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2000 will be year of the bug
With computers tucked in all corners of society, a date-sensitive glitch has even programmers stashing food and cash
Wednesday, August 19 1998
By Steve Woodward of The Oregonian staff
Five hundred days from today, society will:
(A) Collapse.
(B) Bumble into a technological minefield that could trigger economic consequences ranging from slower growth to full-fledged depression.
(C) Have a good yuk over nothing.
Hmmm. How about B?
That's B as in "bug" -- specifically, the so-called Millennium Bug. It's not a bug at all but an artifact left from computing's Dark Ages, and many folks have adopted the apocalytic misnomer to describe the so-called Year 2000 computer crisis.
As New Year's Eve revelers kiss at the stroke of midnight on Dec. 31, 1999, computers throughout the world will roll their clocks forward to Jan. 1, 2000 -- 1/1/00 -- a date that, believe it or not, many computers are too witless to recognize.
The result: Those computers could malfunction, spew out incorrect data or fail completely.
Not that mankind hasn't ever seen a computer crash.
But never on this scale. The United States relies on 100,000 mainframe computers, 300 million PCs and 25 billion to 50 billion microchips embedded in everything from cars to key chains, according to Ed Yourdon, author of 25 computer books, including "Time Bomb 2000." The prospect of simultaneous malfunction for even a tiny proportion of those computers has some Americans fleeing, literally, for the hills.
Wired magazine in an August article titled "Run for Your Life!!" profiled several veteran computer programmers who have stared the Millennium Bug straight in the eye -- and begun stockpiling food, water, blankets and cash in remote locations.
Subsistence farming lessons, anyone?
The most important thing experts caution us to remember, however, is that no one -- not even Bill Gates -- knows what every computer will do when '99 rolls forward to '00.
Knowledgeable Portlanders apparently lean more toward fear of malfunctions that would lead to a mild recession. All but one of 33 respondents in a recent informal poll said the Year 2000 -- or Y2K -- crisis will bruise the economy, with most opting for a mild recession rather than slow growth or depression. The remaining respondent expected disaster.
The poll's participants weren't doomsayers. They were members of the Portland Year 2000 Ready User Group, an organization of more than 200 computer experts from local companies and government agencies, including the state of Oregon and Portland General Electric Co.
"We don't know what's going to happen," said Leille Sussman, a Clackamas-based computer consultant and user group member. "It's like a bridge where you know 10 percent of the rivets are going to fail, but you don't know which ones."
Q. Should I be worried?
A. Yes. The real question is: How much?
The Year 2000 crisis has attracted a bizarre retinue of computer whizzes, survivalists, business consultants, fundamentalist Christians, Wall Street economists, opportunists and U.S. senators. Each has his or her theory about the dangers of the Millennium Bug, up to and including the end of civilization.
Because of the complexity of modern life, there are many areas of vulnerability. But millions of dollars and man-hours are pouring into the protection of society's most critical areas.
Financial institutions, for example, rely heavily on date-sensitive technology to compute interest rates, calculate balances, process loans and track credit card data. The bug might erase balances, miscalculate interest payments and call in loans. Beginning in 1996, credit card companies got an early taste of the problem when some computers were unable to read "00" as an expiration date.
Wells Fargo & Co., for one, expects to spend more than $100 million re-programming wayward computers, according to its annual filing with the federal Securities and Exchange Commission. The bank company said its solutions will be mostly done by the end of this year.
Nuclear, gas and electric plants are filled with largely hidden process-control microchips. Some of them perform date-sensitive calculations. Others are off-the-shelf chips that have date-sensitivity built into them, even if they don't use that function.
In Oregon, NW Natural says it will spend an estimated $4 million to perform its Year 2000 fix.
One consulting firm, the Gartner Group, has estimated that the problem will cost as much as $600 billion to fix in the United States alone.
Q. So the problem is being fixed, right?
A. Right, sort of. But time has become the enemy. The United States' 2 million computer programmers have 500 days to repair 700 billion lines of computer instructions, computer author Yourdon said.
In June, a congressional subcommittee gave the federal government an overall F on its Year 2000 progress report card, even though some agencies, such as the Social Security Administration, have been working on the problem for nearly a decade.
Cap Gemini America, a leading U.S. consulting firm, released survey results in July that show more corporations underestimating costs, falling behind schedule and already experiencing Year 2000-related breakdowns.
In December, for example, 7 percent of large companies surveyed by Cap Gemini reported Millennium Bug failures. By July, the incidence had risen to 40 percent.
Moreover, there's the specter of embedded computers.
Q. Embedded computers? What are those?
A. Not every computer comes in a box and sits on your desktop. Some are tiny chips that sit in places you normally don't think of. Your digital watch has an embedded computer that tells time and, possibly, records phone numbers and acts as a stopwatch. Your car has chips that calculate such things as the car's fuel mixture and the outside temperature in Fahrenheit and Celsius. Office buildings have computers that decide when to turn on the heat or where to send an elevator.
In fact, an estimated 25 billion to 50 billion embedded computers are currently at work in the United States. Most are innocuous, as far as the Year 2000 problem goes: If a chip fails in your watch, you might see a wrong time or lose a phone number.
In contrast, an embedded chip in a heart monitor in a hospital intensive care unit performs a life-and-death function.
Q. Who's responsible for the problem?
A. No one, really. In the olden days, computer memory was prohibitively expensive. So it was cheaper to process a year as two digits rather than four digits. Programmers knew the distant year 2000 would be a problem but assumed that "someone" would fix the problem by then.
But as time marched on, consumers demanded that new software be compatible with old software. So programmers left the old dates alone -- until recent years.
Nowadays, most new computer programs know that "00" means 2000. But many will interpret "00" as 1900 or 1980 or a meaningless number. And some new computers and computer software are failing date tests.
Q. What should I do personally?
A. As with buying insurance, it depends on your personal comfort level with risk.
Here's some general advice offered by numerous sources:
Get hard copies of important documents. For example, write or call the Social Security Administration for a copy of your Personal Earnings and Benefit Estimate Statement, which details your lifetime Social Security contributions.
Keep an emergency supply of cash and liquid assets, in case bank cash machines don't work or your bank balance is in error.
Prepare as if a big storm is on the way, building an adequate supply of food, water, blankets, a battery-operated radio, a first-aid kit, prescription medicines and other necessities.
Inspect your home for date-sensitive digital devices, such as programmable thermostats and security and sprinkler systems. Ask the manufacturer if they are Year 2000-ready and fix the devices that are most important to you.
Q. What about my home PC?
A. Sussman and Susan Lannis, partners in L&S Resources, offer this advice: Back up your data before conducting any tests. Disconnect your desktop computer from any network. Go to one of the following World Wide Web sites, each of which offers free PC testing software:
• Ymark 2000 (www.nstl.com)
• Test 2000 (www.rightime.com)
• Survive 2000 (www.patssb.com)