ONLY THE OVAL
BUTTONS LINK
|
The
Year 2000 and Your PC |
|
by
Peter Huemer, User-Friendly Computing
What
is the year 2000 problem?
The
origin of the Year 2000 problem is simple to explain. Many
computers
were programmed to record only the last two digits
of
the year for any date they encountered. So, they represent
1999
as "99" and 2000 as "00". This was not an oversight.
Computer
experts made a deliberate decision to save what
was,
at the time, valuable memory. As a result, some
applications
could misinterpret the year "00" as 1900, 1980, or
some
other date.
Date
arithmetic is just one of the problems that will crop up at
the
turn of the century. Some systems were programmed years
ago
when the Year 2000 seemed a long way off, so "99" and
"00"
weren't treated like real dates. Some programmers used
these
two convenient, easily remembered codes for assigning
a
special status, to a customer or an invoice. For example, a
birth
year of "99" might be a code indicating that the customer
is
deceased, so he or she should not receive any marketing
solicitations.
A birth year of "00" might indicated that a
customer
has declared bankruptcy, so he or she should not be
extended
any credit.
If
all this weren't bad enough, there is another problem - the
year
2000 is a leap year. The last millennium leap year was
1600.
A leap year only occurs at the turn of the century every
400
years, and some applications may have failed to
accommodate
this. As we all know, if a year is divisible by four
it
is as leap year, so February has 29 days. That may be the
rule
that we all go by, but - like many rules- this rule has an
exception.
When a year is divisible by 100, it is not a leap
year.
Unfortunately, there is also an exception to the
exception.
If the year is also divisible by 400, then it is a leap
year.
So, 1900 was not a leap year and neither is 2100, but the
Year
2000 is a leap year. While many programmers knew about
the
exception to the rule, fewer knew about the exception to
the
exception. As a result, not all computers are programmed
to
recognize the Year 2000 as a leap year. Because of this leap
year
issue, we may not see all of our Year 2000 computer
problems
on January 1, 2000. Some computers won't begin to
misbehave
until February 29, 2000.
Broad
Impact of the Year 2000 problem
When
the year 2000 arrives, many date-arithmetic calculations
are
likely to go awry. For example, if you make a 10-minute
long-distance
telephone call beginning at 11:55 p.m. on
December
31, 1999, you would expect the phone company to
compute
the charges by subtracting the starting time of the
call
from the ending time. But its computer might calculate the
duration
of your call by subtracting the "99" for 1999 from the
"00"
of 2000, which lead the computer to believe that your call
lasted
for a negative time period,, i.e., a period of minus 99
years.
Depending on how the computer was actually
programmed,
this could lead to a number of wildly incorrect
results:
negative charges, astronomically late charges, or even
some
kind of computer system failure.
The
year 2000 problem is more than just a technical problem.
It
raises a wide range of personal, financial, professional, and
legal
issues. Examples of some of the systems which may be
impacted
by the Year 2000 problem include: expiration dates
(driver's
license, credit cards, subscriptions, drugs), air traffic
control,
reservations (hotel, air travel), automated vehicle
maintenance
notifications, traffic light scheduling, length of
overdue
invoices, ATM/bank access, cash plan, utilities
(heating,
ventilation, water, sewage, telephones, answering
machines,
and air conditioning), failure of chip-dependent
electronic
equipment (VCRs, telephones, elevators, security
systems,
fire alarms, fax machines, copiers, etc.), IRS record
keeping,
payment mortgages and bank notes, disruption of
e-mail
and postal communications, reliability of vendors and
business
(banks, utility companies, pension plans, insurance
policies
and coverage, security companies, communications
companies).
It
also introduces a variety of potential legal issues resulting
from
failure of companies to deliver financial or investment
agreements,
failure of software/hardware companies to be
compliant,
death or injuries resulting from failed equipment.
Many
insurance companies will exclude coverage for Y2K
problems
for policies issued or renewed after January 1, 1999.
There
is no clear legal definition of what constitutes a valid
Y2K
claim. Some attorneys believe that unless a business takes
"reasonable
and prudent" measures to avoid Y2K bugs, that
business
could be liable for any hard or damage that their
customers
or suppliers may incur.
The
Year 2000 Information and Readiness Disclosure Act was
passed
by the U.S. Senate and won House approval. President
Clinton
signed the bill into law. The bill is supposed to
encourage
companies to share information about year 2000
preparations
by freeing businesses from liability over
statements
they make about products or plans to fix the
millennium
problem. About 40 industry groups support the law,
although
the Association of Trial Lawyers of America and other
critics
in the legal community oppose it, saying that it does
not
provide enough protection for consumers
(http://www.cnn.com/tech/computing/981-/05/y2kbill.idg/).
