Y2K Bug :: essays research papers fc

Computers have become the gritstone of the world today. Is there a while bomb slowly check down inside of the computers that run everything from your laundry machine to Wall passage? "The form 2000 beg is a flaw in the scheduling of implant chips in most electronic devices"(Outsmarting 2). These chips lonesome(prenominal) calculate the date in the ending 2 digits of the year. For instance, the date 1-1-1999 in the computer comes out 1-1-99. "When the year 2000 comes around, the computers will speak up that it is the year 1900"(2). Any program or formation that relies on dates to perform certain functions, such as calculating ages, time periods, or payrolls is at risk of crashing on the stroke of midnight. Programmers in the 1970s were redemptive a lot of space in programming by only using the last 2 digits of the year. They had no insight into the problem they were creating by cutting this programming corner. The justification for cutting this corner was tw o fold. First, think of all of the coding and coding time they saved if the date is compute over 1 million times in a iodine computation. Second, in those early years, disk storage space was at a premium and severely limited by todays standards. It was important to make the best(p) available use of storage space. For this reason that they entered only the last 2 digits of the year in the old programming. Because only date sensitive programming is at risk, however if or when the Y2K bug hits, the damage will be minimal at most.For those people who plan to move to the country and distribute all of their possessions in order to get away from the effect, do non leave just yet. The year 2000 bug will not be the end of the world. Many think that they will start a country community and it will be their little Garden of Eden. If the year 2000 bug strikes, it will strike everything everywhere, even in rural Montana. The problems will be universal. People believe that they can rely on i nsurance to underwrite their assets are facing another problem created by the year 2000 bug. amends companies are calling all of their current clients informing them that their coverage does not include losses due to the year 2000 bug. However, lawyers and law firms are railroad train up for what they believe will be a windfall, based on millennium bug claims