Myth 1: The year 2000 affects only mainframes.

Make no mistakes. PCs have the Y2K problem as well. On many old PCs and even on some sold as recently as last year, the clock’s time and date information is provided by a piece of hardware, called the BIOS, which assumes that the first two digits of the year are 19. The BIOS, in turn, provides this information, to some software applications. But most software products do not rely on the BIOS; they instead query the computer’s operating system, which gets the date information from the BIOS but does not make the same assumption about the century. It’s hard to know which software pulls date information directly from the BIOS and not from the operating system, it is recommended that users check with their PC manufacturers to see if their BIOS is Y2K compliant. If it is not the case, then a software patch from the PC manufacturer must be installed to fix the problem.

The date problem will also affect many common PC software applications; we cannot just fix the mainframe side and leave the PC desktop side alone, we are still in big trouble. The Y2K problem extends beyond the mainframes.
PCs, servers and other pieces of distributed computing systems are vulnerable too. It’s true that most distributed systems do not run Cobol applications - the heart of the Y2K problem on mainframes, but the programmers of many distributed applications used the same Cobol YYMMDD  (two-digit year) date format, decades ago to save what was then expensive data storage. Even the cutting edge JavaScript v.1.1 does not consistently handle 20th and 21st century dates in its "getYear" function.  Year 2000 compliance is especially difficult on distributed systems because data bases and spreadsheet files are commonly shared by users on  networks.

Myth 2: The Apple Macs are fine.

Not all Macs are Y2K compliant. It is true that Macintosh hardware knows how to handle year data well into the next century and that the newest versions of MAC OS is century-capable. The latest Apple Macintosh computers are designed so that they will not have date problems until the year 29940 – almost 300 centuries from now. But there are problems with earlier versions of MAC OS and MAC applications. Mac date-data exchanges are likewise problematic, primarily because of differences in how applications process and store dates. But users know these differences and understand what to do about them, they can have serious problems processing dates.

Myrh 3: Windows 95/98 are Y2K compliant.

Windows 98 defaults to two-digit years just like Windows 95 and two-digit years can lead to problems. The "file manager" utility and the "find file" tools do not support four-digits dates. A patch is available from Microsoft to
fix this problem. Though most Windows date-processing problems are easily managed if you know what to do about them, otherwise users need to be trained on how  to deal with them.

Myth 4: The problem will occur at midnight on 1/1/00

Actually, some of the problems started to occur years ago. For instance, some merchants ran into credit cards that didn’t accept cards with an expiration date ending in 00.  Some problems will occur even earlier. September 9,
1999 is a date that many people worry about, because some programmers used the nasty "four 9s" such as 9/9/99 to indicate an Invalid date field.   Others worry about the 99th day of 1999 (April 9, 1999).

Myth 5: The problems are well identified.

Although the basic Y2K problem is well understood, the difficulty is finding all the places where dates show up. Two-digit dates codes were used in all kinds of  programs. Many of those were written years ago, and no one
remembers all aspects of them. It is impossible for programmers to find every such logic in the next year and a half. Some problems will be minor, some will be more serious.

Myth 6: Y2K is a technical problem

Certainly there are technical problems that must be addressed, but the legal, public relations and political issues are just as important. On the legal front, some claim that software developers should be responsible for making sure every version of software ever sold is Y2K-compliant. Groups of users are starting to sue desktop software vendors for failing to provide Y2K compliance for free. Four law suits have been brought on behalf of users against two accounting software vendors: SBT Accounting Systems and Macola Inc. as well as against Symantec Corp., maker of Norton AntiVirus, and Intuit Inc., maker of Quicken financial software. The four vendors have been sued for breaching their warranties by requiring customers to pay for Y2K patches to their software products. In addition, Symantec was charged for failing to certify Norton AntiVirus products prior to version 4.0 as Y2K compliant and failing to remedy the defect  at no charge. Politically, the biggest concern is with government computers. Politicians do not want to spend money on something that is invisibble as fixing lines of code.

Myth 7: This is system software problem

It is primarily a software application problem but both hardware and software are involved.

Myth 8: The world as we know will end on 1/1/00.

People think that everything electronic will stop working forever that morning. Not necessarily. Large businesses are well aware of the problem and are aggressively working to fix the problems, most are planning to reinterpret the two-digit date to a rolling 100-year window, which will work for now. But many smaller businesses are not all that aggressive, believing that they aren’t all that dependent on computer systems. Let’s hope they are right. Quality of life could take a nosedive if those folks that run the local auto shop, dry cleaner, grocery store, etc get bitten by the Y2K bug. Today, with less than 15 months before the arrival of the year 2000, few companies and public agencies are in good shape with their Y2K efforts. To get the year 2000 issue in front and center among small businesses
that serve everyone, President Clinton has declared Oct. 19-23, 1998  to be National Y2K Action Week. Hundreds of educational events will be jointly carried out during the week by the Small Business Administration, the Department of Commerce and the Department of Agriculture through their local offices.

