3.6 THE YEAR 2000 PROBLEM*

(We remind you that the asterisk in this section heading and in some later section headings indicates advanced material that may be skipped on a first reading.)

The year 2000 problem has often been abbreviated to the "Y2K problem" by those who love acronyms, and termed the "Millennium Bug" by those who want a more catchy name. The problem involves software that stores dates using only two digits for the year. That raises the issue of determining what the year 00 denotes. If it denotes 2000, then everything will generally be fine when that year arrives. On the other hand, if it denotes 1900, then all manner of difficulties will arise. A phone call that starts the night of December 31, 1999, and extends a little past midnight, could be charged for 100 years of air time, resulting in a horrendous bill. A bill due in December 1999 but not paid until the next month could result in an interest fee of gigantic proportions. Or the software might just fail, freezing bank accounts and leaving flight controllers with no information on their tracking screens. Indeed, consumers are already being affected. The expiration date on Mastercard and Visa credit and debit cards is listed as MM/YY. Recently, cards were issued with an expiration date of 01/00, and these cards are being denied, as having expired some 98 years ago. While the larger authorization centers have updated their software, some smaller authorization centers still cannot...