The Y2K Solutions

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.)

solutions to the y2k problem

Do nothing. Let the old programs die.
Wait until Jan 1, 2000 and fix the things that break.
Change the software so year is years since 1900.
Windowing, change the software so years greater 65 are 19xx and years less than 65 are 20xx. [dates other than 65 also work, 65 happens to be the number used by SCCS which I still use.]
Re-write the software. [You were planning on doing that anyways right?]
My personal favorite, dates of the form 11/11/59 often take up 6 bytes in old cobal programs, this allows room for 2^48 different dates. All the current dates have the most significant bit set to 0. We will call such dates old style and change the meaning of the 2^47 dates with this bit set to one as the number of days since 20 billion years ago. Since 2^47 days is almost 400 billion years this is enough to last til the end of time (or close enough).
I'm missing at least one. So instead I'll tell a Microsoft joke. Windows 2000 is going to be late (no surprize here) and rumor has it that it is being renamed Windows 1901.