Y2K Fix in the Year 5760 by Tania Hershman

3:00 a.m. 16.Sep.99.PDT

JERUSALEM -- September 1999 may seem a little late for a millennium bug solution. But, says Ben-Etzion Yaron of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem's Department of Computerized Information Systems, not only has he recently come up with a program to solve Y2K, he's taken care of Y3K, too.

In the same week that Israelis celebrated the Jewish New Year 5760, Yaron unveiled Sapir 2000. The program is his way of rooting out pesky dates -- converting them and then checking that the whole thing won't crash on 1 January -- in about 20 percent of the time of similar tools, he claims.

The software, which is awaiting a patent, employs an algorithm that compresses the four digits of any year after 2000 in two non-numerical symbols and then expands the symbols back again to perform calculations involving pre-millennium dates.

It is also ready for Y3K -- just choose two different non-numerical symbols and away it goes.

As well as conversion, Sapir 2000 is also useful for checking software that has already purportedly been made Y2K-ready.

Although it came to him rather late in the day, Yaron has won fans with his concept, namely Magic Software Enterprises, one of Israel's largest software houses.

"We found out about this six weeks ago," says Magic CEO Yaki Dunietz, who was so impressed that his company did a deal with Yissum, the university's commercial arm, to market and distribute the software.

Sapir 2000 is designed for software written in COBOL, the language used by the majority of those living-for-the-moment programmers in the 1970s and '80s who were too preoccupied to think about millenniums.

The current version, suitable for the Windows environment, is no slick, graphic-heavy application. It bears a greater resemblance to the rather sparse programs of previous decades.

But looks aren't everything.

Yaron tested Sapir 2000 on one of his department's machines, and says that it fixed and verified 400 programs and 400,000 lines of code in a month.

Unfortunately, although the clock is ticking, the rest of the world won't have a chance to use Sapir 2000 just yet. Magic is planning to sell it only to the local market right now, while the company performs a "viability study".

"If we decide it is a viable solution we will take it worldwide through our subsidiaries," said Oren Inbar, Magic's general manager.

Inbar stressed he has no qualms about the technology involved -- just its marketability. "We hope to make a lot of money and we anticipate intense activity between now and the end of the year," he said.

None of the parties seems to feel a great sense of urgency. "I wish we had more time, " says Dunietz.

But, says his colleague Inbar optimistically, in a pessimistic sort of way, "Y2K problems are not going to end on 31 December 1999."

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@Y2KOK.ORG), September 16, 1999

Answers

The problem with this "solution" is that it creates more problems than the original Y2K digit deficit. He is probably just trying to capitalize on the last-minute procrastinators looking for a "silver bullet". Too late.

-- @ (@@@.@), September 16, 1999.

What about the imbedded chips?

What about non-compliant corruption?

-- Mumsie (Shezdremn@aol.com), September 16, 1999.

What about the Great Squirrel Conspiracy to bring down the grid?

-- Mumsie (Shezdremn@aol.com), September 16, 1999.

You are all doomed!! My fur-covered bretheren even now prepare to diffuse this paltry attempt on remeadiation!! Death to the Furless Monkeys and thier Society!!

-- The Squirrel King (Just Nuts@up.a tree), September 16, 1999.

Deep fried...they're finger lickin good !

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 16, 1999.

Oops, sorry there Squirrel King, I got carried away.

I promise it wont happen again.

-- no talking please (breadlines@soupkitchen.gov), September 16, 1999.

In a word: no.

Jerry

-- Jerry B (skeptic76@erols.com), September 16, 1999.

I do believe that the "inventor" is sincere, but this only deals with one data base system...as I remember. Variants of this (encoding four digits and putting in two bytes) have been used/proposed as a Y2K fix for some itme. It's ok as long as all of the connected systems use the same encoding technique... In short, it's ok for an isolated system, but not in "the real world."

-- Mad Monk (madmonk@hawaiian.net), September 16, 1999.