Y2K the Millennium Bug: the Event that never happened ( 2000 )

January 1st, 2000

The Event that never happened…

During 1960s to late 80s there was a widespread practice in all computer softwares to use two digits for repreasenting a year rather than using 4 digits. This was done to save computer disk and memory space because these resources were relatively expensive in those times. As the year 90’s approached experts began to realize this major shortcoming in the computer application softwares. In year 2000, the computer systems could interpret 00 as 1900 messing up all the computing work. For example if a program function is calculating difference between two dates, it would calculate a negative number. For example difference between 1 Jan 2000 and 31 Dec 1999 could be calculated as -100 years rather than 1 day. This was a major bug for the whole finance industry. The bug not only existed in computer software but it also existed in the firmware being used in the computer hardware. In general this bug threatened all the major industries including utilities, banking, manufacturing, telecom, airlines.

http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/