What's the Deal?!?

By Pete Rhinehardt

After a lengthy hiatus to straighten out my life, not only with physically moving my family yet again, but moving my career target too, I'm back. I was not idle while away, but thinking constantly about what my next article could be. It really wasn't all that difficult to decide, either. I just followed the news and read the paper and thought, "What's the deal?"

My idea first started after reading an article in our local rag about a paper mill in the next town over (no matter where you are, you are always downwind from one of these things). It seems that the mill was hiring a staff of eight computer experts to study and perform whatever maintenance was going to be necessary on the company computers. Why? This so-called Year 2000 Bug, or Y2K. I sat there and laughed as I read it and thought, "what a waste" and, "this is ludicrous." You see, I'm not really very educated when it comes to things PC.

My son and I are Mac enthusiasts. As my wife puts it, "When you got the new computer (it was a Power Mac 6100), it's like you joined a cult." Maybe I did. Unquestionably, there are very few companies in the world that have the kind of dedicated customers as Apple enjoys. Anyway, the rest of the family is pretty much PC. So I asked them, "Are things really that serious?"

"Oh yes," responded my mother-in-law. "Think of all the businesses and banks, the government, all of the schools and things that use PC or mainframe equipment. They could all crash in the year 2000. Aren't you worried about what will happen to your computer when January 1, 2000 rolls in?"

"Nope," I responded.

"Why not?" asks my mother in law.

"Oh, the Mac is good, as far as dates go, until the year 29940. Even my son Nate's old Mac Plus."

"That's a strange number. Why the year 29940?"

"I don't know. Doesn't really matter to me since I won't be alive to care. I have the satisfaction of knowing that, barring a hardware failure, my Mac should be around buzzing away long after I've been composted."

A couple weeks later in the Sunday paper, they had a big headline that included a funereal countdown with less than 500 days until the Year 2000 Crash. Now what the heck does that mean? Is the world going to end? Should I be stockpiling canned goods, bottled water and sling shots to protect my family?

So for the last month or two, I have been following little news stories about this scare and that concern because of the Y2K bug. I've even received advertisements for Mac software that included slogans of "Y2K Compliant." It would be more laughable except that less informed Mac users are concerned about their computers failing. I have had some lengthy e-mail discussions trying to reassure friends that their computer won't fail and that yes, they could purchase a Mac now without fear of the Y2K bug.

Where did it all start? I can't begin to explain to you what this Y2K bug is. All I know is that the concern is when we hit the year 2000, PC computers will interpret that number as 1900. For those computers that keep databases based on birth dates, I can see this might cause a paradox. Keeping track of someone putting money in the bank with a birth date of 01/01/55 would stump a computer which thinks it's the year 1900. No one could have such an account since that person hasn't yet been born.

How could some really intelligent people miss the fact that we are about to start a new millennium? Was the ball dropped or ignored, for the motive of profit? I can be both sarcastic and cynical, but I would really be pushing the antisocial limits of cynicism to believe that profit was behind it all.

And yet, I cannot believe that Microsoft continues to sell products that are not Y2K compliant. I know, I know - the patches are free to download. Still, knowing how people are concerned, to continue to produce flawed products seems rather foolish. It seems to me that being Y2K compliant shouldn't be all that difficult. Am I missing something both extremely technical and crucial here?

Unless...unless there's a reason for it all. Does Microsoft do this because it doesn't care? Let's face facts - Microsoft is on trial now for monopolizing methods. Do you suppose that Microsoft feels that it has such a lock on the PC software market that they can turn out poor quality software and we, the consumers, are stuck with whatever table scraps they deign to toss us? Or does Microsoft have a plan to announce the Y2K bug patch when people will be forced to purchase it, whatever the cost? Neither seems to be a good option.

So what does it mean to me? Well, I might actually consider taking all my money out of the bank before that day, but it hardly seems worth it. Then again, since I need to know the Windows and Unix platforms for my Masters, I guess taking that money out will be good. I'll probably need it to purchase new Y2K compliant software. Maybe even a Microsoft Y2K patch. The irony of it all will kill me.

Still a teacher in Maine, Pete has decided to earn his Masters of Science in Computer Science. And he's going to do it on his Mac 6100 which was recently violated with the addition of a DOS card. May the gods forgive him.

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February 08, 2012