The Effects of Y2K
As the Millennial sun rose over human civilization, in the independent republic of Kiribati, a group of some thirty low lying coral islands in the Pacific Ocean that straddle the equator and the International Date Line, the reality of the Y2K bug became apparent. This long awaited sunrise marks the dawn of the year 2000. Kiribati's 81,000 Micronesians observed nothing different about this dawn, they only received TV in 1989. (y2ksupply.com) However, those who live in a world that relies on satellites, air, rail and ground transportation, manufacturing plants, electricity, heat, telephones, or TV, experienced a true millennial shift, or not. We finally saw the extent of the networked and interdependent processes we had created. At the stroke of midnight, the new millenium closed the greatest challenge to modern society we have responded to yet. We didn't experience this event, as chaos or social transformation. I am describing the year 2000 problem, known as Y2K (K signifying 1000). Nicknamed at first "The Millennial Bug," increasing sensitivity even escalated the nickname to "The Millennial Bomb." The problem begins as a simple technical error. Large mainframe computers more than ten years old were not programmed to handle a fou
This calculation problem explains why the computer system at Marks & Spencer department store in London destroyed tons of food during the process of doing a long-term forecast. The computer read 2002 as 1902. Instead of four more years of shelf life, the computer calculated that this food was ninety-six years old. It ordered it thrown out. A similar problem happened recently in the U.S. at the warehouse of a freeze-dried food manufacturer. Y2K Preparedness Information, "www.y2ksupply.com" Ferrara Tim, Matthew. "Outsmarting the Y2K Bug." 14 Aug 1998. The Department of Justice has an even worse problem. They are charged with keeping track of criminals and federal indictments across the country. Because of the complexity of the laws, if the computers used to keep track of indictments and criminal records are not Y2K compliant, then the Justice system could have criminals cleared of any wrong doing because of a simple date issue. It is well known that if the date or address were wrong on an indictment or a search warrant, anything found because of the indictment or warrant could not be used in court. (Cohen) In order to understand the Y2K bug we must first understand what it is. For many years electronic storage was very expensive. In the early days of computing a Megabyte or a million bytes of information could have cost up to $100,000 to store electronically. This same amount of information storage can now cost around ten cents. (Barr)
Some common words found in the essay are:
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Approximate Word count = 2822
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page double spaced)
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