What is the Y2K disaster?
The Y2K bug was a computer flaw, or bug, that may have caused problems when dealing with dates beyond December 31, 1999.
What caused the Y2K problem?
The term Y2K had become shorthand for a problem stemming from the clash of the upcoming Year 2000 and the two-digit year format utilized by early coders to minimize use of computer memory, then an expensive commodity.
Will the Y2K bug happen again?
When the year 10000 (Y10k) rolls around, we'll have the Y2K problem all over again when we try to subtract 9000 from 0000. If 8,000 years is too far in the future, don't worry! There's another giant date bug that's right around the corner in 2038.
How did they solve Y2K?
Programmers wanting to avoid the Y2K bug had two broad options: entirely rewrite their code, or adopt a quick fix called “windowing”, which would treat all dates from 00 to 20, as from the 2000s, rather than the 1900s. An estimated 80 per cent of computers fixed in 1999 used the quicker, cheaper option.
What will happen in 2038?
What Is The 2038 Problem? The 2038 problem refers to the time encoding error that will occur in the year 2038 in 32-bit systems. This may cause havoc in machines and services that use time to encode instructions and licenses. The effects will primarily be seen in devices that are not connected to the internet.
Is the Year 2038 problem real?
Another threat is known through the cyber security world as the “2038 problem” which may cause computer problems similar to the fears over the Y2K bug of 20 years ago. The year 2038 problem is 16 years in the future, but the threat can already be seen.
What were people afraid of Y2K?
December 31, 2019. Twenty years ago, as people were ringing in a new millennium, some were also preparing for a disaster dubbed Y2K: People feared turning over to the year 2000 might cause computers to crash worldwide. That's because many computer programs allowed only two digits for the year (i.e., 99 instead of 1999) ...
Why is 2038 the next Y2K?
As computers measure time in seconds from 1 January 1970, 03:14:07 UTC on 19 January 2038 is equal to 2,147,483,647 seconds after 1 January 1970. As 32-bit date and time systems can only count up to 2,147,483,647 separate positive values the system cannot continue counting the seconds past that time.
When did the fear of Y2K start?
In 1999, Y2K was shorthand for a computer bug that many believed would break the world's electronic systems.
When did the Y2K scare start?
Problems were reported on February 29 2000, Y2K's first Leap Year Day, and 1 March 2000.
How did Y2K affect society?
Y2K did bring home how reliant we all are on computers. Many of us still don't back up critical data at home. The same isn't true for business and government. Many learned from Y2K just how vulnerable information systems are to a malicious attack or unforeseen disaster.
Where did the survivors of the apocalypse live?
One passage describes the horrors of the sixth day after the apocalypse, when he and a few other survivors try to escape the the remains of the city of Asheville, North Carolina, after living in an abandoned bomb shelter in one of the city's buildings. The passage is as follows:
How did the 3xer virus affect the US?
It took only a few microseconds for it to do so, and by 12:00:06 AM, half the computers in the world had been irreparably damaged. The United States defence system had its main clock fail, which allowed the 3Xer virus and other minor sister viruses to enter the main defence grid and cause massive errors, which by 12:00:13 AM, caused it to activate the nuclear warheads and set it to DEFCON 1. This caused full-out retaliation to a non-existent nuclear attacker.
What is 3xer virus?
The new virus, dubbed 3Xer ('X' because it was unlike anything seen before and unknown, and ‘3’ because it triplicates itself in decimal time), was unusual, in the sense of where it seemed independently to work to find points of weakness in systems that had standard date processing. It seemingly corrupted systems that had trouble changing date formats, especially computers that only processed two digits for a year on their clock. Leasure was intrigued by this new-found virus since early similar versions had been found in September 1998 and March 1999, when fellow universities had done their Y2K Bug systems check.
What happened in January 2000?
At 12:00:00 Midnight EST, January 1, 2000, the computers had failed in over a third of the country. Then, by some unlikely situation, the problem magnified. 13 seconds later, over 6439 nuclear warheads had been unstoppably launched, and were heading for their various targets. Britain, France, Germany, Australia, the former Soviet Union. Naturally, Russia’s defense system reacted double-fold. The Warheads reached Washington D.C. and New York at 12:24:56 and 12:12:09, respectively. By dawn, over five billion people's lives had been lost, and thousands of cities and towns in ruins. To the few survivors, this was only the beginning of the end. Their families and friends have all been gone because of a mere date malfunction, and the rest of the world was at an end. Man has started everything and now is being gullble like you...
What happened at 11:55:12 p.m.?
At 11:55:12 p.m., in Los Angeles, California, a man broke into the CBS 2 News Station and managed to appear on-screen in front of the local anchormen and shout explicit messages of doom and horror regarding the Y2K Bug. He was forcibly escorted out of the building and taken to the nearest police station.
