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| Mouth-Off Main PageWhen computers were first developed, memory and disk space was so spare and expensive, that most companies used abbreviations such as "68" for the year 1968 instead of writing out the full four numbers. The computation and tracking programs based on this method treat 00 as 1900 instead of 2000.
Although many companies are already working furiously to rewrite their millions of code to deal with the year 2000, anyone with experience in programming knows how difficult it is to test software without actually running it. There will be many overlooked errors that will all appear on the same day, 1/1/00! Many companies will also discover that the problems were far more extensive than they first thought and simply won’t be done on time.
Even more exciting, will be the government’s computer system breakdown. While most corporations are already working hard on this problem, the government, in its usual head in the sand deny reality approach, is doing little. Even if they were able to get things done, no organization has a bigger task. Not only is the US government one of the biggest organizations in the world, since it was one of the first organizations to use and develop computer systems, the US government has billions of lines of ancient computer code to upgrade.
Politicians have been talking about reducing the size of government for 30 years, but a gargantuan computer collapse will finally do the job in one fell swoop on 1/1/00.
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