Note: this was borrowed from the original site which a shut down right after Y2K

Millenium Bug

Hmm. The millenium bug. The chances are that if you are reading this, then you will know something about this one.

However, for those of you that don't, here goes:

Way back in the olden days when computers were in their infancy, each and every byte of memory was precious indeed. One of the ways to conserve valuable space was to restrict all dates to 2 digits for the year. For exampe 1972 was programmed as 72.

Not really a problem in that is there? Not until the year 2K anyway. Now that we are approaching the big 2000, the two digit date suffix might not be a good idea. When we finally roll over into the year 2000, some computers could register the date as 01/01/00. This may cause all manner of strange things to happen. The reason, for those that have not got it yet, is that computers could assume that the zero zero date indicates 1900 and not 2000. This has the potential to cause various problems.

The doomsday  merchants will have us believe that aircraft will fall out of the sky, stock exchanges will grind to a halt and your TV remote will not work, aaaarrrggghhh.

On the other side of the coin, the skeptics reckon that it will have little or no effect at all.

Or it could be somewhere in between.

The problem is that nobody really knows.

Of course, just about everybody has an opinion on it. Speak to one person and you'11 think the end of the world is nigh. Speak to someone else and they will swear blind that we will not feel a thing.

Here in the UK, the government seems to be getting a little twitchy about the whole affair. In fact plans are being drawn up to mobilise troops in the event of civil unrest. This in itself might not be so straightforward. Official figures released in December 1998 show that more than half   the computers belonging to the Ministry of Defence remain 'at risk' from the bug. The Defence Secretary, George Robertson has dismissed scaremongering talk of potential malfunctions in the nuclear arsenal. He has however conceded that the bug poses a potentially significant threat to our defence capabilities.