Last year, the Electric Power Research Institute was quoted as follows: "Major disruptions in technical and business operations could begin as early as Jan. 1,1999." Although many businesses might discover significant IT problems when they start work on 1-4-99, so far I've heard of no significant infrastructural disruptions anywhere. What is the prognostic significance, if any, of this limited good news?

-- Anonymous, January 02, 1999

Answers

Hi electricity folks! Check out Ed Yourdon's Forum for incoming reports about 1999 Failures:

TimeBomb 2000 New Questions

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-- Anonymous, January 02, 1999

Bill,

I don't think anyone really expected operational breakdowns on 1/1/1999, although there are some being reported (to wit, I got a call yesterday from a friend who could not get into her office building because the security system program had, according to building management, frozen up as soon as the clocks rolled to 1999 and the card readers wouldn't work).

The problems reported so far with the 1998-1999 transition have been as expected; mostly IT related, in financial applications and forward looking scheduling systems. We'll be hearing a lot more about these failures in the next week, I think.

-- Anonymous, January 02, 1999

I picked the following up off of CPSR's Y2k news list this evening:

From: Dan Stevens

To: Multiple recipients of list cpsr-y2k@cpsr.org

At about 9:30 EST tonight, January 1, 1999, the "Quick Forms Lookup" for the SEC's Edgar database no longer was able to find 1998 4th quarter form 10Q filings. These are the quarterly profit-and-loss statements in which companies describe their Year 2000 remediation programs. The "Current Events Analysis Lookup", which lists form filed within the last five business days, returns the message "error getting daily index file".

Could Edgar be the first casualty of the 21st Century? Maybe the support staff just left the computer running and went home for the weekend, leaving it to its own devices. Or maybe there's more to the story.

After reading this, I went over to the EDGAR search site, and called up a few companies. Sure enough, the search does not return any 4th quarter 10Q's.

Coincidence? Probably. Make of it what you will - I sent an email to the SEC webmaster this evening seeking explanation.

-- Anonymous, January 02, 1999

It's too soon, and the 4th quarter is different.

Companies have 45 days after the end of the quarter to file 10Qs with the SEC (plus a few days before they show up on EDGAR). But, they have 90 days to file 10Ks, the annual report to the SEC, which includes the 4th quarter. So, we will not find 10Qs for 4th quarters, and we get to wait 90 days for the 10Ks instead of the 45 that 10Qs can take.

Jerry B Life is complex: there is a real part, and there is an imaginary part.

-- Anonymous, January 03, 1999

Electricity out in Santa Monica right now, according to my friend. Also was out all day on New Year's Eve.

scott

-- Anonymous, January 04, 1999

I see versions of question repeatedly.

Millions of lines of code - Imbedded or not - do not all get called/used/executed at the same time. Like the sentences in a book, not all are read at the same time. Picking the book up and opening to the page is like the date rollover. Until you read the sentence the tears don't flow or the smile is hidden. The y2k related disruptions are like the smile or tears - until the words are read and understood (code executed/used) nothing appears to have happened.

For a best seller - given enough of them in print at the same time - someone somewhere will probably be reading that line right now. For an imbedded y2k event the equivalent of -best seller- is; how many chips are candidates for problem from a given rollover. How many have a time/date capability at all? How many would error due to a date input of 1/1/99? How many would be impacted by 9/9/99? How many would be hit by the dreaded 1/1/00? Others, more qualified than I am on this issue, predicted that a small number of errors could arise due to just having a 99 in the year position of the date.

That any errors occurred and proceeded to the point that a problem surfaced should give a reasonable person a reason to pause and reflect. Did the owners, managers, and officers of the affected companies not hear, understand or believe the message? Did they not care about the consequences of ignoring the possibility for these problems to occur? Did they just miss a deadline? Are they alone? Will we be lucky next time? Do people have to die for an event to be classified as a major one?

-- Anonymous, January 06, 1999