Y2K Bug: a Big Nothing
Created | Updated Jun 20, 2003
Anyone who's watched TV, listened to the radio, or logged onto the Internet in the past year must have heard about the Y2K glitch, when computers were in danger of messing up by reading the year as 1900 instead of 2000 because of a measure taken by programmers to save space on computer hard drives.
The bug was thought to affect electricity, clocks, computers, cars, and everything else powered by electricity, batteries, or that contained clocks, and stop them from working. Russia's old nukes were supposed to launch.
Many programmers for the old mainframe machines that would be affected by this glitch were retired or dead.
Everyone was nervous about it, but breathed a sigh of relief in mid-afternoon on the 31st where it was announced that things in Asia were going fine. When things got to London (and New York City 5 hours later), all went well. The only thing to worry about was from staying up and drinking all night...
Some minor problems were caused. I saw web sites with the date set as '1900' or '19100'. As a matter of fact, a French weather station showed the year as 19100. However, no major problems were caused, Russia didn't set off its nukes, and the ball dropped in Times Square.
