Bejing Article List Glitches

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From the South China Morning Post Technology www.technologypost.com/Resources/Y2k/Article/20000104094530307.asp

Published on Tuesday, January 4, 2000 Y2K ARCHIVE

First Y2K workday brings few computer problems STAFF REPORTER and ASSOCIATED PRESS in Beijing

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Hackers attacked the Web site of the US Embassy in Beijing, while banks and the weather bureau found minor computer glitches yesterday, but the mainland rode out the first workday of the new millennium with no reports of major Y2K troubles.

US Embassy officials discovered on Sunday that their Web site had been defaced with two crude phrases and asked the contractor to shut down the site and fix the problem.

"We don't know who hacked it but I can confirm it was hacked," said embassy spokesman Bill Palmer.

He said precautions taken to avoid Y2K-related problems failed to fend off the hackers.

Almost all Y2K-related problems reported by yesterday were minor.

Some automated teller machines in Guangzhou failed to dispense cash and some bank computers were dating documents with the year 1900, the Beijing Youth Daily reported.

"This machine has a problem," said one middle-aged man who, with his wife assisting, attempted to get money out of an ATM in the Beijing Friendship Store.

The National Meteorological Administration discovered problems in some of its observation systems: in the remote northwestern region of Ningxia the circuit board of a solar measuring device had failed to roll over to 2000.

Measurements were being made manually, the government Y2K Web site reported. No major problems were reported in the mainland's hospitals, one of the areas feared to be the least prepared to tackle the effects of the millennium bug.

According to a member of the Beijing Sino-Japanese Friendship Hospital Y2K taskforce, the hospital only encountered superficial errors.

She said: "There were no big problems. Some of the equipment displayed '00', instead of '2000', but it did not affect the equipment. It was only a display issue."

Some department stores in the capital also experienced Y2K glitches.

"We had some Y2K-related problems, but they have all been corrected," said a member of Beijing's Hualian Department Store's computer department.

Meanwhile, a few discrepancies over the date cropped up on the Internet as a result of the rollover into the new millennium.

On the Web site for Guangming Daily, the year was denoted as "19100", reported the Beijing Evening News.

-- Jennifer Bunker (Salt Lake City, Utah) (jen@bunkergroup.com), January 05, 2000


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