Friday, January 9, 2009

Y2K

Maggie Castro, Chris Brown, Adam Ashby

Y2K

Definition: Of or relating to the year 2000. Of or relating to the y2k bug.

Origin: The Y2k movement started in the very beginning of the computer age when computer programmers were entering the dates into the first computers. Instead of writing the dates in the form (YYYYMMDD), they wrote the dates using the six digit format (YYMMDD). For example, February 14, 1983 would be written in the computer “021498”. The problem with this is that once the year 2000 came, the computer would only see that date “00” or “1900”. People started to realize this problem because they remembered that computer run such a large portion of things that we all need on a day to day basis (air conditioning, clean water, internet, banks). Thousands of computer programmers where then stuck with the task of changing the dates on millions of computers, and manually because the original computer programmers were not around anymore. This problem would effect all of the United States, and was considered a crisis at the time just before the year 2000 arrived. The crisis was averted by major companies spending billions of dollars in fixing the approaching IT crisis. When 2000 came around, main computers were turned off and back-up computers were turned on, and no major problems were reported.

Influential Groups/People:

Citizens for Y2K Recovery

Advisory council is a group of y2k experts that took charge of national and international concerns regarding Y2K. This committee worked to educate the general public, lecture to government officials and international delegates, and offer solutions and consolation to those worried about Y2K. The panel included Rick Cowles, President of CyberServices America and a founding member of Computer Professionals for Social Responsibility’s Y2K Working Group; Cory Hamasaki, head of HHResearch Co, and specialized in Year 2000 remediation; Michael Hyatt, author of The Millennium Bug: How to Survive the Coming Chaos; Tony Keyes, funder of “The Y2K Advisor;” Jim Lord, retired Naval Officer, specializing in the electronics field and author of A Survival Guide for the Year 2000 Problem; Victor Porlier, former cief of Information Systems Development for the U.S. foreign aid program, head of the Center for Civic Renewal, Inc. and author of Y2K: An Action Plan for January 1, 2000; Stuart Umpleby, professor for the Department of Management Science at George Washington University; and Bruce Webster, international authority on Y2K, founder and co-chair of Washington, D.C. Year 2000 Group, and author of The Y2K Survival Guide: Getting To, Getting Through, and Getting Past the Year 2000 Problem.

References:

http://www.y2ktimebomb.com/

http://cy2kr.tacticom.com/AdvisoryCouncil.html

http://www.thefreedictionary.com/Y2K

http://www.1960pcug.org/pcnews/1998/08/2000.htm

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