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Peter Cochrane's Hard Drive 1998 Millennium bug: hype or horror? IT is hard to imagine that anyone has not heard of the Year 2000 Problem. This potential time bomb has been in the news for the past two years at least, and the Government has recently launched a poster campaign to warn people about it. Yet it remains confusing, uncertain and potentially dangerous. In a nutshell, the entire problem centres around old hardware and software designed when memory was expensive. Two-digit date formats, like 98 for 1998, were adopted to conserve memory. But any system employing this format cannot discriminate between the years 2000 and 1900. How did anything so obviously silly ever happen? Well, no one thought their products would last so long, with hardware attaining reliability and lifetime levels considered impossible just 20 years ago. And no one could have guessed that old-fashioned COBOL would still be the dominant computer language today. So we might expect problems in banking, insurance, commerce, manufacturing, transport and defence. How do you calculate interest, annuities, or account for invoices apparently unpaid since the turn of the previous century? What happens when a production plant or defence system decides it is overdue for maintenance by 99 years? There's no doubt about it, the potential for a major cataclysm exists. At the turn of midnight on the last day of 1999 I shall not be flying, standing in a lift or moving money by electronic banking. I think I shall retire to an armchair with a glass to see in the new Millennium. Just how worried should we be? While politicians have only recently woken up to this problem, industry, commerce and defence have been investing millions of man-hours for years to correct the situation. Interestingly, the attitude in Britain, and more recently mainland Europe, has been significantly different to that in North America. The home of the problem (the United States) seems to be very relaxed and is spending less per head than organisations on this side of the Atlantic. For small operations the solution to this problem is potentially simple. First the main elements of the system should be backed up. Then the system clock can then be advanced to just before the witching hour on the last day of 1999. Then stand back and watch. Does it die or crash? Easy enough to tell, you might think. But are there any embedded software and hardware components, with independent clocks hidden from view? These are most likely to be the real time bombs ticking away inside the box. Anything might happen, from software licences suddenly being revoked, to maintenance schedules being violated and sub-systems being automatically closed down. Putting all of this in perspective, a stand-alone PC is unlikely to be a major problem, but a network will almost certainly be so. Many accounting, logistic, and process control packages will need attention and it is worth seeking professional advice. For most individuals and small operators it is unlikely that 2000 will be a major electronic problem. Human behaviour on the other hand could be the major factor, with stockpiling, and a potential rush for cash, just in case. Peter Cochrane holds the Collier Chair for the Public Understanding of Science & Technology at the University of Bristol. His home page is: |
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