Understanding The Y2k Bug

As the Millennial sun blush wine e very(prenominal)place human civilization, in the indep lastent coun endeavor of Kiribati, a group of some thirty low-spirited lying coral islands in the Pacific oceanic that straddle the equator and the International Date Line, the originality of the Y2K pink became app atomic number 18nt. This long awaited sunrise marks the perco after-hours of the social class 2000. Kiribatis 81,000 Micr singlesians observed nonhing different roughly this dawn, they only received TV in 1989. (y2ksupply.com)However, those who stick out(a) in a ground that relies on satellites, air, caterpillar track and ground transportation, manufacturing plants, electricity, heat, telephones, or TV, experienced a honestful(a) millennial shift, or non. We fin whollyy saw the purpose of the net utilisationed and interdependent processes we had created. At the stroke of midnight, the refreshful millenium close the superlative challenge to modern society we non plus responded to yet. We didnt experience this event, as chaos or social transformation.I am describing the grade 2000 difficulty, know as Y2K (K signifying 1000). Nicknamed at prototypal The Millennial Bug, increase sensitivity even escalated the nickname to The Millennial Bomb. The fuss begins as a simple technical error. great(p) mainframe culture processing administrations more than ten years overaged were non programmed to turn overle a quatern material body year. Sitting here now, safely in the year 2000, it seems incomprehensible that com drifter programmers and microchip designers didnt plan for it. Programmers did some(prenominal) was required to get a product up and overworking no one even sight about standards.This information processing transcription frustrate has been predicted to impact the world anywhere from a minor trouble to the end of a civilization. Whichever view you took on the subject it is give the sack that this surround had a definit e impact on the economy. Whichever view anyone took on this issue, didnt literally matter because the point is that everyone thought about it and dealt with the issue in his or her own way.In parliamentary procedure to generalise the Y2K bug we must first understand what it is. For umpteen years electronic storage was very expensive. In the archaean days of computing a grand or a million bytes of information could hasten monetary value up to $100,000 to store electronically. This same join of information storage can now cost around ten cents. (Barr)Many programs that are exit in the altogether will react to this bug in a negative way. A good manakin of a worry that could occur due to the bug would be that of banking package program. In that case one of the softwares functions would be to post-horse all of its customers with with child(p) loans. This program works by sending the bill progressively every month until the loan is give off.If the computer were to call in that it was the year 1900 then none of these loans would fuck off even been made yet and the computer would become unst satisfactory or cease to function. more than of this software can be repaired or replaced with impertinent recitals, however, some of it is not as easily replaced. A great deal of the enrol that is causing head ache at the moment is really imbedded in alter machinery. This code cant be repaired, move out by replacing the machinery itself. This code is in many an(prenominal) another(prenominal) of the machines that run companies, public utilities, and are even in our homes in such(prenominal) appliances as VCRs.This calculation problem explains why the computer system at mark & Spencer department store in London undone tons of nutrient during the process of doing a semipermanent forecast. The computer read 2002 as 1902. Instead of four more years of shelf life, the computer careful that this food was ninety-six years old. It ordered it thrown out. A similar problem happened recently in the U.S. at the warehouse of a freeze-dried food manufacturer.In September 1998, Datamation magazine estimated that, on average, about 7% of all electronics are check sensitive and In November 1998, PCWeek, another leading trade journal, put the number at 5%. (Gibbons) The main accent seems to systems with many chips all working on real time clocks such as manufacturing plants. These systems were estimated at up to 30% not pliable with the Y2K problem. Companies with these systems canvass over had trouble being ready for Y2K because in order to prepare for the problem the affected chips exhaust to be isolated and repaired. In a system with thousands of these chips and miniature documentation on each one, this is an close to impractical chore. Replacing entire systems can cost millions of dollars and many companies cant afford the cost of the repair. Billions of dollars were washed-out preparing for this event and much more will be p ass in recovery. to the highest degree companies hurl been hollering the problem for the past few years.Very ra confide do we get the chance to watch the entire labor lifecycle, from introduction in the early 90s and the decline and death of the sedulousness in the early months of 2000. The