-=PCTechTalk=- A Moment In Computer History

While working on the settings inside my router, I discovered that the 
router's clock had reset itself back to 2002 and that got me thinking. 
Eight years ago today, a LOT of folks were in a serious panic over whether 
or not their systems were going to be functional the next day.  For those 
who may have missed that period on PC history, the problem was that 
computers were originally designed to recognize only a two digit 
representation of the year, which was not a problem when the year ended with 
'82 or '91.  But what was going to happen when '99 suddenly became '00??? 
In theory, many programs were supposed to shut down, go berserk or simple 
explode under the strain of figuring out what to do with such a leap back 
into the past.  This was especially true of stuff like payroll systems, 
where the difference between what you made last week really does matter this 
week.  To go from '99 to '00 means you went back 100 years and you can't 
possibly make positive income going backwards in time (unless you're a 
really bad gambler, of course).  A lot of money, time and resources went 
into trying to frantically fix a problem that had most convinced that the 
end of the PC was upon us.  It actually caused some folks to get physically 
sick from worrying so much.

While I've never considered doing any real research on it, I have to wonder 
exactly how much money was spent and just how much of that work actually 
made a difference.  I'm sure there were some servers and maybe even some 
internet relay switches that needed to be updated to overcome some real 
malfunction they would have suffered otherwise, plus MS and other OS makers 
needed to release patches that told the systems how to handle the 
discrepancy, but I would bet the house that most of what was done was 
completely unnecessary and therefore a waste of time (no pun intended).

It's kinda funny now, but it occurs to me how much has changed since then, 
even though most things PC-wise haven't really progressed a bit.

Peace N Hugs,
GMan
http://reddit.com
"The only dumb questions are the ones we fail to ask!"


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