>A good example: I'm worried that shelters (and
>readers) may find their own computers are not working properly in the year
>2000.  Will delays in retrieving information stored on your computer affect
>a shelter operation?  Quite possibly.
 
The Y2K problem is only a problem with the large mainframe computers (which
stored dates as only 2 compressed "characters" in order to conserve disk
space).  This is not a problem with our home based PC's where the year has
been stored as 4 digits (there's other lists to discuss this on).  However,
even if you assume I'm totally incorrect, those of us with our own computers
can control our system date.  If you find out there's a problem, set the
system date back to 1999, or up to 2999.  You are NOT going to lose data
because of this problem (on our home systems).  Even my old DOS based
database can be rapidly changed to add 2 digits to the year field.
 
My shelter will continue to operate, we will not run out of Totally Ferret,
my well will continue to produce water, and if necessary both my waste and
my ferrets can be buried with a shovel, just as in the good old days! ;-)
 
Sandi (ex-mainframe computer programmer who helped to cause the Y2K problem)
Best Little Rabbit, Rodent & Ferret House
Seattle, WA
 
PS: It's easy to check all of your programs right now by backing up your
files, changing the system date and run all of your programs.  It's NOT
easy to change the date in mainframe computer files/databases and hundreds
of thousands of custom programs.
 
[Moderator's note: As someone quite involved with Y2K compliance at work,
and as a mainframe and PC programmer, I disagree.  Nearly every PC we
surveyed *failed* Y2K compliance -- the bios of most PCs were not compliant.
Fortunately, many are upgradeable.  And even once the bios is compliant,
many operating systems are not.
 
Many things would continue to work anyhow, of course, but in some cases
programs would fail to run, or worse, data could be lost -- such as a
database program deleting suddenly outdated records.  Actually, our
mainframes are in comparatively great shape -- it's the PC's we're all
worried about!  Macintosh computers have been compliant since day one by
the way, though no guarantee that applications running on them are.
 
I believe that the typical home computer is not compliant unless it is
quite new.  But I also don't think it will spell disaster -- a lot on your
computer will continue to work anyhow.  The point of the original post was
a suggestion to be ready for emergencies, be they caused by fire, flood, or
calendars.  Other than that, it's pretty much not a topic to discuss forever
on the FML.  BIG]
[Posted in FML issue 2366]