Y2K1
Civilization's dependence upon computers has grown exponentially in the last thirty years. Businesses use computers to keep their records, write reports, and to converse with colleagues and clients. The average businessperson depends primarily on their computer to complete a day's work. Years ago, programmers caused what could have potentially been a major problem with modern computer systems. While attempting to conserve scarce and expensive data bits, they programmed the year using two digits instead of four. At the turn of the century, computer systems would not be able to discriminate between the year 1900 and the year 2000. As the speculation of what would happen at the turn of the millennium grew, those who depended on computers became frightened at the thought of what their world might become. In order to prevent any major problems from occurring, measures were to taken to repair this bug. Now that the beginning of the new century has passed, it is safe to say that the precautions taken by businesses and the government were not done so in vain. Now the century has turned, our computers are safe and precautions no longer need be taken. On and after January 1, there were several Y2K related problems with comp
In Kansas City, KS, a few court cases were delayed, including a civil suit regarding a wrongful death, due to year 2000 related computer failure. In one case, two citizens were not served subpoenas until almost two months after they were issued (Overman, par. 2). Ellen Crawford, public information officer for the Jackson County Circuit Court, commented, "There were a lot of problems and one of them was issuing summons" (Overman, par. 8). Jonathan Weber of CNN agrees that there probably would have been problems if businesses and the government had not spent as much money on this issue as they did, but he contests that "computers have all kinds of problems all the time." He believes that businesses' existing staffs were large enough to keep their computer systems running through the turn of the century (par. 1).
Some common words found in the essay are:
, Circuit Court, Weber CNN, California CIO, City KS, President's Council, Civil Suit, Businesses Overbill, Data Corp, Eyewear Industry, nov 2000, computer systems, money spent, 6 nov, feb 2000, card companies, credit card companies, 6 nov 2000, credit card, 8 nov 2000, par 1, businesses government, overman par,
Approximate Word count = 1072
Approximate Pages = 4 (250 words per page double spaced)
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