Beyond Y2K

"I survived Y2K" boast T-shirts for sale in flee-markets all across the country. Indeed it seems no single story captivated the media and spurred as many new start-ups as the "Year 2000" bug did. And all for naught! Well, at least that seems to be the popular opinion on the matter. Though, anytime this subject is brought up, you'll be sure to hear the equally logical counter argument. "If we hadn't spent millions of man hours and billions of dollars fixing the millennium bug in 1999, New Year's Day 2000 wouldn't have gone by so peacefully."

One thing the world did ascertain is that, for all their transistors and CPU speed, computers will simply follow orders-even if those orders come from a clumsy human being whose had only three hours sleep in the last four days! Simply put, we all make mistakes. Ever since an August night in 1945 when U.S. Navy Captain Grace Murray Hopper pulled a now infamous moth out of a set of electrical relays, "bugs" have become an integral part of computer programming. (Some say the term "computer bug" even proceeded the "moth incident.")

Some bugs are so common we named them. There's the "out-of-bounds bug," the "null-pointer bug," and of course the "off-by-one bug." Microsoft is continually issuing "service packs" which more accurately could be called "bug fix-it kits." And if that hasn't convinced you yet that bugs are a regular part of the software industry -did you know almost all software development environments come with a little something called a "debugger?"

What made the Y2K bug so different from your ordinary run-of-the-mill critter was the capacity to do world scale damage instantly. Bugs have been blamed in the past for countless amounts of monetary loss and even for the loss of life. But never before was there the possibility for so many bugs to strike at once. Thankfully the millennium bug limited its damage to a few erroneous fines on video rentals and some newborn babies being able to collect social security. But the risk still remains. Computers are being used more heavily for mission critical operations than ever before. And somewhere in the infinite lines of programming code lies one "greater-than" sign where there should be a "less-than" sign. And that this one seemingly insignificant oversight may one-day reek havoc is a very real risk.

Take the New York City Mass Transit Authority (MTA), for example. The MTA made a significant effort to ensure there would no problems for straphangers celebrating New Year's in Times Square. And in fact the subway ran smoothly that night. Everything was fine till almost a full year later when daylight savings time rolled around. It seems thousands of "MetroCard" vending machines across the city couldn't handle the extra hour and stopped functioning. Crews had to visit each machine and reset them manually. New York City was fortunate all this happened at a time when the subway system was most lightly used. Things were back to normal for the Monday morning rush hour. But this incident demonstrated that no matter how much testing is done something can always slip through the cracks. Had this bug struck at the peek of rush hour one could only imagine the consequences.

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