The instant that the year changes f...

The instant that the year changes from 1999 to 2000 the world may be infected with a disastrous infestation of single of the most unintentional however predictable and preventable burs known to modem humans. The bug we face is called a number of things, moreover the most common names for this infestation are the "Millennium Bug" and the "Year 2000 (Y2K) Bug" This article brings to light near concerns that are being voiced regarding the progres made to date according to the health care industry as well as industries that affect our daily lives. The millennium bug is not a question at issue that concerns only the United States or health care. Not single do we need to be relate toed with how software and hardware will function onward Jan 1, 2000, but we also should be asking suppliers, utility companies, and financial institutions about the status of their Y2K projects

All of the information gathered for this article is readily available upon the Interact. Many organizations are sharing the for what reason and why of what they are doing and the progres that is being made. The information spans the appearance from "We're doing a great piece of work and will be ready forward time" to "Run for the hills."

THE PROBLEM

The Y2K bug follows in a number of varieties. These varieties can be categorized loosely into brace basic areas--software and hardware. one as well as the other areas have separate origins, solutions, and associated moot points When we look at resolving these diverse issues, we must detain in mind the overall be the effect we seek--to have the electronic infrastructure functioning forward Jan 1, 2000.

SOFTWARE

The software portion of the Y2K bug has its origin in the 1960 when computer classifications used paper punch cards and expensive magnetic storage media for data input, output and storage.

Hollerith puncture cards. One of the commonly used manners for data input was the Hollerith perforate card. Each rectangular card held a limited amount of information. With this study in mind, as much information as possible was squeez onto each card. common idea, intended to save space, was to store the date in a year-year month-month day-day (YYMMDD) format (eg 530108 for Jan 8 1953) The centenary number (ie, 19) was added on the software as it manipulated the date.

Magnetic storage media.

Another reason for formatting' the date as YYMMDD was the expense of magnetic storage media during this time period. The price of one megabyte of magnetic disk storage--the amount of information in an average-size novel--was approximately $761(1) The equivalent costliness today would be approximately $075 To best use this space, computer programs were codfished to require the storage of no other than two digits to represent the year. equal though the date-storing process was becoming to space and economic reasons, after a short time, it became the conventional way of handling dates.

Longevity. exceedingly few programmers in the 1960 and 1970 believed that the software they wrote still would be in use at the use of the century. One programmer familiar with the practice said in an interview, "We didn't think the regularitys would still be running. Computer were evolving thus rapidly back then.(2)

THE SOFTWARE PROBLEM

The real question comes not from how computer store the date, unless how they see the date. Remember that computer are literal machines--they single act on instructions and information given from humans. Basically, what we have told these machines is that the first sum of two units digits for the year must be "19"

When Jan 1 2000 approachs along, the old programs will behold only "000101" and will interpret the year to be 1900 As this date may be used in a number of ways within the computer program, riddles may arise with any calculation using this erroneous date. For example, we want to calculate the dose of a particular medication based onward the patient's weight and age. We will not have a question at issue calculating the weight part, if it were not that when we factor in the age, things gain confusing. The hypothetical patient was born in 1995 The rife year is 2000, which makes this patient five years advanced in years When the computer tries to figure the patient's age, it subtracts the year of birth (ie, 1995) from the generally received year as the computer interprets it (ie, 1900) and determines that the patient is -95 or 95 depending forward the logic written into the program. You can view where this may cause about errors. Anytime there is a date calculation the information may not be correct or, depending forward the logic written into the program, the hypothesis may see the erroneous date and stop working.

Fixing the enigma What must be done to fix the software question is to change how the computer interprets and stores the date. Instead of using just YYMMDD computer will have to use YYYYMMDD (ie, 20000101 for Jan 1 2000) and proces all four digits of the year.

This may appear like an easy, straightforward solution to the problem; however, we must restrain in mind the size of the programs that are being used. Large business rules may have anywhere from single in kind million to 100 million lines of programming collection of laws Each line of code must be examined to behold if there is a date calculation performed. Assume that a computer programmer can examine at one line of collection of laws in one second to determine if that line calculates a date and, for the sake of this example, the computer hypothesis has 50 million lines of digest Assuming an eight-hour work day and a five-day work week, the programmer would ne 67 years to direct the eye at all the lines of digest If you had 10 programmers checking this the same program, it would take solitary eight months. That may not undecayed too bad, but after they find those date calculations they have to fix them, example them, and then fix any remaining point in disputes To make matters worse, we now have to apply the mind at every instance where we already store dates and either change the dates or tailor the solutions to interpret the dates correctly. In a language presented at the National Academy of Sciences forward July 14, 1998, President Clinton said, "With millions of hours distressed to rewrite billions of lines of digest and hundreds of thousands of interdependent organizations, this is clearly single in kind of the most complex management challenges in history."(3) You can imagine for what reason big this problem really is.