Several people have asked me my opinion of the Y2K bug and its effect on people when January 1 rolls around. First of all, you need to know my qualifications to speak on the subject. I have worked with computers since I was in junior high school. For example, one of the very first PC’s to hit the market was Radio Shack’s TRS-80. It became available when I was in high school. I wrote programs for that computer and actually sold several commercially. I have continued to program computers throughout my life, and several of my programs are still used in the scientific community. In the process of earning my Ph.D. in nuclear chemistry, I actually had to build computers from the ground up in order to be able to collect the data I needed in experiments. That gave me a firm knowledge of the hardware involved in computers. In addition, I have participated in the design of integrated circuit electronics, some of which are still in use to this day. In the end, then, I have a good knowledge of computer hardware and software design and implementation.

In my opinion, the Y2K bug is not going to impact the lives of everyday people very much. I know this goes against a large majority of what you might have heard, but it is the most common view among computer professionals. If you read the actual trade magazines in our industry, you would know that we have been addressing the Y2K bug for nearly ten years now, and it is mostly under control. The vast majority of power companies are already Y2K compliant. In order to be totally safe, they also have manual backup plans. Those power companies that are not Y2K compliant have solid schedules laid out in publicly-available white papers that indicate they will be Y2K compliant before January 1. The same can be said of water and gas utilities.

Having said all of that, let me make one quick caveat. There will be some companies that go broke as a result of the Y2K bug. Companies that did not devote the necessary time and effort into fixing the bug will go under. A medical laboratory for which I consult, for example, has spent well over $500,000 in fixing the Y2K problem. For a company that grosses only 16 million per year and has less than a 5% profit margin, that is a HUGE investment. Had they not made that investment, however, they would have gone bankrupt after January 1. Some companies have refused to devote that kind of money to the problem, and they will fail in the year 2000!

If you are wondering why I think that the Y2K bug is not going to destroy the world as we know it (like the doomsayers are predicting), consider the following points.

1. The Y2K bug, although enormous in scope, is the simplest kind of computer bug to fix. When I have a problem with my software, I usually have no idea what the problem is. Thus, I need to run test after test just to find out what the problem is. Then I can start the programming to actually fix the bug! In the Y2K arena, we know what the problem is. That makes it a no-brainer to fix. In many Y2K conversions, interns do a lot of the re-programming, because it is a perfect introduction to real bug-fixing. Thus, the Y2K bug fixes take mostly manpower and very little brainpower.
   
   
2. Most major companies have already done serious Y2K testing, which involves "rolling the clocks ahead" past the year 2000. The reports I have seen, and the companies for which I have consulted, have indicated that this testing resulted in no major calamities to their computer systems. The entire Wall Street network, for example, has run a series of such tests already. If you cannot demonstrate that your system has passed such tests with flying colors, your system will be "locked out" of the Wall Street network in December. This is typical in the industry.
   
   
3. Even for systems that are not Y2K compliant, there are backup plans that can work. For example, a company can set its clocks backwards 28 years. If they do that, all of the dates and days will be correct, only the years will be wrong. Billing systems and the like have already demonstrated that this is a viable solution to keep a system running if it has Y2K problems.

If you are worried about the so-called "embedded chip" problem, don’t be. This is something that has been overhyped by people who really do not understand how embedded chips work. Consider these points:

1. The vast majority of embedded chips do not have calendars. It turns out that a calendar is a design-intensive power hog. You only put one in a chip if you absolutely have to. Most embedded chips that work on a time interval do not use calendars. Instead, they simply count the oscillations in a quartz chip. This is completely year-independent.
   
   
2. Most embedded chips with calendars also have firmware. They can have their firmware "flashed" to reset the calendar. These chips need not even be replaced - merely identified and flashed - a very easy task.
   
   
3. If an embedded chip does have a calendar, it probably makes no decisions based on that calendar. It probably still looks at a quartz chip to measure time intervals. Calendars in chips are mostly used to timestamp an item or a report. Thus, the operation of these chips will not be affected. They will simply timestamp with a "00" in the year 2000. Since that is purely for informational purposes, there is no problem there.
   
   
4. For those few chips that do have a calendar and do make decisions based on it, year 2000 is still not necessarily an issue. For more than 10 years, chip makers have put a century switch in their chips so that when the year does turn to "00," the chip will know how to handle it. Even though these chips are not specifically Y2K compliant because they have only 2-digit years, they will stay operational until the next century change in 2100.
   
