Information about the Year 2000 problem

This site is designed to inform you about the Year 2000 bug and to suggest a few potential solutions.

Introduction

What is the Year 2000 problem (a.k.a. the "millennium bug") and how did it happen?

Simply put, it’s the practice of representing a date without the two-digit century value. All of us are in the habit of using two digits rather than four to designate the calendar year. For example, we say "class of ‘97" instead of the "class of 1997". It’s a convenient, shorthand way of referencing a date. However, it causes problems wherever computer systems perform arithmetic operations, comparisons or sorting involving years later than 1999.

Earlier technology and the historically higher cost of storing information led to dates being stored as two digits. The strategy was to save space and store as few digits as possible. This meant we saved 2 bytes per date by not storing the century value, which resulted in significant savings at the time, which is a LOT when you remember we were using 80-character computer cards and PCs with 8mb of ram back then.

An example of the Year 2000 problem:

If you were born in 1935, your age in 1998 is:

BUT, in the year 2000 when you are 35:

Of course, the correct calculation is:

SHOULD I WORRY?

Microsoft says 32-bit Windows (Win95 and NT) will correctly process the years 1980 to 2099. However, most PC's with 16-bit Windows (Win 3.1) will have a problem. On January 1, 2000, an estimated four out of five of the PC's using 16-bit Windows will reboot to the year 1980 or 1984. This particular problem is fairly easily resolved (by resetting the date on your machine), but there are other problems lurking within the PC environment.

Shrink-wrapped software (that software which you purchase off-the-shelf at your local discount store) may cause you problems. This is true even if the manufacturer is one which is considered a highly reputable company. For example, most Windows applications have date limitations hardwired into them. In some cases, the date limit is the year 9999 and we consider this to be an acceptable limitation. In others, such as Microsoft Access 95, the limit is 1999, after which you must always enter a 4-character year. Excel versions 4, 5, and 7, crumple after 2019. Review our list of web-sites and understand that you, the customer of some of these defective products, may have to pay for the upgrade required to keeping the product running at the turn of the century.

Another date-related problem will occur on February 28, 2000. The initial release of Lotus 1-2-3 did not account for the turn-of-the-millennium leap year. The program does not know there is a February 29 in the year 2000. To make matters worse, competing spreadsheets Excel and Quattro Pro, duplicated the problem, presumably for compatibility.

In addition to the potential year 2000 problems with PC's and computer mainframes, a problem exists with "embedded" chips controlling everything from power plants to washing machines to building elevators. Embedded systems are written in low-level code and then burned into a chip's read-only memory. Except for some of the newer programmable memory chips, most chips cannot be altered. If the chip accepts time and date input, it may behave unexpectedly or even completely fail. These chips are found in products and/or systems that do not readily fit in the universally defined area of information technology, but in many cases, have more potential negative impact if they are not year 2000 compliant.

By definition, systems, equipment and instrumentation with embedded chips will require persons with expertise in the product (the vendor or manufacturer) to test for and fix year 2000 problems. Each embedded system must be treated as if it were a different program. Without an "expert" to help, your system is at risk. Users of embedded systems should contact their vendors and manufacturers to ensure a particular product is Year 2000 compliant, and if not, ask for the remedy required to make it so.

Leap Year

Many people have heard that there will not be a leap year in the Year 2000. The following excerpt from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution should answer this question:

From The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, December 29, 1995, p.2:

"Most years ending in "00" are not leap
years, but those divisible by 400 (including 2000)
are. The Julian calendar, authorized by Julius
Caesar in 46 B.C., assumed that the year had
365 1/4 days, with a 366-day leap year added
every fourth year.
In A.D. 730, an Anglo-Saxon monk, the Venerable
Bede, calculated that the Julian year was 11 minutes
and 14 seconds too long, an error of about one day
every 128 years. But nothing was done about it for
800 years. In 1582, the accumulated error was
estimated at 10 days, and Pope Gregory XIII decreed
that the day following Oct. 4 would be Oct. 15.
To make future adjustments for the error
(about three days every 400 years), it was decided
that years ending in "00" would be common years rather
than leap years -- except those divisible by 400.
So 1600 was a leap year and 2000 also will be,
but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not."

Solutions Suggestions

It seems that to fix most of the year 2000 problems on a hardware level, an updated BIOS (if one is available) needs to be installed on the computer. Most computers purchased within the last year (click here to see the NSTL Year 2000 Hardware Compliance Program) are Year 2000 compliant and will not have a problem with the date change.

The problem is not that the current hardware is not capable of supporting a date past 1999, it is just incapable of advancing its internal clock to the proper time.

CNET has put together a list of commonly used desktop accounting and spreadsheet software that will tell you if the application that you use is Year 2000 compliant (click here to see "Will your software fail?").

Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure

The University of Oregon Computing Center provides the information on this website to inform you about the state of Oregon's Year 2000 Readiness. This is a Year 2000 Readiness Disclosure pursuant to the Year 2000 Information & Readiness Disclosure Act, PUB.L. NO 105-271 (1998). This website contains information we obtained from federal agencies, other states' agencies, local governments, nonprofit associations, and private parties. We rely on those providing the information to be accurate. We have not verified that all of the information provided is correct, nor can we verify that those providing information have done all they could or should to protect the state or the public from Year 2000 problems. We will try to verify information we gather before we rely upon it. You may want to do the same for your personal or business interests.

Generic Website Disclaimer

THE INFORMATION FOUND IN THIS WEB SITE IS PROVIDED BY THE UNIVERSITY OF OREGON COMPUTING CENTER, AS A YEAR 2000 READINESS DISCLOSURE PURSUANT TO THE YEAR 2000 INFORMATION READINESS DISCLOSURE ACT, PUB. L. NO. 105-271 (1998), AND IS INTENDED SOLELY FOR INFORMATIONAL PURPOSES. THE INFORMATION IS NOT INTENDED AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSTRUED AS BUSINESS, LEGAL OR ANY OTHER FORM OF ADVICE. AGENCY INTENDS THIS INFORMATION, BUT AGENCY DOES NOT GUARANTEE, REPRESENT OR WARRANT THIS INFORMATION TO BE ACCURATE, CORRECT, COMPLETE, RELIABLE, USEFUL, TIMELY OR UP-TO-DATE. ADDITIONALLY, AGENCY EXPRESSLY DISCLAIMS ANY WARRANTIES, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED (INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE), OR REPRESENTATIONS OF ACCURACY, CORRECTNESS, RELIABILITY, USEFULNESS OR TIMELINESS OF THE INFORMATION PROVIDED HEREIN. ANY REFERENCE OR LINK PROVIDED ON THIS SERVER TO A SPECIFIC PRODUCT, PROCESS, SERVICE OR SITE DOES NOT CONSTITUTE OR IMPLY ANY ENDORSEMENT OF THAT PRODUCT, PROCESS, SERVICE OR SITE. THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS EXPRESSED IN THIS WEB SITE OR IN ANY REFERENCED DOCUMENT DO NOT NECESSARILY STATE OR REFLECT THE VIEWS AND OPINIONS OF THE STATE OF OREGON.