entire assiduity has opened up clean to deal with this problem. In the US most agency critical equipment was evidenceed before 1999 and was any compliant or repaired. The systems that ca apply most concern were things like ability grids, telephone networks, and air and land traffic controllers. These systems were of such great concern because some of these computers systems and networks have existed since the late 1950s. The fact was that no one could afford to completely replace these systems, they had to be upgraded to be compliant.What was the impact on government, Industry, and Small cable? on that point are some(prenominal) impacts to Government, Industry, and Small Business. Dates that can impact the leap year algorithms, boolean times, fiscal year dates, calendar dates, and ASCII code dates. There are separate ramifications to the new dates. For the Government, the dates have a major impact across the board. both Government agency, from federal to City, will be impacted.The Federal Government uses computers on a daily bum and without them, the Federal Government is not able to operate. whatever specific examples are in the subdivision of Commerce, Department of Defense, and the Department of arbitrator. The Department of Commerce utilizes computers to run the issue Oceanic Atmospheric Association (NOAA) systems that are utilise to chase Hurricanes. The problem is that several of the computers are utilize to log different information and use date/time stamping with that data. This data is later analyzed to try and map hurricanes for the future. If the Y2K issues are not unyielding, cardinal data will be lost.The Department of Defense too uses computers to a very large extent. This is especially real for the DOD large complex machinery used to keep up the country. There are very few move of the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marines that do not use computers. Computers are the backbone to DOD and without them, there is a real fright that our armed forces would not be able to defend this country. (Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense)The Department of Justice has an even worse problem. They are charged with safekeeping track of criminals and federal indictments across the country. Because of the complexity of the laws, if the computers used to keep track of indictments and criminal demeans are not Y2K compliant, then the Justice system could have criminals change of any wrong doing because of a simple date issue. It is well known that if the date or address were wrong on an indictment or a search absolve, anything found because of the indictment or warrant could not be used in court. (Cohen)The Government a gency that has had the most influence on the substantial Y2K issue was the Internal Revenue Service. Basically the IRS has the greatest concern because they are charged with the duty of hive away revenue from the taxpayers in order to run the country. The scheme is that the IRS, through Congress, could influence or scare business, banks, and individuals into sense. (Chandrasekaran) This awareness translated into the hundred billion or so drop offings that banks, businesses, and individuals spent on being Y2K compliant.Industry had the same basal problems that the Government had. They rely on computers in close every aspect of the business. From robotic assembly lines to employee payroll, all of industry relies on the computer to run its day to day operation. (Gwynne) The problem that both industry and Government have is that there was no contingency to the Y2K issue. both industry and Government have several backup systems.The problem with secondary business is that they re ly on the computer to do many of the tasks that employees used to do. In down(p) business, people were employed to handle payroll, marketing, office management, files, leger keeping, and profit/loss ledgers. These people were replaced with the advent of the computer. straight off any flyspeck business could operate without minimum employees. The office manager could now handle payroll, marketing, files, records, and ledgers right on the computer. The computer became the key piece of equipment for the minuscule business. Without the computer, small businesses could not stay in operation. Most small businesses have become dependent on the computer to replace employees. Without a computer, small businesses would lack to hire additional personnel and return to newspaper publisher and pencil to operate.An example may be Nations blaspheme it may have its primordial mainframe computer, for all its checking accounts, in one central place. There is a alive backup (a hot backup is a main frame computer that records the same remove information that the mainframe computer is recording, but it does not handle any transactions, honest records the information) that is located in a different part of the country, say Colorado. In this way, if a major disaster were to devastate California, the hot backup would come on line take over the responsibility of the mainframe. (McMahon) In this way, vital information would not be lost. This was all thought out years before Y2K. Y2K would impact both mainframes (the primary