The Year 2000 Bug

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older computers was compressed in any way possible. One way to cut down the size of code was to compress dates to a format only six characters long. So instead of April 14 1999 the date would be compressed to 4/14/99. At the time of this programming this seemed to be the best solution to the space saving dilemma. As we come closer to the millennium we see that this style of programming was a great overlook of programmers. Assuming that the machines would not still be functioning in the year 2000, programmers did not see this as a problem. Now that the year is approaching there are a great deal more of these machines around then anyone ever would have thought. This poses a problem because when the last two digits of the year section of the date roll around to 00 the computer will think that the year is 1900 because it simply assumed that the first two digits are 19.
At first glance this problem seems to be minor but at a deeper look we can see that this Y2K bug can cause a ...

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however, is widely disputed and does not take into account other types of processors that have real time clocks. In September 1998, Datamation magazine estimated that, on average, about 7 percent are date sensitive and In November 1998, PCWeek, another leading trade journal, put the number at 5 percent. The main emphasis seems to systems with many chips all working on real time clocks such as manufacturing plants. These systems have been estimated at up to 30% not compliant with the Y2K problem. Companies with these systems have had trouble being ready for Y2K because in order to prepare for the problem the affected chips have to be isolated and repaired. In a system with thousands of ...

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