How
does the Year 2000 problem affect my PC?
Your
computer system consists of several components:
applications
(such as word processing, spreadsheet,
database
and other applications), an operating system
(such
as Windows(r) 95), a basic input/output system
(BIOS)
and a central processing unit (CPU). When your
application
requires a date, it requests one from the
operating
system. The operating system, in turn,
requests
the date from the BIOS, which requests it from
the
CPU clock. The CPU returns the date to the BIOS,
which
may interpret the date before it reports it to the
operating
system. The operating system may then
format
the date before reporting it to the application. If
any
one of these components fails to properly recognize
the
date, the application may fail to store and display
the
date correctly. To evaluate year 2000 compliance,
your
PC must be checked on several fronts:
Hardware: BIOS, CPU,RTC
Operating System: DOS, OS/2, Windows
3.x/95/98/NT, Netware
Software Applications: Quicken, Quickbooks,
Peachtree, Paradox, Quattro Pro, Access, Lotus 1-2-3
Application Data: Access, dBase, Paradox,
FoxPro, Excel, Lotus, QuattroPro, Symphony
Some
PCs reset the system date to 1980 or other invalid
dates
when the computer reaches the year 2000. This
problem
is created by flaws in the computer hardware
and
in low-level BIOS software provided by other
vendors.
PCs older than two years will most likely need a
manual
date change in the year 2000. Some will also
need
a BIOS update. Note that all Apple computers made
since
1984 are year 2000 compliant
Currently,
about 25 percent of corporate PCs rely on
non-Y2K-compliant
DOS, Netware, and OS/2. Although
Windows
98 is compliant, be aware that Windows
95/NT
and Novell Netware 3.12, 4.10, and 4.11 are not
Year
2000 compliant unless a Y2K compliant patch is
applied.
You can download the Windows 95 patch,
WIN95Y2K.EXE,
from
ftp://ftp.microsoft.com/softlib/mslfiles/WIN95Y2K.EXE
Several
commonly-used applications have been
identified
as being non-compliant, including: Quicken
(versions
prior to 6.0), QuickBooks (versions prior to
6.0),
Peachtree (versions prior to 6.0), Paradox
(versions
prior to 7.0), Quattro Pro (versions prior to
7.0),
Microsoft Access (version 2.0), Lotus 1-2-3 for
DOS
(early versions), Frontpage (versions 1.1 and 97),
Site
Server (version 2.0), Office Professional (version
4.XX)
, Internet Explorer (versions prior to 4.0), Visual
Basic
Standard (versions prior to 5.0), Word for DOS
(version
5.0), Works (versions prior to 4.5)
Several
popular versions WordPerfect have not yet been
tested
for Year 2000 compliancy, including versions 5.1
and
5.2 for DOS/Windows. Although WordPerfect 6.1
has
minor compliancy issues (see
http://www.corel.com/2000_productlisting.htm),
Corel
reports
that WordPerfect 7 and 8 are year 2000
compliant
applications. Other applications which have
been
identified as compliant include: Netscape
Communicator
4.0, Netscape Navigator 2.02 and higher,
Internet
Explorer 4.0, Word 97, Norton Antivirus 4.0,
Norton
Utilities for Windows (versions 2.0 and higher).
For
a Y2K compliance summary of other common PC
applications,
refer to:
http://www.currents.net/advisor/y2k/programs.html
How
your application stores and displays dates, as well
as
how you enter, edit, export and import dates, can
affect
how your application handles date information
before,
during and after the year 2000. If an application
stores
dates in a format that includes the century
information
(i.e. 1998 instead of 98, or 2002 instead of
02),
it should have little difficulty displaying and
processing
dates after the turn of the century. If the
application
stores dates in a format that does not
include
the century information (i.e. in 2-digit format),
the
application may have difficulty displaying and
processing
dates after the turn of the century. While you
can
enter and display date information in many different
formats,
such as 01/01/1998, 01/01/98, January 1,
1998,
or 1 Jan 1998, we recommend that you always
enter
and display the date with a 4-digit (yyyy) year to
avoid
any misinterpretation. Be aware that many
applications
(e.g., Access 95) make 2-digit year entry
assumptions.
You should also set all your default date
formats
to display a 4-digit year. Make sure that any
data
previously entered or stored in a 2-digit year
format
is entered and stored in a 4-digit format and that
the
information has been accurately converted.
Copyright
© 1999
by User-Friendly Computing
|