Editor's Viewpoint

To get a feel for how much the computer industry has changed, you merely have to think about the approaching January 1, 2000 date. Today, it would be inconceivable to jump through programming hoops to try to save a couple of bytes of storage. Yet, this is one of the driving forces in years past that resulted in our current situation - back when computers where expensive and people were (relatively) not. Of course, things are just the opposite today, when we find ourselves trying to fix the problem with scarce people resources.

There are some misconceptions about the year 2000:

• Year 2000 starts on January 1, 2000.

  Technically, the year 2000 starts on January1, 2001. No one worries about this much, so you can add this to your bag of interesting and largely useless tidbits to amaze your friends and family.

• Year 2000 software issues will occur starting on January 1, 2000.

  Actually, many software systems have already been affected by the problem. If you think about a program that looks into the future, such as issuing a new credit card with an expiration date in 2000; a driver's licence good for five years; and so on. These are all everyday examples of systems that have already been affected by a year field that has "00" and can't determine if it's 1900 or 2000.

So what's gonna happen at midnight as the millenium arrives? Your guess is as good as anyone's. There was a proposal to close the stock market, but it was rejected. So we'll see if the software systems close it anyway. There have been predictions from largely "business as usual" to almost total chaos and shutdown of banks, street lights, and everything down to your toaster oven. So what's your guess? See you on the street on 1/1/00!

Mark Lorenz

Editor in Chief

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