Y2K: An Overview
The Millennium. Asteroids hitting the Earth, pandemics ravaging populaces, religious zealots attempting to incite Armageddon and fanatics working on bioweapons while smuggled suitcase nukes become common carry-on luggage. My, our collective unconscious has been working overtime processing all the images of disaster thrown at it lately. Maybe it's the passing of an era and the fear of the new and unknowable times ahead. Maybe some kind of culture-wide dream-state is trying to come to terms with some of the apparitions our advancing technology has presented to us. However one such apparition is firmly grounded in reality. The Y2K problem, in case you have been living on Mars the past six months, is that some computers, computer chips and programs cannot handle dates after December 31, 1999. They variously report a year expressed as "00" as being 1900 or the more clever ones, realizing that there were no computers in 1900, will say it is 1980. This will cause these systems to malfunction when performing any date-related task. Experts cannot agree on what percentage of systems will fail and estimates from responsible sources vary greatly. These systems are not only based in easily accessible computers, but are also "embedded" in systems and devices that are not accessible; encased in concrete or down a deep hole or on the ocean floor or any combination thereof. A non-compliant chip may be part of an overlooked circuit board handling some routine but necessary task in almost any automated process on the planet. As if this "Big Bump" weren't enough, the year 2000 has another distinguishing feature: it is a leap year. A year ending in "00" is a leap year only once every 400 years so we can look forward to a "Baby Bump" when some systems which passed January 1, 2000 without problem choke on February 29 - March 1, 2000. So what does this mean? Nobody knows for sure at this point. So let's start with some basic facts of life. We are city dwellers. We do not grow our own food or draw our own water. The majority of us rely on a combination of coal-generated electricity and imported fuel oil for our heat. Our disease-carrying wastes are taken away by a complex maze of pipes and pumps and vehicles. We depend upon an intricate network of economic activity for our income to purchase the necessities of life and of course the necessities themselves. Computers are interwoven into every aspect of our lives; one source estimates that each one of us crosses paths with some seventy microprocessors before lunch each day. Some of these are going to fail, with varying consequences. This is the bad news. The good news is that people are not stupid. Large corporations, banks, and utilities companies are all frantically working on this problem and many claim to be already compliant or in an advanced stage of making their systems compliant. Smaller businesses are being more lax; estimates are that half of them are making no effort to investigate their own status but it is probable that most will take some action as the deadline approaches. Government is another story entirely. While Federal government departments appear to be making headway, there are definite warning flags up on at least three Nova Scotia Provincial departments: Health, Community Services and Natural Resources. Health alone is budgeted for almost three quarters of this province's Y2K budget of $83 million and the province's own Auditor General has expressed skepticism about whether N.S. will be able to make the deadline. Since the deadline isn't going to be moved back, the prudent advice is to make your plans accordingly. The N.S. Provincial Y2K web site is updated at the end of each month and it is a good idea to keep an eye on it. So what can you do?
The first order of business is to think of what preparations you can make ahead of time. There is no cause
for alarm or panic, but some simple precautions can make things easier in case of trouble.
In the months between now and the end of the year more information on the extent of this problem will become available. It is very likely that any disruptions in basic services, should they occur at all, will be of short duration. Problems are made to be solved.
You may direct comments or suggestions about this feature to: Andrew D. Wright, au141@chebucto.ns.ca
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