   

If you read the wrong people, these facts might be completely new to you. Feel free to check them out thoroughly. They are based on years of experience and many discussions with the people who actually make chips. I would like you to consider one other thing. Many of the doomsayers are telling lies. They may not know that they are telling lies, but nevertheless, they are. For example:

1. Virtually every Y2K alarmist says that there is an embedded chip in every transformer that sits at the top of utility poles. To make power delivery Y2K compliant, then, someone would have to climb up to every transformer and change the chip - a clearly impossible task. This is a lie. If you actually look at the designs for pole-top transformers, there never have been chips in them. A transformer is and always has been an analog device. There is nothing digital in them! A few huge transformers at power stations are controlled digitally, but they are few and easily assessable.
   
   
2. One of the most famous doom stories in the Y2K alarmist community seems to have been started by Jack Anderson. He claims that a nuclear power plant ran a Y2K test and was completely shut down because one chip (out of thousands) at the top of a smokestack was not Y2K compliant. It supposedly took them "weeks" of constant work to find this chip. When asked for the name of the nuclear power plant and other details, Anderson could not provide any information. Larry Burkett also uses this story. He had no details when asked. The main brains of nuclear energy, the NEI, has never heard of such a story. Investigative journalists cannot find it. It is a lie - a good story that someone made up and then just passed on. I hope that neither Anderson nor Burkett made up the story. Most likely they just heard it somewhere, liked it, and began passing it along with no research to see if it was true.
   
   
3. Y2K alarmists are fond of saying that in order for a system to be Y2K compliant, every chip must be tested, one by one. This is patently false. It takes a high schooler’s research ability to see that it is false. Every system that uses embedded chips keeps track of serial numbers. The serial numbers can be used to reference manufacture’s schematics, which can tell anyone with a working knowledge of chip design whether or not the chip will have Y2K problems. At that point, only the problem chips need be investigated further.
   
   
4. Y2K alarmists are also fond of stating that the final problem is connectivity. Since computers are all connected in one way or another, there needs be only one system that is not Y2K compliant, and it will "bring down" all of the others with its bad data. Once again, a high school student can do research to see that this is not true. There is a standard practice called "windowing" that has been used with birthdates ever since computers were first used widely in commerce. It can also be used to protect a Y2K compliant system from non-Y2K compliant systems. Computer companies do not consider a system Y2K compliant until is has instituted windowing, which makes it completely safe from non-Y2K compliant data.
   
   

These four points are a tiny, tiny list of the many lies told by Y2K alarmists. I choose to think the best of people, so I do not think that people like Jack Anderson, Larry Burkett, and Gary North know that they are lying. I expect that they just hear good stories and pass them on. On Gary North’s website, for example, you are free to post any Y2K horror story that you can dream up. He states very clearly that he does not try to confirm the stories. He just allows them to be posted. If you get anyone with a working knowledge of computers to review these stories, he or she will immediately see that the vast majority of them are simply impossible. Whatever happened to "Study to shew thyself approved unto God..." (2 Tim 2:15)?

The international journal Embedded Systems Programming is the most highly-respected journal in the embedded chip industry. Consider this quote from the editorial in their January, 1999 edition: "Ten months ago in this space I asked for those of you who have encountered year 2000 (Y2K) problems in embedded systems you are developing to let me know. In all of the E-MAILs I have received, no one cited a verifiable problem." Those who do their homework and know what they are talking about have little worries about Y2K.

One final note. There is the possibility of food shortage and bank failures in late December and early January. It will not be due to the Y2K bug, however. If such calamities occur, it will be because people have listened to the lies of the alarmists and have tried to hoard food and money. Please research the facts before you go nuts over Y2K. If everyone learns the facts, there will be no serious problems! Personally, I plan to be websurfing on January 1, 2000. I expect that soon after the date change occurs, the sites of Gary North and the like will change. They will start congratulating themselves, saying that they "raised the alarm" soon enough to avoid disaster. That will be one more lie to add to their list of lies. It is the computer and chip industries themselves who have raised the alarm as much as ten years ago. They raised the alarm, and they rallied the troops to fix the problem. Gary North and the like have just been making money off of it.