Y2K. What's up with the Year 2000 Bug?
| Autor | Chad Murray |
| Cargo | Law school student at the University of Akron School of Law in Ohio, United States. Bachelor of Arts (B.A.) in Geography in 1995 from the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, United States. (USA) |
December 31st, 1999 – Tropical Island, Oceana. The last flight of the evening is on approach to Tropical Island airport and the hour is nearing midnight. The flight control tower gives clearance for the aircraft to land. The airplane is only a few miles offshore when the year 2000 arrives. As the passengers on the airplane toast the New Year, the lights at the airport flicker off and the control tower goes dark. Aircraft controllers use the emergency radio to tell the incoming flight that they are on their own for landing and wish them "good luck" since all ground systems are no longer functioning. Do you want to be a passenger (or a pilot) on the airplane?
Of course, this event has yet to occur and Tropical Island is a fictitious location; however, the scenario is possible. This is just one of the many situations which may arise due to the well known and studied dilemma – The Year 2000 Bug. Also known as "Y2K," this is a global problem.
WHAT IS THE YEAR 2000 PROBLEM?
Since the dawn of the computer age, computer programs have been written using only two digits as identification for year dates. At the time of writing, computer programmers never considered what would happen when the century arrived and the unfortunate results may include errors and computer failures. This insidious problem infects almost all businesses the world over. Computers using two digits see the current year "1998" as "98" with the "19" as a given. In the year "2000," these computers will see "00" and use "19" as a given and calculate the year as "1900." This error can have ill effects on any date dependent functions such as interest rate calculations and lease information. The computer may have such difficulty understanding data that it may even shut itself down.
Even if businesses begin to fix their computers, they have to do it on time. There is no option to move the repair date since the millennium obviously cannot be moved.
The Federal Aviation Administration ("FAA"), for example, tested one of their radar systems used for airplane traffic control. Specifically, the FAA tested the cooling system of the radar by moving the date forward to December 31, 1999 to see what would happen when January 1, 2000 rolled around. This date dependent cooling system is used to cool the motors that turn the radar. When the computer’s clock hit January 1st, 2000, the cooling system shut down. Shortly thereafter, the entire radar ceased functioning. We should consider ourselves lucky to have made this discovery now so that the problem can be corrected before something disastrous occurs. What will we do about systems that remain untested and in disrepair? Considering the potential disaster scenarios can be disturbing.
WHAT COULD GO WRONG?
The potential for problems is huge. This problem is not restricted to old mainframe computers or home personal computers. Small computers are embedded in all sorts of electronic devices that we use everyday. We take for granted some of the items that rely on non-compliant Y2K computers.
Imagine you are driving home after a New Year’s Eve party on January 1, 2000. You approach a railroad crossing and the gates are up so you proceed across normally. A train immediately strikes you. The crossing gates were tied to a non-complaint system that shut down at midnight and you had the misfortune of being hit by a train. The gates did not go down when the train crossed the road.
A good example of an embedded computer chip that can cause a Y2K problem can be found in a pacemaker. Suppose, for example, that a man named Jonathan has a pacemaker. He is out on the golf course on a hot, humid summer afternoon in South Florida. By the ninth hole, he is a bit tired but still enjoying the game with his comrades. On the long walk to tee off on the tenth hole, he experiences some chest pain as his heart beats at an abnormal rhythm. The next day, January 4th, 2000, he goes to the cardiologist. The hospital’s computer downloads information from the pacemaker to aid the doctor with a diagnosis; however, the hospital’s computer cannot understand the data because the incident occurred on January 3rd, 2000. This computer reads the data as 01-03-00, meaning 1900, and a malfunction occurs. The doctor, unable to interpret the data from the pacemaker and the computer, makes a poor diagnosis Jonathan. Later that month, the patient’s heartbeat fluctuates uncontrollably and he passes away. This is a scenario that has a tragic, and quite possible, result.
The Veteran’s Health Administration has been collecting information about Y2K compliance amongst biomedical equipment manufacturers. "As of 29 July, the administration had received information on biomedical equipment from seventy-three percent of the nation’s one thousand four hundred nine manufacturers. Forty-seven percent of the suppliers reported that their products were not susceptible to the millennium bug." The Food and Drug Administration did a similar survey of medical equipment producers. Out of sixteen thousand surveys sent out, only twelve percent were returned.
Here is another disturbing fact. Officials from the Veteran’s Health Administration are not willing to perform Y2K compliance tests on their own equipment. Why? They are afraid they would expose...
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