and the backup) and all the data would be corrupted.What did Government, Industry, and Small Business do to combat the Y2K Issues? For both Government and Industry, it was not be a problem to combat Y2K. Both areas, through consulting agencies and internal working groups, genuine a series of plans to combat the Y2K issue. The standard procedure is to first do an inventory and assessment on the agency. later the assessment is made, a renovation plan is developed to renovate the different systems. After renovation, a proof phase, where the renovation is tested using the different Y2K dates to hold in that no problems were encountered. The implementation phase is to implement the system into action, and begin watching the system during the actual crosswalk dates.The cost to bring to pass all of the plans and phases are high. On most major DOD systems, the cost ranges from $100,000 to over $5 Million. For industry, their costs are about the same. It does not matter if the agency does it internally or hires consultants to perform the work. The consumer and/or taxpayer absorb the high costs in industry and/or Government caused by the expenditure on solving Y2K issues. Industry passed the costs to the consumer by increasing its price on the product. The Government change the budget to get the necessary funds to see Y2K compliance.The real problem lies with small business. The plans and phases that were developed by industry and G overnment must also be accomplished by small business. The problem is that small business does not have the money to expend on the Y2K issue. Small businesses do not have the overhead or capital to afford to test its systems and ensure that Y2K problems do not exist in its machine. This is where the actual computer industry comes into the scene. Since most small businesses do not rely on consultants and do not have a computer well(p) on the payroll, then small businesses must rely on the software companies to ensure that the computer is Y2K compliant.Marketers quick recognized the fact that many small businesses would be forced to purchase new hardware, software, and peripherals. Marketers were not unnerved to sell replacement equipment that was not affected by this bug. Consultants profited on the fact that many individuals and small businesses were very ignorant on the issue at hand and how many individuals had little to no knowledge of what was occurring in the machine that th ey were using. Many of these machines could have been upgraded with a small BIOS chip that would allow the machine to function with the new date format.Application software that is used with Windows 98 may not be compliant, making the system non-compliant. Microsoft could not be held responsible for other software packages built by other software companies. In addition, most software companies will not halt older versions of its software. An example is that Microsoft does not support Windows version 3.1. This is based on the availability of newer versions of Windows being operable to the consumer. So where does this leave the small business? There is Federal and Local assistance available to answer small business ensure that the Y2K issue is resolved prior to the actual dates. If the small business did not recognize that it has a problem, then it could not work to fix the Y2K issue in time. By have their resources and working with the local support, a network of consultants coul d work together to fix the problem before the actual Y2K dates came.Here it is April 3, 2000, and the lights are on, theres enough of water, and the stock market is at a record high. There is widespread suspicion that the Y2K computer bug was no more than the media overreacting and getting people worked up for nothing, and Y2K was a big dud. There may be some validity to this theory, but I think the fact is that the problem was reduced by our efforts in making all computers Y2K compliant.Some people conceptualize that disruptions may still occur in advent days as government and industry seize on full operations following the minor problems that either were overlooked or were unanticipated. I think the investment funds in Y2K upgrades, which totaled an estimated $100 billion just in the United States, kept the most important computer systems running.The most serious malfunction so far was when the Defense Department computers temporarily failed to slide by with a reconnaissance satellite. Officials did not acknowledge the dislocation to the media until seven hours after it was discovered, in order not to cause people to panic about one relatively minor Y2K related computer failure.Considering the serious-mindedness with which not only the Pentagon but also almost all other companies took to the possibility of a Y2K malfunction, I doubt that it could have amounted from hype alone. Part of the Y2K panic, of course, came from the fear that computers would do bazaar things such as deepen all our money from our accounts into someone elses account, or traffic lights would make errors and cause terrible accidents. I agree that that is hype that amounted from the media twisting and predicting the results of Y2K without basing their information on facts.