Who invented the atomic bomb?
Some waited patiently; they decided to have one more drink, or they decided to read the last edition of Time Magazine released that very day, with a picture of Albert Einstein whose work led to the invention of the Atomic Bomb, the same device that would undo the empire humans created in just a short while.
Why Was Y2K Scary?
Experts feared that the switch from the two-digit year '99 to '00 would wreak havoc on computer systems ranging from airline reservations to financial databases to government systems. For instance, the banking system relied on dated computers and technologies and it wasn't irrational for depositors to worry about being able to withdraw funds or engage in important transactions. Bankers were worried that interest might be calculated for a thousand years (1000 to 1999) instead of a single day.
What Is Y2K?
Y2K is the shorthand term for "the year 2000." Y2K was commonly used to refer to a widespread computer programming shortcut that was expected to cause extensive havoc as the year changed from 1999 to 2000. Instead of allowing four digits for the year, many computer programs only allowed two digits (e.g., 99 instead of 1999). As a result, there was immense panic that computers would be unable to operate at the turn of the millennium when the date descended from "99" to "00".
What Led to Y2K?
Y2K came about largely due to economics. At the dawn of the computer age, the programs being written required the type of data storage that was extremely costly. Since not many anticipated the success of this new technology or the speed with which it would take over, firms were judicious in their budgets. This lack of foresight, especially given that the millennium was just about 40 years away, led to programmers being forced to using a 2-digit code instead of a 4-digit code to designate the year.
What was Y2K used for?
Key Takeaways. Y2K was commonly used to refer to a widespread computer programming shortcut that was expected to cause extensive havoc as the year changed from 1999 to 2000 at the turn of the Millenium. The change was expected to bring down computer systems infrastructures, such as those for banking and power plants.
What is Y2K in computer terms?
Y2K is the shorthand term for "the year 2000.". Y2K was commonly used to refer to a widespread computer programming shortcut that was expected to cause extensive havoc as the year changed from 1999 to 2000.
How did Y2K come about?
Y2K came about largely due to economics. At the dawn of the computer age, the programs being written required the type of data storage that was extremely costly. Since not many anticipated the success of this new technology or the speed with which it would take over, firms were judicious in their budgets.
Why did Y2K happen?
Y2K came about largely due to economics. At the dawn of the computer age, the programs being written required the type of data storage that was extremely costly. Since not many anticipated the success of this new technology or the speed with which it would take over, firms were judicious in their budgets. This lack of foresight, especially given that the millennium was just about 40 years away, led to programmers being forced to using a 2-digit code instead of a 4-digit code to designate the year.
What does Y2K mean?
Y2K is a numeronym and was the common abbreviation for the year 2000 software problem. The abbreviation combines the letter Y for "year", the number 2 and a capitalized version of k for the SI unit prefix kilo meaning 1000; hence, 2K signifies 2000.
What caused the Y2K crash?
An upscale grocer's 1997 credit-card caused crash of their 10 cash registers, repeatedly, due to year 2000 expiration dates, and was the source of the first Y2K-related lawsuit.
How much did the US spend on Y2K?
The total cost of the work done in preparation for Y2K is estimated at over US$300 billion ($451 billion as of January 2018, once inflation is taken into account). IDC calculated that the US spent an estimated $134 billion ($201 billion) preparing for Y2K, and another $13 billion ($20 billion) fixing problems in 2000 and 2001. Worldwide, $308 billion ($463 billion) was estimated to have been spent on Y2K remediation.
What year did the Y2K+10 problem start?
Some systems had problems once the year rolled over to 2010. This was dubbed by some in the media as the "Y2K+10" or "Y2.01K" problem.
Why did the Deep Impact spacecraft lose time?
In addition to the Year 2000 problem, various issues have occurred due to errors involving overflows. A specific issue with time formatting caused the destruction of the NASA Deep Impact spacecraft. It tracked time in one-tenth of a second increments, and so was lost on 11 August 2013 at 00:38:49 when its internal clock reached exactly 2 32 tenths of a seconds since 1 January 2000, the time value being stored in a signed 32-bit integer which overflowed on the date and at the time in question.
Is a leap year a year?
Normally, a year is a leap year if it is evenly divisible by four. A year divisible by 100, however, is not a leap year in the Gregorian calendar unless it is also divisible by 400. For example, 1600 was a leap year, but 1700, 1800 and 1900 were not.
Who wrote the year 2000 problem?
The Year 2000 problem was the subject of the early book Computers in Crisis by Jerome and Marilyn Murray (Petrocelli, 1984; reissued by McGraw-Hill under the title The Year 2000 Computing Crisis in 1996). The first recorded mention of the Year 2000 Problem on a Usenet newsgroup occurred on 18 January 1985 by poster Spencer Bolles.
