waht was y2k virus and how it was solved???????????
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waht was y2k virus and how it was solved???????????
Sjees.. first hit on google:
http://vmyths.com/hoax.cfm?id=165&page=3
Erm,it wasn't a virus AFAIK...more like a wee little bug that got a lot of hype..never did cause any serious problems though.
The fourth result on a Google search gets you this:
Source:www.y2ktimebomb.com/
What is Y2K Bug?
During 1960s to late 80s there was a widespread practice in all computer softwares to use two digits for repreasenting a year rather than using 4 digits. This was done to save computer disk and memory space because these resources were relatively expensive in those times. As the year 90's approached experts began to realize this major shortcoming in the computer application softwares. In year 2000, the computer systems could interpret 00 as 1900 messing up all the computing work. For example if a program function is calculating difference between two dates, it would calculate a negative number. For example difference between 1 Jan 2000 and 31 Dec 1999 could be calculated as -100 years rather than 1 day. This was a major bug for the whole finance industry. The bug not only existed in computer software but it also existed in the firmware being used in the computer hardware. In general this bug threatened all the major industries including utilities, banking, manufacturing, telecom, airlines.
How was it averted?
Y2K bug was a clicking time bomb for all major computer applications. The computer and system application companies came out with year 2000 compliant operating systems and system software. IT companies around the world spent billions of dollars to go through their entire application source code to look for the Y2K bug and fix it. Almost everybody raced around to make themselves Y2K compliant before the fast approaching deadline. Finally when the big day came, many utilities and other companies switched off their main computers and put the backup computers on work. When the clock ticked Jan 1, 2000, no major problems were reported. Almost every bank worked fine, no major power outages were reported, airplanes still flew and the whole world went on with its normal life.
It got me £4500 (English Pounds) :D
FUD?
We were actually trying to trade real cases?............I only found one, with a dead battery!! :eek:
"Well see, they wrote all this bank software, and, uh, to save space, they used two digits instead of four. So, like, 98 instead of 1998? Uh, so I go through these thousands of lines of code and, uh... it doesn't really matter. I uh, I don't like my job, and, uh, I don't think I'm gonna go anymore."
-Office Space
It was a bug in code not a virus....see a lot of cobol programmers used two digits for dates instead of four. Luckely a lot of us hardwokign schlubs put in 80 hr weeks in 97 and 98 to make sure nothing bad happen leading to a lot of newer it folks thinking the issue was all hype. I personaly watched automated assembaly lines grind to a halt during date rollover testing in the late 90's (just in time assembly decided it had 100 years before the component needed to be built so it stoped).
It was a very serious error (or more correctly a lot of very serious errors comeing from the same programming practice) we just fixed it in time.
If the story was every truly told it would be a great victory for us poor IT schlubs, we actualy did somethign right...unfortunitly that story is boring, and well most people want to blame it not praise us.
I remember I spent newyears eve 99 - 2000 in the office. The company threw a decent party for us and we did get a bounus for the hundreds of hours we put in during the time leading up to the date but as bballad said it is a boring story in itself.
As I remember it, the problem just wasn't related to Cobol. In many other languages and even in quite a few databases the engineers decided to store dates as just a string of 6 characters. Often in YYMMDD format to simplify the sorting by date. Quite effective, of course, as long as the year stays within a range of 100 years. One solution for the Y2K bug was to change the year offset, which was simple to implement and which would buy some more time to really fix the problem. This offset method is simple. E.g. any YY value below '30' would be in the 21th century and above would be in the 20th century. Thus 18 -> 2018 and 44 -> 1944.
Nowadays, dates are stored differently. Often as a number of days since 1900 or since 1970. Thus the only limit now is the size of the number datatype (often 2 or 4 bytes) which won't cause many problems anymore for the next 50 years or so. (And then there will be a new Y2K like problem.) Storing dates as just a number of days used to be considered a slow method because it required the computer to do some serious calculations to translate it to day-month-year format. Nowadays computers are fast enough so this isn't a problem anymore.
Basically, the Y2K bug is just an overflow error. :D It's quite a common mistake. But the Y2K bug did provide a lot of new jobs in the IT industry since many companies decided to invest heavily to get rid of this problem. And the IT industry stayed quite popular for a while until the whole bubble exploded. The industry normalized again, with many companies going chapter 11 just because they had invested too much. But still, the IT industry got very popular because of it all because suddenly companies started to invest heavily to educate new developers and engineers to fix these issues.
Out side the the obvious financial and some control software. Some academics and media decided the Clock was the cause of the problem, If it was electronic and had a "Clock" it was vulenerable to the Y2K bug, inspite that many Electronic clocks had nothing to do with the time, let alone the date. This lead to Y2K hysteria. Visions were displayed of exploding computers, planes crashing, powerstations melting down.
Some wise guys when faced with the failure of any major problems to surface, came up with alternate problems based on the Y2K bug. Who has heard of the Time Dilation Effect?
Yep this was the death throws of Y2k..
Y2K Bug 5% fact 95% hype
Y2K WAS A FRENZY & NOTHIN EVEN HAPPENNED!!!!
I have to pipe in on this. I any of you remember, much of the hysteria surrounding Y2K was generated from the efforts of Gary North. This is the guy who has actively worked to generate panic, FUD and generally work up the gullible population in his attempts to bring down the secular government of the US.
http://www.serve.com/thibodep/cr/y2k.htm
Calling himself and his followers "contrarians," his current efforts are seen here:
http://www.garynorth.com/
Katja: Nope computers do't do datesdirfently now. In most cases we jsut put in a date window. IF you are before this two digit date the century is 20 otherwise its 19...so yes in a few years we go through all of the changes again (job security).
Und3ertak3r: While planes where never going to fall out of the sky. JIT assembly lines had problems, enviromental contorlls had problems. JIT delivery app had problems. Some of the AMI BIos versions had problems (yes the PC would just stp working untill you flashed the BIOS.) There where serious issues that coud have effected the econamy seriously...we just fixed them in time.
As far as computers storing dates differently. This is also true. Unix has been storing dates the same since the late 1960's and 1970's. And unix uses the number of seconds that have passed since the year 1970 written as a signed 32 bit number. The current day,time, and year is calculated based on the number of seconds. So faster computers did not make this possible. It just doesn't take that much math to figure the date, it's not that intensive. Any system using the current 32bit date format of counting seconds since 1970 will run out of space in their 32 bit counter in 2038. It's known as the unix timebomb..Quote:
Originally posted here by Katja
Nowadays, dates are stored differently. Often as a number of days since 1900 or since 1970. Thus the only limit now is the size of the number datatype (often 2 or 4 bytes) which won't cause many problems anymore for the next 50 years or so. (And then there will be a new Y2K like problem.) Storing dates as just a number of days used to be considered a slow method because it required the computer to do some serious calculations to translate it to day-month-year format. Nowadays computers are fast enough so this isn't a problem anymore.
Basica[/B]
The problem with Y2K was poor planning, it had nothing to do with the speed of computers. Most of the developers didn't think those systems would still be running by the time 2000 rolled around.
I SOLVED MY OWN Y2K PROBLEM