Time zones offer Y2K preview

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http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/1999/49/ns-12210.html

Time zones offer Y2K preview Thu, 16 Dec 1999 14:48:38 GMT Reuters

If computers in New Zealand and Australia start to crash at midnight on December 31, big corporations in Europe and the United States might still have time to ward off disaster

Tonga and its hundreds of palm-ringed islands in the Pacific will be the first to ring in the year 2000. One hour later New Zealand enters the next century, the first modern economy to find out if the millennium computer bug means disaster or just a collective yawn. Two hours later Australia's east coast will be put to the test.

Computer experts in Europe and the United States will be monitoring early evidence from the east. They will either be breathing collective sighs of relief, or counting off the hours they have left to fight off calamity as heart rates accelerate.

Companies have spent huge sums to thwart the bug, now known as the Y2K problem. US information technology research company Gartner Group has said companies around the world would have to spend between $300bn (#180bn) and $600bn to fix it.

IDC, another US high technology consultancy, estimated in a report last month that by the end of 1999, $250 billion will have been spent finding, replacing, rewriting, testing and documenting suspect computer code.

And all because computer programmers in the 1980s used two digits like 95 or 97 to record dates on software, knowing that this would stumble over the two zeros in 2000 and cause computers to crash or spew out corrupt data.

These programmers knew that this shortcut to conserve what was then precious and scarce memory would cripple data processing if not rectified before clocks ticked into 2000.

They gambled that the progress of technology would be fast enough to render obsolete this method of using dates. They lost, and set off this expensive race to fix computer systems before midnight on December 31. Most experts now believe that disruption will be limited.

But chief executives and computer engineers from big corporations will not be partying over the New Year's holiday weekend. They will be packed into control centers anxiously watching the Far East and hoping a lack of action there will mean their anti-millennium bug plans have worked.

"Europe has about 12 hours to respond, the US, 24 hours. If you have the same system in Australia as London or New York, you might have time to fix it. It's good business practice to set up incident rooms to monitor how this develops," said Fons Kuijpers of the PA Consulting Group.

Telecommunications giant AT & T of the US will be looking east on December 31, confident that everything will work, but taking no chances.

"We are very confident that the ATT network will be in good shape and fully operational. We will begin monitoring the rollover at 6am eastern time on the thirty first when New Zealand rolls over," said Dave Johnson, spokesman for ATT's global network center by telephone from New Jersey.

Johnson said ATT's chief executive officer will be in the control center to authorise any necessary emergency action. Action squads are ready.

Industries which use continuous processes -- like some chemical production and oil refining -- are theoretically under threat from the bug if computers managing production crash.

Anglo-American oil giant BP Amoco Plc will suspend loading and unloading of crude, but refining and production will carry on uninterrupted.

"On the night it will be business as usual, but loading and unloading of tankers will be suspended for a few hours over the transition," said David Nicholas, press officer at BP Amoco.

"Production platforms, we expect them to work through. We are not planning stopping oil production or refineries," Nicholas said.

Ford, the world's second largest car manufacture and which has huge and intricate supply chains to keeps its factories pounding out the product, said it will have a global monitoring operation in place but expects few problems on the night.

Experts say that any threat to supply chains used by huge global businesses are unlikely to show themselves on the night of December 31. Slow burning and difficult-to-spot damage to computers are the biggest threat to these complicated supply chains which might threaten smaller companies in coming months.

The big three US car makers -- Ford, the world's biggest -- General Motors -- and Chrysler -- have set up an action group to monitor supply chains in 2000.

British Telecommunications (quote BT.A) said it has spent more than $500m over 4-1/2 years fighting the bug and it too will be manning a command center over the changeover.

"We operate in Hong Kong and Australia and will get feedback from them. A lot of major telecommunications systems across the world operate on GMT, so they would not necessarily hit Y2K problems until midnight here in London. We can't take it that a lack of bad news from around the globe means that everything's OK," said BT spokesman David Orr.

All big companies express confidence in their own systems. So why have all these high-powered executives and SWAT teams on expensive call?

ATT's Johnson says you can't be too careful. "It's like fire insurance. You'll probably never going to use it but it kind of lets you rest better at night knowing you got it," Johnson said.

-- Uncle Bob (UNCLB0B@AOL.COM), December 16, 1999

Answers

Gee...
It's nice to know that no one is trying to blame the programmers of the 50's, 60's, and 70's of maliciously using two digit dates in their software, only the programmers of the 80's. Whew, I'm off the hook...

-- just wondering (what.it.is@about.com), December 16, 1999.

just wondering - Get your story straight now. "Ya, I was a bartender. That's it, a bartender...."

-- Stars and Stripes (stars_n_stripes@my-deja.com), December 16, 1999.

How many hours does it take to "ward off disaster?"

sheesh. I've been working for a year and a half for nuttin'.

-- eubie (eubie@countingtoes&fingers.com), December 16, 1999.


Re: AT&T...Any idea who the CEO is....or his background. I really trust THAT A******

-- Larry (Rampon@cyberramp.net), December 16, 1999.

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