Y2K Bug
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------As the year 2000 quickly approaches computer programs all over the world are scrambling to alter current programs into ones that can handle the century change. While the problem may seem simple, change all two-digit years to four-digit years, it is actually a very complicated and tedious process (Millennium). However, if the problem is not fixed it can cause a dominos effect to other systems worldwide. Most computer operating systems and applications store data with two digits for the year rather than four. The century is assumed to be the nineteenth. Programs and systems alike rely on this assumption that will no longer be valid when the year rolls over to 2000. This will cause the programs or systems to incorrectly calculate the difference between dates. The reasons behind this problem are all due to the fact that early programmers never imagined there programs to live to the next decade, let alone the next century. What early programmers did not realize was that the programs they were creating would be the foundation for other updates and new releases. An ideal example of this is DOS and Windows. When Windows 3.1 was released it had t
Many large corporations have already sunk million of dollars and hours of manpower to complete this job in the short amount of time allowed. They have placed little importance on fixing this bug in their government systems, many of which control their weapons of mass destr!uction, and nuclear power plants. However, it was not taken seriously until it was too late. Water and waste treatment plants are automated systems that rely on computers and flow by control devices that rely on computer chips. These microchips use range from those that roll up and down your car windows, to those that helps a pilot land an airplane. The year 2000 bug has already lead to a variety of problems. " (Jager, 1) There are well over thirty billion embedded microchips that control electronic devices (Ulrich, 15). o support the original operating system DOS. While this problem may be effecting us today the worse is yet to come. The reasons behind this are numerous, but the most common reason were lack of time and money, cooperate downsizing, and no demand for a year 2000 compliant product. In an effort to save money the manpower that could have been devoted to addressing the issue was deliberately ignored. CIBC bank has one thousand people working on its project with a budget of one hundred and twenty million dollars. Businesses all over the world have ignored this problem for so long and now that they realize the potential problems that may occur it is already to late for many of them. The final blame can be found in the most unlikely place, the consumer. The problem will cause failures in arithmetic, comparisons, and sorting when using databases involving dates, and can corrupt databases with erroneous information (Jones, 25).
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Acceptance Essays
