T h e Y e a r 2 0 0 0 P r o b l e m Argument for the statement "The Year 2000 bug will have such extensive repercussions that families and individuals should begin planning now for the imminent chaos." The Ticking Bomb Introduction A serious problem called the "Millennium Bug", and also known as the "Year 2000 Problem" and "Y2K", is bringing a new century celebration into a daunting nightmare. In the 1860s and 1970s, when computer systems were first built, the computer hardware, especially information storage space, was at a premium. With an effort to minimise storage costs, numeric storage spaces were drained to the smallest possible data type. Ignoring the fact that a software may be run in multiple centuries, programmers started conserving storage spaces by using two digits to specify a year, rather than four. Consequently, on January 1, 2000, unless the software is corrected, most software programs with date or time may malfunction to recognise the entries in the year fields "00" as the year as "1900" instead of "2000" . Year 2000 problem is not restricted only to the above exigency. 20 years ago, everybody understood that a leap year came every 4th year except for every 100th year. However, a piece of algorithm has been forgotten by most people a leap year does exist every 400 years. So, under the first two rules, year 2000 is not a leap year, but with the third rule, it actually is. Computing errors will also occur before Year 2000. Values such as 99 are sometimes used for special purposes not related to the date. The number 99 is used in some systems as an expiration date for data to be archived permanently so some computers may lose the data a year before 2000. Programmers and software developers were surprised to see some of their programs survive for only a few years but failed to anticipate the problems coming by the year 2000. It is sorrowful to find most programs are still in use or have been incorporated into successor...
