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You probably have heard of the Millenium Problem. At the stroke of midnight on that dread date, millions of computers, including many of the most powerful, are going to stop working, unless their owners find a way to inform the systems that the 1900s are over.
This is not as easy as it seems, and it has nothing to do with nostalgia. You see, to a computer, there are only 100 years, from 00 to 99. For some curious reason, programmers did not anticipate anything like the year 2000 happening. Fixing the problem means adding an entire field to your computer's BIOS or database -- a big deal, evidently.
If your computer isn't hip to the difference, at 12:01 AM, January 1, 2000, it will think it is 1980, the PC equivalent of the onset of life, or even 1900. Fixing the problem will cost an ostrobogulous sum of money -- an estimated $600 billion worldwide. Fixing the systems of the federal government alone will cost 30 billion of your tax dollars. Now, we have that kind of cash lying around. But then there is the time factor -- there is simply not enough time in the remaining 1,290 days to fix all the machines.
How do you know if your computer is millenium-worthy? Two simple tests. If you are in windows, go to Control Panel. Click Date and Time, and reset to December 31, 1999, 11:57 PM. Turn off your system and go brew a pot of tea. When you come back, boot up again and see if your date is 2000, or 1980. (The year 1980 is how most systems interpret 00.)
The second test is even easier. Set the computer to January 1, 2000, shut down and reboot. If your date stamp slipped to 1980, you failed.
Your machine BIOS (the software embedded in your computer that helps it start up) is the likely culprit. PC systems failing one or both of these tests include models by IBM, Compaq, Dell, AST, Hewlett-Packard and Gateway. But you may have a double problem if your operating system is as dumb as your BIOS. Chief among the dumb operating systems are Windows 3.X and NT 95.
This will stun the more innocent Windows/Intel system users, but Macintosh people appear to be spared the pain of the millenium. Isn't that just the way of it.
Now, you may be wondering, just how bad is it to have a bad date stamp? You may remember the old days before computers had clocks, and you either filled in the date each time you booted up, or you ignored it (and all your files were dated January 4, 1980, remember?).
But to today's multitasking machines, a date stamp is crucial. Billing software, investment software, and financial software will become useless overnight without accurate dating. And you can toss your diary, calendar, and check-writing programs in the trash.
You can imagine what this will mean to large institutional systems. Big companies like AT&T, the IRS, and Citicorp have a head start on fixing the problem. But how about where you work -- do you think they've got a handle on this yet?
One possible solution is for defective PC companies to issue recalls of computers, and replace faulty BIOS chips with chips that don't see the 20th Century as a Moebius strip. PC makers may mail the chips to users, or to dealers, who will make hay charging you $100 a shot to milleniize your system.
It may even be possible to reprogram your existing BIOS through network uplinks: your system calls IBM (for instance), IBM scans your system, finds the location of the BIOS dating information, and rewrites the chip. Sort of like airborne refueling. But I wouldn't bet on it happening. And even if it did, I wouldn't count on it working.
So kick back, we may be on the brink of a catastrophe deeply satisfying to both technophobes and apocalyptics alike: the collapse of western civilization because computers turned to be too stupid for the future.
I started writing this column thinking this would be a nice topic to poke smug fun at people with backward systems. You know, other people. Alas, my own system failed the 2000 test. Luckily, I know exactly what to do. Offload the problem onto my kids.
My guess is that the long-term results of the millenium problem will not show up until about 2010. That is when testing will start to show that our kids and grandkids, to whom we handed down our chronclastic computers, don't have an especially firm grasp of time. What year is it, kids? 1980? 1900? Would that be AD or BC?
That will pretty much be the end of the future. I foresee kudzu, lots of it, overgrowing the computer centers of the world. Traffic lights will shut down and we'll abandon our cars. Within a matter of years we will return to a fishhook economy. It will be a world in which nanosecond precision has given way to many-moon vagueness.
We will sit around fires telling tall tales about the wizards of the golden age at Microsoft and Intel, who could carve cathedrals out of a grain of sand. They could do anything, except think 20 years in advance.
Buddy, can you spare the time?
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