Tribulation in  Revelations.

Actually new years 2001 was the one they should have been afraid of, as this marked the end of the millenium and 2000 was still the 20th century.

Answer 8

many older computers were built with only 2 digit years, ie 68 for 1968.  thus, when the year 2000 came along, the computer would think that the year was 1900, possibly causing obvious problems.

Answer 9

people thought that computers would not be able to handle the date change.  everything had been '90 or '99 and just assumed the 19.  people feared computers would shut down and would not be able to handle the turn of the century