Are you ready for the biggest problem of 2000?
Are you ready for the Year 2000 (Y2K)? You've heard about all those old
mainframes that will fail in 2000, but that situation is not what I'm talking
about. I'm talking about the Y2K problems you're not expecting, such as the
effect Y2K might have on your VCR. And I don't think you'll remember Y2K so much
as a disaster, but more as a corporate excuse.
Software that uses two-digit years in dates accounts for most publicized
Y2K problems. The computer industry certainly needs to deal with such software,
but two-digit dates aren't the only millennial problem. Programs that calculate
days of the week will also have trouble. A well-known and widely used algorithm
for computing which weekday a particular date falls on relies on the fact that
January 1, 1900, was a Monday. That algorithm won't work for the 21st century
because January 1, 2000, will be a Saturday. The result? Well, suppose you
program your VCR to tape Babylon 5 every Wednesday at 10 p.m. Come the
year 2000, your VCR will faithfully try to tape Babylon 5 at 10 p.m.
every Monday.
Some people say that January 1, 2000, will bring plagues of locusts and
other disasters. Other people say the public shouldn't worry because Y2K will
cause only a few annoyances. The folks in the second camp are probably more
right, but one person's annoyance is another's disaster. If, for example,
Fidelity Investments lost just one of my accounts because of a Y2K bug, I'd be
closer to a locust fest than I care to get.
The Y2K bug will have at least two opportunities to strike in addition to
January 1, 2000. These two opportunities are September 9, 1999 (i.e., 9/9/99,
the date the computer industry has used to represent forever) and February 29,
2000 (many programs erroneously don't allow for a leap day in 2000 because 1900
wasn't a leap year).
In the next couple years, you'll hear plenty of Y2K horror stories. But
I'll bet you won't hear that some companies will use Y2K to duck responsibility
to their customers.
Over the past 50 years, the phrase "the computer is down" has
found a place in the American lexicon right next to "the check's in the
mail." This excuse is pretty pathetic when you think about it. Can you
imagine a business telling a customer, "Sorry, we lost your account records
because the shoddy roof we installed keeps collapsing"? Of course not.
A firm that installed an insufficient physical infrastructure wouldn't
advertise that fact. Why, then, are businesspeople so eager to reveal their weak
computing infrastructure, as if bugs and network failures were acts of Nature
rather than results of bad planning?
I can imagine the excuses: "We're sorry we couldn't send you your W-2
until July, but we were having Y2K problems." And don't expect the IRS to
be lenient. It's one of the few government agencies that is ready for 2000.
My advice? Be prepared for problems and worry about your assets. Starting
November 1998, keep every document you receive that relates to your bank
accounts, mutual funds, stocks, pension funds, 401Ks, or IRAs. In addition, call
the firms that handle your finances and request a statement of Y2K compliance, a
declaration that they have a Y2K plan in place and will be ready to tackle Y2K
by September 9, 1999. A statement of Y2K compliance doesn't guarantee that a
firm won't have problems. But if something goes wrong with one of your accounts,
you'll have a better chance of winning a lawsuit if you have all the account's
documentation and a statement assuring you that your assets are safe.