The Millennium Bug
The y2k problem, "The year 2000 problem" has often been called the
millennium bug because of is timing. The problem is basically that
software authors have been saving only part of the year in their
programs and data bases. (In the early 1980's, programming classes
were told of this problem. Since the average life of software was
15 years at the time, one might think we would be better prepared.)
There are many solutions to the y2k problem.
Here are some
In some sense this really the century bug. Why?
People are use to refering to years by only two digits, and programmers
worried about memory usage or just lazy would only store two digits. The
program would just assume that year was 19xx. This has already cause
problems for people who have lived more that 100 years. Apparently
a 107 year old got a truant notice and another 104 year old got invited
to a kindergarten open house.
It is a century problem and not a millenium problem because of the
two digits. The same problem would have occurred in 1900 if computers
were invented 100 years eariler. (Or in 2100 if computers were invented
100 years later.) Many experts are willing to bet that there will also
be a year 2100 problem.
This use of a "two digit key" for a longer "four digit year" is an
example of hashing (a Computer term).