Less than 100 days to go...
I was reminded that, by the time you read this, there would be less than 100 days to the next Millennium. You might be sitting there getting excited about all the wonderful things that the new Millennium will bring - super fast computers, an end to poverty and strife or just that you are going to the most amazing New Year's Eve party.
For those of us involved in Y2K work - compliance for companies and so forth - we can't wait for the Millennium - we are sick to death of writing compliance letters, testing PC's, testing software, re-testing software (especially Microsoft's!). All in all the "Y2K Experience" is getting long in the tooth and I for one will be glad when the clock's hit 1st January 2000 and our computers are still running, my video works and we can all return to some kind of normality (whatever that is!)
Thing is though, does the Y2K problem end on 1st January 2000? No, it doesn't, I'm afraid. OK - for those of you, who have been involved in this you will be sitting there saying, "No - computers still have to deal with the fact that the year 2000 is a leap year." Does it end with 1st March 2000? Not necessarily!
If computers fail outright on Jan 1 then it's pretty obvious that something has gone wrong and needs fixing. No (real) problem. For most computers, resetting the clock to 2000 will resolve the problem. If a piece of equipment fails (like your video), you know it's wrong and you can take immediate action.
What about if everything appears to work but is in fact wrong. What does this mean? Well, take the following example...
A computer somewhere will be calculating what pension I am entitled to. The calculations will be based upon my length of service within the pension scheme. After 1 Jan the calculation is run and instead of 2000 being used in the calculation, 1984 is used (or 1900). My length of service is dramatically reduced (or is even sent into negative figures).
Now I have about another 20 - 25 years service left in me depending at what age I retire. These calculations could be "miss calculating" for quite sometime to come and nobody may notice the error until the day I retire and I find that my "40 years loyal and true" has been whittled down to a few weeks!
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