ANST - New Millenium

[Scott Powers]

>few years) but the 486 I'm running now went quite properly to 1/1/2000.


This topic really does not have anything to do with the SCA, so I will add
a couple of comments that I hope will put this to rest once and for all.

The year 2000 problem does not affect most computers.  It is primarily a
problem with COBAL programs written in the 1950s and 1960s.  The
programmers at the time never suspected that the software they were writing
would still be in use 30 to 40 years later, and made no provision for the
year 2000.  The dates were formatted like this:
	mm/dd/yy
	01/01/89
For the year 2000 problem to be solved, the dates have to be formatted like
this:
	mm/dd/yyyy
	01/01/1989
Its not a big mystery.  No big deal (other than changing several hundred
thousand date references in the programming code).  Its just that a lot of
old software has to be altered to manage the longer dates.  Big companies
often had tens of millions of dollars tied up in this software and could
not afford to start over again.  Older microprocessors were designed to
take maximum advantage of every byte, when RAM and disk memory both were
very expensive.

The reason you hear so much about it is that a lot of big financial
institutions (ergo. Banks, Mortgage Companies, and Insurance Companies) are
still running that old software.  It is so vast and complicated that it
would take too long and cost too much to start over again.  And little
things like your mortgage payments depend on the dates being right.

So go easy on those COBAL programmers and early computer engineers.  They
did the best they could with the information and resources they had.

And as far as current equipment is concerned, most will not present any
problems at all.  So don't worry about it.

Rumil


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