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Through the 1990s, many articles have appeared that discuss the "Millennium Bug" and its threat to nation's computer systems. The reason for all this attention is that the year 2000 problem (also known as Y2K) threatens to paralyze government and the economy, disrupt air traffic, social security, the banking system, and financial markets, along with power grids, telecommunications systems, and much more.
These and other dire predictions of elevators stopping, hvac units failing, and bank vault doors that won't open, may actually happen.
In a global economy that relies heavily on technology and ubiquitous computers that do "everything," the problem is far reaching indeed.
Asia, with its economic crisis, is lagging far behind in dealing with the Y2K problem, and some are predicting economic disruption so severe as to cause a worldwide recession. The magnitude of the problem is so great, President Clinton has even created a Year 2000 Council that reports directly to him.
But what exactly is the Millennium Bug, and what does it mean to the nation's hvac community? We should start by asking, "What is so special about the year 2000?"
Y2K PROBLEM IN A NUTSHELL
The problem is that when your computer's clock hits midnight on the last day of this century, some software will think the date is not Jan. 1, 2000, but will instead think it is either Jan. 1,1900 or 1984.
Back in the early days of computers, it was a common practice and in many cases, even considered good programming technique, to store only the last two digits of the year and just assume "19" for the first two digits. For large databases, this technique saved significant amounts of storage space.
The problem is that when the year advances to 2000, most of the schemes to print the date or calculate elapsed time will fail, because the "00" year is taken to be the year 1900 or 1984 (the default date stored in early personal computers), depending on your...