True Crime-Paranormal-Conspiracy Theories Stories Part V #Wattys2023

Y2K Problem

The year 2000 problem, alsoknown as the Y2K problem, Y2K scare, millennium bug, Y2K bug, Y2Kglitch, Y2K error, or simply Y2K refers to potentialcomputer errors related to the formatting and storage of calendardata for dates in and after the year 2000. Many programs representedfour-digit years with only the final two digits, making the year 2000indistinguishable from 1900. Computer systems' inability todistinguish dates correctly had the potential to bring down worldwideinfrastructures for industries ranging from banking to air travel.

In the years leading up to the turn ofthe century (millennium), the public gradually became aware of the"Y2K scare", and individual companies predicted theglobal damage caused by the bug would require anything between $400million and $600 billion to rectify. A lack of clarity regarding thepotential dangers of the bug led some to stock up on food, water, andfirearms, purchase backup generators, and withdraw large sums ofmoney in anticipation of a computer-induced apocalypse.

Contrary to published expectations, fewmajor errors occurred in 2000. Supporters of the Y2K remediationeffort argued that this was primarily due to the pre-emptive actionof many computer programmers and information technology experts.Companies and organizations in some countries, but not all, hadchecked, fixed, and upgraded their computer systems to address theproblem. Then-U.S. president Bill Clinton, who organized efforts tominimize the damage in the United States, labeled Y2K as "thefirst challenge of the 21st century successfully met", andretrospectives on the event typically commend the programmers whoworked to avert the anticipated disaster.

Critics pointed out that even incountries where very little had been done to fix software, problemswere minimal. The same was true in sectors such as schools and smallbusinesses where compliance with Y2K policies was patchy at best.

Background

Y2K is a numeronym and was the commonabbreviation for the year 2000 software problem. The abbreviationcombines the letter Y for "year", the number 2 and acapitalized version of k for the SI unit prefix kilo meaning 1000;hence, 2K signifies 2000. It was also named the "millenniumbug" because it was associated with the popular (rather thanliteral) rollover of the millennium, even though most of the problemscould have occurred at the end of any century.

Computerworld's 1993 three-page"Doomsday 2000" article by Peter de Jager was called"the information-age equivalent of the midnight ride of PaulRevere" by The New York Times.

The problem was the subject of theearly book Computers in Crisis by Jerome and Marilyn Murray(Petrocelli, 1984; reissued by McGraw-Hill under the title The Year2000 Computing Crisis in 1996). Its first recorded mention on aUsenet newsgroup is from 18 January 1985 by Spencer Bolles.

The acronym Y2K has been attributed toMassachusetts programmer David Eddy in an e-mail sent on 12 June1995. He later said, "People were calling it CDC (CenturyDate Change), FADL (Faulty Date Logic). There were other contenders.Y2K just came off my fingertips."

The problem started because on bothmainframe computers and later personal computers, storage wasexpensive, from as low as $10 per kilobyte, to in many cases as muchas or even more than US$100 per kilobyte. It was therefore veryimportant for programmers to minimize usage. Since computers onlygained wide usage in the 20th century, programs could simply prefix"19" to the year of a date, allowing them to onlystore the last two digits of the year instead of four. As space ondisc and tape was also expensive, these strategies saved money byreducing the size of stored data files and databases in exchange forbecoming unusable past the year 2000.