With apologies to Disney, this is the paranoid IT mananger's idea of what all watches should look like.  No more confusion as to whether a person has worked minus 4 hours intead of 8 hours when the day is "9 to 5" - from now on it will be "9 to 17".

"The IT world has gone mad" - Norman Perelson, February 1999

Look in any information technology (IT) trade magazine and you will find one or more articles on theY2k bug.

First mistake, the super geniuses spell Y2k wrong, they invariably spell it with a capital K, which would then translate to "Year 2048" instead of "Year 2000". (The lower case K is the metric abbreviation for the 1000 multiplier, and when adopted by the computer industry to mean 2^10 or 1024 they sensibly adopted a capital K to indicate the difference.)   The second mistake is that they all seem to call it a "millennium bug", but in reality it is a century bug - it occurs every 100 years. Besides, the millennium only changes after year 2000.  Then, to add to the confusion of the lay public, they start using the abbreviation to mean any unanticipated program shortcoming - not just 2-digit year related bugs

But, that is not why I say the IT world has gone mad. I say it because many IT people are becoming enturbulated (unknowingly mentally confused and less in control). IT managers and programmers are led to believe, mostly by their peers, that year 2000 will be a bad thing for computers. They become embroiled in the "game" of fixing the problem before the end of 1999 and seem to lose the ability to see the whole picture for what it really is. Instead they see bugs, potential computer crashes and general devastation in degrees out of all proportion to what is really there.

The result of this insanity was the huge effort to find potential Y2k "bugs" - but the sheer magnitude of the problem seemed to overwhelm some programmers to the extent that they would begin to change code recklessly, using a set of rules, finding and replacing all occurrences of offending code, rather than first testing to see which 2-digit dates will really cause a problem after 1999, and then fixing the real bugs only. The blind conversions got the more creative(?) programmers working out ways to automate the process - thus reaching total chaos in a quicker time.

The second result, which was a direct result of the first result, is that there are probably a lot more serious bugs in programs now than there were before these blind repairs were started.

The third result is that many programs now use 4-digit year format for data entry and display, which is leaving the user with an extra bit of work to do each day for the next few decades or maybe less. (How long will it take before users are tired of typing "20" every time they have to enter a date?)

Being totally the effect of "Y2K", the IT industry is now "seeing" problems in virtually every one of mans creations. They are saying that most old computers will not work after 1999. They are saying that programmers must not try to create long-lasting programs, because within a year or so something like Y2k will happen and make it expensive to maintain.

That is psychosis, a sure sign of insanity, the IT industry has gone mad.

So, why am I telling you this? It is to try to put a bit of reality into the picture and to offer a warning. By now, all of you must have been asked whether your computers are "year 2000 compliant". Many of you may have been told that some part of the computer system you are using is not compliant. Please do not get embroiled in this insanity.  I am astonished that all the computer dealers are to some extent exploiting the wave of insanity that has occurred - gently encouraging their clients to upgrade in time for year 2000.   Astonished because either they are also insane or they are selling under false pretenses.

Someone said; "If it is not broken, don't fix it."  I believe that that is good advice as it applies to computers and computer software too.  If you do have a problem in 2000, first see if you can fix it yourself before you seek professional advice.  Most hardware clock bugs can be fixed by setting the clock manually in year 2000 using any one of a number of methods, for example just typing the command "DATE 1-1-2000" at the DOS prompt will fix most computers.  Do it just once, and it will give your computer another 100 years of immunity from the "Y2k bug".   See if you can work around the problem for the first month or so.  Many bugs will only effect the change on the 1st of January, and most will disappear on there own by 2001.

I personally guarantee that the latest version of The Jewellery Shopkeeper will operate perfectly, with regard to date functions, until at least the year 2010 WITHOUT ANY UPGRADES TO YOUR HARDWARE OR OPERATING SYSTEM, regardless of how antiquated that hardware and operating system may be.

The only worst-case problem that I can foresee has nothing to do with The Jewellery Shopkeeper, but rather backup software. In a few cases backups that are being selected by date may have to be revised - in other words a different method of selecting files to be backed up may need to be used. My guarantee covers any help that you may need to correct any errors that you may experience, as usual, I ask you to keep up-to-date and also not so up-to-date backups of your files in case of unforeseen problems - but this is a requirement for every month-end in any case.

Relax and look forward to the beginning of the new millennium which starts, a year later, at midnight on 31 December 2000. By that time, hopefully, these over stressed IT types will have recovered without drugs or other permanent damage, and the unscrupulous dealers will have gotten over their guilt!

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