SOME STATISTICS

From a survey of 15,000 companies in 87 countries for a July 98 report:
 

• 23% of all companies have not started year 2000 efforts. More than 80% of these are small companies.

• 19% of the companies that have started Y2K compliance efforts jus began face-to-face meetings in 1998 with vendors that provide mission-critical solutions.

• 50% of all companies do not intend to perform year 2000 testing, because they plan to focus on the most critical problems first by the end of next year, and then come back and fix the rest of the problems as they occur.

Eyes Wide Shut:

From a CIO magazine survey of 643 individuals for a Year 2000 Consumer awareness  in May 1998:
 

• 38% admit they are not aware of the year 2000 problem.

• 62% know about the problem. Of the 62% with working knowledge of the problem

• 50% are not at all concerned about the Y2K affecting them personally and

• 80% are confident that the problem will be fixed before the dawn of the century.

Yet CIO’s April 1998 poll of technology and business executives indicated that only 17% were confident the glitch would be fixed by then. Federal agencies fall father behind on Y2K projects Fifteen government agencies are behind schedule on their year critical 2000 projects and total spending on fixes is expected to reach $5 billion
according to the Office of Management and Budget. Six agencies having the most serious trouble are: Department of Defense, Education, Energy, Transportation, Health and Human Services and the Agency for International Development. Among the agencies furthest behind is Health and Human Services, which did not complete an assessment of its 289 business-critical systems until May 98. Defense with its 1898 critical systems has brought only 29% into compliance. The DOT is also a laggard with only 38% of its 630 critical systems in compliance.

Air Transportation Survey – Most Disturbing:

In a statement prepared for Congress hearing on Sep 28, 98, the Air Transport Association of America said its preliminary survey of airports turned up most disturbing’: 35% of airports indicated that they had no plan for dealing with the Y2K problem. At the beginning of this year, the FAA lagged behind the government-wide schedule for Y2K repairs, but the agency redoubled its efforts and appear on track to have air traffic control systems fixed by the end of June 98. Some members of Congress warned that airline travel could be disrupted
in January 2000, particularly overseas travel. The International Civil Aviation Organization was asked to raise Y2K
issues with its 145-member nations. The FAA, meanwhile, has set up teams to work with Canada, Mexico, Japan, Britain, the Bahamas and the Dominican Republic to ensure the computer glitch does not compromise safety. More than half of all American travelers go to these six countries.

In the US, the Air Transport Association said, an inventory of 81 airports found 20 on schedule to fix the Y2K computer glitches, 9 are running one to three months behind schedule. Twenty-four airports were more than three
months behind or will not finish Y2K repairs until after June 1999. The remainder 28 were without plans, the association said.

Banking and Hospital audits:

Audits by federal banking regulators released in June 98, found that Y2K projects at 695 banks need improvement, with the efforts at 43 of  those institutions listed as unsatisfactory. A nationwide survey of hospitals by Chicago law firm Gordon & Glickson found that 30% haven’t begun year 2000 projects.

SEC to enforce Year 2000 reporting:

The Securities and Exchange Commission told the Senate banking subcommittee that while 70% of the 1,000 companies the agency reviewed disclose Y2K project information in their annual reports, many do not follow the
disclosure guidelines set by the SEC. The companies failed to disclose the costs of fixing the problem but also the potential consequences if the company does not fix the problem in time. Steven Hock, CEO of Triaxys Research testified that Triaxys examined 250 corporate financial filings with the SEC and found that 15% provided  no
Y2K information, another 30% used such vague language as to leave investors unaware of the status of their projects or the risks involved. The SEC said that it is ready to take action against public companies that do
not comply with the guidelines for disclosing information on their Y2K costs and compliance.

Other distractions:
 

• There is the "10K" problem along Wall Street firms whose program-trading software written in the mid-1980s cannot handle a Dow Jones Industrial Average of 10,000 points and beyond. Wall Street claims to have fixed this problem. Let’s wait for the day that the Dow Jones shoot over 10K.

• In Europe, there is also the conversion to the new EURO currency standard by year 2000.

• Watch your neighbor - The Pentagon has raised a Y2K red flag. In a recent testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said the United States may need to calm Russian forces if year 2000 problems cause their missile-control computers to crash as New Year Day’s begins. Hamre said jittery Russians rely on nuclear weapons "as a safeguard for heir national security" and having their computers suddenly go black won’t help us. By mid-1999, the Pentagon will have spent $2.9 billion on Y2K problems, but Hamre said it still foresees some ‘nasty surprises’.

Baltimore, MD.  Sat, 17 Oct 1998
VACETS Column