Technology Expert view Two Decades after Y2K Bug

IBM played the role of setting computer development practices in early days of computers emerging in 1950s, as the technology expert in our terms today. Engineers and programmers were almost playing similar roles of developing hardware and software. IBM mainframe software programmers and engineers were the decision makers in choosing many techniques and strategies, at a time there was no computer architect role in place.

Business teams were keen to sell hardware and software to governments and corporations at very expensive cost; everything in computers was expensive as well. Disc space and memory (RAM) were very expensive pieces to allocate and expand; therefore, it was very important for programmers to reduce disc space usage.

How Y2K bug developed?

The Y2K term refers to “Year 2000 bug”, “year 2000 and beyond”, before year 2000 programmers designed systems by the assumption of adding 19 to dates at runtime, without storing full year four digits.

In order to reduce cost of storage and maximize utilization, IBM programmers and systems designers decided to store files and date data in its systems using short code format MMDDYY. YY was the year of the 20^th century in short format, 80 instead of 1980. Personal computers in 1970s joined the club following IBM practice.

For almost 50 years before year 2000, the programmers who were writing code for software and hardware used two digits shorthand to indicate the year. The practice was not limited to Main Frame and Personal computer software, all independent machines, chips that were developed and deployed in isolation of networks was following the same pattern.

Conspiracy of Y2K “The Sky will Fall”

The technology experts who were developing programs (developers and system engineers), raised the alert in late 1990s about a problem that will take place in year 2000 and beyond. A real problem assessed to be potential threat to cause disasters in people live, accounting mistakes, wrong calculation, etc.

Y2K problem was huge business opportunity gaining money to the same people who created the problem; programmers are solving the problem they have created. The work started at 1997, special committees formed by governments, banks from officials and technology experts, large companies to implement remedial work and contingency planning to safeguard the catastrophe expected to happen at year 2000. The expectations were that all systems running at that time could stop functioning by the year 2000 turnover; utilities like electricity, telecommunication, health services and so on.

The focus was on getting systems up and running without causing serious damages, the cost of fixing Y2K problem estimated over $300 billion.

What really happened?

Most of the money spent on building contingency plans and backup systems, including redundant disaster recovery centers. Developing contingency plans, backup systems, and disaster recovery centers were always being ignored in corporate budgets, Y2K problem threats made it reality.

Business leaders driven by the fear of service disruption; budgets were approved without traditional bureaucracy involved. IT teams were able to use the fear of Y2K catastrophe to get money replacing hardware and software that were lagging long time without approval of budgets.

Software’s has fixed to handle year on four digits basis, or replaced completely by new software built with that problem in mind.

Where is the catastrophe prophecy?

As per Wikipedia article:

• 10000 cards for HSBC stopped working
• Incorrect assessment to 154 pregnant ladies in UK
• Radiation-monitoring equipment failed at midnight in Japan, no risk reported
• Alarm sounded at nuclear plant for two minutes in Japan
• Error in date management for telecommunication carrier in Japan, fixed within three hours
• Some mobile phones were deleting new SMS messages received instead of old messages in Japan also
• Bus ticket validation machines in two states failed to function in Australia
• 150 lottery machines stopped working in Delaware
• USA country master clock reported the date as 1 January 19100 instead of 1 January 2000
• National weather forecasting service in France reported the date “01/01/19100” in a webpage

Other problems reported in 1^st March 2000 as a result of wrong leap year calculation.

Beyond the Y2K

After year 2000, no one questioned the high expenditure to handle the Y2K problem, because there were few minor problems reported, whereas the biggest expected problems did not.

Everything went well; all software developers received their bonuses, by solving a problem they have created. The world celebrated the success story of risk management huge expenditure. Mitigated risk by professionals who created a problem, discovered their problem late, pushed the whole world to accept their solution, and they passed with it without highlighting the actual failure.

However, there is a catch in the story, there is a learning lesson, there is new awareness level, and the major part of this lesson and awareness developed inside Information Technology companies as a driver to the technology solutions. It is the lesson of adding new roles for architecting solutions. That new role changed the view of software development, added new level of well-designed solutions.

The second lesson learned by consumers, mainly government bodies and large corporations, it is listening to IT departments risk assessment and risk mitigation on technology, a new awareness paradigm that was not available within management teams. Business leaders were looking to IT teams as cost centers rather revenue generator, as marginal internal service center instead of business enabler.

One of the most suggested advantages as gained results of Y2K problem remediation was during 9/11 attacks, the New York infrastructure (including subways, phone service, and financial transactions) were able to continue operation because of the redundant networks established in the event of Y2K bug impact, and the contingency plans devised by companies. The terrorist attacks and the following prolonged blackout to lower Manhattan had minimal effect on global banking systems. Backup systems were activated at various locations around the region, many of which had been established to deal with a possible complete failure of networks in the financial district on 31 December 1999.

Year 2038 Problem

Technology experts expects a problem will occur in Year 2038 on January 19, 2038. It is speculated that the Y2038 problem will occur due to limitations of 32-bit processors and the systems that run on them.

Researchers say that at 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038, the systems running on 32-bit processors will not be able to cope with the date and time change. The computers started counting the time in seconds from January 1, 1970. However, the 32-bit systems have the capacity to count only up to the number 2,147,483,647; thus, for the time, it can calculate those many seconds only. In addition, at 03:14:07 UTC on January 19, 2038, the counting will reach its ultimate capacity of 2,147,483,647 seconds.

What will happen once the clock of 32-bit systems will go beyond its threshold of 2,147,483,647 seconds? Could these computers simply crash and stop working altogether.

“It depend”! For the remaining years’ time (till the year 2038), there will many changes witnessed by the computer and software industry. It is said that data security professionals will have to change the way they deal in areas such as national security, SSL encryption, Internet of Things devices and Cryptocurrency.

The simplest solution provided by the data scientists for the Year 2038 problem is to upgrade the systems to 64-bit processors. Simply put, the 64-bit machines will have the huge capacity to count up to 9,223,372,036,854,775,808; a count that will certainly not get over in near future.

In fact, many of the latest PCs and systems run on 64-bit. Microsoft’s Windows machines run on 64-bit version ever since the Windows XP Professional 64-bit was released in 2005. Even, Apple’s OS X desktop software is running exclusively on 64-bit after Apple released its Mac OS X 10.7 Lion in 2011. Though the Unix systems that power the web servers and other backend hardware are still using 32-bit systems; most of them can be upgraded to 64-bit systems over time.

The Daily Mail claims “Outdated PC systems will not be able to cope with time and date”

Final word

People learn from mistakes, mistakes teach more than literature. Technology experts with long time experience are able to shed the light on most of the mistakes, accelerate organization learning curve and best of all enrich and mature systems early.

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Author: Jawad Alalawi

Information Technology Professional specialized in Financial Payment Services, Risk Management, Information Security, and Compliance. Experienced in solutions development and implementation, and technical writer, copywriter. Contact (sjawada5 at gmail.com)

Technology Specialist & Consultant

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